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If the gentlemen had been shot in the court-yard of Jasse-house, by decree of a drum-head court-martial, an hour after their arrest, the rights of the provinces and the sentiments of humanity would not have been outraged more utterly. Every constitutional and natural right was violated from first to last. This certainly was not a novelty.
Arrived there, the negroes at once commenced beating a couple of large drums, half as tall as themselves, made something like a beer-barrel, covered on the top with a cow-skin stretched tightly over, by way of a drum-head. This drumming was an announcement of our arrival, intended as a mark of regal respect.
"Tight as a drum-head," was the reply. "Now look!" exclaimed the inventor, turning to the boys. They were more than astonished at what they saw. They had no idea that the rough shed held such a perfect piece of machinery. Up near the roof of the place, which was quite high, there swayed an immense bag of oiled silk. It was shaped like a cigar, big in the middle and tapering at both ends.
Prythee, what have the Horse Guards Blue to do with the laws of chemistry? Wessenburg of the Pandours would, even at his own mess table, suffer much free talk more perhaps than fits in with the dignity of a leader. Had his officers ventured upon such matter as this, however, there would have been a drum-head court-martial, or a cashiering at the least.
He had gone to grow tea in Ceylon and fruit in British Columbia, and to help sheep to grow wool in Australia. At the age of twenty he had just returned from some similar errand in Canada, from which it may be gathered that the trial he gave to these various experiments was of the summary drum-head nature.
A drum-head court martial was immediately held. The hapless pilot at first denied all knowledge of the letter, but at length compelled to confess his guilt, with a short shrift he was next morning hanged at the yard-arm.
The partitions convey sound like a drum-head, and everybody knows it; but no matter, a German family who are all kindness and consideration in the daytime make apparently no effort to moderate their noises for your benefit at night. They will sing, laugh, and talk loudly, and bang furniture around in a most pitiless way.
There was no mistake about it; it was a genuine historical document, of the Ziska drum-head pattern, a real cutis humana, stripped from some old Scandinavian filibuster, and the legend was true. My friend, the Professor, settled an important historical and financial question once by the aid of an exceedingly minute fragment of a similar document.
Marshal Randon, the present French Minister of War, began his military career as a drummer boy; and in the portrait of him in the gallery at Versailles, his hand rests upon a drum-head, the picture being thus painted at his own request.
"A drum-head court-martial will sit not later than to-morrow morning, Miss Meredith, and there will be one less rebel in the world ere nightfall. Your promise is a fairly safe one to make. Here," he continued, as the soldiers came running into the room, "fetch a pail of water and douse it over this fellow, for I want to carry him before Sir William.
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