"Snake-Head" -- Theodore Roscoe (ARGOSY, January 7, 1939)

Greetings, readers, Bill here.  Well, my lovely long weekend with my lady has drawn to a close; she's on her way home to Maryland and I'm left with an empty bed and my own lackluster cooking.  But she'll be back to visit again next month, and we're looking at mid-January for her to move in with me, so that'll be nice and gives me something to look forward to.  For now, to fill her absence, let's take a look at a bit of pulp.  I actually read today's story on Wednesday night last week after posting "The Soul of a Regiment," and have been sitting on it for a couple days.  After this story, however, we'll be taking a short break from The Big Book of Adventure Stories; my reading this weekend, done on my Kindle while Gina was sleeping, consisted of Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male.  Also, during a trip to our local Barnes and Noble this weekend, I discovered that War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches has finally returned to print, meaning my decade-long quest to find a copy in good condition that wasn't priced into the stratosphere has come to a close.  I'm not sure if I'll return to The Big Book of Adventure Stories after reviewing Rogue Male or if I'll dive into Global Dispatches for a bit.  We'll see.  Today's story, a humorous tale of adventure amidst the French Foreign Legion, originally appeared in Argosy in the January 7, 1939 issue; also appearing in that issue was Burroughs' The Synthetic Men of Mars, which I'm sure I'll cover here someday.

Thibaut Corday, a crusty old storyteller known for his tales of service in the Legion, may have finally been outdone.  Finding a copy of Bulfinch's Mythology on a cafe table, Corday is flummoxed to discover that one of the stories told within is a story about him! Oh, sure, the author changed the names of the participants and "exaggerated" events some, but everything is essentially as he experienced it ten years earlier.

Corday's unnamed companion tries to explain that the book collects Greek myths, thousands of years old, but Corday is insistent -- this "Perseus" character is him! He launches into an explanation, telling of how he found himself isolated and cut off in a box canyon, captured by vicious Kabyle tribesmen after he wounded their Sheik's son.  He's to be put to horrible death: a starved rat placed on his stomach under a copper bowl, and a fire lit on top of the bowl to encourage the rat to dig down into his bowels.

Just before the rat starts digging, Corday is granted a reprieve; a delegation from another tribe arrives, one which was to bring the princess whom the Sheik's son was to marry.  They announce that they were attacked and the princess taken to the cave of the Snake-Woman, a monstrous hag whose evil eye turns all who behold it to stone.  When none of the Kabyles are willing to risk facing the Snake-Woman to retrieve the princess, Corday, in a fit of inspiration, bellows out that he will do it -- in exchange for his freedom.  The Sheik, giving Corday an evil eye of his own, agrees, but explains that no one has ever lived to escape the realm of the Snake-Woman...

Yes, it's a retelling of the story of Perseus and Medusa in 1920s North Africa, and you know what readers? It's a damn fine tale, and one that works out great.  I love that we're given a Weird Menace that wouldn't have been out of place in the shudder pulps like Weird Tales, and then the story turns around and, via the unnamed framing narrator to whom Corday's telling the story, a sound, rational explanation is given for it all -- not that Corday believes too much of the rational explanation, despite being the one to kill the Snake-Woman in pitched combat.  Corday, an uneducated and simple man, is content to believe in what his own eyes tell him is true and leaves it at that.

The story's pacing is tighter than anything, with the reader barely given time to draw breath between incidents of high adventure; Corday drawn into a sniper's duel with the Sheik's son, Corday stretched out and beginning to feel the heat of the fire and the claws of the rat, Corday being lowered on a rope into Stygian darkness to face off against the Snake-Woman with only a scimitar and a mirror at his disposal.  Roscoe's prose really makes the reader feel the tension of the race against time Corday has found himself in as he struggles blindly to make it through the cavern system inhabited by the Snake-Woman (and her hundreds of hissing pets) in time to save the princess from petrification.

Altus Press has been reprinting the Thibaut Corday stories in a set of collected editions.  I'm intrigued enough by what I saw of the character here that they're definitely going on my wish-list.

"The Soul of a Turk" -- Achmed Abdullah (ALIEN SOULS, 1922)

Achmed Abdullah was the pen name of Alexander Nicholayevitch Romanoff -- the son of Grand Duke Nicholas Romanoff, a cousin of the Tsar, and Princess Nourmahal Durani, daughter of the Amir of Afghanistan.  This makes him the most aristocratic author we've had on BPaLGM to date, though he was hardly an active member of the Russian royal family; his mother tried to poison his father over his various dalliances, leading to a divorce and young Alexander being raised by an uncle who opted to convert young Alexander from Russian Orthodox to Islam.  After graduating from Eton, he joined the British Army and served extensively in the Near and Far East, building an impressive knowledge of Oriental customs and cultures that later served him as a novelist, playwright and screenwriter.  Today's story, the first of the "Sun and Sand" section of The Big Book of Adventure Stories, was originally published in Abdullah's collection Alien Souls, published 1922.

Mehmet el-Touati is Turkish peasant, in late middle-age when the call comes, chanted by the green-turbaned mullahs in the mosques.  The Russian is threatening to destroy Islam, they say, and holy war - jihad or, as it's spelled in the story, jehad -  is declared.  Mehmet el-Touati, along with ever able-bodied man in his village, signs up to do his share to defend the Faith from the Russians.  They form the Seventeenth Turkish Regiment.

And they march, and they fight the Armenians, because they are told that the Armenians are in league with the Russians.  And they march some more, and when the Armenians are all dead, they're sent after the Syrians.  And the Greeks.  And along the way they pick up some Prussian military officials, and the mullahs tell Mehmet and the rest of the peasants that this is right and just and good, because the Prussians are a distant sect of Islam, and their Emperor Wilhelm will help them smash the Russian and save the Faith.  Metmet has his doubts, but Islam is in trouble and the Faith must be protected.

Then one day Mehmet el-Touati hears something not meant for his ears.  He hears the Prussian drill sergeant serving his regiment as brevet-major speaking with his aides.  He hears tell that the Russians have been smashed, and now the Seventeenth Turkish Regiment is to be thrown against the British and French on the Western Front.

Mehmet el-Touati thinks about this.  He doesn't care about the British or the Americans.  He signed up to defend the Faith from the Russian.  With the Russian defeated, the Faith is safe and he can return home to his family.  But he knows how the Prussian deals with deserters.

Mehmet el-Touati thinks about this, and makes up his mind the kill the Prussian.

This is a very different take on the First World War then I'm used to.  Being an American, in history class I was never given more than the bare-bones outlines of the war before America's involvement, especially beyond the Western Front.  "The Soul of a Turk" instead looks at a theatre of the Great War forgotten by American historians - that of the Middle East, through which the German Empire aimed to cut off Russian military access to the rich oil and mineral deposits of the Middle East.  The Ottoman Empire, which made up much of the Middle East during this time, was allied with the German Empire against the Russians, hence the Prussian attaches to the Turkish soldiery on display here.

With its emphasis on the drudgery and discomfort of war and the insignificance of the individual , in some ways "The Soul of the Turk" reminds me of All Quiet on the Western Front, which would not be published until seven years after this story was; I'm not saying All Quiet was inspired by "The Soul of the Turk" in any way, just that both authors were likely drawing on similar experiences to guide their writing, though in Abdullah's case, filtered through a distinctly Middle Eastern belief in kismet and the guiding hand of fate in all things.