aste-hall: and long before you reach the door threading your way
through a crowd of squatting hawkers, your ears are assailed by the most
deafening noise, reminding you forcibly of the coppersmith's bazaar with an
accompaniment of rythmic drumming. The cause is not far to seek. In the
centre of the room two Sidis are sitting, in cock-horse fashion, astride
what appear to be wooden imitations of a cannon and beating the parchment-
covered mouths of their pseudo-steeds with their hands; at their feet a
third Sidi is playing a kind of _reveille_ upon a flattened kerosine
oil-tin; and in the corner, with his back to the audience, an immense
African--an ebony Pan blowing frenzy through his wide lips--is forcing the
whole weight of his lungs into a narrow reed pipe. The noise is phenomenal,
overpowering, but is plainly attractive to Sidi ears; for the room is
rapidly filling, and more than one of the spectators suddenly leaps from
his seat and circles round the drummers, keeping time to the rythm with
queer movements of his body and feet and whirling a "lathi" round his head
in much the same fashion as the proverbial Irishman at Donneybrook Fair.

* * * * *

Meanwhile there is some movement toward in the half-light of the inner
room. From time to time you catch a glimpse of the black sphinx-faces,
immobile and heavy-eyed, framed in scarves bearing a bold pattern of red
monkeys and blue palm-trees: and as the din increases the owners of those
inscrutable faces creep out and sink down upon a strip of china matting on
the far side of the room. They are the wives and daughters of the
community--some of them young and, from the Sidi point of view, good to
look upon, others emulating the elephant in bulk, but all preternaturally
solemn and immovable. Here and there among the faces you miss the well-
known type. The thick prominent lips yield place to more delicate mouths,
the shapeless nose to the slightly aquiline, for there are half-breeds
here, who take more after their Indian fathers than their African mothers,
and who serve as a living example of the tricks that Nature can play in the
intermingling of races.

[Illustration: Sidis of Bombay.]

And now the piper in the corner sets up a wilder strain; the drummers work
till their muscles crack, now looking as if they were undergoing torture,
now turning half-round to have a joke with a fresh arrival, until the
tension reaches breaking-point and wi