Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 115, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 May 1910 — A ROMP IN THE DESERT. [ARTICLE]

A ROMP IN THE DESERT.

The Bedouins of fiction are usually supernaturally grave fellows, who look out on the world with “unfathomable mystery” in their eyes. Quite a different picture is that drawn by Norman Duncan in “Going Down from Jerusalem.” It was a company of travelers —Christian and otherwise — that had stopped for the night. One member had just performed a simple trick tor the entertainment of the others. “A feat!” cried Mustafa. “I* too, will perform a feat!” We made a ring in the moonlight* and fell silent and watchful, while the old fellow gravely wound his skirt about his middle. An athletic performance, evidently some mighty acrobatio feat of the desert. “Observe!” said Mustafa. Ojjr attention deepened, and Mustafa, having bowed with much politeness to the company, turned a somersault. Then restraint broke loose. “Catch me!” shouted the younger khawaja. Here was a familiar game. They reached to seize him; but the younger khawaja leaped from the quick hands of the big muleteer; dodged tho catspring of the Sudanese, buffeted Aboosh, overturned the Bedouin, and darted off into the moonlight with a whoop like a shriek of a disappearing locomotive. They were after him in a flash —a yelping, giggling, hallooing guffawing pack, leaping over the moonlit sand like shadows. Weelah! but the delight of that pursuit, the triumph of the capture! “Ring-around-a-rosy”—and the desert fairly groaned from the vigor of the squatting. “Bull-ln-the-ring”—a mad success! “Crack-the-whip”—and the climax of earthly joys was achieved. We put the camel beys on the end of the line; we sent them tumbling head over heels, rolling over the soft sand like rag balls, far into .the farther moonlight. Weelah! but they would be cracked again. And we cracked them, with such joyous fervor that we never expected to see them more. Mustafa clamored to be cracked. We indulged Mustafa; we put Mustafa where he craved to be, and we gripped hands with a new and mightier grip, and we ran faster and farther, and we turned more abruptly, and we 'cracked the old gentleman clean out of sight over the ridge of a sand drift. “By Mohammed!” he screamed, returning. “But there is a deep hole in the desert where I alighted."