The elders stroked their beards and laughed superciliously.
“You are young and foolish, Dimoussi. A single shot from a gun, and all Moghrebbin is in flame.”
“Yes; and he that fired the shot certain of Paradise.”
Not one of them had thought to fire the shot. They were chatterers of vain words. But the words sank into Dimoussi’s mind; for Dimoussi was different. He began to think, as he put it; as a matter of fact, he began to feel.
He went up to the tomb of Mulai Idris, bribed the guardian, who sat with a wand in the court outside the shrine, to let him pass, and for the first time in his life stood within the sacred place. The shrine was dark, and the ticking of the clocks in the gloom filled Dimoussi’s soul with awe and wonderment.
For the shrine was crowded with clocks: grandfather clocks with white faces, and gold faces, and enamelled faces, stood side by side along the walls, marking every kind of hour. Eight-day clocks stood upon pedestals and niches; and the whole room whirred, and ticked, and chimed; never had Dimoussi dreamed of anything so marvellous. There were glass balls, too, dangling from the roof on silver strings, and red baize hanging from the tomb.
Dimoussi bowed his head and prayed for the djehad. And as he prayed in that dark and solitary place there came to him an inspiration. It seemed that Mulai Idris himself laid his hand upon the boy’s head. It needed only one man, only one shot to start the djehad. He raised his head and all the ticking clocks cried out to him: “Thou art the man.” Dimoussi left the shrine with his head high in the air and a proudness in his gait. For he had his mission.
Thereafter he lay in wait upon the track over the plain to Mequinez, watching the north and the south for the coming of the traveller.
During the third week of his watching he saw advancing along the track mules carrying the baggage of Europeans. Dimoussi crouched in the bushes and let them pass with the muleteers. A good way behind them the Europeans rode slowly upon horses. As they came opposite to Dimoussi, one, a dark, thin man, stretched out his arm and, turning to his companion, said:
“Challoner, there is Mulai Idris.”