The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Desert Drum, by Robert Hichens

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Title: The Desert Drum
1905

Author: Robert Hichens

Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23417]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DESERT DRUM ***

Produced by David Widger

THE DESERT DRUM

By Robert Hichens

Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers

Copyright, 1905

I

I am not naturally superstitious. The Saharaman is. He has many strange
beliefs. When one is at close quarters with him, sees him day by day
in his home, the great desert, listens to his dramatic tales of desert
lights, visions, sounds, one's common-sense is apt to be shaken on its
throne. Perhaps it is the influence of the solitude and the wide spaces,
of those far horizons of the Sahara where the blue deepens along
the edge of the world, that turns even a European mind to an Eastern
credulity. Who can tell? The truth is that in the Sahara one can believe
what one cannot believe in London. And sometimes circumstances--chance
if you like to call it so--steps in, and seems to say, "Your belief is
well founded."

Of all the desert superstitions the one which appealed most to my
imagination was the superstition of the desert drum. The Sahara-man
declares that far away from the abodes of men and desert cities, among
the everlasting sand dunes, the sharp beating, or dull, distant rolling
of a drum sometimes breaks upon the ears of travellers voyaging through
the desolation. They look around, they stare across the flats, they
see nothing. But the mysterious music continues. Then, if they be
Sahara-bred, they commend themselves to Allah, for they know that some
terrible disaster is at hand, that one of them at least is doomed to
die.

Often had I heard stories of the catastrophes which were immediately
preceded by the beating of the desert drum. One night in the Sahara I
was a witness to one which I have never been able to forget.

On an evening of spring, accompanied by a young Arab and a negro, I rode
slowly down a low hill of the Sahara, and saw in the sandy cup at my
feet the tiny collection of hovels called Sidi-Massarli. I had