Page:Harris Dickson--Old Reliable in Africa.djvu/174

 flow. All day long, every day, through all the ages, the nile-wheel on the river's brink had clicked, clicked, clicked. Old Zack watched the oxen plodding round and round while a boy slept on the end of their scarcely moving pole.

"Look yonder, Cunnel," he grinned and pointed; "dat boy thinks he's ridin' on a flyin' jinny."

Through the lassitude of tepid hours this wheel turned round; its water jars rose from the river, slow—slow—slow, and emptied themselves into a trough; the stream disappeared under a mud-wall into a garden where the greedy soil drank it up. The boy roused himself and beat the oxen. His jars rose rapidly, and water gurgled as it hastened to feed the palms.

Old, old women, naked to the waist, with skins of wrinkled rubber, trudged to and fro, bearing water jars upon their heads, a never-ending file that began with the dawn of time. A camel sprawled awkwardly and laid its long neck, like a suction pipe, to the river. Other camels knelt, with square iron tanks across their backs, while Egyptian drivers filled them for the soldiers.

Colonel Spottiswoode tried to see everything at once, but did not observe the pairs of keen black eyes that were fastened upon Zack. Zack did not see them, but the eyes saw him, and the lips of desert men muttered to each other.