e itself. There were others too--rows and rows within the arches, in
the dusk of the mosque itself, and from man to man emotion passed like a
spark upon the wind. The crowd grew denser, there came a suspense, a
tension. It gained upon all, it laid its clutch upon Shere Ali. He ceased
to think, even upon his injuries, he was possessed with expectancy. And
then a man kneeling beside him interrupted his prayers and began to curse
fiercely beneath his breath.

"May they burn, they and their fathers and their children, to the last
generation!" And he added epithets of a surprising ingenuity. The while
he looked backwards over his shoulder.

Shere Ali followed his example. He saw at the back of the enclosure, in
the galleries which surmounted the archway and the wall, English men and
English women waiting. Shere Ali's blood boiled at the sight. They were
laughing, talking. Some of them had brought sandwiches and were eating
their lunch. Others were taking photographs with their cameras. They were
waiting for the show to begin.

Shere Ali followed the example of his neighbour and cursed them. All his
anger kindled again and quickened into hatred. They were so careful of
themselves, so careless of others!

"Not a Mohammedan," he cried to himself, "must set foot in their
graveyard at Lucknow, but they come to our mosque as to a show."

Suddenly he saw the priest climb the ladder on to the high wooden
platform in front of the central arch of the mosque and bow his forehead
to the floor. His voice rang out resonant and clear and confident over
that vast assemblage.

"There is only one God."

And a shiver passed across the rows of kneeling men, as though
unexpectedly a wind had blown across a ripe field of corn. Shere Ali was
moved like the rest, but all the while at the back of his mind there was
the thought of those white people in the galleries.

"They are laughing at us, they are making a mock of us, they think we
are of no account." And fiercely he called upon his God, the God of the
Mohammedans, to root them out from the land and cast them as weeds in
the flame.

The priest stood up erect upon the platform, and with a vibrating voice,
now plaintive and conveying some strange sense of loneliness, now loud in
praise, now humble in submission, he intoned the prayers. His voice rose
and sank, reverberating back over the crowded courtyard from the walls of
the mosque. Shere Ali prayed too, but he prayed silently, with al