FORE:A man in the fort always struck out the hours on a gong, very slowly, in the heat of the day. Twelve at noon was interminable��one, two, three were so feeble as to be scarcely audible. And then when it was cooler and the tom-toms could be heard in the distance, the strokes had a queer dislocated rhythm, and sometimes even a stroke too many, smothered in a hurried roll.