Mpoko and Nkunda talked a little about the river as they squatted there in the warm darkness. Mpoko had been promised that he should go fishing when the canoes went downstream to mend a bridge that was shaky, and Nkunda promised to help him make new nets for the fishing. He finished winding the wire round the spear handle and began to polish it with great care.
Then very far away in the forest they heard the tapping of a drum.
The sound of a drum in the African jungle always means something. It may mean a village dance; it may mean news; it may mean sudden danger. It is not like any other noise in the forest.
On the other side of the mountain, the great towering mass of stone beyond the forest, was the country of Tswki, the Snake, who was not friendly to the river villages. When he was getting ready to make war, whichever village heard of it first, warned the others. Messengers were not needed to take the warning, for the sound of the drum could be heard over lake and marsh, through tangles of wild jungle where a man would have to cut his way at every step. The drum was made of wood, covered with oxhide stretched tight, or with the skin of a large snake or lizard.
The children had been the first to hear the tapping, because they were nearest to the ground, but in a minute all the others, old and young, heard it too, and listened. They stopped whatever they were doing and stood as still as trees, and listened, and listened.
Then through the blackness of the forest, far away, there sounded singing, and Mpoko and Nkunda were not afraid any more. This was not one of Tswki’s war parties that was coming; it was their own men, singing all together to forget their weariness on the last miles of the trail. A Central African carrier will travel with a load of sixty pounds from fifteen to thirty miles a day. And this is not walking on a level road; the carriers go through a wilderness without anything like a road, the trail often only a few inches wide. They may have to climb steep hills, scramble over boulders, or force their way through matted grasses ten and twelve feet high. There are no pack animals. Everything is carried on men’s backs, and during most of the year the mercury is at about eighty in the shade. When the men sing toward the end of a journey, it is likely to be a sign that they are very tired indeed. Often they beat time with their sticks on their loads. But now they surely had a drum, and somebody was playing it.
At last Mpoko, listening very closely, caught a line or two of the song, and he jumped up, whirling his spear round his head and shouting, “The Alo Man! The Alo Man!” Then Nkunda, too, sprang up and began to dance and whirl round and round, clapping her hands and singing, “The Alo Man! The Alo Man is coming!”
Every one was glad. The Alo Man, the wandering story teller who went from place to place telling stories and making songs, came only once in a very long time. When he did come, he told the most interesting and exciting stories that any one in the village had ever heard. He knew old stories and new ones, and it was hard to say which were the finest. No one could make the people see pictures in their minds as he could. No one knew so many wise sayings and amusing riddles. No one had seen so many wonderful and interesting things among the people of so many different tribes. Even when some one could remember and tell over again the stories that the Alo Man had told, they did not sound as they did when he told them himself.
Even the dogs knew that something was going to happen and began to bark excitedly, and the slaty-blue, speckled guinea hens half woke and ruffled their feathers and gave hoarse croaks of surprise. The beat of the drum and the singing voices grew louder and louder, until the people waiting in the firelight caught the tune and joined in the song, keeping time with the clapping of their hands curved like cymbals.