"Ye have seen with your own eyes, O warriors of the hills! Praise be to Allah for His mercies! Ye will no longer doubt. In the name of the Prophet, the Sultan Willem, the protector of Islam, commands that ye rise up and sweep beyond the Indus. Everywhere the power of the English is broken. With your own eyes ye have seen it. Only on your borders do they still keep up a vain show. Rise up, O children of the Prophet, and sweep these dogs of infidels into the sea! The rich lands of India and much loot will be the reward of your valour. Paradise awaits those who fall in the sacred fight! The green banner of Islam shall wave over the entire earth, for there is no God but God, Mohammed is His Prophet, and the Sultan Willem is His chosen instrument!"
Karl Schultz felt an inward glow of triumph at his own histrionic power as, his words ringing sonorously through the stone apartment, he stood in the full blaze of light and raised his arm. It evoked loud shouts of fanatic frenzy from the excited assembly. They clamoured to be led against the infidel there and now. He kept his arm outstretched as though to still the tumult, as though his discourse were yet unfinished.
But the cries would not cease. "Great is Allah! Death to the infidel! Death! Allah! Allah! There is no God but God! Allah! Allah! Allah! Death to the infidel—death!"
Suddenly there was a new element in the vociferation, a movement among the assembly far back in the dark room. "Make way for the holy man with great tidings from India! Make way for the Haj! In the name of the Prophet—make way, dogs that ye are!"
Schultz looked towards the venerable figure of Muhammed Din pressing through the throng. A sudden doubt leaped up in him, was extinguished in self-confidence. The strange fakir approached. The wild clamour of the tribesmen was stilled in curiosity. They fell back in a sudden awe.
Schultz watched the venerable stranger advance solemnly, silently, into the blaze of light in which he himself stood. Again he was conscious of an instinctive tremor. "The peace of Allah be with thee, O Haj!" he said, and he found that he had deliberately to control his own voice. There was something uncannily impressive in the advance of this silent, dignified old man.
"And with all the faithful!" came the sonorous reply, enigmatic to the German's ears.
He found himself looking into a pair of strangely disturbing eyes; heard, with a wild reeling shock of the spirit, his own tongue spoken in a low, level Oriental voice.
"Move not a finger and make not a sound, Schultz Sahib, or you are a dead man!" Schultz Sahib's eyes glimpsed the muzzle of a pistol not six inches from his chest. "Smile, Sahib! or your friends may interrupt us."
Having once ceded to the menace of the pistol, the German's brain could not resist the command of the imperative eyes that seemed to be boring deep into him. He smiled—a deathly smile.