United States or Zambia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He saw the flooded valley shining with the breadth of water, and the trooper's horse on the other side, shaking his drenched flanks and neighing; and half-way down the hill he saw the three Doones mounting hastily. And then he knew that his only chance lay in the stoutness of his steed.
Langston asked himself in the still hours of the starlit night, camping on the banks of Dismal River, was it possible that her heart was following some soldier in the dusty column, riding hard, riding fast long miles away to the northwest now, eager to overtake the comrade soldiery already on the flank of the foe, and bear a trooper's part in the battle summer so suddenly to open.
"If those are the women that he knew before he came here, I do not wonder that he never cared to watch even my bamboula," was the latent, unacknowledged thought that was so cruel to her: the consciousness which forced itself in on her, while her eyes jealously followed the perfect grace of the one in whom instinct had found her rival that, while she had been so proud of her recklessness, and her devilry, and her trooper's slang, and her deadly skill as a shot, she had only been something very worthless, something very lightly held by those who liked her for a ribald jest, and a dance, and a Spahis' supper of headlong riot and drunken mirth.
His Trooper's Song is a variation of an old theme and is of great metrical interest in that here, as in Uhland, one may observe how the subtle handling of rhythm, the lengthening or shortening of a line, or the shift of stress, brings with it a corresponding shift of emotion.
"I will arrange the matter." He went away, but reappeared about a quarter of an hour afterward, leading an old plough-horse by the mane. This clumsy and heavy steed he harnessed into the cabriolet as best he could. But even this did not satisfy the old trooper's complaisance.
"Here," said he to himself, "is a man who has of course spent my money in satisfying a trooper's three theological virtues play, wine, and women!" "To be sure, monsieur, we are not distinguished for luxury here.
"Wal," he said, "he's as good anyhow as slop-over soldiers." Meanwhile, Braden was on his way to The Trooper's Delight, his face glum, his step quick, his arms cutting the air like propellers. When he lumbered into it, he creaked up to the plank bar and helped himself to a finger of whisky. Then he propped himself on an elbow and stood scowling into the rear of the room.
Then, as the visibility increased, war-ships manoeuvred into position, and fired slowly and deliberately at unknown inland targets. Occasionally the troop-ship shook from the shattering crash of the Queen Elizabeth's guns. Reflecting was not one of the trooper's habitual occupations; but undoubtedly these first scenes and sounds of the real thing were occasions for thought.
"Thank you. Thank you. It's a weight off my mind," says the trooper with a heave of his chest as he unfolds his arms and puts a hand on each leg, "though I had set my heart on being scratched, too!" The brothers are very like each other, sitting face to face; but a certain massive simplicity and absence of usage in the ways of the world is all on the trooper's side.
For all that, he had been forced to rest part of the day at an outlying farm, and while there a man brought him word from Stanton, whose line of travel ran roughly parallel with his, three or four leagues to the west. The trooper's horse had gone badly lame, and Prescott was instructed to push on while Stanton sought another mount.
Word Of The Day