Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/246

230 child began to cry. The artist revived in a moment and resumed his polishing of the stone together with his illuminating comment before sending it aloft on another mission of destruction. We watched him attentively and soon had the solution of his trick. Just before the stone reached his forehead, he jerked his head aside and took the fall on the strongly developed muscles of his neck; but he made the movement with such incredible speed that it carried the deceit through without detection. It required some longer observation to run down the noise of crackling bones, which we finally located as that of stones rattled above the belt or within the sleeve of his bournous.

Later, when we saw the man had finished his performance, we watched him rubbing the muscles of his neck and quite openly taking some stones from the sleeve of his bournous to toss them into his property basket. As he dressed, he chattered continually and kept the crowd in a merry mood. Finally, making the sign of the salaam, he shot them a parting bolt that made his audience roar and clap their hands. The chouse whom Monsieur Delarue had kindly loaned us as interpreter, while he finished his office work, rendered for us the juggler's words with an evident effort in maintaining the seriousness which his office demanded:

"Mumeni, when you hear that they are needing another teacher in the medersa, tell the wise ones that you know Ali, who also possesses a strong, hard head!"

In the next circle four dancers of the Shlu tribe, dressed in white robes girt with red belts and wearing turbans, were going through a slow, rhythmical dance which suggested to my wife the first movements of the