Then he took the helm while the fireman started the engine, and the craft went noisily down the harbor. As they passed the end of the mole, Dick changed his course, and the white town rose clear to view in the moonlight behind the sparkling fringe of surf. The flat-topped houses rose in tiers up a gentle slope, interspersed with feathery tufts of green and draped here and there with masses of creepers. Narrow gaps of shadow opened between them, and the slender square towers of the cathedral dominated all, but in places a steep, red roof struck a picturesque but foreign note.
“Santa Brigida has a romantic look at night,” Dick remarked. “Somehow it reminds me of pictures of the East.”
“That is not very strange,” Ida answered with a smile. “The flat roof and straight, unbroken wall is the oldest type of architecture. Man naturally adopted it when he gave up the tent and began to build.”
“Yes,” said Dick. “Two uprights and a beam across! You couldn’t get anything much simpler. But how did it come here?”
“The Arabs found it in Palestine and took it to Northern Africa as the Moslem conquest spread. The cube, however, isn’t beautiful, and the Moors elaborated it, as the Greeks had done, but in a different way. The latter broke the square from the cornices and pillars; the Moors with the Saracenic arch, minarets, and fretted stone, and then forced their model upon Spain. Still the primitive type survives longest and the Spaniards brought that to the New World.”
“No doubt, it’s the explanation. But the high, red roofs yonder aren’t Moorish. The flat top would suit the dry East, but these indicate a country where they need a pitch that will shed the rain and snow. In fact one would imagine that the original model came from Germany.”
“It really did. Spain was overrun by the Visigoths, who were Teutons.”
“Well,” said Dick, “this is interesting. I’m not an architect, but construction’s my business, as well as my hobby.”
“Then don’t you think you are a fortunate man?”
“In a sense, perhaps,” Dick answered. “Still, that’s no reason you should be bored for my entertainment.” He paused and resumed: “I’m grateful because you mean to be kind, as you were the night I met you first at the tent. Although you had heard my story, I saw you wanted to make me feel I was being given a fresh start.”