Monstrous in Death: Yimnah the Eunuch in ‘Down the Coast of Barbary’
A 1922 novelette by Henry Bedford-Jones
The novelette Down the Coast of Barbary by Canadian-U.S. author Henry Bedford-Jones was published in Argosy, October 21, 1922 (pp. 500–537).
PulpMags.org lets you download the PDF (scroll to digital page 30).
I read this because it has a eunuch character, and the treatment of eunuch characters always interests me. To be sure I understood that character in his fictional context, I summarized the whole story, and I’m sharing that summary here.
Down the Coast of Barbary is an Orientalist story, and if you don’t know what that means, I encourage you to check out what I wrote about Edward Said’s definition of that term. It’s also a swashbuckling tale, intended as entertainment.
The story begins in 1730 in Algiers, when the Algerians (to whom the author refers as “the Moors”) were trying to maintain control of the city of Oran against the occupying Spaniards.
On the map, the red pin marks the city of Oran, west of Algiers.
The Opening: Chapters 1–2
A young American, Captain Patrick Spence, has been stranded penniless in Algiers after a shipwreck. Helpful Englishmen resettled him next door to the Dey (the local ruler).
When he finds a Punic coin in his villa garden, he brings the Oxford-educated Rev. Dr. Shaw to have a look at it, but Shaw is pulled away by some political excitement.
Mulai Ali the Idrisi then stops by. He has seen an astrologer at Arzew, the seat of the Moorish provincial government, “the ancient Arsenaria, twenty miles east of Oran,” now under Hassan Bey, a Turk. The astrologer linked his fate with that of a man named Ripperda.
Mulai Ali offers Spence money, power, and a wife if he’ll come to Morocco; Spence casually says he’ll give his assistance “freely.” So Mulai Ali gives him a small leather box, an unsigned note saying “I have woven a net to catch Ripperda” from someone who self-identifies as a slave, and advice to beware of a man in a black burnoose (a hooded cloak).
William Lewis de Ripperda was a Dutch baron who changed religions opportunistically: born Catholic, he became a Protestant so he could be an ambassador, then a Catholic again to become ruler of Spain, then a Muslim to rule Morocco. Now he seeks to unite “the Barbary States against Christendom,” including Spain. It is his army threatening Spanish control of Oran. The Dey fears him.
Mulai Ali invites Spence and Shaw on his quest to defeat Ripperda “because you are true men.” Besides, “through you I can make treaties with England.” Spence joins him just because he’s the adventurous hero of this story, and Shaw joins for the archaeological interest.
Before they leave, Spence sees a man in a black burnoose with “a twisted face that was marked by a purplish birthmark about the right eye.” This must be the man he was supposed to beware. The stranger jumps Spence, but other men chase him away.
Yimnah the Eunuch: Chapters 3–7
Yimnah is a character who interests me, so here I pay special attention to these chapters that include him.
Spence and Shaw ride west, beginning their quest. Spence has sewn the mysterious box in cloth and tied it to his saddle. They stay at the kasbah (citadel) of Hassan Bey. We learn that the aggressor with the twisted face in the black burnoose is Gholam Mahmoud, a former Janissary who serves Ripperda. Mulai Ali plans to grab the throne while Ripperda is away at Oran.
Mulai Ali wants Spence to release the English astrologer, captured by Hassan from a ship and enslaved by him. Mulai Ali won’t personally betray Hassan in this way because he has accepted Hassan’s hospitality, but he expects that “a Christian has no scruples,” so he’s asking Spence to do this work for him.
In the kasbah courtyard, in a pomegranate grove, “a huge black eunuch, half asleep,” armed with a scimitar, guards a stone tower.
For the character of Yimnah, the author, Henry Bedford-Jones, may have had in mind an image like this painting by Austro-French artist Rudolf Ernst. Perhaps he was also influenced by books like Michael Russell’s 1835 History and Present Condition of the Barbary States (PDF).
The eunuch recognizes Mulai Ali and lets his party in the tower to visit the captive astrologer: the beautiful young Mistress Betty.
