Page:Harris Dickson--Old Reliable in Africa.djvu/320

 excited. Agha tore his way through the crowd and spoke to Mahomet. Mahomet turned blandly to Zack: "Agha say very good, Effendi. Peoples much try be quiet."

During the next four days every black creature on Wadi Okar remained intensely quiet. Colonel Spottiswoode observed it in the fields, McDonald commented on it at the table. And the king's head men knew why in the tukuls. The catfish stand was choked with customers. Zack summoned Fudl and Mahomet to help him as extra salesmen, but every customer insisted upon paying his piaster into the hands of the Black Effendi himself, none other. Each purchaser called his own name many, many times, impressing it upon the Black Effendi, until Zack got tired. "Git away from here; I ain't gwine to fergit you. Nobody 'members a nigger's name, but I knows yo' favor."

On the last crucial afternoon, Saturday, the white men noticed a suppressed excitement which ran like a tremor amongst the Shilluks in the fields. Every man kept at his plow and hoe and planting; every eye kept upon the descending sun. Lyttleton—seasoned in Sudan warfare—felt a vague uneasiness. "Something's up," he said. McDonald saw it, the Colonel felt it; the head man knew why.

"Quitting time," McDonald called to the head