"At the next instant Ishmael was on his knees beside the body of the girl, and asking the father for her name. It was Helimah.
"'Helimah! Your father is waiting for you! Come,' said Ishmael, touching the child's eyes and smoothing her forehead, and speaking in a soft, caressing voice.
"Gordon, as I am a truthful woman, I saw it happen. A slight fluttering of the eyelids, a faint heaving of the bosom, and then the eyes were open, and at the next moment the girl was standing on her feet!
"God! what a scene it was that followed. The Sheikh on his knees kissing the hem of Ishmael's caftan, the men prostrating themselves before him, and the women tearing away the black veils that covered their faces, and crying, 'Blessed be the woman that bore thee!'
"It has been what the Arabs call a red day, and at that moment the setting sun catching the clouds of dust raised by the camels made the whole world one brilliant, fiery red. What wonder if these poor, benighted people thought the Lord of Heaven Himself had just come down!
"We left the village loaded with blessings (Black Zogal galloping frantically in front), and when we came to the next town—Berber, with its miles of roofless mud-huts, telling of Dervish destruction—crowds came out to salute Ishmael as the 'Guided One,' 'The true Mahdi,' and 'The Deliverer,' bringing their sick and lame and blind for him to heal them, and praying of him to remain.
"Oh, my dear Gordon, it is terrifying! Ishmael is no longer the messenger, the forerunner; he is now the Redeemer he foretold! I really believe he is beginning to believe it! This is the pillar of fire that is henceforth to guide us on our way. Already our numbers are three times what they were when we left Khartoum. What is to happen when thirty thousand persons, following a leader they believe to be divine, arrive in Cairo and are confronted by five thousand British soldiers?
"No! It is not bloodshed I am afraid of—I know you will prevent that. But what of the awful undeceiving, the utter degradation, the crushing collapse?
"And I? Don't think me a coward, Gordon—it isn't everybody who was born brave like you—but when I think of what I have done to this man, and how surely it will be found out that I have betrayed him, I tell myself that the moment I touch the skirts of civilisation I must run away.
"But meanwhile our pilgrimage is moving on—to its death, as it seems to me—and I am moving on with it as a slave—the slave of my own actions. If this is Destiny, it is wickedly cruel, I will say that for it; and if it is God, I think He might be a jealous God without making the blundering impulse of one poor girl the means of wrecking the hopes of a whole race of helpless people. Of course it acts as a sop to my conscience to remember what you said about God never making mistakes, but I cannot help wishing that in His inscrutable wisdom He could have left me out.