The ecstatic melody of the thrushes' song and the pensive strain of the pewee had not changed, yet now they were instinct with cheer and acceleration, as was the merry drumbeat of the flicker on a dry branch overhead.
"A Hero of Ticonderoga"
Rowland E. Robinson
It seems that a touch would now send the shattered masses left standing, down upon the people below, who look up to them and shrink together as the tremor of the earthquake again passes under them, and the mysterious reverberations swell and roll along, like some infernal drumbeat summoning them to die.
"Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror"
Richard Linthicum Trumbull White Samuel Fallows
At the first sound of the drumbeat, the people knew what it meant.
"The Later Cave-Men"
Katharine Elizabeth Dopp