We must have presented an extraordinary spectacle if there’d been any one to see us, the cart swaying and slithering on the shifting surface of the ash and Zina standing there balancing herself to the swing of it like a charioteer, her black hair streaming in the wind. Behind us the mountain belched a red glare of farewell.
‘I think he has been very kind,’ Hilda said to me.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘Vesuvius. We have had no more falls of hot stones.’
I nodded. ‘But pretty near everything else has happened.’
She smiled and put her hand over mine. ‘Now tell me what happen when you go off after that — that man?’
We were past the last of the houses now and in open country, forlorn-looking under its mantle of ash. I looked back at the remains of Santo Francisco and I knew I’d never in my life be so glad to be out of a place. Then I told her all that had happened on the roof of that house, and as I was talking I was looking at Jan Tucek. He was barely recognisable. He looked like an old man and he met my gaze with eyes that were dull and lifeless as though he had suffered too much. His companion — Lemlin — a big man with a round baldish head and china-blue eyes was the same.
When I had finished Hilda said, ‘You have been lucky, Dick.’
I nodded. ‘The devil of it is that swine got away with your father’s things.’
‘What does that matter?’ she said sharply. ‘You are alive. That is what matters. And I do not think he will get far — not now.’