By this time the procession had come to the town walls at a point near to the Bab Toot. No one had observed until then that the rain was no longer falling, but now everybody was made aware of this at once by sight of a rainbow which spanned the sky to the north-west immediately over the arch of the gate.
Israel saw the rainbow, and took it for a sign. It was God's hand in the heavens. To this gate then, and through it, out of Tetuan, into the land beyond—the plains, the hills, the desert where no man was wronged—God Himself, and not these people, had that day been leading them!
What happened next Israel never rightly knew. His proper sense of life seemed lost. Through thick waves of hot air he heard many voices.
First the voice of the crier, “So shall it be done to every man who is an enemy of the Kaid, and to every woman who is a play-actor and a cheat.”
Then the voice of the soldier, “Balak! Balak!”
After that a multitudinous din that seemed to break off sharply and then to come muffled and dense as from the other side of the closed gate.
When Israel came to himself again he was walking on a barren heath that was dotted over with clumps of the long aloe, and he was holding Naomi by the hand.
CHAPTER XX
LIFE'S NEW LANGUAGE