Israel overheard him and smiled. It seemed as if he laughed a little also. “It will soon be true,” he muttered under his breath, that came so quick. And hardly had he spoken when a low deep sound came from the distance. It was the funeral wail of Israel ben Oliel.
Nearer and nearer it came, and clearer and more clear. First a mighty bass voice: “Allah Akbar!” Again another and another voice: “Allah Akbar!” and then the long roar of a vast multitude: “Al—l—lah-u-kabar!” Finally a slow melancholy wail, rising and falling on the darkening air: “There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the Prophet of God.”
It was a solemn sound—nay, an awful one, with the man himself alive to hear it.
O gratitude that is only a death-song! O fame that is only a funeral!
Israel listened and smiled again. “Ah, God is great!” he whispered; “God is great!”
To ease his labouring chest a moment the Mahdi rose and stepped to the door, and then in the distance he could descry the procession approaching—a moving black shadow against the sky. Also over their billowy heads he could see a red glow far away in the clouds. It was the last smouldering of the fire of the modern Sodom.
While he stood there he was startled by the sound of a thick voice behind him. It was Israel's voice. He was speaking to Naomi. “Yes,” he was saying, “it is hard to part. We were going to be very happy. . . . But you must not cry. Listen! When I am there—eh? you know, there—I will want to say, 'Father, you did well to hear my prayer. My little daughter—she is happy, she is merry, and her soul is all sunshine.' So you must not weep. Never, never, never! Remember! . . . . Ah! that's right, that's right. My simple-hearted darling! My sunny, merry, happy girl!”
Naomi was trying to laugh in obedience to her father's will. She was combing his white beard with her fingers—it was knotted and tangled—and he was labouring hard to speak again.
“Naomi, do you remember?” he said; and then he tried to sing, and even to lisp the words as he sang them, just as a child might have done. “Do you remember—
Within my heart a voice
Bids earth and heaven rejoice,
Sings 'Love'—”