That was ten years ago. During those ten years the English soldiers and the Cairenes, both natives and foreigners, have learned so well to know and appreciate each other, that when it leaked out (who shall say how) on Sunday evening that orders had been received for the immediate embarkation of all the British troops in garrison here, the announcement clanged like a tocsin through the startled town.
Once again the Frank quarter was filled with an anxious wondering mob, formed not of Arabs only, but of all the varied nationalities that make up Cairo’s thriving population, who roamed the broad streets round the Esbekeeyeh Gardens, silent, orderly, and sad, or gathered in tight-packed masses in front of Shepheard’s and the New Hotel, and the Sporting Club, and lingered for hours in slowly changing thousands in the great square facing the Abdeen barracks.
It was near midnight, and the moon was high, when the news became generally known. The band of the Alexandria Regiment had for some time ceased playing in the Esbekeeyeh Gardens, and nearly all English soldiers were back in barracks. Some few men, however, who had twelve o’clock leave, were still abroad, and as, on their way home, they shouldered through the throng—wondering, no doubt, what could be the matter—they were instantly seized upon by scores of eager well-wishers, delighted to find an outlet for some portion of the cordial enthusiasm pent up within them. Of one of these spontaneous outbursts of affection towards ‘Thomas Atkins’ I was myself a witness. I was standing with other Englishmen and ladies on Shepheard’s balcony watching the shifting masses of the crowd below, when suddenly there arose, some way up the street—beyond the British Consulate—a wild confused noise of cheering. It was a queer kind of cheer, such as could probably be heard nowhere else in the world—a strange blending of the Zughareet of Arab women—the guttural Fellah Hàgh, the Italian Viva, and the Greek Huzzah, with a leavening of Levantine squeal; but the outcome of the mixture was sufficiently startling to make us turn—for a moment anxiously—in the direction of the sound. Then the crowd before us took up the cry, and quickly pressing back on either side of the way, left room for the passage of the most extraordinary procession it has yet fallen to my lot to behold.