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Sure enough, on the far side of Dean Pont they found the sloop's mainmast washing about with half a dozen men lashed to it, men in red jackets, every mother's son drowned and staring; and a little further on, just under the Dean, three or four bodies cast up on the shore, one of them a small drummer-boy, side-drum and all; and near by part of a ship's gig, with 'H.M.S. Primrose' cut on the stern-board.
He held out the open book towards me, and added, with sudden apprehension, "You can read, I trust?" I assured him that I could. "And write? Good again! Come in you will find pen, ink, and paper on the side-drum in the corner. Bring them over to the table and seat yourself. Ready? Now begin, and let me know when you cannot spell a word."
I seated myself, silently wondering what might be the use of the side-drum in the corner. "Let me see let me see " He thumbed the book for a while, murmuring words which I could not catch; then thrust it behind his back with a finger between its pages, straightened himself up, and declaimed: "Next of aerial honey, gift divine, I sing. Maecenas, be once more benign!"
But the trumpet was evidently an old cavalry trumpet, and the threads of its party-colored sling, though fretted and dusty, still hung together. Around the side-drum, beneath its cracked brown varnish. I could hardly trace a royal coat-of-arms and a legend running, "Per Mare Per Terrain" the motto of the marines.
A rataplan on a side-drum feebly played in the street outside! the village crier announcing that a calf had committed hari-kari on one of the flag-poles put up to warn horsemen that they mustn't take short cuts over sown land. The veal resulting from the accident would be shared out among the villagers that evening.
The drummer drew a long applausive rattle from his side-drum; the trombone player sawing the air with his instrument, as with a fret-saw, evoked noises not to be described. In the midst of this general mirth while Cai stood his ground, red to the ears, and Mrs Bosenna plucked nervously at the tassel of her sunshade 'Bias came thrusting forward, shouldering his way through the press.
If she winked at me, I should not jump into the air, as if shot in the spine, with my blood tingling to my extremities; my heart would not beat like a side-drum; my blushes would not come perspiring through my whiskers. Her winking would altogether misfire. Why? Because her winking would be physiological and not erotic.
Dunstan's, played a more elaborate instrument than a Jew's-harp or a mouth organ. The side-drummer, who played the side-drum, bass drum, cymbals, Chinese block, motor-horn, triangle, and clappers was a boy who had lost both eyes. I have vivid recollections of the celebration at St.
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