Still, he has five thousand followers of his own.
"Mahmud told me today that he had done all in his power but, placed as he was, he could not withstand the words of the emirs, and the complaints of the tribesmen.

When the battle comes--as it must come in a day or two--it will need all his influence and the faith of the men with him to win; and with so much at stake, how can he risk everything for the sake of a single life, and that the life of an infidel?
If you would agree to aid in working his guns, as the Greeks and Egyptians do, it would content the emirs." "That I cannot do," Gregory said.

"If I am to be killed, it is the will of God; but better that, a thousand times, than turn traitor!" "I knew that it would be so," Fatma said sorrowfully.

"What can we do?
At other times, the protection of the harem would cover even one who had slain a chief; but now that the Baggara are half starving, and mad with anger and disappointment, even that no longer avails.

If they would brave the anger of the son of the Khalifa, they would not regard the sanctity of the harem.