Helena thought she saw light at last. Having expelled England from Egypt by making it impossible for her to govern the country, Ishmael intended to establish, like the Mahdi, an entirely worldly and temporal power with himself at the head of it. The second letter from the Ulema at Cairo contained a still more serious message. Having met and concluded that the action of the Government justified the proclamation of a Jehad, a holy war, on the just ground that the unbelievers were trying to expel them from their country, they had solemnly sworn on the Koran to turn England out of Egypt or die in the attempt. To this letter Ishmael sent an instant answer, saying— "No! What will it profit you to turn England out of Egypt while she holds the Soudan and the sources of the Nile? O blind and weak! If you have forgotten your souls, have you no thoughts for your stomachs?" Then came further letters from the Chancellor of El Azhar saying that the fellaheen were being evicted from their houses and lands, and that their sufferings were now so dire that no counsels could keep them from revolt. Even the young women were calling upon the young men to fight, saying they were not half the men their fathers had been, or they would conquer or die for the homes that were being taken from them and for the religion of God and His prophet. To this message also Ishmael returned a determined answer. "War is mutual deceit," he said. "Avoid it! Fly from it! I will countenance no warfare! That is my unalterable mind! Hear it, for God’s sake!" But hardly had Ishmael’s answer gone from Khartoum when messengers began to arrive from all parts of Egypt saying that the fellaheen had already risen in various places, and that battalions of the British army had been sent out to repress them; that the people had been put down with loss of life and suffering, and that many were now trooping into the cities, homeless and hopeless, and crying in their despair, "How long, O Lord, how long?" It was a black day in Khartoum when this news came, for among Ishmael’s immediate following there were not a few who had lost members of their own families. Some of these, that night when all was still, went out into the desert, far away from the tents, and sang a solemn dirge for the dead. It was a melancholy sight in that lonesome place, for they were chiefly women, and their voices, under the deep blue sky with its stars, made a most touching lamentation, like that of the sobbing of the sea. Helena heard it, and, with her heart still poisoned against Ishmael, it made her yet more bitter against him, as one who for his own ends was holding the poor, weak people under their cruel fate by the spell of superstitious hopes and fears.