They saw the point at once, each accepted a franc, and suddenly remembered that he had business elsewhere. In two minutes they had disappeared up a street, and we had the yelling crowd once more in front of us and once more naked. Evidently bribery is cheap at Bellianeh.
Just back of the landing-place was a heap of loose dust, like a small mountain. It was not less than forty feet from top to bottom, and the sides were at an angle of about fifty degrees. To project a copper into this heap was the height of our ambition, and there were only two men on the boat who could do it. When a coin was fairly landed there the rush was interesting. There was a lot of Arabs at the foot of the heap, and another at the top. Those below scrambled up, and those above scrambled down, and the cloud they created was something fearful; but luckily the wind blew it away from us. Sometimes they rolled in a tangled mass of arms and legs from top to bottom, and the youngsters who had just emerged all wet from the river were speedily veneered with the adhering dust. It may have been the ruins of an ancient city that they rolled in, and not impossibly the ashes of a king may have stuck to the body of one of these begging natives. Little they cared for that; they have no more respect for the old kings than we have for the beggars themselves.
The process of disrobing was not an elaborate one. A boy would peel himself in about ten seconds, as he had only a single garment, a sort of long shirt, to remove. This shirt is almost invariably made of blue cotton, like the material which we call “denims” in America, and such as the hod-carrying Celt and other laboring men generally use for overalls.
All the boys appeared to know how to swim, and they had no hesitation at rushing into the river. We had swimming matches among them, by attaching coppers to doura stalks and throwing them out into the stream, where they were instantly pursued and overtaken.
One of the passengers heated a piastre at the cook’s galley, and then threw it out; the boy who took it immediately dropped it, and it was seized by another and larger boy, who dropped it in turn. It didn’t burn them, but was just warm enough to feel uncomfortable.
