Had these, with their commander, been brought at once to Tel-el-Kebir, they might have saved at least the honour of the army, for Abd-el-Aal was one who could be relied upon for forward action, and his troops were full of spirit and undiscouraged by defeat. It seems, however, still to have been thought that Damietta needed its garrison, for I cannot find that the Military Committee so much as suggested Abd-el-Aal as Ali Fehmi's successor. I have sometimes thought that Yakub Pasha Sami, the President of the Military Committee at Cairo, good service as he had done in organizing the war, had at this time been tampered with by the Khedive's agents. He was a Mussulman, of Greek origin, and so one of the ruling class, and there are documents in my possession which show him, though Arabi's right-hand man at the War Office, as always a Khedive's man rather than a Nationalist. The Khedive seems to have counted him as such, and as in other instances after the war, treated him for that reason with exceptional rigour, and he was one of the seven Pashas exiled to Ceylon, though the attitude he adopted before the Judges had been one of servile repentance and protestations of loyalty. Of his deep jealousy of Arabi the papers give ample evidence, and it is quite possible that after the disabling of Ali Fehmi, he did his best to isolate Arabi and hasten his ruin at Tel-el-Kebir. Instead of Abd-el-Aal the command was given to a very worthy but quite incompetent man, Ali Pasha Roubi, one of Arabi's old companions of the early days of the National movement, but who had no other qualification for so responsible a post.
Arabi himself meanwhile, in spite of the imminence of the English attack, remained stolidly on in camp surrounded, as always, by the country Notables, who still flocked to see him, and by religious men, with whom he passed the time in prayers and recitations.