Mistress Betty warns Mulai Ali he won’t live long if he persists in his violent lifestyle. He says that’s quite all right with him.
Spence understands that the girl had played off Hassan Bey’s superstitions “until he feared her more than he desired her,” and that’s why she wasn’t in his harem.
Mulai Ali informs Spence that this is the bride he’d promised, and that the eunuch, motivated by improving his own position (perhaps he can be chief eunuch in a sultan’s harem someday?) will aid her escape and will travel with them.
Spence says, “I know no Arabic, and I fancy the eunuch has no Spanish,” so he cannot communicate directly with the eunuch. Spence therefore plans to departs with Mistress Betty that night, and everyone else — Mulai Ali, Dr. Shaw, and the eunuch — plans to leave the next morning.
While Hassan Bey is at a party, Spence slips away to rescue Mistress Betty. Just then, “a dark shape arose before him, the starlight glittered on a naked blade, and he recognized the distorted shape of Yimnah, the eunuch” — named here for the first time.
Spence tells Mistress Betty they’ll ride to Tlemcem. There are five in their party, each on their own horse: Yimnah, Elizabeth, Captain Spence, and two Spahis (horsemen) assisting them.
A stranger on horseback shoots at Spence; Spence returns fire and recovers a written note from the man’s body. The Spahis read it, explaining that it suggests that spies are tracking Mulai Ali.
They hear a Spanish man singing. Yimnah goes to investigate:
The eunuch, Yimnah, baring his scimitar, slipped from the saddle and glided forward to the masking trees. Then he was back, his thick lips chattering words of fear, his limbs trembling.
Note that Yimnah is here portrayed in a racially stereotypical way with “thick lips.” He is also perceived to be “chattering,” not only in the sense that he is afraid, but probably also insofar as he and Spence don’t share a common language.
Elizabeth translates for Spence: “He says it is the ghost of Barbarossa.” (Barbarossa was a sultan of Algiers who had lived two hundred years earlier. That was his Italian name, “red beard.”) Then they see the Spaniard: the large, red-headed Lazaro de Polan, also known as Barbarroja, the Spanish version of the name.
Barbarroja asks Spence to hire him as a fighter for his quest. Spence agrees.
Outside their inn in Tlemcen, Spence briefly spots Gholam Mahmoud hiding in the shadows. Spence angrily throttles the innkeeper, demanding that he find the bad man, but the innkeeper denies knowledge.
Yimnah snores in the room he shares with Spence until he rises early for morning prayers upon hearing the call from the minaret.
Spence sees Gholam Mahmoud on the ground, and he jumps out the window, with the result that he is tied up. Barbarroja negotiates with Gholam Mahmoud.
Gholam Mahmoud’s arms are bare, revealing a dolphin tattoo on the right arm. This marks him as a Janissary in the Thirty-first Orta (cohort), a bodyguard to the sultan.
The sherif does not know of the small leather box, or so Barbarroja assures Gholam Mahmoud. Barbarroja, however, claims he knows where it is and might be willing to sell it to Ripperda. Gholam Mahmoud acknowledges that Ripperda has indeed ordered him to retrieve the box.
Gholam Mahmoud says he’s also been ordered “to kill Mulai Ali before he reaches Udjde.” Barbarroja convinces him that they both want to kill Mulai Ali, though for different motivations. Gholam Mahmoud asks for Mistress Betty as a reward for his alliance, to which Barbarroja readily agrees.
Returning, Barbarroja trips over Spence’s bound body. He cuts him loose. Spence asks if he’s seen anyone with a twisted face (Gholam Mahmoud). Barbarroja says the man left on a horse a half-hour earlier.
Spence sends Barbarroja and a Spahi to meet Dr. Shaw, and in their absence, he flirts with Mistress Betty, asking her to draw up his horoscope. He tells her he knows that Gholam Mahmoud is near. She replies that Mulai Ali could easily take the throne in Morocco from the current sherif, who’s merely Ripperda’s pawn.
