ore than ever determined to find
some other and quicker way of getting our hands upon this gang.

All that week we haunted Midway to little purpose. Once in the very
centre of the big Turkish bazaar--where everything was sold, and which
was extended from time to time out of all proportion to its original
size--where, too, I had been arrested and ignominiously marched away,
to be rescued by Dave Brainerd--I caught a glimpse of Delbras, this
time in full Turkish costume, and minus the beard and smoked glasses.

I followed him recklessly, thrusting aside those who obstructed my way
with an impatient and ruthless hand, until I came to a spot, almost at
the southern exit of the long and narrow L, where a crowd was packed
from side to side of the eight-foot aisle, with mouths agape listening
to the exhortations of a boyish-looking fellow, wearing a Turkish fez
and a sort of smoking-jacket, and looking, in spite of this, far more
like a Jew than a follower of Mahomet. He stood at one side, close to
the entrance, and a curtain framed and partially concealed him. Behind
him, towering above him by a head and shoulders, was a tall Soudanese,
his face black, and shining, and round, and his white robe and turban
emphasizing the arm, bare, black, and massive, that waved a continuous
accompaniment to the words half spoken, half shouted, by the other:

'Buy your tickets! Buy your tickets now, now, now! Come and see how to
get married! Come to see how to get divorced! Come to see how the
ladies quarrel with their husbands! Come and see how the ladies
quarrel with each other! Buy your tickets now, now, now!'

In this singular combination of the modern fakir plying his trade and
the huge black steadily and systematically beckoning toward a stairway
partially concealed beyond the curtain, and looking like some giant
eunuch of ancient romance, there seemed something which caught and
held the public eye and the public wonder; and they crowded about the
improvised entrance, and formed an impassable wall between me and the
man so short a distance ahead, yet so utterly out of reach.

It was vain to struggle. That Turkish fez had been to Delbras an open
sesame through the packed mass of humanity, and for a time I saw it
nodding above the lesser heads half-way between the door of exit and
that half-concealing curtain. Then, presto! it was gone; and though I
went wildly around to the farther entrance, pushing and jostling to
right and left, an