Suddenly Kaid sat down again among his cushions. "Inshallah! In the name of God, be it so. Thou art not as other men. There is something in thee above my thinking. But I will not sleep till I see thee again." "I shall see thee at midnight, Effendina. Give me the ring from thy finger." Kaid passed it over, and David put it in his pocket. Then he turned to go. "Nahoum?" he asked. "Take him hence. Let him serve thee if it be thy will. Yet I cannot understand it. The play is dark. Is he not an Oriental?" "He is a Christian." Kaid laughed sourly, and clapped his hands for the slave. In a moment David and Nahoum were gone. "Nahoum, a Christian! Bismillah!" murmured Kaid scornfully, then fell to pondering darkly over the evil things he had heard. Meanwhile the Nubians in their glittering armour waited without in the blistering square. CHAPTER XII THE JEHAD AND THE LIONS "Allah hu Achbar! Allah hu Achbar! Ashhadu an la illaha illalla!" The sweetly piercing, resonant voice of the Muezzin rang far and commandingly on the clear evening air, and from bazaar and crowded street the faithful silently hurried to the mosques, leaving their slippers at the door, while others knelt where the call found them, and touched their foreheads to the ground. In his palace by the Nile, Harrik, the half-brother of the Prince Pasha, heard it, and breaking off from conversation with two urgent visitors, passed to an alcove near, dropping a curtain behind him. Kneeling reverently on the solitary furniture of the room--a prayer-rug from Medina--he lost himself as completely in his devotions as though his life were an even current of unforbidden acts and motives. Cross-legged on the great divan of the room he had left, his less pious visitors, unable to turn their thoughts from the dark business on which they had come, smoked their cigarettes, talking to each other in tones so low as would not have been heard by a European, and with apparent listlessness. Their manner would not have indicated that they were weighing matters of life and death, of treason and infamy, of massacre and national shame. Only the sombre, smouldering fire of their eyes was evidence of the lighted fuse of conspiracy burning towards the magazine. One look of surprise had been exchanged when Harrik Pasha left them suddenly--time was short for what they meant to do; but they were Muslims, and they resigned themselves. "The Inglesi must be the first to go; shall a Christian dog rule over us?" It was Achmet the Ropemaker who spoke, his yellow face wrinkling with malice, though his voice but murmured hoarsely. "Nahoum will kill him." Higli Pasha laughed low--it was like the gurgle of water in the narghileh--a voice of good nature and persuasiveness from a heart that knew no virtue. "Bismillah! Who shall read the meaning of it? Why has he not already killed?"