Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/192

 and warmth that man owes little even to the most rudimentary of the arts of life. Such as it was, at any rate it held all that life had for its simple peasant owner, and it sufficed. Probably his small and quiet world wagged well enough with him till that fatal afternoon in December, 1895, when he heard shouts and shots in the street of his village, and stepped out, or, more likely, perhaps, was dragged out to his cruel death.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon when these desert-wolves swooped down on this wretched flock. This is the first thing that we gather from the son of the Sheikh, to whom a brisk member of our party, who suddenly develops the gifts of a heaven-born examiner-in-chief, proceeds to put a series of very pertinent questions. It is investigation under difficulties, since the English vocabulary of our worthy dragoman is not extensive, neither is his speech fluent; but on the whole we make out enough to satisfy any reasonable mind that the raid was really the work