Page:Harris Dickson--Old Reliable in Africa.djvu/157

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THE EXPECTED ONE
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of a massacre, reassuring a terrified population and setting them to work again. As Cameron individually had triumphed, on Beni Yeb, so had the British triumphed throughout that measureless Sudan. And, as part of their success, they meant to grow cotton for Lancashire spindles.

They had sat long at the table, and it was very late when McDonald pushed back his chair. and suggested, "My dear Colonel, would you be so kind as to call your black man? Let Cameron hear his method for getting labor. You know that's my part of the show at Wadi Okar."

The Colonel smiled and shouted for Zack. No Zack. Then: "Wahid! Mahomet Mansour!" Mahomet slipped in like a phantom, but knew nothing. Said came after, salaaming to the very ground, and in the name of Allah the Compassionate, he protested ignorance of his master's whereabouts. Colonel Spottiswoode shook his head, "Sorry, gentlemen. Zack is an old reprobate; he's probably gone a-rambling, and won't turn up until morning."

Cameron looked annoyed; if a reprobate went rambling around these fellaheen—particularly their women he might never turn up at all. The Nile was too near. So Cameron dispatched Kali to find the rambler—Kali, the young sheikh, versed in the white man's tongue and the Jaalin circum-