"Lord! Lord! yea, O Lord, smite down!" responded the ready chorus. And there were sobs and strange savage gutterals which no white ear may ever fully understand. The white listener on the station platform understood enough, and his eager face grew tense and grave. A meeting of the blacks, thus bold at such a time, meant nothing but danger, perhaps danger immediate and most serious.
The wild chant rose and fell in a sudden gust, and then the voice went on. "De time is heah; I seen it in a dream, I seen it in a vision f'om de Lord. De Lord done tell it to de Queen, and done say ter me, 'Rise, rise and slay mightily. Take de land o' de oppressoh, take his women away f'om him an' lay de oppressoh in de dus'! Cease dy labors, Gideon, cease an' take dy rest! Enter into de lan', O Gideon, an' take it foh dyself! O, Lord, give us de arm of de Avengeh. I seen it, I seen it on de sky! I done seen it foh yeahs, an' now I seen it plain! De moon have it writ on her face las' night, de birds sing it in de trees, de chicken act it in his talk dis vehy mawnin'. De dog he howl it out las' night. De sun he show it plain dis vehy day. De trees say it, now weeks an' weeks. All de worl' say to nigger now, jes' like he heah it fifty yeah ago, jes' like he heah it in de wah we made—'De Time, de Time!' I heah it in my ears. I kain't heah nuthin' else but dat—'De Time, de Time am heah!' Nuthin' but jes' dis heah, 'De Time, de Time am heah!'"
And now there ensued a yet stranger thing. There was no further voice of the orator; but thee arose a wild, plaintive sound of chanting, a song which none but those who sang it might have understood. Its savage unison rose and fell for just one bar or so, and then sank to sudden silence. There came a quick shuffling of feet in separation. The group fell apart. The store was empty! Out in the open air, under the warm summons of the sun, there passed a merry, laughing group of negroes, happy, care-free, each humming the burden of some simple song, each slouching across the road, as though ease and the warm sun filled all his soul! Dissimulation and secretiveness, seeded in savagery, nourished in oppression, ingrained in the soul for generations, are part of a nature as opaque to the average Caucasian eye as is the sable skin of Africa itself.
They scattered, but a keen eye followed them. Eddring saw that they began to come together again at different points, group joining group, and all bending their steps toward the edge of the surrounding forest. Had the owner of the Big House, or any planter thereabout, seen this gathering at the midday hour, when the people should have been at their work, he would assuredly have stopped them and made sharp questioning. But at the moment the storekeeper was at home asleep in his noonday nap; the owner of the Big House had problems of his own, and, as it chanced, none of the neighboring planters was at the railroad station. John Eddring, now fully alert, looked sharply about him, then slipped down from the railway platform. He crossed a little field by a faint path, and hurried off to the shadow of the woods, his course paralleling the forest road as nearly as might be.
At half-past three that afternoon, at a point five miles from the railway station, there was enacted a scene which might more properly have claimed as its home a country far distant from this. Yet there was something fitting in this environment. All around swept the heavy, solemn forest, its giant oaks draped here and there with the funereal Spanish moss. A ghostly sycamore, a mammoth gum-tree now and then thrust up a giant head above the lesser growth. Smaller trees, the ash, the rough hickory, the hack-berry, the mulberry, and in the open glades the slender persimmon and the stringy southern birches crowded close together. Over all swept the masses of thick cane growth, interlaced with tough vines of grape and creeping, thorned briers. It was the jungle. This might have been Africa itself!
And it might have been Africa itself which produced the sound that now broke upon the ear—a deep, single, booming note which caused the brooding air of the ancient wood to shiver as though in apprehension. There had been faint forest sounds before that note broke out: the small birds running up and down the tree-trunks had chirped and chattered faintly; the squirrels on the nut trees had dropped some bits of bark which rustled faintly as they fell from leaf to leaf; a rabbit ambling across the way had left a vine a-tremble as it disappeared, and a far-off crow had uttered its hoarse note as it alighted on a naked limb. But as this deep, reverberant, single note boomed out across the jungle, there came a sudden hush of all nature. It was as though each living thing caught terror at the sound. Only far above, as though they heard a summons, the black-winged buzzards idly circled over.
The note came again, single, deep, vibrant, smiting a world gone silent. There had been the interval of a full minute between the two echoes of the giant drum. A minute followed before it spoke again. And thus there boomed out across the jungle, deep, solemn, ominous, miles-wide in its far-reaching quality, this note of the savage drum; the drum never made by white hands, never seen by the eyes of white men; the drum whose note has never yet been heard in the North, but which some day, perhaps, may be; whose note is not yet understood by those of the North, over-wise, arrogant in the arrogance of an utter ignorance, who may yet one day hear its strange and frenzied summons!
The drum spoke on—the drum of the savage people, of the ancient savage tribes. The rolling vibration of its speech swung and extended, causing the leaves to shiver in its strange power. The sound could have been heard for miles—was heard for miles. Slipping down the little leafy paths in the cane, pushing along the edges of the highway for a time, ready to step out of sight upon the instant did occasion arise for concealment; coming down the paths made by deer and bear and panther; moving slowly but speedily and with confidence through this cover of vine and jungle, to which the black man takes by instinct, but which is never really understood by the white man; knowing the secrets of this savage wilderness, yielding to its summons and to this summons of the compelling drum, whose note shivered and throbbed through all the heavy air of the afternoon— these people, these inhabitants of the jungle, slipped and slunk and hesitated and came on, until at last this little, secret, unknown building which served as their hidden temple was fairly packed with them; and a circle, open-eared, alert for any sudden danger, made a human framing half-hidden in the shrouding of the mighty canes.
One blast of the horn of white hunter or of chance traveler, and the spot had been deserted on the instant, its peopling vanished beyond discovery. But there was no horn of hunter, no sound even of tinkling cow-bell, no voice of youth in song or conversation. Only the sound of the great drum, the drum made years ago and hidden in a spot known to few, spoke out its sullen summons, slowly, in savage deliberation. Its sound had a carrying quality of its own, unknown in white men's instruments. It was heard at the Big House, five miles away, though it was not recognized as an actual and distinct sound, white ears not being attuned to it. Even here at the hidden temple it seemed not more than the whisper of a sound, scarce louder than it appeared miles away. It was bell and drum in one, and trump of doom as well.
The drum spoke on, the drum of the jungle. It whispered of revenge to those who crept up to the dusky drummer and stood waiting to drink in at each long interval this deep intoxicating stimulus, the note of the priestly drum. And each deep throb of the drum carried a greater frenzy, a frenzy still suppressed, yet mysteriously growing. The riot of the ominous clanging sank into the blood of these people, though still it only caused them to shiver and now and then to sob—to sob! these giants, these tremendous human beings, these black or bronze Titans of the field, transplanted—in time, perhaps, to have their vengeance of the ages! They stood, their eyes rolling, their mouths slavering slightly, the muscles of their shoulders now and again rolling or relaxing, their hands coming tight together, palm smitten to palm, jaw clenched hard upon its fellow.