“Verily He is Praised and Mighty!” I responded. Then, with a long kiss of farewell, I breathed a few whispered words of passion into her ear, and, promising to return at the earliest moment, I released her supple form from my embrace, and, stumbling blindly out, left her standing, pale, friendless, and alone.
Devoutly-murmured words of a fervent prayer fell upon my ears as I turned from her presence, but I halted not, striding onward—onward in search of the knowledge and elucidation of the Great Mystery, onward to an unknown, undreamed-of bourne.
Chapter Thirty Nine.
Mohammed Ben Ishak.
That night, while the ferocious horde, half demented by delight, still continued their fell work of massacre and pillage, I slipped through the small arched gate into the courtyard of the Great Mosque.
Outside, in the roadway, corpses thickly strewn showed how desperate had been the conflict. Bodies of men were lying about the streets in hundreds, perhaps thousands, for I could not count—some with not a limb unsevered, some with heads hacked and cross-cut and split lengthwise, some ripped up, not by chance, but with careful precision down and across, disembowelled and dismembered. Indeed, groups of prisoners, tied together with their hands behind their backs, had been riddled with bullets and then hewn in pieces. The sight was awful; but why repeat it in all its painful detail?
The Ennitra had, however, faithfully obeyed Zoraida’s injunctions, and the sacred building remained deserted and untouched, although a guard was stationed at the gate to prevent any fugitive from seeking shelter there. In the lurid glare cast by the burning houses to which the firebrand had been applied, I saw how spacious was the open court. A great fountain of black marble, with ancient tiles of white and blue, plashed in the centre, inviting the Faithful to their Wodû; a vine, centuries old, spread its great branches overhead in a leafy canopy, shading worshippers from the sun’s scorching rays; while the stones, cracked and broken, the exquisitely dented horse-shoe arches, the battered walls of marble and onyx, all spoke mutely of the many generations who had performed their pious prostrations there. Like sentinels, fig and orange trees stood black against the fire-illumined sky, and as I halted for a moment, the tumult beyond the sacred precincts grew louder, as those whom I had been compelled to call “friends” spread destruction everywhere.
The white façade of the majestic structure presented a most picturesque aspect, with its long arcade of many arches supported by magnificent pillars of marble, while above rose a handsome cupola, surmounted by its golden crescent and its high square minaret, bright with glazed tiles, whence the mueddin had for centuries charted his call to prayer.