From the observatory they could see very well the fright of the crowd assembled in the court-yard at the whizzing of the bomb over their heads, and how every one looked anxiously at the little round white cloud there; only he who lay dead in the midst of them remained cold and tranquil. He will never again be disturbed by the roar of an exploding bomb.
The imams raised him on their shoulders, and, amidst the melancholy dirges of the mourners and the muffled roll of the drums, they carried him away to his open tomb, for his grave was already dug.
The Moslems do not put their dead in a closed coffin; they only half board the tomb up in order that the angels of death may have room to place the corpse in a sitting posture when they come to take an account of his actions.
They really did lower Ali Tepelenti into his tomb.
The garrison fired a triple salute, the imams thrice sang their sacred verses, and then came the gravediggers and cast the earth upon the corpse. A large marble slab was standing there, and with it they pressed down the earth on the tomb, at the same time placing two turbaned headstones, one at each end of the tomb.
They really did bury Ali.
When the imams and the officers had departed from the covered tomb, Gaskho Bey summoned the keepers of the observatory to the summit of Lithanizza and laid this command upon them:
"Let a man stand in front of this telescope from morning to evening (and mind that he is relieved every four hours), and never withdraw his eye from that tomb. At night, when the moon goes down, a rocket is to be fired every five minutes, that the watchers may see the tomb and never leave it out of sight, and report upon it every hour."
What? Is Gaskho Bey actually afraid that old Ali, a veteran of seventy-nine, will be able to arise from his tomb and hurl away that heavy marble slab with his dead hands? There are men of whom it is impossible to believe that they are dead, and whom people are afraid of even when they are buried.
Every hour till late in the evening they reported to Gaskho Bey that the tomb remained unchanged, and all the night through not a soul approached it.