Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/67

Rh the very outskirts of the melée; another hurries to a distance—freedom from interruption seeming to him worth securing, even at the expense of lost ground. Dusty feet are thrust with furious haste into boots, themselves already half filled with dust by facetious hands; nervous fingers pluck at the laces; then one man leaps to his feet and rushes for the goal. In another moment a second is in pursuit of him, a slower lacer, but a faster racer, and the two breast the handkerchief almost side by side.

Other "events" as interesting, but certainly no less bewildering to the shade of his Highness the Caliph, succeed the boot-race. Infidel non-commissioned officers, each holding between his teeth a spoon with an egg balanced in its bowl, career cautiously over a fifty yards course for a prize of a turkey and a pair of chickens to him who shall reach the goal with his fragile charge unbroken. Then privates, mounted on donkeys for a wrestling match, proceed to show, as Napier says of