How many of your civilised millions would die for their prophet Christ?
Yet all Egypt would rise up from the mud-floor, the dourha-field and the
mud-hut, and would come out to die for Mahomet and Allah--ay, as Harrik
knew, as Harrik knew! Ye steal into corners, and hide behind the
curtains of your beds to pray; we pray where the hour of prayer finds us
--in the street, in the market-place, where the house is building, the
horse being shod, or the money-changers are. Ye hear the call of
civilisation, but we heap the Muezzin--"

He stopped, and searched mechanically for his watch. "It is the hour the
Muezzin calls," said David gently. "It is almost sunset. Shall I open
the windows that the call may come to us?" he added.

While Kaid stared at him, his breast heaving with passion, David went to
a window and opened the shutters wide.

The Palace faced the Nile, which showed like a tortuous band of blue and
silver a mile or so away. Nothing lay between but the brown sand, and
here and there a handful of dark figures gliding towards the river, or a
little train of camels making for the bare grey hills from the ghiassas
which had given them their desert loads. The course of the Nile was
marked by a wide fringe of palms showing blue and purple, friendly and
ancient and solitary. Beyond the river and the palms lay the grey-brown
desert, faintly touched with red. So clear was the sweet evening air
that the irregular surface of the desert showed for a score of miles as
plainly as though it were but a step away. Hummocks of sand--tombs and
fallen monuments gave a feeling as of forgotten and buried peoples; and
the two vast pyramids of Sakkarah stood up in the plaintive glow of the
evening skies, majestic and solemn, faithful to the dissolved and
absorbed races who had built them. Curtains of mauve and saffron-red