--Yes,
there is still much work to be done in Cairo. It is not only
Bardissi who has to be fought and driven out; there is Ismail, the
chief of all the Mamelukes, and all the other beys. All this lordly
game is to be chased and driven to bay to-day, and then there are
rich spoils to be gathered. Bardissi has hardly quitted his house
when the soldiers rush into it, and begin to plunder and destroy
after a fashion that can hardly be surpassed by the Mamelukes
themselves. The soldiers intend to pay themselves for that which
Bardissi owes them.
And they do pay themselves. Bardissi possesses not only this but
other houses in Cairo, and the soldiers plunder them all, leaving
nothing behind but the bare walls.
They then fall upon Ismail Bey; but he, too, succeeds in cutting his
way through the enemy. With him escape almost all the Mameluke beys
with their followers. They flee far out of Cairo, into the open
country.
At Gheezeh, on the verge of the desert, the Mamelukes lay encamped
on the following day, and there the beys were assembled around their
hero, Bardissi, in a sad consultation.
True, they are safe, yet they feel that their rule in Cairo is at an
end, to be restored no more.
"At an end is the rule of the Mamelukes!" cries the sarechsme,
Mohammed Ali, triumphantly. In the night he sends out messengers
requesting the cadis and sheiks to come to him, as he has important
intelligence to communicate, and a firman sent to him by the grand-
sultan to read to them.
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