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Francis stop for a moment to wish his old pupil Absalom good evening, and then vanish quickly like a figure flashed on a screen by a cinematograph. Lights came out in high windows and sounds of bagpipes and beating tom-toms began inside the open doors of a nautch house.
The beaters streamed down the steep bank into the ravine which some distance away was filled with dense scrub affording good cover for the quarry. Forming line they moved through it with shrill yells, the blare of horns, the beating of tom-toms and a spluttering fire of blank cartridges from old muskets. The riders mounted and, spear in hand, eagerly watched their progress through the jungle.
I had reason to ask the same question that evening, as we sat in the cool verandah, watching the fireflies flicker about the tree-tops, and listening to the weary din of the tom-toms which came from all sides of the Savanna save our own, drowning the screeching and snoring of the toads, and even, at times, the screams of an European band, which was playing a 'combination tune, near the Grand Stand, half a mile off.
The passage would have been agreeable enough but for the dreadful "tom-toms," or wooden drums, which are beaten incessantly while the men are rowing. Two men were engaged constantly at them, making a fearful din the whole voyage. The rowers are men sent by the Sultan of Ternate. They get about threepence a day, and find their own provisions.
Thereupon the Shiek got up and made a long speech, in which he described his grief at being obliged to refuse the request. At the end of that time one of the women came op to them with a lovely waistcoat which she had manufactured out of the Wagnerian plaids; and when the Shiek saw it he immediately ordered all the tom-toms and kettle-drums in the camp destroyed, as they were no longer necessary.
And we encountered other men, fiercer, bigger, who faced us on the beaches in open fight, showering us with spears and arrows, while the great tree drums and the little tom-toms rumbled and rattled war across the tree-filled hollows, and all the hills were pillared with signal-smokes.
I knew instinctively that it was "humbug," arranged to show the celerity with which the little army could be turned out; and shortly an orderly arrived with a note "False alarm;" but Klang never subsided all night, and the Klings beat their tom-toms till daylight. I am writing at dawn now, in order that my letter may "catch the mail."
The tone of the chant now being sung by the savages was very different from that which had reached our ears while in the open river; it was more subdued, and did not convey that suggestion of savage exultation that had been the dominant note of the other, and I also now noticed that the deafening clamour of horns and thumping of tom-toms had ceased.
As I did so the beating of the tom-toms broke on my ears with such vehemence that I was well-nigh stunned, and a waving dance of torches and cressets bewildered my eyes. I stood on the edge of a range of steps looking down upon an amphitheatre crowded with men.
Incantations of the most extravagant character are the principal means used by the priests, who are also called doctors, and who pretend to relieve sickness and pain by barbarous means, such as hideous dances, beating of tom-toms, blowing of horns, wearing hideous masks, and other devices. All this nonsense is popularly supposed to drive away the evil spirits who cause the sickness.
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