The rickety conveyance clattered
slowly up a winding road that seemed like a white band tied about the
mountainside, holding here little terraced vineyards, there a huddling
group of houses that else would surely have slipped into the ravine. For
a short distance it hung out over the sea, then cut inward, as though
the band of white had been laced in and out among the silvery sprays of
the olive leaves.
Below it all, and beyond, lay the Mediterranean, its blue waters now
deepened to indigo, shading into wide lakes of purple, under the
reflection of the setting sun, which, like a great red lantern, seemed
sinking into the sea. A sharp turn inward and upward brought the
conveyance shambling into a little courtyard. It halted before the
doorway of a low, white-washed house smothered in semi-tropical vines,
which extended from the eaves over a pergola built along the wall at the
terrace edge. Beneath this arbor was a rustic seat, on the cushions of
which a big gray cat sat up slowly, and stared at the intruders with
insolent, unwinking eyes.
A woman's voice droned a dirgeful song that had a half Oriental, half
negro suggestion in its monotonous pitch, while from afar, like an echo
over the mountainside, came faintly the wailing cadence of the
_caramella_ of some shepherd boy, and the tinkle of goat bells,
interrupted by the hoot of little owls crying through the dusk.
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