Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/64

46 two forces, and so uneventful the situation. Both sides pull till their joints crack, but neither produces the least effect upon the other. Nor does either receive the slightest assistance from their own animals, or encounter any resistance, save that of inertia, from those of their opponents. Each ass stands motionless, inconvenienced by both belligerents but aiding neither, a perfect type of the conscientious neutral; and as eight men cannot be expected, without some very commanding superiority in weight and strength, to drag along an equal number of their comrades plus eight donkeys, and at the same time to kick or otherwise persuade eight other profoundly unsympathetic asses into rendering their assistance, the contest naturally ends in a draw, both sides retiring with equal honour from the field.

The "Officers' Mule Race" would no doubt have been less surprising to our Saracenic revenant, who would naturally assume that the descendants of the Crusaders must