Lost trumpet

64 THE LOST TRUMPET
the hired Leyland wobbled unchancily from the
Abbassieh yard. It was loaded with much gear and
stores, the nine other labourers, and, perched high
above all other burdens, Georgios Papadrapoul-
nakophitos, clutching in one hand two indignant
chickens in a coop and in the other a case that I
guessed to contain his silver bugle.
Our aged Darracq Marrot drove on this occasion,
Huebsch sitting greatly and placidly beside me in
the back seat. He drove with one hand, did the
thin, sardonic Marrot, and with that single hand
performed those prodigies of skilful steering and
retarding that is the genius of the born motorist.
Through Abbassieh, into the radiance of the sun¬
light coming down the road from Heliopolis. The
morning freshness had not yet quite gone. In the
air through which our Darracq sped, chasing its
own shadow, there was still the tang of night cool¬
ness. Bugles were blowing in the English barracks.
A train of donkeys ; a squad of native soldiers,
with thin, pipe-stem legs absurdly enwrapped in
those puttees imitated from the English; a hospital
matron on a motor-cycle; three camels swaying in
line, the little bell of their leader tinkling down the
road. ... We were following that route that
Pelagueya and her lover had taken two years before.
And the day brightened, and the sun climbed the
sky, and in front of us the lorry, emulating an
inebriated snake, curvetted Abu Zabal-wards.
But a little beyond Heliopolis, on the Helmieh
road, it came abruptly to a standstill, almost jerking