He picked up the drumstick and struck the war drum.
Tips
history
Famous from the Analects line 乘桴浮于海, Confucius musing that if his teaching failed he would drift off to sea on a raft. The word also means a roof beam and, separately, a drumstick.
The wood radical 木 on the left ties every sense together, a raft, a roof beam and a drumstick are all wooden objects, so the radical neatly covers the whole word.
