ELMINA, GOLD COAST COLONY, JUNE 1874
The setting sun brought the drums. Mary heard them first, lifting her head and frowning as she walked to the window.
“Can you hear that, Jack?”
“I hear them,” Jack said. He remembered the drums beating out their warning along the North-West Frontier of India. “There is something ominous about drums at night. They sound more menacing when you can"t see the drummer.”
“I wonder what they are saying.” Mary stood at the window for a few moments with her head c****d to one side.
The drumming increased in volume, seeming to penetrate the walls of the fort and creep into Jack"s head, so they became part of his mind, rhythmic, alien and intrusive. Lying on the hard bed in the heat of the night, he swatted at the circling insects, listening to the insistent
