a victim to his temper. His
entourage knew it well, and many a man trembled that day for his place,
or his head, or his home. Even Sadik the Mouffetish--Sadik, who had
four hundred women slaves dressed in purple and fine linen--Sadik, whose
kitchen alone cost him sixty thousand pounds a year, the price of whose
cigarette ash-trays was equal to the salary of an English consul--even
Sadik, foster-brother, panderer, the Barabbas of his master, was silent
and watchful to-day.

And Sadik, silent and watchful and fearful, was also a dangerous man.
As Sadik's look wandered over the packed crowds, his faded eyes scarce
realising the bright-coloured garments of the men, the crimson silk
tents and banners and pennons, the gorgeous canopies and trappings and
plumes of the approaching dervishes, led by the Amir-el-Haj or Prince
of the Pilgrims, returned from Mecca, he wondered what lamb for the
sacrifice might be provided to soothe the mind of his master. He looked
at the matting in the long lane before them, and he knew that the bodies
which would lie here presently, yielding to the hoofs of the Sheikh's
horse, were not sufficient to appease the rabid spirit tearing at
the Khedive's soul. He himself had been flouted by one ugly look this
morning, and one from Ismail was enough.

It did his own soul good now to see the dervish fanatics foaming at the
mouth, their eyes rolling, as they crushed glass in their mouths and ate
it, as they swallowed fire, as they tore live serpents to pieces with
their teeth and devoured them, as they thrust daggers and spikes of
steel through their cheeks, and gashed their breasts with knives and
swords. He watched the effect of it on the Khedive; but Ismail had seen
all this before, and he took it in the stride. This was not sufficient.

Sadik racked his brain to think who in the palace or in official life
might be made the scapegoat, upon whom the dark spirit in the heart
of the Khedive might be turned. His mean, colourless eyes wandered
inquiringly over the crowd, as the mad dervishes, half-naked, some with
masses of dishevelled hair, some with no hair at all, bleached, haggard,
moaning and shrieking, threw themselves to the ground on the matting,
while attendants pulled off their slippers and placed them under their
heads, which lay face downwards. At last Sadik's eyes were arrested by a
group of ten dervishes, among them one short in stature and very slight,
whose gestures were not so excited as