Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/65

know how to ride, though he might not expect to find them as much at home on a barebacked courser as his own wild horsemen of the desert. He would be puzzled, again, however, by the "Children's Handicap," one of the prettiest events of the day, with its dozen or so of small competitors dashing off at the word of the starter, and the fair-haired, delicate-featured officer's child running neck-and-neck with the sturdy progeny of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Atkins for a prize of thirty piastres, or a little more than six silver shillings. And, above all, what would Saladin, the son of Yussuf, have said to the boot-race, with its strange and onerous conditions? "Boots," he would have read, or his interpreter would have read to him from his programme—"Boots to be taken off at starting-post, placed in a heap fifty yards off, race to heap, competitors to pick out their own boots, and the first to return to starter with boots fully laced up to win." Severe as is this trial of the qualities of fleetness of the