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Travelling by night from Mecca, El Husseyn and his retinue appeared at dawn outside the city walls, and when it was morning, mounted on a white mare from Nejd, and preceded by his escort of Koreysh Arabs and the Sultan's guard of honour, he rode into the town.
El Husseyn, too, became specially obnoxious to the reactionary party, when it resolved at last to quarrel with England, for he and his family persisted in remaining on friendly terms with the British Government on all occasions when the interests of Indian subjects of her Majesty's came in question at the Haj.
At first, even those who saw the deed hardly knew what had happened, for El Husseyn did not fall or dismount, and without speaking rode on to the house. There he was lifted from his mare and carried to an upper chamber, and in the course of some hours he expired. Those nearest him, meanwhile, had seized and cudgelled the old man, and some of the escort had taken him to the guard-house.
He was personally on good terms with El Husseyn, and has since been disgraced; but all point to the Stamboul Camarilla and even the Sultan himself as its author. It is known that Abd el Hamid constantly employs dervishes as his spies and private agents, and some who pretend to know best affirm that the old man received his mission directly from the Caliph.
So much was this the case that, in the year following the disastrous Russian war, when Constantinople seemed on the point of dissolution, the Arabs began to talk openly of making El Husseyn ibn Aoun Caliph in the Sultan's place.
I have not been able to ascertain that El Husseyn himself indulged the ambitious project of his friends, for he was eminently a man of peace, and the Caliphal title would hardly have given him a higher position than he held. But it is certain that his popularity gave umbrage at Constantinople, the more so as Abd el Hamid could not and dared not depose him.
When it became known what had happened, a great cry arose in Jeddah, and old and young, and women and children, and citizens and strangers wept together. I have heard the scene described as one beyond description moving, and the women shrieked and wailed the whole night long. El Husseyn was beloved, and he was taken in the flower of his manhood.
It is known in Jeddah that El Husseyn's successor, who had long been resident at Constantinople, sent orders to his agent at Jeddah to prepare for his return as Grand Sherif two months before El Husseyn, who was a young man, died; and that he had, moreover, dispatched most of his baggage in anticipation. The last words of the old assassin are curious.
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