Explore "Saïd the Fisherman" by Marmaduke Pickthall on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was towards evening when Saïd left the place where, weary from long walking in the fierce eye of noon, he had sought shelter and refreshment. A crowd of men, women and children -- all who dwelt in that place -- went out with him from among the hovels as far as a tall palm-tree, which crowned a smooth hillock green with grass. In the midst of the obsequious rabble Saïd strutted a king, distinguished as he was by the missionary's brown dressing-gown, braided conspicuously with red, and girt about the waist with a red and tasselled cord; not to speak of the new scarlet fez bound to his head by a turban of more than human cleanness.
Arrived at the palm-tree, all the villagers pressed forward to kiss his hand or, it might be, only the skirt of his wondrous robe. The glory of his raiment had enthralled them at his coming, and in the first rapture of greatness, in the joy of their cringing and flattery, he had promised to see that all their wrongs and grievances were presently redressed.