said hurriedly to Kadza, 'Away
now, and call them in, the crowd about the palace, that they may behold
the triumph of Shagpat, for 'tis ripe, O Kadza!'

And Kadza replied, 'Thou'rt a wise woman, and I'll have thee richly
rewarded. Lo, I'm as a camel lightened of fifty loads, and the glory of
Shagpat see I as a new sun rising in the desert. Wullahy! thou'rt wise,
and I'll do thy bidding.'

Now, she went flying back to the palace, and called shrill calls to the
crowd, and collected them in the palace, and headed them through the
garden, and it was when Baba Mustapha had summoned courage for a second
essay, and was in the act of standing over Shagpat to operate on him,
that the crowd burst the doors, and he was quickly seized by them, and
tugged at and hauled at and pummelled, and torn and vituperated, and as a
wrecked vessel on stormy waters, plunging up and down with tattered
sails, when the crew fling overboard freight and ballast and provision.
Surely his time would have been short with that mob, but Noorna made
Kadza see the use of examining him before the King, and there were in
that mob sheikhs and fakirs, holy men who listened to the words of Kadza,
and exerted themselves to rescue Baba Mustapha, and quieted the rage that
was prevailing, and bore Baba Mustapha with them to the great palace of
the King, which was in the centre of that City. Now, when the King heard
of the attempt on Shagpat, and the affair of the Pomegranate Grain, he
gave orders for the admission of the people, as many of them as could be
contained in the Hall of Justice: and he set a guard over Baba Mustapha,
and commanded that Shagpat should be brought to the palace even as he
then was, and with the lather on him. So the regal mandate went forth,
and Shagpat was brought in state on cushions, and the potency of the drug
preserved his sedateness through all this, and he remained motionless in
sleep, folded in the centre of calm and satisfaction, while this tumult
was rageing and the City shook with uproar. But the people, when they saw
him whitened behind a lather, wrath at Baba Mustapha's polluting touch
and the audacity of barbercraft wrestled in them with the outpouring of
reverence for Shagpat, and a clamour arose for the instant sacrifice of
Baba Mustapha at the foot of their idol Shagpat. And the whole of the
City of Shagpat, men, women, and children, and the sheikhs and the
dervishes and crafts of the City besieged the King's palace in that