His regenerated soul saw in his death not only his own salvation, but,
the salvation of his people also. It was not clear to him how this was
to come to pass, but death had always been a gain to great causes, and
God was over all!
Under this sublime resolution his heart became almost buoyant. He
turned to go back to the camp, and as he walked he thought of Helena
again. The tender love which had filled his whole being for months
could not be banished in an hour, and he began to tell himself that
perhaps after all she had not been to blame. Love could not be ruled by
a rudder like a boat. The white woman could not help but love the white
man. It was a woman's way to risk everything, to sacrifice everybody,
to commit sin and even crime for the man she loved--how many good women
had done so!
That was the temptation to which the Rani had succumbed, and he--yes, he
also--must submit to the pains of it. They were hard, they were cruel,
they cut to the core, but with the idea of death before him they could
now be borne.
He remembered his unbridled wrath with the Rani, his ferocious violence,
and he felt ashamed. It was almost impossible to believe that he had
really laid hands upon her and tried to strangle her.
He remembered how he had left her, face down on the angerib, in her
misery and remorse. The picture in his mind's eye of the weeping woman
in her tent made his heart bleed with pity.
He must go back to her. His people might suspect that she was the
author of their trouble, and in their fury they might threaten her. He
must conceal her fault. He must take her sin upon himself.
"I must cover her with my cloak," he thought.
Thus thirsting with a desire to drink the cup of his degradation to the
dregs, Ishmael got back to camp. It was full of touching sights.
Instead of the flare of the lights and the tumult of the excited crowds
which he had left behind him, there were now only the ashes of dying
fires and the melancholy moanings of the people who were sitting about
them.
He made his way first to Helena's tent, and, standing by the mouth of
it, he called to her.
"Rani!"
A woman who had been lying on the angerib rose to answer him. It was
Zenoba.
"Alas! Your Rani has gone, O Master," she said, with mock sympathy but
ill-concealed tones of triumph.
"Gone?"
"She was afraid the people might kill her, so she fled away."
"Fled away?"
"I did my best to keep her for your sake, but she loves herself more
than you, and that's the truth, O Master."
Ishmael groaned and staggered, but the woman showed no pity.
"Better have contented yourself with a woman of your own people, who
would have been true and faithful," she said in a bitter whisper.
Covered with shame, Ishmael turned away. He looked for Zogal.
The black Dervish was at that moment struggling to sustain the people's
faith in the Master and his mission by means of a pagan superstition.
"Give me a mutton bone," he had said, and having received one, he had
looked at it long and steadfastly in order to read the future.
As Ishmael came up to the smouldering fire about which Zogal and his
company were squatting, the wild-eyed Dervish was saying--
"It will be well! Allah will preserve His people, and the Master will
be saved! Did I not tell thee the bone never lies?"
"Zogal," said Ishmael, "sound the horn, and let the people be brought
together."
The sky was dark. The stars had gone out. It was not yet midnight.
*CHAPTER XI*
At the next moment the melancholy notes of the great horn rang out over
the dark camp, and within a few minutes an immense multitude had
gathered.
It was a strange spectacle under the blank darkness of the sky. Men
carrying lanterns, which cast coarse lights upward into their swarthy
faces, were standing in a surging and murmuring mass, while women, like
shadows in the gloom, were huddling together on the outskirts of the
crowd.
They were Ishmael's faithful people, all of them, broken-hearted
believers in his spiritual mission, for at the shadow of disaster those
who had followed him for personal gains alone had gone.
Ishmael caused the people to be drawn up in a great square, and then,
mounting a camel, he rode into the midst of them. He was seen to be in
a state of great excitement.
"Brothers," he said, "we have passed through many hard days together.
You have shared with me your joys and your sorrows. I have shared with
you my hopes and my dreams. We are one."
Touched to the heart by his voice as much as his words, the people
cried--
"May God preserve thee!"
"Nay," he cried, "may God punish me, for I have permitted myself to be
deceived."
The people thought he was going to speak of the woman who was understood
to have betrayed him, but he did not do so.
"Look!" he cried, pointing towards the pyramid. "We stand amid the ruins
of a pagan world. Where are the Kings and Counsellors who slept in
these desolate places? Gone! All gone! Have not strangers from a far
country taken away their bodies to wonder at? Where is the king who
built this tomb? He thought himself the equal of God, yet what was he?
A man, shaped out of a little clay! And I?" he said, "I, too, have been
drunk with power. I have been living in the greatness of my own
strength. I have permitted myself to believe that I was the messenger
of God, and therefore God--God has brought me down. He has laid me in
the dust. Blessed be the name of God!"
Only the broken ejaculations of the people answered him, and he went on
without pausing--
"In bringing me down He has brought down my people also. Alas for you,
my brothers! You cannot go into Cairo. The armed forces of the
Government are waiting there to destroy you. Therefore turn back and go
home. Forgive your leader who has led you astray. And God preserve and
comfort you!"
"And you, O Master?" cried a voice that rose above the confused voices
of the people.