"The Egyptian soldiers are Moslems, O my brother—the brothers and sons of our poor afflicted children of Allah. It needs only the right word from the right man and they will throw down their arms at the city gates and then the army of God may enter."
Ishmael read the letter aloud in his throbbing voice and his face began to shine with ecstasy. In an instant a wild scheme took shape in his mind.
He would announce a pilgrimage! With ten thousand, twenty thousand, fifty thousand of his followers he would return to Cairo to meet and greet the Expected One! The native army would not resist their co-religionists, and once within the city the struggle would be at an end! In a single hour his fifty thousand would be five hundred thousand! The Government would not turn them out; it dared not make war upon them; the whole world would cry out against a general massacre, and God Himself would not permit it to occur!
But somebody must go into Cairo in advance to prepare the way—to make sure there should be no bloodshed! Some trusty messenger, some servant of the Most High, who could kindle the souls of the Egyptian soldiers to such a blazing flame of love that not all the perils of death could make them take up arms against the children of God when they came to their gates!
While Ishmael propounded this scheme with gathering excitement and a look of frenzy, Helena sat trembling from head to foot and clutching with nervous fingers the reed pen she held in her hand, for she knew that her hour had struck at last—the hour she had waited and watched for, the hour she had come to Khartoum to meet. She held her breath and gazed intently into Ishmael's quivering face as long as he continued to speak, and then, in a voice which she could scarcely recognise as her own, she said—
"But the messenger who goes in advance into Cairo—he must be one whose wisdom as well as courage you can trust."
"True, true, most true," said Ishmael, speaking eagerly and rapidly.
"Some one whose word will carry influence with the Egyptian army."
"Please God, it shall be so," said Ishmael.
"If the soldiers are native and Moslem, the officers are British and Christian, therefore the risks they run are great."