thee, on thee and on thy family, and on all thy
companions."

And all this in a long-drawn, nasal chant,
sonorous and far-reaching, which must have
penetrated into every back room, and alcove
and garden of every shawl-seller in that tranquil
street. This chant would have taken the place
of the daybreak or midnight call to prayer, so,
persistent, so Oriental, so wild, and so
protracted. The " Come to prayer, come to prayer.
Come to security. God is great, God is great.
There is no deity but God. Prayer is better
than sleep, prayer is better than sleep." All
this I had missed; nor could I indeed see any
congregation.

I looked in. Schlafrig, evidently afraid of the
Tartars, pulled me by the arm, and entreated me
not to go a step nearer. In the porch were
three pairs of slippers. Inside, in a large
square perfectly plain room, lighted by three large
square windows, and carpeted with Persian
carpet, knelt the three turbaned owners of those
three pairs of slippers, looking towards the niche
that directed them to Mecca. They were as still
as images, except every now and then, when a
grave pale face turned towards the doorway, or
when one of them suddenly bent forward and
touched the carpet with his forehead. A dusty
ill-cut glass chandelier hung from the roof, and
a clumsy dark wooden chair, which served as a
pulpit and a seat for the reader of the Koran,
constituted all the furniture. The carpet was an old
Persian carpet, still soft and rich, though its deep
reds and blues had long since faded to a brownish
white. The mosque had once boasted a carpet
of enormous value, the glory of the looms of Ispahan,
but some Muscovite dog had stolen it. May
his grave be defiled, and the examining angels,
Mumkar and Nekeer, when they come to question
him in his grave, pummel him well with their
maces of red-hot iron for robbing the poor church
of the humble exiles!

All at once one of the three worshippers, who
turned out to be the mueddin, or caller to prayer,
rose from his knees, tucked his black beaded
rosary in a fold of his great white turban, and
gravely turning with an air of the profoundest
and humblest piety, came to the door, shuffled
his slippers on, and, coming out into the open
air, turned his face towards Mecca, and then
raising his open hands, palms outwards, to
each side of his old face, and carefully touching
the lobe of each ear with the thumb of each
hand, began to screech the call to prayer
which I have already given, with the most agonising
and piercing acuteness that can be imagined.
Without any apparent tendency to apoplexy, or
even of blood to the head, without turning damson
colour or getting red about the whites of his eyes,
this detestable old man of the sea, intensely
grave under the responsibility of being a whole
peal of bells, a gong, and a brazen-lunged herald
all in one, emitted his excruciating nasal gush of
Arabic, guttural and metallic by turns, hideous
to the ears as ten cats fighting, irritating as the
screeching hiss of a knife-grinder's stone, and
detestable as the noise of sharpening saws.

At first I felt a certain sudden heat rise in my
blood tempting me at all hazards to rush at
the gullet of the old man of the sea and choke
him into silence. The next moment a tickling
effervescence about the diaphragm compelled me
to step round the angle of the mosque and cram
my handkerchief into my mouth, so unexpected
was the old man's appearance, and so
outrageously discordant his performance.

At the same time a sub-current of graver
thoughts passed through my mind. I felt a
pity for these humble Publicans, who, far
from the Greek Pharisees, with their jewelled
pictures, gilt shrines, and countless tapers, came
to this quiet retreat to turn their faces and
their hearts to Mecca, and worship the God of
their fathers in the old simple way first taught
in the Arabian desert. Far otherwise had I seen
the turbaned Moslem in the Lebanon, at Cairo,
at Stamboul, and at Jerusalem, too ready in all
those places to lay hand on his sabre, and, when
he dared, to spurn the Christian under foot.

No huge-domed temple here, supported by
pillars wrenched from Ephesian shrines, no great
marble courts with fountains all in a grey flutter
with favoured doves, no long pendent strings
of silk tassels and ostrich eggs, no great scaffold
network of lamps; no, here only the sober penury
of the early Christians, and a worship unseen
and unheeded of men. No galleried minarets
here rose like Tamerlane's lances into the clear
sky, no dervishes raved out prophecies against
the giaour, no sultans' tombs were here, covered
with Indian shawls and crowned with diamond-
crested turbans. No crowd of bare-armed
servants hurried to lay the prayer carpets, to light
the lamps, to fill the vessels for ablution, or to
mount the minaret. There were no students
here, reading the Koran; no groups of idlers
sleeping, spinning, eating, as in the Egyptian
mosques of an afternoon; these poor Tartars
were in a hidden corner of the city of the most
deadly of their enemies.

But now the worshippers began one by one to
drop in, and I had no more time for comparisons.
Every moment the green garden door creaked
open, and some man or lad entered, shuffled off
his slippers, placed them in the doorway, and
then, passing in, knelt in prayer; now it was
an old shabby man, with the bent look of a
mechanic; now a smart bright-eyed stripling,
who entered with a jaunty and rather pert
trip, thinking, I fear, more of his snow-white
turban and the rosary that looped round his
wrist, than of the prophet or the wiles of Eblis.
Presently a mere ceremonialist slid in, his mind
still preoccupied with the price of rose-attar,
and his eyes wandering round on the strangers,
or oftener on a poor pariah, who, less virtuous
than Lazarus, and almost more degraded, knelt
apart, far behind the rest, in the light of the
window furthest from the niche which showed
the direction of Mecca.