On Barbarroja’s tip, Spence and Mistress Betty ride out of Tlemcen to meet up with Mulai Ali and Shaw at a rest stop for water and a smoke. Mulai Ali says he’s willing to face Gholam Mahmoud alone and counsels everyone else to seek safety in Udjde. He wants Spence to take the small leather box, with its “copies of secret Spanish treaties,” for safekeeping. Yimnah also comes to Udjde, “bringing up the rear.”
On the way, Shaw asks Spence what he agreed to pay Barbarroja, and Spence admits he forgot to discuss it. Shaw thinks that’s suspicious on Barbarroja’s part; if he doesn’t care about being paid, what are his real motivations?
Yimnah’s death scene
Stopping at El Joube (The Cisterns), Barbarroja threatens the men, telling them that attackers lie in wait but he’ll call them off if they hand over the girl. Shaw replies: “Villain!” and knocks Barbarroja unconscious. Barbarroja’s hidden allies fire on the party with muskets, but the heroes escape. One of the Spahis, mounted on his own horse, grabs the halter of Mistress Betty’s horse and races away with her. Another leaps into the saddle of Barbarroja’s horse.
Shaw slays one of his aggressors with a sword. Spence shoots two with a pistol.
And here is the end of Yimnah:
A wide blade flamed in the moonlight. The hoarse, inarticulate rage scream of Yimnah rent the night like a paean of horror. The monstrous figure of the eunuch, streaming blood from a dozen wounds, rushed through the assailants, striking to right and left in blind fury. They opened before him, fell back from Spence, shrieked that this was no man, but some jinni of the mountains. Yimnah leaped on them, struck and struck again, screaming.
‘Fools!’ cracked out a voice in Spanish.
A musket flashed near the voice. There died Yimnah, the wide blade sweeping out from his hand and clashing on the stones.
The injured Barbarroja crawls back to Gholam Mahmoud and argues: “Only one eunuch bagged, and half our men down!” Barbarroja insists on remaining to lie in wait for Mulai Ali, while Gholam Mahmoud rides alone to Udjde.
Spence gets directions to Udjde, then spots Ripperda riding there with his bodyguard.
What interests me in Yimnah’s death scene is the word “monstrous.” Yimnah has been nothing but nice to this party. At risk to his own neck, he helped Mistress Betty escape her captors, and he’s been traveling politely with the men who are guiding her to safety.
Yet now that he is “streaming blood from a dozen wounds,” reduced to emitting a “hoarse, inarticulate rage scream” but still fighting until his last moment, he is somehow a “monstrous figure.” To be sure, he might appear monstrous to his targets, simply because he might actually kill them. He is “no man, but some jinni of the mountains,” they shout. But I suspect also that the narrator means for us to see him as monstrous because he is a black eunuch. The meaning — at least as I receive it — draws from longstanding literary tropes that depict Black people and eunuchs as inhuman. The narrator reminds us of Yimnah’s gender together with his monstrosity: “the monstrous figure of the eunuch.” Thus he dies, and like other characters who die in this story, he is never mentioned again.
How It Ends: Chapters 8–13
On each side of Mistress Betty’s horse, a Spahi rides, holding onto her horse’s reins.
Shaw, still holding his rapier, catches up with them. Betty chides him for abandoning Captain Spence in battle. He sheaths his rapier and tells her that he must carry an important letter “involving the fate of empires and of religions” to the Governor of Udjde — so that Pasha Ripperda will not remain ruler of Morocco, the Barbary States won’t attack Spain and the Moors won’t start a holy war to take it back — and that Mulai Ali’s welfare also depends on him completing his errand.
So they all continue to Udjde, where they are given hospitality and Shaw dines with the governor. Regarding Mulai Ali’s adversaries, the governor tells him that Barbarroja serves the Sherif Abdallah, and Gholam Mahmoud serves Ripperda. Two messages arrive by carrier pigeon, one warning the governor that Ripperda will arrive tomorrow with his bodyguard, the other notifying him that Mulai Ali has been shot dead.
