Talk:Adventure (magazine)/Volume 53/Number 5/The Treasure of Mulai el-Hassan
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| Edition: | from Adventure magazine, 20 July 1925, pp. 137–174. |
| Source: | https://archive.org/details/AdventureV053N0519250720 |
Extract from the "Camp-Fire" section of the issue, pp. 176–177.
THE following was originally the first chapter of George E. Holt's complete novelette in this issue, but his suggestion that it be used instead at “Camp-Fire” seemed a good one, since it is occupied altogether with what might be called facts antecedent to the story itself. So here it is:
Ensenada, B. C., Mexico.
In beginning this story I should much like to set aside, for a little space, restrictions as to probabilities, and boldly set down what I feel to be the truth in the matter. But as this course would demand the reincarnation of two once-prominent men after they had died rather thoroughly some four or five thousand years ago, prudence counsels that my opinions be kept to myself. This, however, does not preclude me, I think, from setting forth certain facts, nor you from drawing your own conclusions therefrom.
NOW, certain of these facts are very, very old, and as the memory of them has been preserved through forty or fifty centuries by the minds and tongues of man, they must also be very, very true. And it is with these venerable and truthful matters that this twentieth-century story really begins.
In any volume of mythology—which, of course, is only a modern record of the oldest half-remembered events of importance in the world's youth—you will assuredly find some pages devoted to the exploits of a certain man, and, most probably, a wood-cut showing an astonishingly muscled gentleman leaning gracefully upon a war-club of imposing proportions. That will be Hercules, and the book will tell you that he “was son of Alcmena, wife of Amphytryon.” His father, the book will also go on to tell you, regarless of the fair name of the inconstant Alcmena, was not Mr. Amphytryon, however, but Jupiter himself, king of all the gods. The city of Thebes was his birthplace, and between his birth and his death, in the flaming shirt of Nessus, Hercules no doubt packed more adventure than any other character known to man. Wherefore he became almost a god.
WITH most, of these adventures we have no concern; but one or two of them have a bearing upon our story. Hercules reached manhood and became the father of three children. But one day Juno, spouse of Jupiter and consequently jealous of the illegitimate offspring of the King of the Gods, made Hercules insane, and in his fit of madness he threw his children into the fire and so destroyed them. Regaining his senses then, Hercules journeyed to Delphi to consult the famous oracle concerning atonement for his crime. The oracle ordained that he should go to a place called Tiryno, in the Peleponnesus, and there serve King Eurystheus for a space of twelve years, accomplishing therein twelve tasks which the king should impose upon him. Obeying the oracle, Hercules became the servant of King Eurystheus, and his twelve tasks became famous enough to rank, among students of the present day, with the Seven Wise Men, the Ten Commandments and the Fourteen Points. And two of them quite directly, through a course of four or five thousand years, made possible, or inevitable, certain other matters.
IN PERFORMING his tenth task—that of bringing from the Isle of Erythea the purple oxen of Geryon, Hercules, according to the record, “was come to the extremities of Europe and Africa, and here he set up two pillars, one on each side of the strait.” We call one pillar Gibraltar (which the Moors named Djibel Tarik) and that other peak on the Moroccan coast, Djibel Musa, or Hill of Moses.
Back to this same region did Hercules' eleventh task take him. He was to fetch to Eurystheus “the apples of Hesperides, which grew in the country of the Hyperboreans. There they were guarded by an enormous serpent and by the Hesperides (Western Maids), who were the daughters of Atlas. There apples were of gold, and they had been given by Earth to Juno on her wedding day.”
Now, the book will not tell you, what is also true, that this “country of the Hyperboreans” was Morocco, wherein the Mountains of Atlas uphold the heavens; nor that the native name of Morocco is Moghreb-al-Acksa, which means “Land of the West,” and that thus the Hesperides, or “Western Maids,” came by their name; nor that the “golden apples” still grow in profusion in the orange groves round about El Arache—sixty miles down the west Moroccan coast, where the “great serpent” or, as it is sometimes written, “foaming-mouthed dragon,” still guards them (or did when I followed in the tracks of Hercules). This same serpent is the Kus River, which, after snaking its way through great stretches of flat country, visible from the hills like a gigantic silver-scaled Thing, froths viciously at the bar which the sea has thrown in its teeth.
HAVING reached the land wherein the golden apples grew, many obstacles rose in the road of our adventurer. He found—and this fact concerns us intimately—he found, according to the book, that the land was governed by a king named Antæus, son of Neptune and Earth. Being challenged by Antæus to a wrestling match, Hercules threw him several times, but each time Antæus rose with a vigor renewed through contact with his mother, Earth. Discovering this, Hercules held him in his arms and squeezed him to death.
But again the book omits facts of interest. The city in which King Antæus reigned is that we now know as Tangier, and Hercules so named it—Tanjerah, to be exact—after he became successor to Antæus. And, although the book is silent on this point also, Hercules left descendants among the people of Antæus; they live today, among those purple brown hills east of Tangier, in a territory which is called by them Anjerah—the “T” having been dropped—and they call themselves sons of Hercules. Mohamed Ali, who became known as “The Eagle of the Anjerahs,” was and is the greatest of them. I, who lived among them for a while and by a quip of fate became one of their lesser chiefs, know them for a brave people, a bold people, an independent people, as becomes the descendants of such a one as Hercules.
Thus, I think, the line is drawn clear connecting the Master Adventurer of earth's childhood and Mohamed Ali, Anjerah chieftain—and, as you may know, politician, governor and outlaw.
IN THE same manner—but it is unnecessary!—could I show how through fifty centuries the line ran from King Eurystheus to a modem monarch, Abd-el-Aziz, Sultan of Morocco at the time of which I write. For Hercules secured the golden apples and carried them to Eurystheus, and they fell into the hands of one of the king's sons, who, seeking more of them, fell in love with one of the Western Maids, and thus left blood which came down through the centuries to the veins of the Moorish Sultan.
Here I must stop, lest I reach my prohibited conclusion. Still I think it a strange coincidence indeed that five thousand years ago Hercules performed twelve tasks for King Eurystheus, and that, in our own day, a lineal descendant of his should be called upon for another—the thirteenth?—task by a king descended from Eurystheus.
But such a thing happened—and the manner of it you shall see.—George E. Holt.
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