United States or Zimbabwe ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The scene below was certainly singular the bugles and drums sounded the assembly and beat the rappel alternately, but the men paid not the slightest attention to the call, but continued to slink away until the drummers and buglers remained alone. Of the two battalions, some fifty men posted at the loop-holes of the crenelated wall by the gate remained; the rest had melted away.
Jakin and Lew were attached to the Band as supernumeraries, though they would much have preferred being Company buglers. "'Don't matter much," said Jakin, after the medical inspection, "Be thankful that we're 'lowed to go at all. The Doctor 'e said that if we could stand what we took from the Bazar-Sergeant's son we'd stand pretty nigh anything."
Dressed in regimentals, with coloured velvet capes lined with silk, swords clanking, buglers and drummers rattling a tattoo, the white trader walked out to meet the Indian chief. The Indian prostrated himself and presented the kingly white man with priceless furs.
Our Lieutenant-Colonel, Horace L. Moore, and his staff followed in order behind the buglers. Then came the cavalry, troop after troop, a thousand strong, in dignified military array, while from door and window, side-walk and side-street, the citizens watched our movements and cheered us as we passed.
But we have lost our father, and are now buglers in the Rangers." "Well, lads," the captain said after a pause, "and now tell us how you came upon this little raft?" Tom related modestly the story of their going overboard from the "Nancy," of the formation of the raft, and of their after proceedings.
The company stands rigid, except the buglers, who are beginning to finger their instruments. "Fire!" There is a crackling volley, and the pipes break into a brief, sobbing wail. Wayfarers upon the road below look up curiously. One or two young females with perambulators come hurrying across the grass, exhorting apathetic babies to sit up and admire the pretty funeral.
I do not know that the melody is peculiar; but it was sometimes played, I used to think, with peculiar feeling; and when uttered to the starlight by all the bugles of a division at once, the multitudinously blending tones had a melancholy sweetness never to be forgotten. And I would dream of phantom buglers, summoning the youth and strength of hosts to the shadowy silence of perpetual rest.
This company of buglers, in uniform, march out with military step and send out over the landscape a few bars of the theme of the approaching act, piercing the distances with the gracious notes; then they march to the other entrance and repeat. Presently they do this over again.
As the body was lowered into the Flanders clay General Jeudwine exclaimed: "We are burying one of Britain's bravest soldiers!" The Battalion buglers played the Last Post. And the spot where the hero lies is marked by the traditional Little Wooden Cross. The crowning triumph came when he was awarded the Victoria Cross; though, to the great sorrow of all, he did not live to know that he had won it.
All the troops here, perhaps seventy or eighty marched with reversed arms to the cemetery after the buglers sounding the Last Post and lined up opposite the grave. The order was given to present arms, the coffin was lowered, each person present threw a handful of earth into the grave and all was over.
Word Of The Day