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Somehow, the presence of houses and people took away the sinister sound of the tom-tom and made it seem like an ordinary drum. Millot, in the faint moonlight, revealed itself as a small village, nestling under high mountains. Signs of former greatness were visible in the old gates which flanked the opening into its main street, but the greater part of the houses were thatched huts.
About twenty of them commenced at a signal to turn rapidly about on their heels and toes, without a moment's pause, for a period of some thirty or forty minutes, to the monotonous notes of a fife and a sort of Chinese tom-tom, until finally their brains became addled, and they fell to the ground in a species of trance, their active devotion being supposed to have thus successfully terminated.
If you will only all of you listen attentively, and if Mr Germsell will have the goodness to modify to some degree the prejudiced attitude of mind common to all men of science, you will hear him as plainly as I can at this moment beating a tom-tom in his cottage in the Himalayas. Now please, Lady Fritterly, I must request a few moments of the most profound silence on the part of all.
Twice Smee beat upon the instrument, and then stopped to listen gleefully. "The tom-tom," the miscreants heard Peter cry; "an Indian victory!" The doomed children answered with a cheer that was music to the black hearts above, and almost immediately they repeated their good-byes to Peter.
The shell is filled with water, some being carelessly spilt to prevent the leakage through the little hole at the bottom being too noticeable. When picking up his "tom-tom" the performer also picks up the bees wax, and attaching it to the "tom-tom" the arrangements are complete. Bringing the "tom-tom" closer to the body makes the duck dive under water.
As they marched, fifty voices rose and fell wildly in a stirring chant, exciting and terrible as the beat-beat of a tom-tom, sometimes a shout of barbaric triumph, sometimes a mourning wail. Then, abruptly, a halt was made in the glittering rain, and the bearers were changed, because of the luck it brings Arab men to carry the corpse of a friend.
Rather to their surprise, immediately after supper the tom-tom sounded its monotonous call, summoning them to the Council Rock. "What is this?" asked Hinpoha uneasily. "Something new?" "I don't know," said Katherine agog, with curiosity and on the alert for anything. Both exclaimed in wonder when they reached the Council Rock.
Deeper down than the disturbed feelings produced by the tom-tom, he sensed a prescience of evil on its way. When, therefore, a figure emerged from the forest into the clearing, and Stuart saw that this figure was not his father, but that of a negro, the boy stiffened himself. "You Stuart?" the newcomer queried. "Yes," replied the boy, "that's my name." The negro hardly hesitated.
I have heard a very great Majesty indeed praise a common little American woman's abominable singing, as though she were a prima-donna, and saw him give a jewelled cigar-case to an amateur pianist, whose fingers rattled on the keyboard like bones on a tom-tom.
The moon was high in mid-heaven flooding a white world when we reached the lodges. We three were placed under guards, while the warriors feasted their triumph and danced the scalp-dance to drive away the spirits of the dead. To beat of tom-tom and shriek of gourd-rattles, the whole terrible scene was re-enacted.
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