Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/127

Rh unsuccessful efforts to remount him as he runs.

Something of the same elasticity of procedure was noticeable in the "gentlemen's donkey race, facing donkey's tail," where the animals who succeeded in dislodging their jockeys either retired promptly from the contest—the difficulties of remounting being in the circumstances insuperable—or made the pace gratuitously hot for those who were still in the race; while the donkeys who found themselves still bestridden, but in no degree controlled, naturally took a line of their own, which usually led them anywhere rather than to the goal which their respective and retrospective riders fondly imagined themselves to be approaching. It was almost a relief to turn from these fantastic and semi-jocular trials of speed and skill to the straightforward and almost appalling simplicity of the camel race. No one who has not seen the "ship of the desert" under a press of sail, so to speak, can have any idea of the