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She could hear the Nubians of Baroudi singing as they bent to their mighty oars; not the song of Allah with which they had greeted her on her arrival, obedient perhaps to some message sent from Alexandria by their master, but a low and mysterious chaunt that was almost like a murmur from some spirit of the Nile, and that seemed strangely expressive of a sadness of the sun, as if even in the core of the golden glory there lurked a canker, like the canker of uncertainty that lies in the heart of all human joy.
Then shall mine armies strive with thee no more, and thou and I shall be the equal lords of the whole earth when all the world is singing the chaunt of Slid, and thy head alone shall be lifted above mine armies when rival hills are dead. And I will deck thee with all the robes of the sea, and all the plunder that I have taken in rare cities shall be piled before thy feet.
Faded the vision, and died the chaunt, as a breath that dims, and vanishes from, the mirror of steel. The breath was gone the firm steel was bright once more; and suddenly the King was recalled to the sense of the present hour, by shouts and cries, in which the yell of Norman triumph predominated, at the further end of the field.
Raised by proud and secular pontiffs in the heyday of renascent humanism, it seems to wait the time when the high priests of a religion no longer hostile to science or antagonistic to the inevitable force of progress will chaunt their hymns beneath its spacious dome.
Faded the vision, and died the chaunt, as a breath that dims, and vanishes from, the mirror of steel. The breath was gone the firm steel was bright once more; and suddenly the King was recalled to the sense of the present hour, by shouts and cries, in which the yell of Norman triumph predominated, at the further end of the field.
It is a useless ceremony only a superstition. The chief himself does not believe in it; but his braves will not go to battle without performing it. Hark! they are commencing the chaunt!" I caught the low monotone of many voices, gradually rising and swelling into a prolonged chorus.
I saw them running, like mice, up the shrouds, as they boused up the mainsail, and heard them chaunt a cheering chorus, as they heaved in the slack of the cable. It was mid-day. I rose, and turning to the left hand, took my way through the fir forest. I had proceeded about half a mile, when I discerned the kneeling figure of a woman through the closely-planted trees. I approached. It was Gunilda.
The moon," she repeated to herself, as she walked on, "I used to be afraid of the moon when I was a little child;" and then, after a pause, she murmured, in a low chaunt: "'The moon she is a wandering ghost, That walks in penance nightly; How sad she is, that wandering moon, For all she shines so brightly!
She saw them rolling through her sister's mind; and just upon the conclusion, she gave out, as in a chaunt: "And I who have sinned against my innocent darling, will ask her to pray with me that our future may be one, so that may make good to her what she has suffered, and to the God whom we worship, the offence I have committed." Rhoda looked up at the pale penetrating eyes. "Read.
The uniform and steady pull of the crew, directed in their time by the wild chaunt of the steersman, with whom they ever and anon join in fall chorus the measured plash of the oars into the calm surface of the water the joyous laugh and rude, but witty, jest of the more youthful and buoyant of the soldiery, from whom, at such moments, although in presence of their officers, the trammels of restraint are partially removed all these, added to the inspiriting sight of their gay scarlet uniforms, and the dancing of the sunbeams upon their polished arms, have a tendency to call up impressions of a wild interest, tempered only by the recollection that many of those who move gaily on, as if to a festival bright in hope as though the season of existence were to last for ever, may never more set eye upon the scenes they are fast quitting, with the joyousness produced by the natural thirst of the human heart for adventure, and a love of change.
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