23: Dancing
T
he
bone bull-roarers whirred viciously and moaned like hornets about the compound, their undulating ground-bass broken at curiously recurring intervals by the stammering drums, the thin hides stretched tightly across the mouths of resonant clay pots. Above this foundation of savage music, rose the high squealing of the thigh-bone flutes, last relics of twelve tribesmen of ancient times, taken from them while the breath was still in their bodies, for potency’s sake, each flute still called by the name of the man of whom it once formed a part.
The dust bellied in a dark cloud above the place as the hard feet of the warriors rose and fell, rose and fell, keeping hysterical time with the brute passion of the music. Women squatting round the beaten earth of the compound clappe
