Solomon
Kane appears for the first time in Robert E. Howard’s novella Red Shadows (1928) and subsequently in
eight other stories, as well as three poems.
(See also The Soul
of the Jungle ) The famous Puritan
hero was also featured in several fragments, three of which were edited by the famous
English horror writer, Ramsey Campbell.
One of these fragments was Hawk of
Basti, published posthumously in 1968.
The piece is interesting in that it contains some biographical material
about Kane. It might have served well as
an introductory chapter to a more elaborate work.
In Hawk of Basti, Kane is wandering again
through Africa, not far from the Slave Coast, a region the Puritan returns to
several times in Howard’s fiction. Why
this location? Why does the image of
enslavement appear so frequently in Howard’s stories? This time, Kane is not with his wizened old
comrade in arms, the ju-ju man N’Longa. But
there is mention of N’Longa when Kane explains the origin of the strange staff
he carries:
It
was given me by a strange creature—one N’Longa, a fetish man of the Slave
Coast, whom I have seen perform nameless and ungodly feats. Yet beneath his black and wrinkled hide beats
the heart of a true man, I doubt not.
(See
also Solomon
Kane, Emancipator for additional detail about the staff.)
In an
eerie forest, Kane encounters another Caucasian, whom he does not initially recognize
because of the man’s outlandish attire.
It is an Englishman ‘gone native’, a boisterous ex-pirate named Jeremy
Hawk. “His nose was thin and aquiline,”
explains the author, “and his whole face was that of a bird of prey.” This is the ‘hawk’ of Basti.
Kane’s
old colleague refers to him as “my sober cutthroat” and “my melancholy murderer”. Hawk reminisces about the early days when “…when
we harried the Dons [that is, the Spanish] from the Azores to Darien [in
Panama] and back again…” Kane points out that they were on two different ships
at that time, under different captains.
Both commanders perished; Kane’s captain went down with his ship, while
Hawk’s took to piracy, as did he.
Different ships, different lives: this is what the author is suggesting
in this comparison.
Solomon
Kane’s noble but doomed captain is the subject of one of Howard’s poems, The Return of Sir Richard Grenville (1968). Wakened from his sleep by the apparition of his
dead captain, Kane is warned that he is in imminent danger from a horde of
murderous natives. They soon emerge from
the jungle and Kane fights valiantly.
Afterwards the carnage is much greater than what Kane could have accomplished
on his own. When he reaches out to shake
Grenville’s hand in gratitude, he is alone in the dark.
Kane
and Hawk discuss politics, as colleagues might do after some time apart. Queen Elizabeth the First is still on the
throne, but Kane never liked her because of her policies toward the
Puritans. Then Hawk cuts to the heart of
the matter and explains his situation.
Following a disastrous shipwreck off the Slave Coast of Africa, Hawk
became the sole survivor of his crew.
But his white skin and knowledge of magic tricks brought him celebrity
and later political influence among the locals.
He
helped the native black Africans overthrow a brutal, repressive regime of “brown-skinned
devils”—Howard implies that these were some sort of invading tribe, possibly a
remnant of an ancient civilization. A
hero, Hawk ruled the island community of Basti until very recently, when a coup
d’état threw him out of power and sent him fleeing for his life. Hawk proposes that he and Kane use their
exotic racial features and superior firepower—Kane’s two pistols—to terrorize
the people of Basti into putting Hawk and Kane on the throne as co-despots. Kane is ambivalent:
But
I wish no earthly throne of pride and vanity.
If we bring peace to a suffering race and punish evil men for their
cruelty, it is enough for me.”
But can
Hawk be trusted? There is an initial
bloody skirmish, and the fragment ends with Hawk and Kane heading to Basti with
some terrified converts to their cause.
It is an effective beginning with some intriguing openings to a number
of plot directions. Why do the “brown
skinned devils” wear bronze helmets?
Where did they come from? Will
Hawk eventually double cross Solomon Kane?
(At this time I am unsure if another author has taken this fragment and
developed it into a complete story.)
The
notion that two white men with advanced weapons are equal to an entire
community of indigenous people is consistent with the racism and colonialist
attitudes of the 1920s and 1930s. So is
the assumption that a white despot, even a pirate, is preferable to local rule
by Africans, or that Caucasians are needed to rescue oppressed Africans, even
from each other.
And yet
I read an interesting story in The New
York Times today (“Mercenaries Join Fight Against Boko Haram”) concerning white
soldiers of fortune—“relics of apartheid” as one expert called them—coming from
South Africa to do battle against the Islamic insurgency in northeast
Nigeria. “They love this gung-ho kind of
stuff, and they’re good at it.” It is not hard to imagine modern day Jeremy Hawks and Solomon Kanes among them.
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