Only twenty Koreish had been slain, whereas the stark bodies of seventy-four Moslems were stiffening on the battlefield. Thither Mohammed now betook himself, and, upon seeing Hamza’s defiled corpse, he tugged angrily at his beard and swore that he would treat thirty Koreishite bodies in a similar way; but later he repented of this remark, and indeed issued stern orders forbidding his troops ever to mutilate a fallen enemy. The crumpled Moslem army then set out for Medina, for it was feared that the Koreish might decide to attack the defenseless city; but a scout soon came hastening up, shouting aloud the cheering news that the Koreish were hurrying southward toward Mecca. “Gently,” Mohammed mildly chided him, “let us not appear before the people to rejoice at the departure of the enemy!” For the Prophet was already profoundly absorbed in meditating schemes that would enable him satisfactorily to explain his defeat. But just now the sense of loss excluded every other emotion from the minds of the refugees and allies--the explanations could wait. Mingled with the ubiquitous sorrow was a feeling of helpless insecurity: the Koreish might yet change their minds and retrace their steps; so a watch was stationed at the Prophet’s door, behind which he went to sleep so soundly that he failed to obey Bilal’s indefatigable call to evening prayers. The Meccans, however, who at this time had another easy opportunity to alter the map of the world, had decided that they had evened matters up with their kinsmen--and besides, they were much more interested in starting their remunerative caravans on the march again than in making or unmaking history. Faced for the first time by an apparently irretrievable disaster, Mohammed well realized that not merely were his assumptions of sacerdotal preëminence, Allah Himself, and indeed all Islam, in imminent danger, but that his very existence would be at stake unless he proved able to satisfy the querulous clamors of his people and explain just how it was that he had failed. Never did his greatness reveal itself more splendidly than in this emergency; his every action was planned with the utmost care. His public demonstration of grief for Hamza, and his decision to visit the field of Uhud once a year to bless its Moslem martyrs--where, on each occasion, he regularly repeated the safe formula, “Peace be on you for that which ye endured, and a blessed futurity above!”--may have been genuine enough; at all events, such actions would be calculated to impress his underlings with his sincerity. But mutinous murmurs were now rampant: if Allah’s arm had brought victory at Bedr, what was He doing on the day of Uhud? and in any case what was to be thought of the Prophet’s multitudinous promises? Yet these apparently unanswerable complaints were no match for Mohammed’s wily brain. The masterful orator kept silence until the time came when, as was customary on Friday, he made known the latest dispatches from Allah in the Mosque.