TOM-TOMS. 183 patrols necessary. Their orders were, in case of attack, not to try to resist the enemy, but to give the alarm and bolt back into the fort. The enemy, however, never appeared ; we heard afterwards they expected us to attack them nightly, like we expected them, and so confined their demonstrations to beating tom-toms all night outside their town.

Those tom-toms got on one's nerves, especially when on outpost duty at night. You would hear them growing louder and louder in the darkness till they seemed to come quite near till you expected a momentary attack, and then they would die away again in the distance, only to advance again ten minutes afterwards with their infernal tap ! tap ! tap !

tap ! tap ! tap ! how we used to curse them ! I don't think they were highly approved of in Metemmeh either, for one morning a young black lady came in from the town, declaring she really couldn't stay there any longer, for the row that the dervishes made every night parading the streets with their tom-toms kept all decent people awake !

Natives used sometimes to walk in from the parts