Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/268

form a sufficiently repulsive sight; and it is only the erect devotee, who stands in the centre of their circle, and to whose performance these moppings and mowings are a species of accompaniment that contrives to interest, without disgusting, the Western spectator. The Dancing Dervishes, for some reason or other, have ceased to dance at the Tekiyet-el-Maulawiyeh, the usual scene of their antics, for the present; but one of their number is here to-night. Without any prelude he has stepped quietly into the ring, a thin anaemic youth of barely twenty, clad in the sort of long striped soutane which these mystics affect. Extending his arms at right angles to his body he begins to twirl, and for five and twenty mortal minutes, by the independent testimony of many watches, he continues to do so. He was twirling "when our parcel left," as the cricket reporters say, and being then evidently "well set," it is impossible to say how long the innings may have lasted. Every now and then, say, at