As one, they stopped cold in their tracks and turned dull, colorless, questioning eyes upward into the tree whence came this weird and vibrant droning!
So stunned with surprise was Isobar that his grip on the pipes relaxed, his lips almost slipped from the reed. But Brown's delighted bellow lifted his paralysis.
"Sacred rings of Saturn-look! They like it! Keep playing, Jonesy! Play, boy, like you never played before!"
And Roberts roared, above the skirling of the piobaireachd into which Isobar had instinctively swung, "Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast! Then we were wrong. They can hear, after all! See that? They're lying down to listen—like so many lambs! Keep playing, Isobar! For once in my life I'm glad to hear that lovely, wonderful music!"
Isobar needed no urging. He, too, had noted how the Grannies' attack had stopped, how every last one of the gaunt grey beasts had suddenly, quietly, almost happily, dropped to its haunches at the base of the tree.
There was no doubt about it; the Grannies liked this music. Eyes raptly fixed, unblinking, unwavering, they froze into postures of gentle beatitude. One stirred once, dangerously, as for a moment Isobar paused to catch his breath, but Isobar hastily lipped the blow-pipe with redoubled eagerness, and the Granny relapsed into quietude.
Followed then what, under somewhat different circumstances, should have been a piper's dream. For Isobar had an audience which would not—and in two cases dared not—allow him to stop playing. And to this audience he played over and over again his entire repertoire. Marches, flings, dances—the stirring Rhoderik Dhu and the lilting Lassies O'Skye, the mournful Coghiegh nha Shie whose keening is like the sound of a sobbing nation.
The Cock o' the North, he played, and Mironton ... Wee Flow'r o' Dee and MacArthur's March ... La Cucuracha and—
And his lungs were parched, his lips dry as swabs of cotton. Blood pounded through his temples, throbbing in time to the drone of the chaunter, and a dark mist gathered before his eyes. He tore the blow-pipe from his lips, gasped,
"Keep playing!" came the dim, distant howl of Johnny Brown. "Just a few minutes longer, Jonesy! Relief is on the way. Sparks saw us from his turret window five minutes ago!"