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Then, just as the deep tones of the war-drum boomed forth upon the night air, the fallen Aztec betrayed signs of rallying wits, giving a low sound which might have been groan of pain or curse of baffled rage. "Mother, mother!" faintly panted the maiden, plainly at a loss to comprehend all that had so recently transpired. "What is it? What does it all mean? Surely that was Ixtli; and the other?"
Within the square of men, immediately fronting the king, the war-arms of Uganda were arranged in three ranks; the great war-drum, covered with a leopard-skin, and standing on a large carpeting of them, was placed in advance; behind this, propped or hung on a rack of iron, were a variety of the implements of war in common use, offensive and defensive, as spears of which two were of copper, the rest iron and shields of wood and leather; whilst in the last row or lot were arranged systematically, with great taste and powerful effect, the supernatural arms, the god of Uganda, consisting of charms of various descriptions and in great numbers.
One can see the tragedy of the time, as a few saw it, in comparing the first Locksley Hall of Alfred Tennyson, written in 1827, with its abiding faith in the "increasing purpose of the ages" and its roseate prophecies of the golden age, when the "war-drum would throb no longer and the battle flags be furled in the Parliament of Man and the Federation of the World," and the later Locksley Hall, written sixty years later, when the great spiritual poet of our time gave utterance to the dark pessimism which flooded his soul: "Gone the cry of 'Forward, Forward, lost within a growing gloom; Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of a tomb.
This one was his friend and comrade-in-arms, Junot, who, descended from an humble family, had by his merit and heroism elevated himself to the rank of a Duke d'Abrantes. He alone failed to respond when the ominous roll of the war-drum recalled all Napoleon's generals to Paris. But it was not his will, but fate, that kept him away.
"Thus was Taalolo introduced into the Vailima kitchen, never to leave it for four years save when the war-drum called him to the front with a six-shooter and a 'death-tooth' the Samoan war-cutlass or head-knife. He became in time not only an admirable chef, but the nucleus of the whole native establishment and the loyalest of our whole Samoan family.
The noggara or war-drum was a dead thing, beating not to quarters, as we had heard it during the day when out with the cavalry. Nor was the deep-bayed booming of the ombeyas, or elephant horns, re-echoing to rally the tribesmen under their leaders' banners. It was 3.40 a.m. on 2nd September when the bugles called the 22,000 men of the Sirdar's army from slumber.
The unfortunate tenant, who looked a martyr to ague, sat "in palaver" with a petty island "king," and at times the tap of a war-drum roused my experienced ear.
The tide rose and fell in the river. The Indian guide begged the white men not to go on; he was afraid, he said, of the Indians of the sea-coast. The river channel divided. Natives along the shore began singing war-songs and beating the war-drum; then they circled out threateningly round the white men's boats.
The very prisoners in the guard- room were shaking the bars of their cells and howling like wild beasts, and from every barrack poured the booming as of a big war-drum. Mulcahy hastened to his own barrack. He could hardly hear himself speak.
Presently the beating of a war-drum announced the arrival of a procession, which advanced slowly to the pool, bearing a litter upon which, bound hand and foot, was stretched the unfortunate Van Luck. When they had come to the edge of the pool they set the litter down and withdrew.
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