It was Droopeye who first learned to make sounds upon stretched skins, which drew to him the younger men and the girls, and made them utter odd singing noises, and want to skip about. Very curious was this thing. We had been at work upon the skin of a groundhog, one time, scraping it clean of all flesh, and making it fit for use as some sort of pouch, and when we had done this Droopeye stretched it across the end of a short hollow length of log which chanced to be lying near his hut, that it might dry there flat and firm until he should take it off to knead and stretch into softness, as was the way. It was pinned tightly with strong thorns driven through its edge into the wood, and there it dried, flat and taut and firm. Then, one day, when I was with him, Droopeye remembered the skin he had left out in the sun to dry so, and brought it to the entrance of the hut, where he took a seat beside me, preparing to pull out the thorns, and make the skin soft again by kneading. We were talking, and he forgot for the time about the skin, playing with a short, hard stick he had chanced to pick up as we talked. At last he lifted the short length of log--it was light and thin and very dry--and, in idleness, hit the skin a smart blow with the stick he held. The sound made us both leap to our feet, it was so loud and odd and booming in a queer way. Again and again did Droopeye hit the skin, and each time came the booming sound, and others came running to see what it was. “I will not take off the skin,” said Droopeye then. “I will keep the sounding thing to play with.” And this he did; and it came, at last, that he fastened a skin across the other end of the little dried hollow log, and the booming was increased, and a great thing finally came of this, for, in time, a bigger length of hollow log was taken, and chipped and scraped smooth inside and outside, and when other skin was stretched and fastened tightly across the ends, and the thing was beaten, the booming drumming could be heard from afar, and we had a means of summons for all the tribe should any time of peril come. But the sounding upon the skin was not all that came of this queer discovery of Droopeye. It so pleased him that he tried stretching more skins across hollow things, making still different sounds, and other sound-making things he tried. Finally he stretched a bowstring of sinew above the half of a great dried wild gourd upon which a skin was stretched, and it made a twanging which pleased him much, though the sound was not at all like that of the beating upon the drum.