THE BAMBOULA
FROM the deck of the ship the night seemed split into three zones of darkness: the vague water, with its elusive surface sheen; the heavier murk of the land, which was not black, but a deep tone of color impalpable from lack of light; then the sky, which was all that was left, and rested prone upon the other two, with no intermediary separation.
I leaned on the rail and tried to pick out the features of the land; a pale band of beach crept out of the opacity, and it seemed to me that I could see dark splotches where the compèche was piled. Now and then a light would spark out and disappear, in many cases its swinging motion proving it to be a torch carried in some black fist. A thin land breeze had sprung up, and it brought off the scent of the damp earth, whiffs of wood smoke, and now and then the heavy fragrance of the stephanotis. Deeper in the gloom tossing hills threw their rough shoulders against the opaque sky.
Suddenly, from a shadowy recess in the black land there arose the steady beat of a drum—a pulsing, cavernous sound, measured in rhythmic time, neither loud nor fast; a patient sound, yet a note impalpable in quality, insistent and seeming like the throbbing heart-beat of the savage island sleeping under the black mantle of the night.
There came an alert step on the deck behind me, and a throaty voice, with the hint of a German accent, remarked at my shoulder:
“The bamboula!”
It was Dr. Leyden who spoke—a shipmate whom I had met the day we both went aboard at Demerara. He had just come down the Essequibo, after three months’ orchid-hunting in the bush; an interesting man, who was by profession what one might call a “market-naturalist.” By that I mean that he was one of these not ultra-scientific collectors who can tell a rare specimen when they see it and who do the outdoor work of the “closet naturalist,” in whose place they get the fever, and to whom they are ready to sell fame at so much per bone, or bug, or plant. He had been everywhere, barring the populous communities, and was at home with all primitive peoples. “No, Doctor,” he said to me one day, “I speak very few languages, no more than nine or ten, but I am acquainted with a great many dialects!” He could acquire an ordinary savage dialect in about a month.
“What is it?” said I, in answer to his remark. “A dance?”
“Perhaps—it sounds like it. There are but few lights yonder in the village and there are torches moving on the mountain-side. Wait—let us see.”