Page:Harris Dickson--Old Reliable in Africa.djvu/153

 this man. "Mister, oh mister," he called, "will yo' dog bite?"

The answer did not reassure Zack; it was more of an avalanche than an answer. Swarms of people came running, some with plenty of clothes, and some with none—long-legged skinny folks, blacker than Zack ever feared to be. Zack did not see all that happened. He had only two eyes. Everybody was doing things at once. Some of the folks picked up spears that glittered in the moonlight. Zack edged away from the spears, and bumped into a group of women. The women ducked and disappeared like prairie dogs. A pot-bellied black child ran out, perfectly naked, stared at Zack for an instant, then turned and fled without a sound. Zack talked mightily, but nobody paid any attention. Throughout the hullabaloo, one old man—a very old man—sat cross-legged on a mat in front of his tent. He looked up in the moonlight and Zack thought he was blind. Zack was half-right, the Sheikh Tabira being one-eyed. Tabira's face was no bigger than a cocoanut, with features squeezed together and smoothed out as if some one had tried to rub off the face when it was soft. Lifting his dime-sized countenance, old Tabira listened to much chatter. The first word he spoke was a question, but Zack would not have known what he was talking about