THE COMING OF THE MAHDI
The Mahdi came back in the evening.He had no standard-bearers going before him, no outrunners, no spearmen, no fly-flappers, no ministers of state; he rode no white stallion in gorgeous trappings, and was himself bedecked in no snowy garments.His ragged following he had left behind him; he was alone; he was afoot; a selham of rough grey cloth was all his bodily adornment; yet he was mightier than the monarch who had entered Tetuan that day.
He passed through the town not like a sultan, but like a saint;not like a conquering prince, but like an avenging angel.
Outside the town he had come upon the great body of the Sultan's army lying encamped under the walls.The townspeople who had shut the soldiers out, with all the rabble of their following, had nevertheless sent them fifty camels' load of kesksoo, and it had been served in equal parts, half a pound to each man.Where this meal had already been eaten, the usual charlatans of the market-place had been busily plying their accustomed trades.Black jugglers from Zoos, sham snake-charmers from the desert, and story-tellers both grave and facetious, all twanging their hideous ginbri, had been seated on the ground in half-circles of soldiers and their women.But the Mahdi had broken up and scattered every group of them.
"Away!" he had cried."Away with your uncleanness and deception."And the foulest babbler of them all, hot with the exercise of the indecent gestures wherewith he illustrated his filthy tale, had slunk off like a pariah dog.
As the Mahdi entered the town a number of mountaineers in the Feddan were going through their feats of wonder-play before a multitude of excited spectators.Two tribes, mounted on wild barbs, were charging in line from opposite sides of the square, some seated, some kneeling, some standing.Midway across the market-place they were charging, horses at full gallop, firing their muskets, then reining in at a horse's length, throwing their barbs on their haunches, wheeling round and galloping back, amid deafening shouts of "Allah! Allah! Allah!""Allah indeed!" cried the Mahdi, striding into their midst without fear.