"Brothers," said Ishmael again, "your homes are here, and your wives and children. I am going out into the desert and you cannot all follow me. But give me one hundred men and your enemies will afflict you no more. One hundred men to carry into every town and village the word of the message of God, and the reign of Mammon will be at an end. Our Prophet (praise to his name!) was driven out of Mecca as a slave, but he returned to it as a conqueror. We are driven out of Cairo in disgrace but we shall come back in glory. So the years pass and repeat themselves," he cried, and then, in triumphant tone, "Yes, by Allah!"
The emotional Egyptian people were now like children possessed, and the fever in Ishmael's own face seemed to have consumed the natural man.
"I ask for martyrs, not for soldiers," he cried. "Shall not the reward of him who suffers daily for his brethren's sake be equal to that of the man who dies in battle? I ask for the young and the strong, not the weak and the old—difficulty is before us and danger and perhaps death. I ask for sinners, not saints—though you are as pure as the sands of the sea-shore, like the sands of the shore you may be fruitless. But are you sin-laden and suffering? Do the ways of life seem to be closed to you? Does the sweet light of morning bring you no joy? Are you praying for the darkness of death to cover you? Is your repentance deep? In the bitterness of your soul are you calling upon God for a way of redemption? Then come to me, my brothers! Your purification is here! A pilgrimage is before you that will cleanse you of all sin.
"Allah! Allah! Allah!" cried the people with one voice, and the cry of their thousand throats in that desolate place was like the boom of breakers in cavernous rocks.
It was one of those moments of life when by a spontaneous impulse humanity shows how divine is the heart of man. In an instant, more than five hundred men, some of them looked upon as low and base, leapt out in answer to Ishmael's call, and were struggling, quarrelling, almost fighting to go with him.
For two hours thereafter the professors and teachers were busy selecting one hundred from the five hundred, telling them what they had to do and where they had to go, each man to his allotted place, while the mounted police rode round and through them in a vain effort to find out what was being said.
The night was now near to morning, the lamps and torches were dying out, and a dun streak, like an arrow's barb, was shooting up into the darkness of the sky. In this vague fore-dawn the hundred chosen men were drawn up before the tomb of a Sheikh, and Ishmael, standing on the dome of it, with his tall figure against the uncertain light, spoke to them and to the vast company of the people that had gathered about.
"Brothers," he said, "you offer yourselves as messengers of the Compassionate to carry His word to the uttermost ends of this country and as far as the tongue you speak is spoken. You have been told what to say and you will say it without fear. You are no rebels against the State, but if the commandments of the Government are against the commandments of God, you are to tell the people to obey God and not the Government."
At that word the sea of faces seemed to flash white under the heaviness of the sky, but Ishmael only looked down at the hundred men who stood below and said calmly—
"You are soldiers of God, therefore you will carry no weapons of the devil with you on your journey. Do you expect to conquer by the sword? Stand back, this pilgrimage is not yours! Do you wish to drive the English out of Egypt, to establish Khedive or Sultan, to found kingdom or empire? Go home! This work is not for you! Only one enemy will you drive out, and that is the devil! Only one Sultan will you establish, and that is God!"