“Wal, why in thutteration didn’t they tell a feller what they was arter!” growled Ephraim, looking ashamed and disgusted. “They acted jest ez if they wanted to murder the hull on us.”
When the shore was reached, Frank paid for the transportation of both himself and Ephraim, as the old fellow whom the Vermonter had upset demanded payment.
“Here we are!” Merriwell cried. “And now we will find a hotel.”
Inquiry revealed that there was one European hotel in the city, and Frank secured a guide to pilot them thither.
Ephraim grumbled as they made their way along. He was dripping with water, and presented a ludicrous aspect, but the populace in the streets did not smile upon him. He was greeted in a stoical, indifferent manner, as if he were a worm of very small importance. Men drew aside from the boys, and women avoided them, while children fled in terror.
“Real sociable people,” chuckled Frank. “Judging by the way they act, any one would think we must be blood-thirsty savages.”
Nearly all the people in the streets were enveloped in a sort of long, white woolen cloak, with a large cowl, generally worn straight up on the heads, so that the whole city presented the aspect of a convent of Dominican monks.
Some of these hooded people passed gravely, slowly and silently, a dreamy look in their eyes, as if their thoughts were far away; some remained seated or crouching along the walls, or at the corners of houses, immovable and with fixed eyes, like the enchanted ones of the “Arabian Nights.”
On their way to the hotel they passed through several narrow, winding streets, flanked by small white houses, without windows, and with small, mean doorways, through which it could not be easy to enter.
In many of the streets nothing was to be seen but the whiteness of the walls and the blue sky overhead.