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A brief pause, a sharp command or two, and then boom boom boom boom, so many beats of the big drum, a crash from the brass instruments, which came echoing strangely back from the barrack walls, and away they went toward the gates, where half the boys and idlers of the neighbourhood were waiting, ready to give a cheer as the drum-and-fife band passed out first in solemn silence, followed by little Wilkins, looking very important at the head of the brass instruments, but in dangerous proximity to the trombone-players, cutting and slashing with their long tubes, behind him.
He had to call back the first celebration of May Day which he "minded", and the smallest event connected with it; and when he had done Mrs White took up the tale, dwelling specially on Jem's musical talent, and how he had been the very soul of the drum-and-fife band. "They're all at sixes and sevens now, to my thinking," she said. "Jem, he kep' 'em together and made 'em do their best."
To march to a drum-and-fife band must be wonderful. Or a brass band ! Those joys will never be mine. Almost all the marching I shall have done in the great war will be summed up in these tiny promenades from the hospital to the railway-station, their rhythm sustained by self-raised choruses, none too melodious. Occasionally an officer would be descried, on the pavement. Then "Party, 'shun!"
Samuel talked of the games played in the Five Towns in his day, of the Titanic sport of prison-bars, when the team of one 'bank' went forth to the challenge of another 'bank, preceded by a drum-and-fife band, and when, in the heat of the chase, a man might jump into the canal to escape his pursuer; Samuel had never played at cricket. Samuel then conducted Cyril home again.
Other sounds also fretted the air, for a hundred yards distant in a hut-circle the Chagford drum-and-fife band lent its throb and squeak to the hour, and struggled amain to increase universal joy. So the fire flourished, and the plutonian rock-mass of the tor arose, the centre of a scene itself plutonian.
"Certainly!" cried Sam. And to show this is a purely friendly match, let us march side by side," he went on, and this was also arranged. The Putnam Hall drum-and-fife corps led the march, and each player strode forth with a rival at his side. The march brought forth a wild round of applause and a veritable shrieking of tin horns and cracking of wooden clappers.
To do this it was necessary to keep his mind steadily fixed on May Day for a whole week beforehand, and not to allow it to relax for an instant. The drum-and-fife band, who felt themselves the pride and ornament of the occasion, had to practise new tunes and polish up "God save the Queen" to a great pitch of perfection, and the children thought themselves busier than anyone.
The drum-and-fife band of the Munsters was practising in an old barn on the wayside, and presently, in honor of visitors who were myself and another the pipers were sent for.
Phil Squod, with the aid of a brush and paint-pot, is employed in the distance whitening the targets, softly whistling in quick-march time and in drum-and-fife manner that he must and will go back again to the girl he left behind him. "Phil!" The trooper beckons as he calls him.
An eager group had gathered there long ago, composed of the drum-and-fife band, which broke out now and then into fragments of tunes, the boy with the maypole on his shoulder, and bearers of sundry bright flags and banners.
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