body-guard loading and firing an old musket in the air as fast as he
could. In front came a couple of men, hugging what at first sight
looked like cannons, but which proved to be drums, about four feet long,
secured round their necks by a skin strap, and which drums they bestrode
as they beat them with their hands.

Next came a couple more with evidently the kettle-drums, hung from their
necks and beaten, like an Indian tom-tom, at both ends. Then the chief
musician came with a large wooden harmonicon hung from his neck. This
instrument, the marimba, he beat with a couple of round hammers,
bringing forth a barbarous, modulated kind of music, not unlike that of
the marrow-bones and cleavers of the London butcher-boys, as given by
them on old-fashioned state occasions.

The instrument took Dick's attention a good deal, and he saw that it,
and another in the band, were formed by fastening so many dry hollow
gourds in a frame, over which were placed a graduated scale of pieces of
hard wood, which emitted a musical metallic sound when struck.

There was another drummer, who worked hard to earn his salary, whatever
it might be; and then came the body-guard, armed with axes, assegais,
and kiris, one and all looking, as Dinny said, as if they were the
finest fellows under the sun.

"Shure, and I'd bate the whole lot wid one stick," he muttered; and then
aloud,--

"Oh, the dirty haythen; what a noise to call music! Faix, I'd pay
something if Teddy Flaherty was here to give 'em one lilt o' the pipes.
They'd know then what music was."

The marimba players beat their instruments more loudly as they
approached the waggon, the drummers drubbed the skins of their drums,
the man behind fired his gun, the horses snorted and grew uneasy, and
Rough'un threw up his head and uttered a most dismal howl, tucked his
tail between his legs, and ran off as hard as he could go; an example
followed by Pompey, Caesar, and Crassus, as far as the howling was
concerned, the chains by which they were secured to the waggon
preventing any running away. They, however, made up for it by barking
with all their might.

The king seemed to take it as a compliment, for he came up, shook hands,
and condescended to drink a glass of wine, and to eat some sweet
biscuits and sugar-sticks, speaking in pretty good English, which he had
picked up from the missionaries, and ending by inviting Mr Rogers and
his sons to dinner.

The present of a sporting k