The band of figures in brown burnouses marched quickly, with a sharp
rustling of many slippered feet moving in unison, and golden spears of
rain seemed to pierce the white turbans of the men who carried the bier.
As they marched, fifty voices rose and fell wildly in a stirring chant,
exciting and terrible as the beat-beat of a tom-tom, sometimes a shout
of barbaric triumph, sometimes a mourning wail. Then, abruptly, a halt
was made in the glittering rain, and the bearers were changed, because
of the luck it brings Arab men to carry the corpse of a friend.
Just in front of the two Englishmen the body rested for an instant,
stretched out long and piteously flat, showing its thin shape through
the mat of woven straw which wrapped it, only the head and feet being
wound with linen. So, by and by, it would be laid, without a coffin, in
its shallow grave in the Arab cemetery, out on the road to Sidi
Bou-Medine.
There were but a few seconds of delay. Then the new bearers lifted the
bier by its long poles, and the procession moved swiftly, feverishly, on
again, the wild chant trailing behind as it passed, like a torn
war-banner. The thrill of the wailing crept through Stephen's veins, and
roused an old, childish superstition which an Irish nurse had implanted
in him when he was a little boy. According to Peggy Brian it was "a
cruel bad omen" to meet a funeral, especially after coming into a new
town.
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