As the road ascended, it turned inward away from the sea, and after a short distance narrowed into a rocky mountain path that looked like the dry bed of a stream, winding through the wilderness. After an hour's ride the character of the landscape changed. The semi-tropical vegetation grew gradually sparse, and after a while in the distance, seemingly in the midst of the path, a great rock loomed gigantic and gaunt, cutting in two the blue dome of the sky. Still farther on, they came upon stretches of straggling wild peach, olive, and lemon trees. Beyond again, tangles of hawthorn were interspersed with patches of dried weeds and grass. But as they neared the mining district the soil was bleak and barren. The mountain rivers were dry, and their beds made yawning gaps as though the earth had violently shuddered at her own desolation.
At last, about noon, they came to the village of Vencata Minore, which stood in a little plain of green. The house of Donna Marcella was set on a slight eminence and, compared with the surrounding habitations, was quite pretentious. It was kalsomined white, had a courtyard of its own, and back of it was a little fruit and flower garden. Donna Marcella was a buxom, thrifty, and dominating woman. Had she been a man she would assuredly have migrated to America and become a captain of industry; however, circumstances having placed her under heavier responsibilities, she came smiling to the door, followed by a troop of brown-skinned and curly-haired babies. She courtesied and beamed and gesticulated her delighted welcome of the strangers and, upon being shown the archbishop's missive, kissed the red seal. A few words were intelligible to her, but the reading of a whole letter was beyond the measure of her accomplishments, and she looked to Padre Filippo to explain. She could write the few nouns and do sums quite well enough, though, to make out the bills for her occasional guests,—if in doubt she added another figure.
Sometimes she had guests—ah, but illustrious! The Gran Signore, Sua Eccellenza il Duca di Scorpa—that name to be whispered, and yet to be dwelt upon—no less a personage than such an exaltedness had come to sleep a night under her humble roof! The distinguished forestieri should have the very room His Eccellentissimo had occupied! She seemed to choose among the Americans by instinct, assigning to Derby and Porter this apartment in which she took such evident pride.
It was, in fact, airy and good sized, scantily furnished, but scrupulously clean, and with two great beds heaped high with the red and yellow flowered quilts which in Sicilian houses serve the double purpose of warmth and decoration: not alone do they lend supreme elegance to the bedrooms, but suspended from the windows, they most gayly embellish the house front on days of festa.
As soon as his belongings were unpacked, Porter, with an eye for beauty as well as a view to making himself popular, began to draw a pencil sketch of the little Marcella, a witch of five and beautiful as a doll. Tiggs and Jenkins saw to the unloading of the mules. But Derby and the carabinieri, with Padre Filippo, after a hasty luncheon of bread, figs, and goats' milk, pushed on to the mines. Beyond the outskirts of the little village the land soon grew dead again—not a bird fluttered, not a living thing was heard. A few patches of green had sprouted here and there in the lava blackness of the soil, but otherwise the country seemed under a curse.
A new bend in the road brought them close to a small abandoned settlement whose windowless houses gaped, staring like lidless eyes, at the pits which had been dug and left like caverns of the dead—as, in truth, they were. Yet nature had softened the graveyard with straggling spots of new green. A vapor rose from one of the pits as though a monster lay in wait below to destroy his victims with the poison of his breath. This was "Little Devil," the priest told Derby. Through the jaws of that yawning hole many had entered the gates of paradise! His lips muttered a fragment of the prayer for the dead; he crossed himself, and Derby noticed that the carabinieri did the same.
During the day Derby had been slowly unfolding to Padre Filippo his plans, and now the priest looked anxiously into the American's face—could he still be hopeful of such a cemetery as this? Derby rode slowly, making a cursory survey of the conditions. It was much as he had expected to find it, he told the priest; he was not disheartened.
They did not stop, as Derby was anxious to go to the Scorpa mines, where he expected to secure his men. He had heard enough to know what lay before him; and even in anticipation he felt oppressed. Another sudden turn in the road gave them a near view of the settlement. Over the arid earth spread a dense haze of smoke and yellow vapor, and down in it—in this vapor whose metallic fumes gripped lungs and throat and burned like fire—crawled human beings! Close to the earth they crept, so that the rising smoke might spend its worst above them.
Derby had thought himself prepared, but with the horrors actually before him, he shuddered uncontrollably; unconsciously, he gripped the pommel of the saddle so tensely that his knuckles whitened. The mine of "Golden Plenty!" From the horrible mockery of the name, the devil might well have taken notes in planning hell! Copper Rock was paradise indeed, compared to this inferno.
Little forms passed by him with faces wizened and wrinkled—were they gnomes?—or what? Surely not children! Small, narrow, stooped shoulders, backs bent under loads buckled to tottering legs. Ragged the creatures were to the point of nakedness, and on their arms and legs were scars fresh and scarlet from the torches of the overseers. Women and men crawled near the caldrons, and down the ladders into the hell pits went the children—up with the heavy loads past the torch and lash of the devil servers, whose duty it was to see that no panting being loitered. Day in, day out, these miserable wretches stumbled under the stinging pain of burning flesh—and once in a while a child's faltering feet slipped from the ladder rungs, his weak hands lost hold—a cry, a fall, and the "Golden Plenty" had swallowed one more victim.