And they kept it up until the brains of the spectators were in a whirl, and some of them (spectators, not brains) had their money’s worth and went away.
After a while one of the dervishes threw up the sponge (figuratively), by sinking down on the floor in a state of exhaustion and perspiration.
He was as pliable as a jelly-fish, and the attendants who came to his relief handled him with care through an apparent fear that he would drop to pieces. Soon another fell, and then a third, and then a fourth, and then the chief gave the signal for stopping the roulette. The dervishes had been on the whirl nearly twenty minutes, and were quite ready to finish the game. Towards the end I noticed that the toes of some of them were terribly cramped, and the veins of their feet swollen like drum cords.
They gathered up their morning wrappers, and after bowing profoundly to their chief, walked slowly from the room. This was the end of the affair, and we returned to the outer door where we mounted our boots, paid our “backsheesh” and departed.
None of these dervishes were corpulent, but whether from accident or design I am unable to say. They were all of a lean and hungry build, and all were pale in the face except one, who was a negro, and couldn’t have paled however much he wished to. Their exercise is not calculated to develop obesity, and if one should grow fat he would be obliged to change his profession, as he couldn’t keep up with the rest without killing himself with overwork. Their faces were not prepossessing as a general thing; some had a pleasing cast of features, but the majority were of an aspect decidedly forbidding.
Before we left the place I told our guide that I could give the chief a hint which might be of service to him.
“Tell the sheik that we have machinery in America which we use for drying clothes in large laundries. The clothes are put into a cylinder which revolves above five thousand times a minute, and throws the moisture out by the centrifugal force.”