“What’s this?” cried Joe, slapping his hand to his face. “Well I’ll be—— Some kind of a fly.”
“It is a wonder we haven’t come across insect pests long before this,” Dr. Kirshner said. “They are very common all through this section.”
The flies had been discovered while they were trudging through a long, hot passageway between two high wall-like rocks. Now, as the two adventurers passed farther on, they came into more of the insects, which swarmed about as if thirsty for human blood.
“Ought to have some kind of a spray,” remarked Joe, pushing them away in great numbers.
“We have, in camp,” his friend said. “If the pests bother us much we’ll have to make use of it.”
After an hour’s hike they came to another dry river bed, and again Dr. Kirshner found flint implements scattered about. Joe had a small motion-picture camera with him, and at the scientist’s request he filmed the half-buried primitive tools as they lay hardly visible in the sand.
“I want proof that these antiquities came from the Sahara,” Dr. Kirshner said, placing them in the small box he carried over his shoulder for the purpose.
A little later Joe started to take a motion picture of a small animal that darted across the river bed, but cried out in disgust.
“A pesky fly got in front of the lens,” the youth explained. “Looked as big as an elephant.”
“One scene ruined,” laughed the archæologist. “But you’ll have to get used to that.”