The governor plans to receive Ripperda. Shaw says he’ll stay put and hope that Ripperda will spare him given his “nominal errand to the sherif.”
Elsewhere in the town, Gholam Mahmoud sits at home, awaiting Barbarroja, who arrives, saying: “I rode my horse to death and walked the last two miles of the way here.” He then claims to have shot Mulai Ali in the back, and says he’ll permit Gholam Mahmoud to tell the pasha that they killed Mulai Ali together so that he can share credit but demands the full amount of the sherif’s reward. He also reveals that Spence, whom he expects to travel west through their region, “carries the leather box behind his saddle.”
Gholam Mahmoud negotiates: Barbarroja can have the money if he’ll abudct Mistress Betty for him. Barbarroja begins to plot how he’ll get her.
Shaw receives a letter in English signed by Spence, announcing Mulai Ali death and saying he’s wounded and horseless, fears to enter the city, ad wants to meet him at the deserted tomb of Osman, a half-mile from the city gate.
Shaw tells the governor and he and the two men with whom he arrived will head to Fez, after all. Shaw, the two Spahis, Mistress Betty, and a guide (“a rascally one-eyed Moor”) head toward the western gate of the city. Just as they exit the western gate, they hear a crowd cheer as Ripperda enters the city by the northern gate.
The tomb of Osman was a trap, and the guide was in on it; he slays one of the Spahis with a long knife. The other Spahi is killed by three men waiting in ambush with muskets. One of these men is Barbarroja, aka Lazaro de Polan, who crows that he forged the note pretending to be Spence. Meanwhile his men “plundered the dead Spahis.” Barbarroja tells Shaw he wants “the pretty señorita” and also wants to settle their previous feud. They begin to fence. Shaw slays Barbarroja, whose three men flee.
Spence (having received a similar note luring him to this trap) arrives, saying the governor had sent him to inquire after their welfare.
Spence’s men (Ripperda’s guard) chase after Barbarroja’s men. Shaw, the one with archaeological interest, recovers Barbarroja’s 800-year-old blade, the Toledo, from his fallen body.
Spence and Shaw warn each other that Ripperda is out for both of them — including because Gholam Mahmoud is aware of the small leather box behind Spence’s saddle. Spence says he’s already thrown the box into the river.
Spence’s men return with the three severed heads of Barbarroja’s men. Spence, Shaw, and Mistress Betty ride back to Udjde.
Pasha Ripperda, suffering from gout, believes Mulai Ali is dead. “This thin man with the haunted eye was the supreme ruler of western Africa; the combined Barbary armies and fleets obeyed his orders — Egypt was in alliance with him.”
Spence, Shaw, and Mistress Betty enter the justice hall of the kasbah, and he greets them, though he is barely able to rise. Ripperda, “generous enough in victory,” offers to forgive and forget, and Shaw accepts.
The three travelers go their guest room. Spence says he found Ripperda “friendly enough.” Shaw says: “Mistake not, Patrick; we play with fire.” To which Spence shrugs.
Ripperda’s guard then forbids them to leave their room. Gholam Mahmoud has arrived; perhaps he has heard that Barbarroja was killed or that Spence was witnessed casting the box into the river. However, the guard fetches Mistress Betty on Ripperda’s pretext of wanting an astrological reading.
Gholam Mahmoud whispers his offer to Ripperda: he’ll attempt to fetch the box, and as an anticipated reward, he asks for Mistress Betty “for my harem.” Ripperda replies: “Her and a dozen more like her….The girl belongs to you.” He’ll wait at Adjerud to hear the results.
Ripperda tells Mistress Betty he has no intention of pardoning her friends. She asks anyway, so Ripperda says he’ll sell Spence into slavery in Adjerud as a form of mercy, but he’ll execute Shaw for knowing and keeping secret that “the box was gone, that I was defeated, unable to keep my promises.” He then asks Mistress Betty to tell his horoscope and swears to her that she’ll “go safe to England” under his protection. She knows it’s a lie, so she asks for a week to prepare his horoscope. He locks her up apart from Spence and Shaw.
