They had soon fallen into a deep and most delightful sleep. How long they lay on their leafy bed, wrapt in their refreshing slumber, they knew not.
It certainly was for many a long hour; for when they awoke, hunger was gnawing at their stomachs. Fain would they have at once proceeded to gather fruit, had not their ears been suddenly saluted with most extraordinary noises. They rubbed their eyes and looked about and at each other, deeming themselves the sport of some merry jack-a-dreamer.
But, no; they were wide awake and in full possession of their senses. Again the strange sounds are heard and this time they are nearer and clearer.
There is a rise and a fall, a swelling out and then a dying away.
The sounds are jerky and snappy like and there is a singular music in them.
Nearer and still nearer they come. Louder and still louder they grow. “Wild beasts?” whispered my mother half inquiringly.
“Nay!” falls from my father’s lips. “Not unless human beings may be so wild as to merit the name of beasts.”
“Hark again!” murmured my mother.
There was no mistaking the sounds any longer, for, like a chorus of many voices, shrill and piping, deep and grumbling, soft and musical, harsh and guttural, yet all in a sort of rude and wild harmony, mingling in one mighty strain, now low and scarcely audible and now breaking out with a fierce and seemingly threatening vigor, the singers, chanters, howlers or what they might be, rushed into the valley below us in a wild and yet half regulated disorder.
They were human beings in savage garb, with painted faces and clubs swung lightly across their shoulders. Whether pausing or advancing they still kept up their wild and mysterious chant, choppy, jerky and snappy for all the world like a thousand people who had just drawn plentifully from a thousand snuff boxes.