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Updated: June 4, 2025
I guess we can handle 'em all right." With shouts and yells the big men came on. Evidently their indifference toward their captives had turned to anger because of the freeing of Poddington, and now they were determined to use harsh measures. They advanced with wild yells, brandishing their clubs and other weapons, while the weird sound of the tom-toms and natives drums added to the din.
I should have said as we approached we met a party of young men running at full speed, who, after exchanging a few words with the girls, hastened on in the direction whence we had come. On entering the town we saw a number of persons approaching, several playing on tom-toms and various musical instruments, and others shouting and singing.
"Well, Mr Carter, sir, and gen'lemen, Mike here and me follered along the path that the savages had took, for a matter of a couple o' mile, when we hears a tremenjous hullabaloo of niggers shoutin', and tom-toms beatin', and dogs barkin', and what not, so we knowed that we was pretty close aboard a native village, as they calls 'em, so we shortened sail and got in among the bushes, creepin' for'ard until we could see what was happenin'. And when at last we was able to get a pretty clear view, the sight we saw was enough to freeze a man's blood.
It was to welcome, I found, a party of their comrades from an attack on one of the neighbouring estates, in which they had come off the victors, with numerous prisoners and much spoil. There began, as before, a horrible din of tom-toms and other musical instruments, mixed with the very far from musical voices of the old women who had been tormenting us.
Not unfrequently dancing boys or girls are in attendance, and the horrid din of tom-toms, cymbals, a squeaking fiddle, or a twanging sitar, rattling castanets, and ear-piercing songs from the dusky prima donna, makes night hideous, until the grey dawn peeps over the dark forest line. Early in January, 1875, my camp was at a place in the sal jungles called Lohurneah.
But the others were afraid too much, and said, "No, we are comfortable here; we have our dances, and our tom-toms, and plenty to eat we won't risk it, we'll stay here"; and they remained in the old place, and from them come the black men. But to this day the white men come to the bank, on the other side of the river, and call to the black men, saying, "Come, it is better over here."
Tossing upon his bed, all through the velvet darkness he was dimly conscious, through his delirious dreams, of tom-toms beaten in the bush. His throat was parched, and in his dreams he drank greedily from his canteen; but each time that he awoke he saw it hanging empty from the tent flap. Presently a large, bright, yellow object rose up in front of him.
Emboldened by the fear that all their possessions would be destroyed a body of the natives rushed out, right in front of the elephants, and beat tom-toms and drums, almost under their feet, at the same time singing wild songs. "I'm afraid we can't stop them!" muttered Mr. Anderson. "We'd better hurry to the airship, and protect that, Tom." But, almost as he spoke, the tide of battle turned.
All night the liquor circled among the savages, as the spirit fired the brains in their narrow skulls the uproar became worse. A huge fire was built in the centre of the camp, tom-toms placed beside it in the hands of old men, and, forming in a giant circle, the braves began a dance.
One bright morning it was discovered that a long line of them had left their tepees and were coming in this direction. They were riding single file, of course, and were chanting and beating "tom-toms" in a way to make one's blood feel frozen. I was out on one of the little hills at the time, riding Bettie, and happened to be about the first to see them.
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