Only once Haigh spoke. "If we miss this 7.55 train, when's the next?" he asked.
"Five fifty-five in the afternoon," returned Taltavull gloomily.
"Surely there's a train out of La Puebla before. The service can't be as fragmentary as all that."
"Yes, another train leaves there at 2.45 for the San Bordils Junction; but it doesn't go through, and there is no connection on."
"And how far is it by road to Palma?"
The old man did not know, and so I mentioned that the fifty-five kilometre post was by the quay at Alcudia Port.
"Oh, come," said Haigh, "that isn't so bad after all;" but what he meant I did not understand, as he relapsed into silence again. But we were pulling in the last knots very rapidly then, and presently we passed the cemetery, and got into the wished-for La Puebla. We tore through the place with the one casualty of a small black porker run over and left squalling in the road, and pulled up before the station in time to see the 7.55 train steam out along the metre-gauge track.
Taltavull rushed into the waiting-room, and tried to storm the barricade, offering threats, money, anything to have the train stopped, if only for three seconds, whilst he got on board. But the officials were stolid and obdurate; they were unaccustomed to hurry and flurry, and they refused to do anything to help him; and the old man came out to us again, wringing his bony hands, and using language that was plaintive and powerful alternately.
Meanwhile Haigh had shown unwonted activity. The populace of La Puebla, roused by our furious passage through the town, had followed hot-foot after us to stare at the ragged vehicle, and to throw ten score of questions at the driver, who, from a casual acquaintance of most of them, had sprung into a public character. So hurried had the summons been that many of them—of both sexes, save the mark—had apparently run out of doors in the apparel which served them under the bedclothes. Through this crowd Haigh shouldered his way, with a leery grin which seemed to win every heart (more especially the female ones), and went over to a double-muled carriage that was drawn up in front of the little casa across the way. It was a private carriage, and the coachman naturally did not own the animals; but Haigh flourished under his nose three hundred-peseta notes, and before that mine of wealth the man's honesty fell. With his own hands he started untracing his cattle.
Seeing what was in the wind, I stepped down and with ready help from the crowd set free the jaded animals that had brought us so far; and before our frock-coated companion had well emerged from the station again, we had picked him up and were off once more as hard as we could pelt. He was a goodish man at plotting and planning beforehand, that same Taltavull; but when it came to brisk action, he wasn't always prompt enough. A bit of a reverse seemed to daze him.