Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/36

 wailing cry of cloaked muezzins summoning to prayer and shouting forth the salutation to a prophet.

He had been dreaming, and the effect was still strong upon him. He fancied that cries of anguish were ringing in his head—cries drowned by the clamor of huge trumpets lifted to the skies.

"Horns of Jericho!" he exclaimed, and this time he did not speak in English.

His fancy still retained the echo of the chimes distorted into another sound—the summons of ten-foot trumpets reverberating from the impulse of the lungs of powerful men, and reëchoed from distant hillsides as if from cliffs in the sky. His memory pictured hooded heads raised to the first light of dawn, and lips murmuring age-old prayers.

The carriage bells of Quebec had taken the semblance of camel bells of another country that jangled as long-haired beasts pad-padded over the snow to the hoa-hoa of caravaneers.

Then he glanced from the window out over the mist-shrouded river, laughed, and stretched.

"Nerves, by Jove! Didn't know I had 'em."