Untitled - Beeldbibliotheek

236 CARAVAN DAYSturn aside to beguile the time till it moved upthe rank. All was done in the most seemlyroutine as if the traffic of the spring was part ofthe normal lifeof the place, and yet these wereby nature tap-users, brought here only by a greatemergency. The men and women passed thetime in conversation or sitting idly on the bank.But the children and most of the water-carrierswere children had matters of far more momentin hand.In the course of a few weeks they hadelaborated a whole system of sports and pastimes,so that not a moment was lost. You plankeddown your can at once and turned eagerly to thebank above to take part in a continuous game,which lasted throughout the whole evening, a newcomerjoining in every minute or two, as one ofthe others dropped off, so that the whole personnelchanged frequently without in any way upsettingthe run of events. The organization seemed tome to be perfect, though I do not profess to haveunderstood the finer points.It was not my ideaof Blind-Man's-Buff, nor yet of Hide-and-Seek,though it partook in a measure of both of them.There was much chasing and catching, hiding andevading in its composition.At times the playersclapped their hands in unison, and when a specialcrisis occurred they sang.