Produced by Al Haines. [Illustration: "By the tombs of our Fathers"] *THE WHITE PROPHET* BY *HALL CAINE* ILLUSTRATED BY R. CATON WOODVILLE IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. I LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN 1909 Copyright London 1909 by William Heinemann and Washington U.S.A. by D. Appleton & Company *ILLUSTRATIONS* "By the tombs of our Fathers" . . . Frontispiece He stretched out his hand to her, but she made no response "Look here—and here," he cried, pointing to the broken sword "How interesting!" cried the ladies in chorus *THE WHITE PROPHET* *FIRST BOOK* THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS *CHAPTER I* It was perhaps the first act of open hostility, and there was really nothing in the scene or circumstance to provoke an unfriendly demonstration. On the broad racing ground of the Khedivial Club a number of the officers and men of the British Army quartered in Cairo, assisted by a detachment of the soldiers of the Army of Egypt, had been giving a sham fight in imitation of the battle of Omdurman, which is understood to have been the death-struggle and the end of Mahdism. The Khedive himself had not been there—he was away at Constantinople—and his box had stood empty the whole afternoon; but a kinsman of the Khedive with a company of friends had occupied the box adjoining, and Lord Nuneham, the British Consul-General, had sat in the centre of the grand pavilion, surrounded by all the great ones of the earth in a sea of muslin, flowers, and feathers. There had been European ladies in bright spring costumes; Sheikhs in flowing robes of flowered silk; Egyptian Ministers of State in Western dress, and British Advisers and Under-Secretaries in Eastern tarbooshes; officers in gold-braided uniforms, Foreign Ambassadors, and an infinite number of Pashas, Beys, and Effendis. Besides these, too, there had been a great crowd of what are called the common people, chiefly Cairenes, the volatile, pleasure-loving people of Cairo, who care for nothing so little as the atmosphere of political trouble. They had stood in a thick line around the arena, all capped in crimson, thus giving to the vast ellipse the effect of an immense picture framed in red.