Page:Harris Dickson--Old Reliable in Africa.djvu/295



HE Hot Cat Eating House had lapsed into the universal indolence, and Zack had to wait until his customers got hungry again.

The stars hung low above Wadi Okar, nearer than lightning bugs caught under Zack's mosquito curtain. The Nile murmured in its sleep, a shimmering, upturned duplicate of the dazzling heavens. Between the river and the squatty brick house where the white folks slept stood clumps of dom palms casting their dense black shadows, like ink blots upon a sheet of silver paper. From the village of Hillet Debaa—Hyena Town—across half a mile of trembling grasses, came the thump, thump, thump of a Shilluk drum. The barbaric monotone pulsed into the windows of the white man's quarters, eddied around to the rear, and dinned upon the ears of Said with insistent invitation. The scrawny brown man sat upon the ground with his back against a straw hut, listening to the voice of the 281