The old woman was merrier than ever after her short incarceration in Mother Earth, and held out her capacious apron to receive our fees; sending after us many good wishes, which I have no doubt were as sincere as her witticisms were pungent, but which unfortunately were quite lost upon us.
The stipulated sum to see the caves of Brando is a franc and a half each person. It seems a good deal at first; but the visitors are no doubt few, and the expense of so many lights rather heavy.
In a minute or two more, we and the red ponies and Bigemark were off again, trotting on to the marina, or little sea hamlet of Sisco. A mile or two past Brando, we came in sight of Erbalunga, a most picturesque little village lying on a low tongue of land right out into the Mediterranean, a Genoese round tower at its furthest end, standing on black rocks washed incessantly by the breaking waves.
Towards one o'clock we reached our baiting place, a seashore village which appeared to consist of one house, namely, the dirty and unpretentious inn before which we stopped. Since leaving Brando, the road had become sterner, the rocks barer, and the flowers more scanty; the green groves disappearing from the waterside, and being replaced by great blocks of granite and porphyry.
Feeling a little doubtful as regarded lunch, we entered the inn door, and picking our way across the very dirty floor of the outer room, in which were assembled some half dozen or so of peasant men and women, with the usual accompaniment of dogs and guns, we were shown by the host into an inner apartment, and supplied with two rickety chairs.
The floor of this apartment was not much cleaner than the other, and a bedstead lately in use filled one end of it. But a capital smell of cooking came from the kitchen on the other side, and through the grimy little window gleamed the bluest sweep of sea and sky. After some conversation with our host, a hairy, black bearded man of polite and sociable proclivities, smoking a short pipe, we discovered that the culinary resources of the establishment consisted of an omelette. But, sniffing again incredulously, and stating our conviction that something better was secreted in the little kitchen, after some hesitation, a soup tureen, containing the most savoury smelling soup, was brought to us.
"Look here, mesdames," said the landlord confidentially, "I have two more ladies upstairs, lodging here; young ladies, whose home is in the Cap, and this is their soup. But, if you will not take too much, you shall have some. The ladies have also my best room, or you would not have had to put up with this poor apartment."
Whilst making his polite speeches, and they were many, our host constantly half raised his fur cap from his bushy hair; but he continued to smoke his short black pipe.
Whilst we were eating our soup, he drew a chair up to the table, and continued the conversation.
"You are Continentales, ladies, are you not? Are you Frenchwomen?"