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“Listen to the drums!” said Wali Dad. “That is the heart of the people–empty and making much noise. How, think you, will the Mohurrum go this year? I think that there will be trouble.”

He turned down a side-street and left me alone with the stars and a sleepy Police patrol. Then I went to bed and dreamed that Wali Dad had sacked the City and I was made Vizier, with Lalun’s silver huqa for mark of office.

All day the Mohurrum drums beat in the City, and all day deputations of tearful Hindu gentlemen besieged the Deputy Commissioner with assurances that they would be murdered ere next dawning by the Muhammadans. “Which,” said the Deputy Commissioner, in confidence to the Head of Police, “is a pretty fair indication that the Hindus are going to make ’emselves unpleasant. I think we can arrange a little surprise for them. I have given the heads of both Creeds fair warning. If they choose to disregard it, so much the worse for them.”

There was a large gathering in Lalun’s house that night, but of men that I had never seen before, if I except the fat gentleman in black with the gold pince-nez. Wali Dad lay in the window-seat, more bitterly scornful of his Faith and its manifestations than I had ever known him. Lalun’s maid was very busy cutting up and mixing tobacco for the guests. We could hear the thunder of the drums as the processions accompanying each tazia marched to the central gathering-place in the plain outside the City, preparatory to their triumphant reentry and circuit within the walls. All the streets seemed ablaze with torches, and only Fort Amara was black and silent.

When the noise of the drums ceased, no one in the white room spoke for a time. “The first tazia has moved off,” said Wali Dad, looking to the plain.

“That is very early,” said the man with the pince-nez.

“It is only half-past eight.” The company rose and departed.

“Some of them were men from Ladakh,” said Lalun, when the last had gone. “They brought me brick-tea such as the Russians sell, and a tea-turn from Peshawur. Show me, now, how the English Memsahibs make tea.”

The brick-tea was abominable. When it was finished Wali Dad suggested going into the streets. “I am nearly sure that there will be trouble to-night,” he said. “All the City thinks so, and Vox Populi is Vox Dei, as the Babus say. Now I tell you that at the corner of the Padshahi Gate you will find my horse all this night if you want to go about and to see things. It is a most disgraceful exhibition. Where is the pleasure of saying ‘Ya Hasan, Ya Hussain,’ twenty thousand times in a night?”

All the processions–there were two and twenty of them–were now well within the City walls. The drums were beating afresh, the crowd were howling “Ya Hasan! Ya Hussain!” and beating their breasts, the brass bands were playing their loudest, and at every corner where space allowed, Muhammadan preachers were telling the lamentable story of the death of the Martyrs. It was impossible to move except with the crowd, for the streets were not more than twenty feet wide. In the Hindu quarters the shutters of all the shops were up and cross-barred. As the first tazia, a gorgeous erection ten feet high, was borne aloft on the shoulders of a score of stout men into the semi-darkness of the Gully of the Horsemen, a brickbat crashed through its talc and tinsel sides.

“Into thy hands, O Lord?” murmured Wali Dad. profanely, as a yell went up from behind, and a native officer of Police jammed his horse through the crowd. Another brickbat followed, and the tazia staggered and swayed where it had stopped.

“Go on! In the name of the Sirkar, go forward!” shouted the Policeman; but there was an ugly cracking and splintering of shutters, and the crowd halted, with oaths and growlings, before the house whence the brickbat had been thrown.