Glyn Severn's Schooldays Part 5

"Begin what?"

"Trying to make them like me. I shall make friends with that big fellow Slegge, and bear it all, and if he goes on again like he did this morning I have quite made up my mind I won't fight."

"Oh," said Glyn drily. "Well, come on down the grounds now. We shall see."

CHAPTER FOUR.

THE ELEPHANT CRIES "PHOOMP!"

Plymborough was out in street and road excepting those who lived on the line of route and had windows that looked down upon the coming procession, which was to be timed to reach the town, after a long march from Duncombe, at noon precisely.

Small things please country people, and there was not much work being done that day. It was an excuse for a holiday, as eagerly seized upon by the townsfolk, old and young, as by the young gentlemen of Dr Bewley's establishment.

But that was not all. The villages near Plymborough were many, and the people for miles round flocked into the place to see the procession and stop afterwards about the market-place to visit the exhibition of beasts and listen to the band.

The day was gloriously fine, and all promised a famous harvest of sixpences for the great Ramball himself, a man as punctual in his appointments as he was in the feeding of his beasts, this being carried out regularly at certain times, but, unfortunately for the animals, in uncertain quant.i.ties dependent upon the supplies.

Dr Bewley's boys took their places along the forms quite an hour before noon, this punctuality having something to do with getting the best places, as they put it, though--as the forms were in a line under the brick wall, which was low enough with their help for the shortest boy to see over, and the procession would pa.s.s close beneath--it was hard to see any difference in the positions, or why the form reserved for the masters was any better than that at the extreme end.

But certainly the masters' form was considered the best from the fact that it stood first, while the nearest end of the next form was taken up in spite of his declaration by Slegge, whose greatest admirers got as close to him as they could or as he would allow.

"Let's go and stand with them," said Singh, as they crossed over to the wall.

"Oh, I don't know," replied his companion. "I vote we go right to the other end along with the juniors."

"Very well," said Singh with a laugh; "but they'll say it's because we're afraid."

"Yes," replied Glyn coolly; "but let them. I don't think we are." And leading the way, he made for the last form, which they had all to themselves, and stood there quietly looking down at the crowd below and along the Duncombe road, which was pretty well lined with people standing about or seated in cart or chaise waiting for the coming sight.

The masters were not in such a hurry, and they remained in the house talking together, so that they were not present to see the skylarking and listen to the banter going on, a good deal of which was set going by Slegge, who was in a high state of glee, and scattered a great deal of chaff, to the great delight of his parasites, who eagerly conveyed insulting messages from their chief to the two new pupils at the other end of the line--at least, they bore those that were not too offensive; others that seemed likely to produce some form of resentment from the lads they attacked were sent on by the youngest boys.

All this palled after a time, and a certain amount of whispering beginning close at hand, Slegge asked sharply what the whisperers were talking about, when silence ensued, no one present daring to repeat the remark which Burney had made, which was to the effect that old Slegge had said that he was not going to stoop to see the miserable procession, but all the same he had taken the best place.

The consequence was that Slegge guessed pretty correctly that something was being whispered dealing with him, and he was just growing fiercely insistent and threatening what he would do if somebody did not confess, when the masters came upon the scene and took their places; while directly after there was a loud cheer, for from out of the distance came the faintly heard throbbing of a drum.

Everything else was now forgotten. Eyes and ears were strained, and minutes elapsed before the pulsations caused by the beating of two b.a.l.l.s upon the tightly stretched skin began to grow nearer, and Mr Rampson commenced a discussion to fill up the time by throwing quotations from the old Roman authors at his fellow-tutors and the older boys.

It was a favourable moment for calling a drum a tympanum and giving descriptions of the different forms, curves, and lengths of the various trumpets used by the Roman soldiery in their warlike processions, all of which Slegge voted bosh, and intimated his opinion to the next boy that old Rampson had better go to the other end of the forms and pour it out on the two new fellows.

At last, though, the pulsations of the well-belaboured drum came nearer and were mingled with the mournfully plaintive notes of the wind instruments being blown by the band, the performers seated in a tall triumphal car decorated in scarlet and gold, and ornamented by a gilt carving meant to represent the giant anaconda of South America embracing and crushing the twenty bandsmen of Ramball's show, gentlemen who, by the way, wore a richly worsted-embroidered uniform of scarlet baize, the braid being yellow ochre of the deepest dye.

The carving round the car was either a two-headed anaconda or a combination of two performing an evolution in twists about the musicians, tying them up apparently, from the spectators' point of view, in horrible knots and giving them a terrible aspect of suffering, the apparent pressure of the serpents' folds causing their faces and cheeks to swell out in an appalling way, and their eyes to start from their sockets, while their sufferings seemed to produce wails, shrieks, and cries for help or mercy, mingled with groans, as the men worked hard with a perfect battery of old-fashioned key-bugles, supported by ophicleide and ba.s.soon.

