Before two days elapsed, events occurred at Alexandria which demonstrated that Arabi was the only power in Egypt, and brought Dervish to his feet as a suppliant.
What those events were, will be recorded in the next chapter.
CHAPTER VII.
THE RIOTS AT ALEXANDRIA.
For some days previous to Sunday, the 11th June, 1882, the demeanour of the natives towards the European population of Alexandria had been growing more and more unfriendly; and there were many indications that some disturbance, the precise nature of which no one was able to discover, was impending.
The forenoon of the 11th passed off quietly enough and without any unaccustomed incident, and the European population attended the churches and places of worship as usual.
Between two and three in the afternoon the tranquillity of the town was disturbed by shouts and yells from some two thousand natives, who were suddenly seen swarming up the Rue des Sœurs, the Rue Mahmoudieh, and the adjacent streets, crying, "Death to the Christians!" Others came soon after from the Attarin and the Ras-el-Tin quarters; and the riot, which appears to have broken out in three places almost at the same time, became general.
The crowd rushed on, striking with their "naboots" all the Europeans whom they could meet, knocking them down and trampling them under foot. Shots were fired; the soldiers and police interfered; but, in most instances, only with the object of making the butchery more complete. Many Europeans, flying for refuge to the police stations, were there slaughtered in cold blood. Shops and houses were broken into and pillaged, and for four and a half hours, until the soldiers arrived on the scene, the usually quiet and prosperous city of Alexandria experienced a fair share of the horrors of war.
The signal for the massacre was a feigned Arab funeral procession, in which natives marched wearing green turbans, and which passed between 10 a.m. and noon through the main streets of Alexandria.[11]
The next thing which occurred was a disturbance which broke out about 1 p.m. between Europeans and natives in the neighbourhood of a coffee-house called the "Café Crystal," in the Rue des Sœurs.