Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/174

we took to be a watchman's rattle, and that we heard in every village through which we passed between sunset and dawn. It was not exactly like any sound that either of us had ever heard before, and we finally became very curious to see how it was made. It suggested, at times, the shaking of a billiard ball in a resonant wooden box; but the throbs were too clear-cut and regular to be made in that way, and I concluded at last that they must be produced by beating rapidly some sort of rude wooden drum. No night-watchman ever happened to come near us until we approached Pávlodár, a little town midway between Omsk and Semipalátinsk. About two o'clock that morning, while it was still very dark, we stopped to change horses at the post station of Chernoyárskaya. While a sleepy Kírghis hostler was harnessing fresh horses under the supervision of a large-bodied, sharp-tongued woman with a lantern in her hand and a lighted cigarette in her mouth, we were suddenly startled by the hollow staccato beat of a night-watchman's drum coming out of the darkness behind us and only a few feet away. "Now," I said to Mr. Frost, "I'll see what that thing is," and springing from the tárantás I called the watchman and asked him to show me his kolotúshka [literally "hammerer"]. It proved to be the simplest sort of a noise-producing instrument. If the reader will take a wooden box about the size of a common brick, knock out the two narrow sides, attach a wooden spool to one end by means of a four-inch cord and fasten a clothes-brush handle to the other, he will have a fairly good imitation of a Siberian night-watchman's rattle. When this instrument is shaken vigorously and rhythmically from side to side, as if it were a heavy palm-leaf fan, the clapper, which is attached to the upper end and which is represented by the spool, swings back and forth, striking the box first on one side and then on the other, and producing a series of rapid staccato beats that can be heard on a still night at a distance of two miles.