Most painful were the shrieking, strident cries produced by a pair of clarinets, and altogether there came from out of the knots of the serpents a hideous chaos of sound, drawn onward by a team of six horses, and received with wild cheers by the crowd, for it was really the new triumphal march freshly down from town, but in which the bandsmen were not perfect as regarded their parts.

"Is that music or the roarings and cries of some of the beasts?"

whispered Singh.

There was a burst of laughter from the boys who heard the native remark, which made Singh turn round upon them angrily; but at a touch from Glyn he smiled good-humouredly, and then laughed aloud.

"Well, it was a stupid thing to say," he cried. "Of course it's the music."

"I say, Singh," burst in Glyn, and he nodded towards the huge drum that was suspended at the back in the highest part of the car, hung, as it were, between the curling tails of the two gilt serpents. "I say," he cried, "wouldn't that astonish the people at Dour? What would they say to that for a tom-tom?"

"Ah!" cried Singh, "I'll buy one like that, and take it back with us when we go home."

"No, I say, don't," cried Glyn. "They make noise enough there as it is."

"Noise!" echoed Singh. "They don't call that noise."

As they were speaking the great six-horse car rumbled slowly by, with the drummer beating hard and the buglers and trombonists blowing their best; while the crowd, taking up the cheer started by the boys, sent it echoing along towards the main street, where, coming slowly along, and stretching as far as eye could reach, there was a long line of caravans, all exceedingly plain and of a uniform yellow colour, with the names of their contents painted on them in black letters.

The place of honour was given to the king of beasts, for the first of the cars bore the word "Lions;" but probably his majesty was asleep, for not so much as a muttering purr on a large scale came from the narrow grating at the top.

Tigers followed; the next car held leopards, each carriage being of the same uniform level, with the black letters; and, coming slowly after them, were about two score, kept a good distance apart so as to lengthen the line as much as possible.

But at first there was nothing else to see, and Singh turned impatiently to his companion, and said: "When does the procession begin?"

"Why, that's the procession," said a small boy close to him, taking the answer upon himself. "The wild beasts are inside. Didn't you know?"

And then he proceeded to display his own knowledge. "They draw all the vans up in a square," he began excitedly, "out there in the home-field behind the `King's Arms,' and then they open the sides of the vans, which are like great shutters on hinges at the top and bottom, so that when they are opened one shutter falls down and covers the wheels, and the other is pulled up, leaving the side all iron bars. Don't you see?

Then, instead of being vans, they are turned into dens and cages."

"Is that so?" said Singh quietly.

"Oh, I suppose so," replied Glyn. "I have never seen one of these affairs; but it seems a very reasonable way for building up a place all dens and cages in very short time."

"Oh, look here!" cried another of the boys. "Here's a game! Look at that n.i.g.g.e.r!"

Singh started as if he had been stung, and was about to turn furiously upon the boy, under the impression that he was the n.i.g.g.e.r in question; but at the same moment he caught sight of a full-blooded, woolly-headed West Coast African leading a very large camel by a rope, the great ungainly beast mincing and blinking as it gently put down, one after the other, its soft, spongy feet, which seemed to spread out on the gravelled road, while their high-shouldered owner kept on turning its bird-like head from side to side, muttering and whining discontentedly, as if objecting to be seen by such an elongated crowd, and murmuring against being made the one visible object of the show.

The camel was not an attractive creature, for, in addition to its natural peculiarities of shape, it was the time of year for shedding its long hairy coat, and this was hanging in ragged ungainly locks and flakes all along its flanks and about its loping, unhealthy-looking hump.

This was something to look at, and the excited boys shouted, cheered, and gave forth remark after remark such as must have been painful to the dignity of the melancholy-looking beast, which kept on turning its half-closed, plaintive-looking eyes at the noisy groups, wincing and seeming to protest against the unkindly and insulting remarks.

"Oh, I say, isn't he a beauty?" cried one.

"Yes; it's just like a four-legged bird," shouted another.

"That's right. They've caught Sindbad's roc and clipped his wings."

"Cut them right off," said Glyn laughingly, joining in the mirth. "Poor fellow, look how he's moulting!"

There was a burst of laughter at this, and as it ceased another boy shouted:

"Ought its hump to wobble like that, and hang over all on one side?"

"That isn't its hump," cried Burney; "that's its cistern in which it carries its drinking-water. Don't you know they can go for days without wanting any more? Can't you see it's empty now?"