In the next scene, they’re all outdoors, and “from his curtained cushions, Ripperda glared out like some venomous reptile at Shaw.” Spence is tied into a saddle, Shaw is dragged away, and the two men shout their goodbyes.
Ripperda’s ship is in port at Adjerud, a prosperous small town on the Tafna River. The ship is rumored to contain his treasures. A second ship, the Boston Lass, is also there, in need of repairs, and that’s where Spence is enslaved with other Americans.
Mistress Betty is kept in a tent near Ripperda, who says that Algiers, Egypt, and Admiral Perez have just joined his side. She’s allowed to leave at night, under guard. That night, outside her tent, a messenger from Udjde arrives (and is paid by her guard). The message is from Shaw, who says that Mulai Ali is alive, marching on Fez, about to be named sherif, and has backed this messenger to attempt to rescue her and Spence. Mistress Betty anticipates that her rescue is a long shot, and meanwhile she plans to use the astrological reading to tell off Ripperda, even if he kills her for it.
The next day, Gholam Mahmoud brings the small leather box, pulled from the river, to Ripperda’s tent. Ripperda opens it, finds “a number of small packages wrapped in oiled silk,” and is satisfied. Gholam Mahmoud demands his reward, and Ripperda says he’ll be free to take her that evening after she reads his horoscope.
That night, in front of the two of them, she gives Ripperda his horoscope: “Your star has waned, my lord. The war against Spain is doomed to failure — nay, has already failed! Mulai Ali is alive and has been proclaimed sherif. You yourself have not a fortnight longer to enjoy life — “
Ripperda swears, but just at that moment, he receives a message of defeat from Admiral Perez: Algiers is defeated, Pasha Ali is dead, and Ripperda must to flee to Tetuan on the coast. A moment later, another messenger arrives to say that Mulai Ali is marching on Fez, backed by the Zenete tribes, and that Spanish ships are heading to Oran.
Ripperda wants to sail to his refuge in Tetuan, but he hears the crowd shouting for “Ras Ripperda!” (“Ripperda’s head!”) so he can’t access the ship. Instead, he and some of his men flee on horseback.
The traitorous Gholam Mahmoud orders his men to raid the treasures on Ripperda’s ship.
Aboard the Boston Lass, the North American men are chained at their wrist and ankles. With the masses still shouting for Ripperda’s head, the Spaniards unchain the enslaved sailors and give them burnooses and scimitars to disguise the fact that they are Christian slaves who have escaped. Spence seems to be the natural leader of these freed men. They realize they need Ripperda’s ship to escape, but they’re waiting for Mistress Betty. One man objects to continuing to wait for the lady; someone kills him for that suggestion. Then they hear that Gholam Mahmoud, with about thirty men and Mistress Betty, is sailing the ship out of port, so they find smaller boats and row after it, catch up, and climb onto the deck, slaying the men who rush them.
Gholam Mahmoud slays one of Spence’s men; Spence breaks the neck of one of Gholam Mahmoud’s men. Mistress Betty shoots a swivel gun from the starboard rail. Gholam Mahmoud is struck first by Spence, then again in the back by someone else, and he falls overboard. They have won, and they have Mistress Betty.
They sail past Tetouan (southeast of the Strait of Gibraltar), then enter the strait on the east side by Gibraltar (Gib-al-Taric, aka Jabal Ṭāriq), and on the western side of the strait, in open water off the coast of Tangier, some of them switch to another boat.
They divide Ripperda’s gold. Some will stay on the local boat to be given to Mulai Ali; he’ll also get the small leather box with the writings with Ripperda’s plans. Spence’s party also takes some gold on their boat for the longer journey.
Spence’s party decides to head for Boston rather than London, as they believe they have a better chance of holding onto their gold there. Spence asks Betty if she minds heading to Boston, and she tells him she’ll go wherever he goes.
Another Fictional Eunuch
For more on eunuch characters, you might also be interested in the chief eunuch in William Beckford’s 1786 Vathek.
