Lost trumpet

THE LOST TRUMPET
75
slow smile. “Would it act as in the days of Joshua ?
Haven’t a notion. Colonel. But you’d better not
sound Marrot on the matter else he’ll preach you to
death on the materialist conception of history—
Joshua no more than a desert bandit and his Trumpet,
if found, a moderately interesting antique horn.”
He stretched himself, greatly. “Fine sky there.”
It was a very fine sky. Now the darlmess, giving
us up as impossible loiterers, had passed over our
heads, and the dusk came after it as a fine lace veil
trailed in the hands of that darkness. But still in the
east the sunset colours shone for a moment, very
gay and insouciant, like the lights of a palace ball
with revolutionists at the gates. . . . Huebsch
spoke again, musingly. “You never know. That
wall there”—he pointed to the bending sheet of the
horizon rim besieged by darkness—“The Lost
Trumpet might bring it crashing about our ears !”
That I found amusing. “ ‘And the heavens shall
roll up like a scroll—’. . . . The good Georgios
appears to be vexed.”
Gesticulating, he was ascending towards us from
amid the magical array of stoves and cooking impedi¬
menta that had shaped to swift being in the lee of the
lorry. “Messieurs !”
“Well, well,” said Huebsch, “you surely haven’t
served dinner already ?”
“But no.” Georgios almost wrung his hands. “I
had forgotten—this I had not anticipated. The
canal water is undrinkable, and there is no other.”
“That,” I said, “can be remedied easily. Send one