“He thought the French would come back,” the Professor had said to him one day. “He had great dreams for the progress of his people. You can hardly blame him for wanting to defend them. In the end he forgot his great dreams for his people and began worshipping gold and that immense pile of brick and stone. Had he put his trust in God instead of in power and gold,” the kindly old professor had rumbled on, “had he written his name on the hearts of men, his name would have lived forever. Now there is only that crumbling pile of masonry to remind the world that he lived at all.”
“It’s all very strange,” Johnny thought. “If one could but have lived then. If he—”
He stopped short in his tracks. His eye had caught sight of something unusual, a white thing hanging from the lower branch of a large tree.
“Couldn’t have been here when I came along an hour ago.” His curiosity increased. “I’d have noticed it.”
He took two steps forward, then put out a hand to touch it. The thing gave forth a hollow sound.
“How queer!” he thought. “A native drum, hanging here.”
Without thinking much about what he was doing, he took down the drum, which was a three foot section of a hollowed-out log with a goat skin strung across one end, placed it between his knees and gave it two quick, sharp blows with his hand.
The result was two resounding roars that set the hills echoing.
The next instant, quite without warning, the boy was seized and thrown violently to the ground.