Brittain did so, and Linham pointed to it with his stick.
‘Now, sound it, you blubber-lipped walrus, and if you don’t get the B flat this time I’ll put you back with the raw recruits!’
Jack looked at the card hanging up and saw that the note the unfortunate trumpeter could not sound was not B flat, but D, a very awkward note to produce on the trumpet, and one which is used only in the ‘Stable’ call.
The sergeant waved his stick, a curious-looking souvenir of his Indian service. It was made of ebony or some other black wood, the end being carved into the shape of an elephant’s head, having two long, white ivory tusks stuck in, which gave it a very realistic appearance.
Jack had noticed that the sergeant, while the trumpeters had been sounding, had waved his ebony stick about in a most wonderful way, as though beating time, but with motions that would have driven a bandmaster crazy and that would have puzzled any body of musicians.
Before Dawes began to sound, the sergeant cried, ‘Now, keep in time. I’ll count;’ and he gave his stick a preliminary flourish like a trooper making ‘cut two’ with his sword, and causing Dawes to jump back, the ferule of the stick having whizzed within a few inches of his nose.
‘Stand still! How dare you move!’ yelled Linham. ‘Now, “Stables”—prepare to sound;’ and Dawes stood straight as a poker and brought the mouthpiece of his trumpet to his mouth. ‘Sound!’
Dawes made a fair start on the low C, the sergeant standing in front of him, waving his stick frantically and counting aloud. His method of counting was peculiar. He began, ‘One, two, three, four, five,’ and so on, and proceeded up to about thirty-five, getting in anything from three to five beats in a bar. As the call was in three-four time, Jack had the greatest difficulty to keep from laughing; and when on the fatal D Dawes broke down, and Linham yelled, ‘Wrong, wrong, wrong! you’re sounding B flat again!’ he had to snigger.
At this moment the trumpet-major entered the band-room; and, after talking with the sergeant for a few moments, Linham was instructed to take Jack, Dawes, and Brown to a small room off the band-room, and there to give them an hour’s scale practice, while the trumpet-major instructed the rest in some new harmonies which he had written for the longer and more musical calls.
Marching his three trumpeters away to the small room, Sergeant Linham gave them a long address, enlarging upon the stupidness of boys in general and trumpeters in particular, giving some most fantastic information about the notation of the calls, which convinced Jack that no matter how good a trumpeter the sergeant might happen to be, he knew nothing whatever about music, sounding by ear; a fact which puzzled him much at the time, but which he afterwards found to be quite correct.