In the early hours of morning they were awakened by loud shoutings in the streets. Two hundred men from Ishmael's company had galloped ahead as heralds, and, flying down every thoroughfare to reassure the population of the nature of the vast procession that was coming, they were crying—
"Peace! Peace! It is Peace!"
After that the general body of the native people, who had been on the tiptoe of expectation, were speeding along the streets. They found mounted and foot police stationed at various points, but no military and no guns.
It was a triumphant entry. The procession came in by the Gizeh Bridge, and passing down the Kasr-el-Aini into the Place Ismailyah, it turned down the broad Boulevard Abul Aziz towards the heart of the city.
The sun was rising, and the scene was a blaze of colour. Banners were swinging from the houses like ships' pendants in stormy seas. The streets seemed to be carpeted with the tarbooshes and turbans of the great, moving, surging masses of humanity that were slowly passing through them. There were brown faces that were almost white from the fatigue of the long desert march, and white faces that were burnt brown by the tropical sun. It was a swarming, shifting, variegated throng, and over all was the dazzling splendour of the Eastern sunrise.
Before the procession had gone far, it seemed as if the whole population of Cairo had come out to it. Eternal children! There is nothing they love more than to look at a great spectacle except to take part in it, and they hastened to take part in this one. Every window and balcony was soon full of faces; every housetop was alive with movement and aflame with colour. People were thronging the footpaths on either side as the pilgrims passed between.
The wives and children of the hundred emissaries who left Cairo on Ishmael's errand had come out to look for their husbands and fathers returning home. Eagerly they were scanning the faces of the pilgrims, and loud and wild were their cries of joy when they recognised their own.
Many of those who had no personal interest in the procession fell into line with it. A company of Dervishes walked by its side playing pipes and drums. Other musicians joined them with strange-looking wooden and brass instruments. Bursts of wild Arab music broke out from time to time and then stopped, leaving a sort of confused and tumultuous silence.
Carts filled with women and children, who were laughing and lu-lu-ing by turns, jolted along by the pilgrims like trundling bundles of joy. And then there were the pilgrims themselves, the vast concourse of fully forty thousand from the Soudan, from Assouan, from the long valley of the Nile, some on horses, some on camels, some on donkeys, some wearing their simple felt skull-caps and galabeahs, others in flowing robes and crimson head-dresses. The barbaric splendour and intoxicating arrogance of it all was such as the people of Cairo had never seen before.
To the great body of the Cairenes the entrance of Ishmael Ameer denoted victory. That the Government permitted it indicated their defeat. The great English lord, who had closed El Azhar, thereby damming up the chief fountain of the Islamic faith, had been beaten. Either the Powers, or God Himself, had suppressed him and rebuked England. Pharaoh had fallen. The children of Allah were crossing their Red Sea. Even as Mohammed, after being expelled from Mecca as a rebel, had returned to it as a conqueror, so Ishmael, after being cast out of Cairo as the enemy of England, was coming back as England's master and king. So louder and louder became their wild acclamations.