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The first trumpet-call trembling through the chill starlight brings one back from dreams to the world. The cavalry trumpeter plays a longer and more ornate flourish than that sounded by the infantry bugler, but reveille is all too short on a winter morning.
If the air steadied at all the seaman at the helm could be trusted for a warning shout: "Ship's all aback, sir!" which like a trumpet-call would make me spring a foot above the deck. Those were the words which it seemed to me would have made me spring up from eternal sleep. But this was not often. I have never met since such breathless sunrises. That young man was rather troublesome.
He saw at length and his trumpet-call at that crisis gave no uncertain sound England stand alone, and find in herself the forces that were to bring her safely through the storm.
Was it a yell of triumph, a shout for help, a scream of terror? It does not come again; but the silence is more terrible than the cry. "Hiero, it was his voice!" said Gnulemah. She looked in her lover's face, trusting to his wisdom and strength. She rested her courage on his, but her eyes stirred him like a trumpet-call. The burden of that cry had been calamity.
"It is your camp," said the Frenchman. "Nay," said Nigel; "we have pipes with us and a naker or two, but I have heard no trumpet-call from our ranks. It behooves us to take heed, for we know not what may be before us. Ride this way, I pray you, that we may look over and yet be ourselves unseen."
Waking in the middle of the night, he thought he saw a knight at prayer one of the old stone Templars from Ferne church, where they lay with palm to palm, awaiting with frozen patience the last trumpet-call that ever they should hear. This knight, however, was kneeling with bowed head and hidden face, a thing against all rule with those other stark and sternly waiting forms.
Sunday followed, a day filled not with a Sabbath calm, but with the stillness felt in nature before some awful convulsion; the silence preceding earthquake, volcano, or blasting storm; a quiet broken from Maine to the Pacific slope when the next day shone, and men roused themselves from the sleep of a night to the duty of a day, from the sleep of generations, fast merging into death, at the trumpet-call to arms, a cry which sounded through every State and every household in the land, which, more powerful than the old songs of Percy and Douglas, "brought children from their play, and old men from their chimney-corners," to emulate humanity in its strength and prime, and contest with it the opportunity to fight and die in a deathless cause.
He had not done all he might; he could have watched with the Galileans, and kept them true and ready; and this ah! this was the moment to strike! A blow well given now would not merely disperse the mob and set the Nazarene free; it would be a trumpet-call to Israel, and precipitate the long-dreamt-of war for freedom. The opportunity was going; the minutes were bearing it away; and if lost!
The doors of Valhalla stand wide open I heard the trumpet-call last night I saw the dark-haired Valkyrie! All is well and my soul is full of rejoicing. Valdemar there is but one thing now thou hast to do for me, the one great service thou hast sworn to render. Fulfill thine oath!" Valdemar's brown cheek blanched, his lips quivered, he flung up his hands in wild appeal.
The people of Paris, to whom music is a necessity of life, were not altogether starved, though orchestras had been abolished in the restaurants. One day a well-known voice, terrific in its muscular energy and emotional fervour, rose like a trumpet-call in a quiet courtyard off the Rue St. Honore.
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