The Fakir's Drum by Flora Anni Steele, Oh Most Mighty Victoria v r redg Britannicorum v I kaiser e hind, Please admit bearer to privileges of praising God on the little drum as occasion befitteth, and your petitioner will ever pray, et cetera.

It was written on a scrap of foreign paper, duly stamped as a petition, and it did not need the interpolation of imperial titles to prove that this was not by any means its first appearance in court to be plain.

It had an ancient and a fish like smell, suggestive of many years acquaintance with dirty humanity.

I looked at the man who had presented it, a very ordinary fakir, standing with hands folded humbly, and was struck by the wistful expectancy in his face.

It was at once hopeful yet hopeless.

Turning to the court reader for explanation, I found a decorous smile flowing round the circle of squatting clerks.

It was evidently an old established joke.

He is damnably noiseful, man, sir, remarked, my sir Rishtadar cheerfully, and his place of sitting close to Deputy Commissioner's bungalow.

Thus European officers object, so it is always Namunzar refused.

The sound of the familiar formula drove the hope from the old man's face.

His thin shoulders seemed to droop, but he said nothing.

How long has this been going on?

I asked, fourteen years, Sir, always on transference of officers, and it is always Namunsor.

He dipped his pen in the ink, gave it the premonitory flick, Munsor granted, said I in a sudden decision Munsor, during the term of my office that was but a month.

I was only a Locumtenun's during leave, only a month.

And the poor old beggar had waited fourteen years to praise God on the little drum.

The pathos and bathos of it hit me hard, but a stare of infinite surprise had replaced the circumambient smile.

The Fakir himself seemed flabbergasted.

I think he felt lost without his petition, for I saw him fumbling in his pocket as the janisries hustled him out of court.

As janisaries love to do east or west.

That night, as I was wondering if I had smoked enough and yawned enough to make sleep possible in a hundred degrees of heat and a hundred million mosquitoes, suddenly reminded of the proverb charity begins at home.

It had with a vengeance.

I had thought my Sir Rishtadar's language a trifle to picturesque.

Now I recognized its supreme accuracy.

The Fakir was a damnably noiseful man.

It is useless trying to add one iota to this description, especially to those unacquainted with the torture of an Indian drum.

By dawn, I was in the saddle, glad to escape from my own house and the ceaseless rumpetum tum, which was driving me crazy.

When I returned, the old man was awaiting me in the verandah, his face full of a great content, and the desire to murder him, which rose up in me with the thought of the twenty nine knights yet to come, faded before it.

Perfect happiness is not the lot of men, but apparently it was his.

He salamed down to the ground.

Hussour he said, the great joy in me created a disturbance last night.

It will not occur again.

The protector of the poor shall sleep in peace, even though his slave praises God for him all night long.

The Almighty does not require a loud drum, I said.

I was glad to hear it, and my self complacency grew until I laid my head on the pillow somewhat earlier than usual.

Then I became aware of a faint throbbing in the air, like that which follows a deep organ note, a throbbing which found its way into the drum of my ear and remained there so faint that it kept me on the rack to know if it had stopped or was still going on.

Rumpetum tum tum, rumpatum tum tum RUMPA ye, and now the impulse to make the hateful rhythm interminable seizes on me.

I have to lay aside my pen and take a new one before going on.

I draw a veil over the mental struggle which followed.

It would have been quite easy to rescind my permission, but the thought of one month versus fourteen years roused my pride as representative of the Almighty Victoria redg Britannicorum, et cetera.

I had admitted this man to the privileges of praising God on the little drum, and there was an end of it.

But the effort left my nerves shattered with the strain put on them.

It was the middle of the hot weather that awful fortnight before the rains break.

I was young, absolutely alone.

Every morning, as I rode a perfect wreck past the Fakir's hovel by the gate, you to ask me if I had slept well?

And I lied to him.

What was the use of suffering?

If no one was the happier for it?

At last one evening, it was the twenty first, I remember, for I ticked them off on a calendar like any schoolboy.

I sat out among the oleanders, knowing that sleep was mine.

The rains had broken, A cool wind stirred the dripping trees, the fever of unrest was over.

Clouds of winged white ants besieged the lamp.

What wonder when the rafters of the old bungalow were riddled almost beyond the limits of safety by their galleries.

But what did I care?

I was going to sleep, and so I did like a child until close on the dawn, and then, by heavens, it was too bad in the very under surely not faint, but loudly imperative.

Rumpa tum tum tum.

I was out of bed in an instant, full of fury.

The fiend incarnate must be walking round the house.

I was after him in the moonlight.

Not a sign.

The white leanders were shining in the dark foliage.

A firefly or two, nothing more.

Rumpa tum tum tum.

Fainter this time round the corner.

Not there, rumper dum tum tum.

A mere whisper now, but loud enough to be traced, So on the track.

I was round the house to the verandah.

Whence I had started, No sign, no sound, gracious, what was that?

A crash, a thud, a roar, and rattle of earth the house, the roof.

When by the growing light of dawn we inspected the damage, we found the biggest rafter of all, lying right across the pillow where my head had been two minutes before, the first sunbeams were on the still sparkling trees.

When full of curiosity, I strolled over to the Fakir's hut.

It also was a heap of ruins, and when we dug the old man out from among the ant riddled rafters, the doctor said he had been dead for many hours.

This story may seem strange to Sam, others will agree with my sir Rishtida, who, after spending the morning over Johnson's Dictionary and a revenue report, informed me that such catastrophes are but too common in this unhappy land.

After heavy rain following on long continued drought, End of the Fakier's Drum by Flora Annie Steele