Yet the Ridge, despite the faith, and fury, and fusillading, had only to dig one grave; for fourteen hours of what the records call "unusual intrepidity"--contemptuously cool equivalent for all that faith and fury--had only killed one infidel.
Shumsha-deen's Fâtma, however, was as proud as if he had killed a hundred; for he had bled profusely for the faith, having been at the very outset of it all kicked by a camel and sent flying on to a rock to dream confused dreams of valor till the bleeding from his nose relieved the slight concussion of his brain, and enabled him to go home, much shaken, but none the worse.
But many hundreds of women never saw their Shum-sha-deens again, or if they saw them, only saw something to weep over and bind in white swaddling clothes and gold thread.
So by dark on the 2d of August the sound of wailing women rose from every alley, and the men, wandering restlessly about the bazaars, listened to the sound of tattoo from the Ridge and looked at each other almost startled.
"Go-to-bed-Tom! Go-to-bed-Tom! Drunk-or-sober-go-to-bed-Tom!"
The Day of Sacrifice was over, and Tom was going to bed quietly as if nothing had happened! They did not know that three-quarters of the Toms had been in bed the night before, undisturbed by the martyrs' supreme effort. If they had, they might have wondered still more persistently what Providence was about.
But in the big mosque, among the great white bars of moonlight slanting beneath the dome, one man knew. He stood, a tall white figure beneath a furled green banner, his arms outspread, his voice rising in fierce denunciation.
"Cursed[[5]] be they who did the deed, who killed jehad! Lo! I told you in my dream in the past and ye would not believe. I tell it again that ye may know. It was dawn. And the Lord Christ and the Lord Mohammed sat over the World striving each for His own according to the Will of the Most High who sets men's quarrels before the Saints in Heaven with a commander to each. And I saw the Lord Christ weep, knowing that justice was on our side. So the fiat for victory went forth, and I slept. But I dreamed again and lo! it was eve with a blood-red sunsetting westward. And the Lord Christ wept still, but the Lord Mohammed's voice rang loud and stern. 'Reverse the fiat. Give the victory to the women and the children.' So I woke. And it is true! is true! Cursed be they who killed jehad!"
The voice died away among the arches where, in delicate tracery, the attributes of the Great Creator were cut into changeless marble. Truth, Justice, Mercy, all the virtues from which all religions make their God.
"He is mad," said some; but for the most part men were silent as they drifted down the great Flights-of-Steps to the city, leaving Mohammed Ismail alone under the dome.