beyond his window, bugles and drums grew louder, and men and horses began to pass a corner beyond the open square. They were but vaguely illuminated by a single street lamp, and he could see little except soldierly outlines, twinklings of metal and moving sleeknesses of light upon the horses; nothing was definite in the darkness except the clean rattle of the drums and the brazen clarity of the bugles. Then abruptly these fell silent and another music set the pace—the African oboes and tom-toms of an Arab cavalry troop following the French to barracks. The tom-toms, beating with their ominous monotony, were like a pulsation in this Arab earth, Ogle thought—a barbaric heartbeat he might have heard in that earth every moment since he had set foot in Algeria, if he had listened; and over the tom-toms the oboe pipings rose and drooped in strange quarter-tones, singing uncivilized messages in the united voices of new-born babies and old cats wailing out of Egypt.
Morose as he was, the young American on the dark balcony found himself fascinated by that wail and by the throbbing of the tom-toms. He could bear a little more of this Africa, he thought, even though he must see it in the society of a lady who was betraying him.
