There
had been reformers in those lost races; one age had sought to better the
last, one man had toiled to save--yet there only remained offensive
bundles of mummied flesh and bone and a handful of relics in tombs fifty
centuries old. Was it all, then, futile? Did it matter, then, whether one
man laboured or a race aspired?
Only for a moment these thoughts passed through his mind; and then, as
the glow through the broken cloud on the opposite horizon suddenly faded,
and veils of melancholy fell over the desert and the river and the palms,
there rose a call, sweetly shrill, undoubtingly insistent. Sunset had
come, and, with it, the Muezzin's call to prayer from the minaret of a
mosque hard by.
David was conscious of a movement behind him--that Kaid was praying with
hands uplifted; and out on the sands between the window and the river he
saw kneeling figures here and there, saw the camel-drivers halt their
trains, and face the East with hands uplifted. The call went on--"La
ilaha illa-llah!"
It called David, too. The force and searching energy and fire in it stole
through his veins, and drove from him the sense of futility and
despondency which had so deeply added to his trouble.
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