The White Prophet, Volume 1 (of 2)Caine, Hall, Sir
General
The White Prophet, Volume 1 (of 2)
Caine, Hall, Sir
British -- Egypt -- Fiction; Egypt -- Fiction
"See, that’s what England saved Egypt from—that horde of
Allah-intoxicated fanatics who would have cut off the heads of your
Khedives, tortured and pillaged your Pashas, flogged your Effendis, made
slaves of your fellaheen, or swept your whole nation into the Nile."
Every soldier on the field had distinguished himself that day—the
British by his bull-dog courage, the Soudanese by fighting as dervishes
like demons, the Egyptian by standing his ground like a man; but not
even when young Colonel Lord, the most popular Englishman in Egypt, the
one officer of English blood who was beloved by the Egyptians—not even
when he had come riding back to paddock after a masterly handling of his
men, sweating but smiling, his horse blowing and spent, the people on
the pavilion receiving him with shouts and cheers, the clapping of
hands, and the fluttering of handkerchiefs—not even then had the
Cairenes at the edge of the arena made the faintest demonstration.
Their opportunity came a few minutes later, and, sullen and grim under
the gall of their unfounded suspicion, they seized it in fierce and
rather ugly fashion.
Hardly had the last man left the field when a company of mounted police
came riding down the fringe of it, followed by a carriage drawn by two
high-stepping horses, between a body-guard of Egyptian soldiers. They
drew up in front of the box occupied by the kinsman of the Khedive, and
instantly the Cairenes made a rush for it, besieging the barrier on
either side, and even clambering on each other’s shoulders as human
scaffolding from which to witness the departure of the Prince.
Then the Prince came out, a rather slack, feeble, ineffectual-looking
man, and there were the ordinary salutations prescribed by custom.
First the cry from the police in Turkish and in unison, "Long live our
Master!" being cheers for the Khedive whose representative the Prince
was, and then a cry in Arabic for the Prince himself. The Prince
touched his forehead, stepped into his carriage, and was about to drive
off when, without sign or premeditation, by one of those mischievous
impulses which the devil himself inspires, there came a third cry never
heard on that ground before. In a lusty, guttural voice, a young man
standing on the shoulders of another man, both apparently students of
law or medicine, shouted over the heads of the people, "Long live
Egypt!" and in an instant the cry was repeated in a deafening roar from
every side.
The Prince signalled to his body-guard and his carriage started, but all
the way down the line of the enclosure, where the red-capped Egyptians
were still standing in solid masses, the words cracked along like
fireworks set alight.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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