XVI
MINORCA
The weekly steamer from Barcelona to Minorca was due to call at the port of Alcudia at 3.30 a.m. We went to bed, but not to sleep, for half a dozen intending passengers, five of them commercial travellers, had arrived by diligence from La Puebla, and the fonda echoed with unwonted noise.
When, about three o'clock, we went downstairs, the large hall was brilliantly lit, and men muffled in big cloaks and scarves were gulping glasses of hot coffee before leaving the shelter of a roof. In the public room beyond, some harbourmen and one of the never-absent carbineers sat smoking.
A nondescript being—faded red cap on head, bare feet thrust into hempen sandals—summoned by the landlord, appeared from the outer darkness and, shouldering our baggage, passed out into the night. We followed, and walking by faith, at length found ourselves standing on the pier, the unseen water lap-lapping at our feet, an increasing group of fellow-voyagers gathering about us.
Out of the dense blackness a boat with a lantern burning dimly at her prow crept beneath us and paused. Some one lit a match, revealing a short flight of steps leading to the water. Descending with fumbling feet, we reached the elusive craft below.
A curious company we were, vague, indefinable, all closely packed together, and all silent. A priest, a party of commercial travellers, and a gaunt Moorish-looking being, who was wrapped from his head—on which, as we afterwards saw, he wore, probably to save bother in packing, a wide felt sombrero with a jaunty yachting cap set a-top—to his naked ankles, in a great white blanket.
There was no moon, and the paling stars gave but little light as the two boatmen, standing up facing the bow, moved the heavily laden boat across the smooth swart water. Urged on with strong, unswerving strokes, the boat moved away from the invisible land, the while we sat dumb, motionless.
I was just thinking that in something of these attitudes of utter and hopeless despair might the unwilling passengers of Charon endure the last dread journey across the Styx, when the Boy, who was sitting next to me, whispered, "Don't we look exactly as though we were shipwrecked people adrift on the ocean?"
Then the bulk of the Monte Toro loomed vaguely ahead, and as our bow neared the accommodation ladder the elder boatman, abandoning his oar, began collecting his fees of fivepence each (dos reales) for piloting us over the bay.
The illusion had vanished. We were everyday human beings once more.