The prisoners were all grouped in a ring about Joe Punchard, who
was amusing them with a strange dance of his own invention. He bent
his knees till he was almost sitting on the ground, and in that
position danced a sort of hornpipe--a feat that must have imposed a
terrible strain upon his inwards, but which he seemed to perform
with consummate ease. The men were so intent upon his antics that I
passed them by unnoticed, and gained the lower room of the shed,
where I whipped the rope out of the drum and ran with it up into
the dormitory, hiding it under one of the beds. I was down again in
a minute, and then, tearing the membrane jaggedly to disguise the
fact that it had been cut, I went out into the yard, and when Joe
had finished announced with an air of vexation that I had unluckily
made a hole in the drum. At this my fellow bandsmen abused me with
a fine show of anger, the bosun in particular storming at me with a
violence at which I had much ado not to smile.
The other men laughed, and made fun of our mishap, which boded ill
for the success of our concert. But when we had eaten our evening
meal, we got our instruments and played until the sun went down,
with a gusto which certainly we had never shown before. For the
nonce I gave up the castanets to the bosun, and beat the drum
myself, thumping it on its sound side joyously. The soldiers
gathered round and gave us very hearty applause; and when Runnles,
to conclude the program, played them on his flute the air of Au
clair de lune, which he had picked up from one of them, they
cheered him to the echo.
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