The Mahdi resolved to set out for Semsa with the first grey of morning,
and meantime he went up to the house-top to sleep. The town was quiet,
the traffic of the street was done, the raggabash of the Sultan's
following had slunk away ashamed or lain down to rest. It was a
wonderful night. The air was cool, for the year was deep towards winter,
but not a breath of wind was stirring, and the orange-gardens behind the
town wall did not send over the river so much as the whisper of a leaf.
Stars were out and the big moon of the East shone white on the white
walls and minarets. Nowhere is night so full of the spirit of sleep as
in an Eastern city. Below, under the moonlight, lay the square white
roofs, and between them were the dark streets going in and out, trailing
through and along, like to narrow streams of black water in a bed of
quarried chalk. Here or there, where a belated townsman lit himself
homeward with a lamp, a red light gleamed out of one of the thin
darknesses, crept along a few paces, and then was gone. Sometimes a
clamour of voices came up with their own echo from some unseen place,
and again everything was still. Sleep, sleep, all was sleep.

"O Tetuan," thought the Mahdi, "how soon will your streets be uprooted
and your sanctuaries destroyed!"

The Mooddin was chanting the call to prayers, and the old porter at the
gate was muttering over his rosary as the Mahdi left the town in the
dawn. He had to pick his way among the soldiers who were lying on the
bare soil outside, uncovered to the sky. Not one of them seemed to
be awake. Even their camels were still sleeping, nose to nose, in the
circles where they had last fed. Only their mules and asses, all hobbled
and still saddled, were up and feeding.