Chapter XVI: The Call of the Drums

Again it was night. Once more the moon edged the crest of the ancient Citadel with a line of silver. Curlie and Johnny had returned to camp. They were welcomed by Dorn with shouts of joy. Old Pompee had uttered grunts of satisfaction and had begun at once the beating up of sorghum seed into petit meal, which later would be formed into cakes and baked on hot coals.

The boys arrived too late for any daylight exploration of the Citadel. After an hour of rest followed by a sumptuous meal of hot cakes and roasted wild pig, they went each his own way in search of adventure.

Curlie struck away up the Citadel trail that led to his laboratory. There, finding all in order, he began work on wires, switches and batteries. From time to time a low tum--tum--tum came from one or the other of his two native drums. At other times there sounded a shrill piping not unlike the notes of a boy's willow whistle.

Meanwhile Johnny was pursuing an investigation of his own. Recalling the story of the ancient black emperor's visits to the Citadel and the story of how he went to the crest of the uncompleted fortress to work all night long with mortar and stone, he had thought too of the slaves who, looking up from their hard beds of trodden earth, had seen him working there. From all this he had developed a theory which he hoped might aid him in discovering the spot, or at least the general location on the wall where Christophe had worked at night.

"Here," he told himself as he stood upon a certain raised portion of earth, "those slaves could not have slept. The space is too narrow and irregular. There were many hundreds of workmen. The greater part of them were slaves condemned to toil on the wall. They must be kept together, guarded against escape at night. Must have been a broad, clear, open space."

After wandering about, flashing his light far and near, walking here, turning to the right, then to the left he came to a definite conclusion.

"This broad square," he told himself, "must have been the sleeping ground of the workers. And from this point only a small section of the wall may be seen, not more than a fourth of it."

Of a sudden, he started. It came to him with something of a shock that this very section of the wall might be seen plainly from their own camp. Dorn and Pompee had told him of the giant with fiery eyes who walked the wall at night, and the little man, the bearer of the telescope, who followed after, but he had quite frankly disbelieved their story. It was, he had said, but the work of their overwrought imagination. Now, as some slight confirmation of its plausibility came to him, he experienced an overpowering desire to go once more to the crest of the Citadel.

"This time," he told himself, "I will avoid pitfalls." For all that he found himself unable to suppress a shudder as his foot touched the first step of the stairway.

* * * * * * * *

During all this time Curlie was experiencing unsurmountable difficulties in his work as an inventive genius. The drums he had procured at some hazard did not fulfill his purpose. One, it was true, worked admirably. The other did not work at all.

"Of course," he grumbled to himself, "one could use whistles, but drums would be more effective and dramatic." The thought that in this land he might use the drums, which had played so great a part in the history of the country, to serve a new and strange end thrilled him to the very center of his being.

"Anyone knows that drums are of different tones, the same as bells and whistles," he told himself. "And I'll find the ones I want though they cost me thirty gourdes apiece." The gourdes he spoke of were not the kind that grow on vines but Haitian silver coins worth twenty cents in American money.

Curious enough, just as he came to this conclusion there sounded on the still night air a faint, long drawn tum--tum--tum.

"They are calling. The drums are calling," he muttered. "I must go. If it's the right one I'll pay forty gourdes--and be glad enough to make the bargain."

* * * * * * * *

Curlie followed the sound of the drum. Not always did he find the right trail. At times as he skulked along beneath overhanging bushes the sound grew fainter. Then he must turn, retrace his steps to begin the search anew. In the main, however, his keen senses served him well.

Moment by moment, yard by yard, mile by mile the sound grew louder until at last the throbbing, pulsating air seemed full of it.

Curlie marveled at the boldness of the drummers. "They know that all the men of Terre Plaisance are gone," he told himself. "It is well for them, else their drums would be split from end to end and they'd not get thirty gourdes for them, either."

It was just at this juncture that a curious thing happened. As he moved stealthily forward, his keen ear caught a sound not made by a drummer.

"A belated dancer," he thought. The fact that someone was so near him in the dark disturbed him.

For all this he continued gliding silently forward over the same trail. Eerie business this, following another in the dark. Snap! went a twig up there in the trail. Rustle, rustle sounded the swinging bushes. Now he fancied he heard a whispered conversation.

"Might drop off at the side of the trail and waylay me." His blood ran cold as he seemed to feel the two-foot blade of a machete come down upon his back.

"Beat 'em to it," he whispered to himself, drawing forth his flashlight. "One glimmer of light full in the face, then I do the vanishing act."

A few gliding foot-steps, then from his lips there sounded a loud:

"Hist!"

The next instant the white gleam of his flashlight shot down the trail. It fell upon two startled faces, one white, one coal black.

But Curlie did not do the disappearing act into the brush. Instead he uttered a low exclamation that expressed profound surprise. The persons before him were Dot and her aged black servant Mona.

"Wha--what are you doing here?" Dot gasped, as he came forward.

"After a drum," he stated briefly. "Buy that drum. Pay forty gourdes if I must. That's the drum I want. Just the right tone."

"Do you know what that drum may cost?" Dot's tone was impressive.

"Fifty--"

"Not fifty, not a hundred, nor a thousand gourdes, but many times that in money and men. That is the war drum of the revolution. It says that they have the black goat once more. Come on. We are glad you are here. But we must hasten. Even now we may be too late." The French girl's dark eyes shone like fire as she turned once more to take up the trail to follow the sound of the drums.