Lost trumpet

CHAPTER THE NINTH
Only, wonderful to be alive and see and smell.
And to touch you.” J
Subchapter i
IT was hardly dawn the next day when Georgios
came beating anxiously at the flap of my tent.
“Mon colonel!”
Dressing, I drew aside the flap. He thrust a hasty
cup of tea in my hand.
“Madame la princesse—she is waiting for you.
Twice she has made the hoot-hoot.”
And there, at the junction of Pelagueya’s road and
the track that led to ours, was verily a small auto¬
mobile. As I drank the tea it hooted again, urgently.
The air was crisp and cold and clear, but with already
a shadowy warmth. Against the far desert rim the
cypress trees of Gault’s castle stood as if caught to
a dark silence by the coming of the morning—
peering into the west, perhaps, to hear the wind that
sang their owner dead in far Mesheen. One leg
very much tucked up, an ibis stood straight and
stiff above its nest near the canal. A flight of cranes
passed overhead towards Abu Zabal. The klaxon
of Pelagueya’s automobile broke into a lunatic
yammer.
ns