Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/269

 intervals of about ten minutes, the speed of his revolutions would slacken, like that of a spent humming-top, and you might have thought that he was coming gradually to a halt from exhaustion. But no! At the moment when the pace had slowed down almost to stopping point, it would rapidly quicken again to its former pitch.

It is a truly extraordinary performance considered merely from a secular point of view, and one well worth witnessing on that account alone. Indeed, you can in a certain sense respect the performer; you may even entertain for him that sort of qualified admiration which is commanded by the sword-swallower or the regurgitator of tape. He is, at least, doing something which you cannot. We could, any of us, growl, and groan, and gasp, and wag our heads and sway our bodies to and fro by the hour together. But to revolve upon the long axis of the spinal column and the human legs, say, one hundred and fifty times a minute,