Lost trumpet

7^
THE LOST TRUMPET
don’t want our follower here to dig up the Lost
Trumpet by accident and startle us some morning
with its strains !”
Subchapter iv
Abu Zabal rose on the horizon half an hour
before sunset, still in the pale land, though there
were deeper shades of brown here from the stubble
of the fields. Windless country we found it, very
quiet but for the unending calling of doves from
distant cotes. The Leyland had halted uncertainly
by the branching of the roads, and we called to
Kalaun to turn to the right. He had better control
of the lorry by then and wheeled into the narrower
track without mishap. So before us lay the country
for our exploration and excavation.
In front, half a mile away, was the deserted Turkish
castle of Oliver Gault, a hideous thing of Parisian
baroque and gimcrack imitativeness that the wester¬
ing sun was tinting in unexpected austerity of line.
Left of us, the autumnal village lands, cut in their
narrow plots. To the right the three great fields of
Selim Hanna, intersected by a half-dried canal. Remote
beyond fields and house a blur, a brown metallic
shimmer that was the desert.
It had memories bitter enough for me, this region,
as I watched the house jut to view and vanish again
in the swayings of the frontward lorry. There Gault
and Pelagueya and I had listened to the tinkling of
that camel s bell that had lured him to his death;