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Several times the barbaric noise of the tom-toms and war drums, with which the shouts of the natives mingled, broke out deafeningly. "Think you can repair it by night?" asked Mr. Durban anxiously of Tom. "I hope so," was the response. "Because if we have to stay here after dark well, I don't want to do it if I can help it," finished the hunter.
"Come back!" called Cunningham. "Iderao! I won't hurt you!" But there was no answer, save the tom-toms' thunder, swelling now into a devil's chorus-coming nearer.
These parties last all night or near it. It needs darkness to give the wild part-song its full effect, and to inspire the drummers to produce a voice of awe from the muttering tom-toms. They work up slowly. During a pause in the singing, while the drummer held his stick-kettle over the fire to contract the skin, some one asked Jeresis if he had seen Bela's white man.
The dark line of prahus were, however, in the meantime approaching, evidently, by their appearance, with hostile intent. As they drew nearer the pirates suddenly broke forth into loud cries, sounding their trumpets and beating their gongs and tom-toms, apparently with the intention of frightening us.
A sudden shouting and beating of tom-toms down in the Corral, and the call in crude rhyme to straggling couples to close in, announced supper. High above other whooping the voice of Trench, the big right guard, reached the top of the bluff: Victor Burleigh and Elinor Wream, Better wake from Love's Young Dream, Before the ants get into the cream. The beating of a dishpan drowned the chorus.
Together they galloped over the desert sands; together they visited the Saharan villages, hidden in the groves of date palms behind the brown earthen walls of the oasis; together watched the burning sunsets of Africa; at meal-times they met in the hotel; in the evenings they sat upon the verandah, and heard the Zouaves singing in chorus, the distant murmur of the tom-toms.
Here we were placed in passes, with great caution and mystery, by the shikari and his chief-of-the-staff the "oldest inhabitant" of Vernaboug; and here we sat in the morning stillness until a distant clamour and the faint beating of tom-toms afar off made us sit up more warily, and watch eagerly for the expected bear.
As we approached the open gate, flanked on either side by watch-towers and guarded by soldiers wearing Arab fezes and loose white garments, a great rabble came forth to meet us. We heard the din of tom-toms beaten within the city, joyous shouts, and loud ear-piercing blasts upon those great horns formed out of elephant tusks.
"This is my friend again with his head in the water and his legs stretched out in supplication to the god of the temple." Carlos looked at it in ecstasy. "Oh, my brothers!" he cried. "To think that I should not have known you! You torture each other just as we do. You are tattooed just as we are! You have bigger feathers and bigger dances and bigger tom-toms. You are bigger savages than we are!
Before Tu-Kila-Kila could get himself under way, sacred umbrella, tom-toms, and all, it was necessary for the King of Fire and the King of Water to make taboo on an elaborate scale with their respective elements; and so by the time the high god had reached M. Jules Peyron's garden, Felix Thurstan had already some time since returned to Muriel's hut and his own quarters.
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