Lost trumpet

THE LOST TRUMPET
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his hands, and grappled with some hidden thing.
He pulled. The thing refused to budge. His legs
and arms straining and up-bulging in muscle, the
great Jew made another attempt. A dark, shapeless
mass was slowly emerging. Marrot backed away
and swung down his torch-beam upon it. A final
tug and the sand-stained, sand-preserved object was
lifted in Huebsch’s hands.
A great sigh went up from all of us ! A littie
early wind came shining through the dimness. Far
in Abu Zabal a cock began to crow. Huebsch,
breathing immensely, shook sand and mould from
his discovery and peered at it nearsightedly in the
light of Marrot’s electric torch. It was the latter who
spoke first, and in a voice strangely high-pitched.
“Leather: a leather sack somehow preserved.
Soaked in gums, perhaps.”
“That, and the sands themselves.” Huebsch’s
voice, surprisingly, was quite calm, even slightly
flat. “Thank God that’s done. You can dismiss all
the boys, Colonel. There’ll be nothing more to-night.
Nor, of course, to-morrow.”
I had come forward to look at the find. “But
are you certain this is the ?”
The near fire spiralled a final column of light.
Huebsch held up the leather sack and crumpled the
leather roughly into the curved shape of the object
hidden in its folds.
“Look.”
We looked, Pelagueya and Marrot and I, first at
the object and then at each other. It was impossible