I seemed to be hearing a drum concert on the ultimate stereo rig, one that had me completely surrounded with woofers and tweeters. Drumming pulsed up from beneath me, pounded at me from all sides, came down upon me from above. It sounded as though the very continent of Africa itself was displaying its natural sense of rhythm. There was something particularly enervating about the beat of those drums, and I think it may have been that the tempo was just a shade faster than my own heartbeat, so that I felt as though I was struggling unsuccessfully to keep up with it.

Water was once again trickling through my breathing tube. Plum had gone off somewhere, and I couldn’t exactly blame her. Some idiots with drums had taken possession of the graveyard. I wanted to go off somewhere myself.

Keep calm, I urged myself. Some sort of pagan cranks were having some sort of ritual in the cemetery. Swinging dead cats over their heads as a remedy for warts, perhaps. Or some equally innocent pursuit. Just a group of religious fanatics exercising their civil rites. They wouldn’t stick around forever. It was raining, and before very long they would bow their heads for the benediction and go back to their huts. All I had to do was wait until they went away.

If it hadn’t been for the drums, I might have been able to wait them out. But I had spent too many hours watching too many movies in which Stewart Granger crouched with his arm around Eleanor Parker and she said, “What do the drums mean?” or “Why did the drums stop?” or “Do you hear the drums?” The drums always signaled the beginning of something horrible. The more I listened to them the more nervous and apprehensive I became, and I had not been precisely relaxed to begin with, and things were not getting better.

I doubled up, and sought out a new position in the coffin, and got my feet braced against the now unfastened coffin lid, and snorted like a karate master, and thrust out with both feet at once.