Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/420



AURENCE OGLE, having lain awake hour after hour that night in Biskra, finally fell asleep only to dream miserably. He was a Greek slave, he dreamed, a Greek from Syracuse, captured in battle by Punic mercenaries and sent down to work in the Desert with other slaves, brown and black and white, all of them sickly and drooping with weakness. The Carthaginians had decided to build a great city in the Sahara; but first the sand must be cleared away from the whole Desert, and that was the task of the slaves. Laurence himself had only a little tin spade and bucket to work with, toys such as children use in play at the seaside beaches in summer; and when he filled the bucket there was no way to empty it except to toss the sand up into the air: then the wind would disperse a little of it; but the rest fell back near him on the ground. Yet the task had to be done before the Master came. Fat black Nubians stood over the toiling slaves, cracking their whips and