“But you beat the drum. You called those natives together.”
“Oh that—why that was—I’ll—I—I’ll tell you about that sometime.”
For a time they sat there in silence. Then, like the first flush of morning, her face lighted with a smile. “She will tell me,” Curlie assured himself.
But she did not, for at that precise moment there came, faint, indistinct, like the low roll of thunder, yet unmistakable a call from the distance and the dark.
“The drums,” a shudder ran through the girl’s slender form. “Far away, the drums. And now perhaps there will be a revolution. How—how useless, how terrible! Someone must prevent it. It can only end with the death of many honest but deluded people; the poor, honest ones.”
“It is true,” said Mona the black servant who had come to serve cocoa. “It should not be.”
“The men all are gone; the native police too,” Dot said turning to Curlie.
“But we—we might do something,” she added after a moment.
“Yes,” said Curlie. “We did something last night. Plenty.”
“Let’s try.”