Under Greek Skies

by Ioulia D. Dragoume

II

It was a wonderful day! The drive to the station through the great empty squares and the half-awakened streets; the wait in the railway station of the Monastiraki while his uncle bought the tickets and Pavlo gazed open eyed at the little railed-in bookstall, hung round with very brightly coloured pictures of various heroes of the Revolution; the railway journey down to Piræus with all the people getting out at Phalerum, towels in hand, for sea baths; the landing stage at Piræus with the multitude of little blue and red and green boats swaying on the sunny water; the climb up the side of the white steamer; the fat kind-faced captain who greeted his uncle as an old friend and himself as a new one and gave him the freedom of his bridge; the steaming out of the harbour past the King’s Summer House[¹⁰] surrounded by its great aloes and its little baby pines, past the grave of Themistocles[¹¹] gloriously placed in eternal view of Salamis,[¹²] past the long breakwater and the lighthouse, and so out into the open sea; the stop at Ægina with its big-sailed boats and shouting boatmen crowding all round the steamer; the sighting opposite Methana of the “stone ship” and the breathless listening to its legend, of its captain the nereid who was turned into stone with all her ship for presumptuously attempting to surpass the moon in swiftness; the thrill of seeing a real dolphin swimming alongside the steamer, … all these and more, made the journey a dream of delight to Pavlo, from which he was almost in fear of awaking to the ordinary every-day life of Solon Street. He forgot to be hungry. It was his uncle who after all reminded him of the packet of crushed and crumbly “kourabiedes” which he had quite forgotten on a bench beside him; and though he did eat them, they might as well have been dry bread for all the pleasure he got out of them.

In a little while after leaving Methana they passed a lighthouse on a rock, and the steamer turned round the corner of it.

“There is Poros!” said his uncle, suddenly laying his hand on Pavlo’s shoulder and twisting him round; and there it was.

A little white village with red roofs, and here and there a big round pine or a tall narrow cypress all climbing up a hill to an old ruined mill at the top.

There was a glorious open bay, and red and orange-sailed fishing boats were sailing about it, and there were tall hills covered with olive trees to the right, and tall hills covered with pine trees to the left. And in the pines nestled a red house, and Pavlo’s uncle pointed it out to him.

“See, there is my friend’s house! There is where you will play with the children; across there! Do you see?”

Pavlo saw, and his cup of happiness was full, for he saw no trimly set-out garden with elaborate flower-beds such as he had once seen at Kiphissia, with “Do not touch” plainly written all over it, but hollows and crags where lentisk and thyme bushes grew strong and thick, and open hillside, and trees and trees and trees around and behind the house, from the top of the hill right down to the seashore, promising endless possibilities for climbing and hiding.

The steamer stopped quite close up to the village, and Pavlo and his uncle shook hands with the fat kind-faced captain and thanked him and climbed down into a little swaying boat which in three or four oar-strokes brought them to the side of the sea-wall. Doctor Zamana got out.