“I have heard nothing about further plans.”
“Well, the lads will keep an open course, and there will be some races and wrestling, and Sergeant Ripsy is going to show some encounters with the bayonet and a little sword-play.”
“Well, as you like. I can think of nothing else but getting the affair over and the people dismissed.”
“There, don’t you be uneasy. There’s a guard mounted to watch over our women folk, so come on.”
The Major went on towards the centre of the parade-ground, while the Resident hurried away, looking hot and anxious, to where seats had been arranged beneath an open tent erected on one side of the parade-ground, partly sheltered by a cluster of palms.
At last, with colours flying and the loud martial strains of the band, doubled by a strange echo thrown back by the dense jungle, the solid little force of infantry, in brilliant scarlet and with the sun flashing from their bayonets, was put in motion; while a strange murmur of satisfaction arose from the crowd of gaily attired campong dwellers, which was caught up by the followers of the two Rajahs with prolonged cries that bore some slight resemblance to the tiger-like ragh, ragh of an American crowd.
And then, as the band marched by, Rajah Suleiman’s group collected in front of the great clump of trees left standing when a portion of the jungle had been cleared, and the huge elephants, now gorgeous with trappings, and each bearing its showy howdah, in which were seated the Rajah himself and his principal chiefs, responded to a final blast of the highly polished brass instruments and the thunderous roll of the drums by a simultaneous uneasy trumpeting of their own, with which were mingled the cries of the mahouts, who had to ply their sharp-pointed goads to keep their charges in subjection.
Fortunately for the occupants of the howdahs, this was a final chord from the band, for the huge beasts were thoroughly startled, and the lookers-on noted that similar uneasiness was being displayed by the nine great elephants that appertained to Rajah Hamet’s force, these in particular showing a disposition to turn tail and make for one of the jungle paths.
The silence that followed the band’s final chord seemed, as Oliver Wendell Holmes says in one of his little poems, to have come like a poultice to heal the wounds of sound, and the great beasts settled down.
Then there was a bugle-call, and the evolutions began in regular review style, with plenty of fancy additions, such as had been planned to impress the great gathering of the Malay people. The troops marched and counter-marched, advanced in echelon, retired from the left, retired from the right, formed column and line, advanced in column of companies, turned half right and half left, formed three-quarter column; there was extended order and distended order, for Major Knowle’s force was very small, but he made the most of it. Sergeant Ripsy, with a face quite as scarlet as his uniform, buzzed about like a vicious hornet, and, perspiring at every pore, yelled at the guides and markers, letting fly snapping shots of words that were certainly not included in the code of military instructions. But the men, as soon as they warmed up—which was in a very short time—went into the spirit of the thing; and when at last the officers had got through the regular evolutions, that seemed to consist in weaving and twisting the men under their command into a series of intricate knots, for the sole purpose of untying them again, and Archie Maine had been saved from disgracefully clubbing his men by issuing an order which the said men wilfully disobeyed so as to cover the lad’s mistake, there was a general forming up again for a rest and cool down, while the band struck up, and, helped by the echo, filled the parade with sweet sounds, to the great delight of the gathered crowd.