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Don Eduardo began to be uneasy. "Can the rebels have rallied and attacked them?" I heard him say to one of his inferiors. "I thought I heard the bugles sounding as we left the ravine." "There can be no doubt about it. If they had been attacked, the sound of the firing would have reached us," was the answer.
By and by their bugles sounded, and they trotted away, wheeling over the ivy-grown stone bridge, and disappearing behind the trees on the Milnethorpe road. Our host comes forth from the bar with a bill, which he presents to an orderly-sergeant. He, the host, then tells me that he himself once rode many years, a trooper, in this regiment, and that all his comrades were larger men than himself.
The bugles blew, the troops rapidly fell into line and marched northward along the turnpike, the Creole band began to play again one of those lilting waltz tunes, and the speed of the men increased, their feet rising and falling swiftly to the rhythm of the galloping air. Jackson, who was near the head of the column, looked back and Harry saw a faint smile pass over his grim face.
Billy walked beside one stirrup, and the girl on the other side, to see us a few yards on our way. At length she halted "No leave-takin's, Jack, but 'Church and King! Only do thy best and not disgrace me." And "Church and King!" she call'd thrice after us, standing in the road. For me, as I rode up out of that valley, the drums seem'd beating and the bugles calling to a new life ahead.
So long was the chase that when the greyhounds pulled down the knobbler, we were out of hearing of your bugles; and having rewarded and coupled the dogs, I gave them to be led by the jester, and we wandered in quest of our company, whom, it would seem, the sport had led in a different direction.
"Not since we left Limoges, monsieur." We were preparing to look for Roger when the bugles sounded, the men sprang to arms, and orders were issued for the retreat to be resumed. "I don't like this," grumbled Felix, "it breaks the men's spirits. Our rearguard came running in to-day like a parcel of sheep. I wish the Admiral would fight; it will be too late after a while.
The latter said that he had heard the same story from three different persons. The French had arrived late the evening before, and when he left, the bugles were sounding and they were beginning to fall in for their march, and would probably reach Alexandria by ten at night.
"'The scarlet of the maples can shake me like the cry of bugles going by," the old man quoted. "It's red," Edwin answered the question. "And you don't know it because you come from the Chauffeur Tribe. They never did know nothing, none of them. Scarlet is red I know that." "Red is red, ain't it?" Hare-Lip grumbled. "Then what's the good of gettin' cocky and calling it scarlet?"
So about three o'clock the bugles sound, and the combatants, hot and grimy, fall back into close order at the point of deployment, where they are presently joined by the Divisional Reserve, blue-faced and watery-eyed with cold. This done, principals and understudies, casting envious glances at one another, form one long column of route and set out for home, in charge of the subalterns.
Nothing more was known, except that he was either falling back along the trail to join us, or was waiting outside the city for us to come up and join him. Laguerre at once ordered the bugles to sound "Boots and saddles," and within five minutes we were on the trail again with instructions to press the men forward as rapidly as possible. The loss of Santa Barbara was a serious calamity.
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