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Suddenly the noon lethargy of the camp was broken; a trumpet-call rang through the stillness; against the amber transparency of the horizon line the outlines of half a dozen horsemen were seen looming nearer and nearer with every moment; they were some Spahis who had been out sweeping the country for food.
The cowed infantry remained supine, when their officers darted forward and threw stones into the faces of the enemy; the troopers heard but obeyed not that trumpet-call to 'Charge! which so rarely fails to thrill the cavalryman with the rapture of the fray. The gunners only, men of that noble force the Company's Horse-Artillery, quitted themselves valiantly.
Far away, the trumpet-call of a wild tusker trembled through the moist, hot night; and great bell-shaped flowers made the air pungent and heavy with perfume. A tigress skulked somewhere in a thicket licking an injured leg with her rough tongue, pausing to listen to every sound the night gave forth. Little Shikara whispered in his sleep.
The outlaw was furious with hate, blind with a madness that surged through it; but all its weaving and fence-rowing could not shake the perfect poise of the rider, nor tinge with fear the glad fighting edge that throbbed like a trumpet-call in the blood. Slowly the certainty of this sifted to the animal.
Because she seems cynical and crass, she cries with trumpet-call to the mind of the dreamer; because she is riant and mad, she speaks to the grave sanity of the poet. So, in a mood perhaps too consciously lofty, Gissing was meditating. It was rather impudent of him to accuse the city of being mad, for he himself, in his glee over freedom regained, was not conspicuously sane.
'The Antiquary, which in health he used to admire, or think he did, exceedingly, has also a narcotic effect; but 'Rob Roy' revives him, and 'Ivanhoe' stirs him like a trumpet-call. What is very curious, just as the favourite literature of a cripple is almost always that which treats of force and action, so upon our sick-bed we turn most gladly to scenes of heroism and adventure.
Then the trumpet-call rang out, and we were all up ready for the rush that was in progress; while I was startled and confused, and unable to understand why the now mounted Boers should be guilty of such an insane action as to attack us there, nestling among the stones.
The echo of it went booming up to scare the birds on the hillside, but evoked no answer from the silent castle. "They keep a zealous watch," laughed the Count. "Again, Lanciotto." The man obeyed him, and again and again his deep voice rang out like a trumpet-call before sign was made from within that it had been heard.
They rang in her ears as if they had been as loud as a trumpet-call; she could hardly believe that they had not re-echoed far and wide across the moor. She felt giddy and sick. The last sight of his face was lost in a strange, momentary darkness. When she saw clearly again he was walking away from her with long, hasty strides, and her cousins were close at hand.
So, on the idle dreams of youth, Breaks the loud trumpet-call of truth, Bids each fair vision pass away, Like landscape on the lake that lay, As fair, as flitting, and as frail, As that which fled the Autumn gale. For ever dead to fancy's eye Be each gay form that glided by, While dreams of love and lady's charms Give place to honour and to arms!
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