he parade-ground,
partly sheltered by a cluster of palms.

At last, with colours flying and the loud martial strains of the band,
doubled by a strange echo thrown back by the dense jungle, the solid
little force of infantry, in brilliant scarlet and with the sun flashing
from their bayonets, was put in motion; while a strange murmur of
satisfaction arose from the crowd of gaily attired campong dwellers,
which was caught up by the followers of the two Rajahs with prolonged
cries that bore some slight resemblance to the tiger-like _ragh, ragh_
of an American crowd.

And then, as the band marched by, Rajah Suleiman's group collected in
front of the great clump of trees left standing when a portion of the
jungle had been cleared, and the huge elephants, now gorgeous with
trappings, and each bearing its showy howdah, in which were seated the
Rajah himself and his principal chiefs, responded to a final blast of
the highly polished brass instruments and the thunderous roll of the
drums by a simultaneous uneasy trumpeting of their own, with which were
mingled the cries of the mahouts, who had to ply their sharp-pointed
goads to keep their charges in subjection.

Fortunately for the occupants of the howdahs, this was a final chord
from the band, for the huge beasts were thoroughly startled, and the
lookers-on noted that similar uneasiness was being displayed by the nine
great elephants that appertained to Rajah Hamet's force, these in
particular showing a disposition to turn tail and make for one of the
jungle paths.

The silence that followed the band's final chord seemed, as Oliver
Wendell Holmes says in one of his little poems, to have come like a
poultice to heal the wounds of sound, and the great beasts settled down.

Then there was a bugle-call, and the evolutions began in regular review
style, with plenty of fancy additions, such as had been planned to
impress the great gathering of the Malay people. The troops marched and
counter-marched, advanced in echelon, retired from the left, retired
from the right, formed column and line, advanced in column of companies,
turned half right and half left, formed three-quarter column; there was
extended order and distended order, for Major Knowle's force was very
small, but he made the most of it. Sergeant Ripsy, with a face quite as
scarlet as his uniform, buzzed about like a vicious hornet, and,
perspiring at every pore, yelled at the guides and markers, letting fly
snappin