"How are you off for money, old man?" he asked Lindbohm. The Lieutenant drew from the recesses of the ancient, water-warped pocketbook a five pound note, badly faded and stained. It came in two at one of the creases as he held it up.
"I will paste this together," he said, "and it will be yust as good as ever. I have plenty more in Athens."
"All right, then," replied Curtis, "I'll get the tickets—"
"But I have plenty."
"We must buy some clothes. I'll get the tickets."
Lindbohm assented, so far as the tickets were concerned, but he positively refused to buy clothing till he got to Athens. He took a stroll about the town to see what military preparations were going on, while Curtis arrayed himself in a cheap, ill-fitting suit and a new pair of tan shoes, for all of which he paid a high price. He also bought a leather traveling bag, into which he put a supply of underwear and other necessities. The Cretan boots and the simitar he tied to the handle of the bag as souvenirs.
So the next morning Curtis and Lindbohm walked briskly through the kaleidoscopic square to the wharf and embarked in a rowboat for the steamer waiting out in the bay.
Curtis looked back at the town. The colored awnings were all up, the square was a moving, shifting mass of bright costumes, through which trotted, to and fro, the patient, useful and immemorial ass. The Punch and Judy booth, with its row of pantomimists, had been removed and apparently forgotten. A group of dignified old gentlemen in fezzes sat at a café, smoking narghiles. It takes an oriental town but half an hour to recover from a massacre or a bombardment. The eternal languor of the East flows over and engulfs any outburst of passion, as the sea swings to rest over a submarine eruption. A sentinel in red jacket and white helmet paced along the rampart wall. A bugle sounded faint and far and a man-o'-war's boat flew by, the petty officer in the stern bending and straightening to the rhythmical splash and rattle of the oars.
"There will be no difficulty in finding her in Athens," said Lindbohm as the two stood at last on the deck of the steamer.
"Tickets, gentlemen!"