He also firmly believed in the miraculous egg laid by a hen after Tel-el-Kebir, on which was inscribed the words--'Arabi has lost the battle because he mutilated the corpses of the enemy. Allah has punished him, but He will give victory to him in the end, if he will keep the commands in the future.'
'Hah!' said he, after a long pull at his chibouque, 'at Tel-el-Kebir your bare-legged men came on as hell will come at the last day.'
'As the Koran tells us, with seventy thousand halters, each dragged by seventy thousand angels--a power nothing can withstand.'
'Accursed as you unbelievers are,' said he, after a pause, 'God seems to give you a wondrous power, even as he gave Solomon the gift of miracles in a degree greater than anyone before him; the animals and the vegetables obeyed him, and he was carried by the winds of heaven above the stars therein, and his power over the genii was by a seal ring, of which one part was brass and the other iron, and upon it was graven the great name of God. Yes, though unbelievers, you are swift in action as the pigeons of Aleppo; not like the Osmanli, who would catch hares in waggons,' he added, with reference to the proverbial slowness of the Turks.
'Sheikh,' said Allan, in his most persuasive manner, 'you know that I befriended you when in sore peril.'
'Yes, as my brother would have done,' said Zeid, his expressive face lighting up and his black eyes sparkling under the hood of his burnous, as he pointed with his left hand to his right shoulder, which had been slashed by the long sword of one of our Life-Guardsmen.
'Well, in memory of that you will allow me to depart home freely to my people?'
'Why? Are you not comfortable enough here? Is not one place that God has made as good as another? And who and what are your people? With all their skill and power, they are but wretched unbelievers, who go to battle with their legs bare, accompanied by bags of devils, that squall and groan, like those who strove to defame Solomon.'
'I shall--is not justice the sister of piety?'
'I have not said so. Why leave the desert and go back to cities, where men become intoxicated with the pleasures of this life, and forget that which is to come?'
Allan sighed. By this time he was weary of the sheikh and his stilted conversation.