Inquiries brought plausible promises of their return in ten minutes—in five minutes—at once. But still they failed to put in an appearance. At length a peremptory demand for their return clean or dirty sent Pedro flying down the street, to hasten back triumphantly bearing the cleaned boots. They had been sent to a shoemaker's to be brushed!
From the deck of the steamer as we rounded the coast we had caught many passing glimpses of the great stone heaps called talayots, and imagining that they would be easily found, we rashly set off, without either guide or direction, in search of them.
After walking a little way along the San Luis road, which we had taken partly by chance, and partly, I think, because there the wind would be at our backs, we saw in the distance a large talayot, and rejoiced at having so quickly come within easy reach of what we were looking for. Our rejoicing was premature, for when we sought a path that would lead us there we failed utterly to find it. On either side of the long straight road were high walls a yard thick, enclosing small stony fields. Beyond these were walls, and yet again walls. It was our first near view of Minorcan country, and the impression was one of stones, stones, and yet more stones—stones absolutely without limit.
The attitude of the few olive-trees within sight showed the prevalence of the north wind. They bent away from that direction, their foliage twisted awry, looking exactly like people cowering before a blast that has blown their cloaks over their heads.
The gale was waxing stronger. Our cloaks were blown over our heads, but still we struggled on. A peasant boy, on being interrogated, directed us to proceed farther, then take a road to the left. Hopefully following his instructions, we "gaed and we gaed," like the classic Henny-penny, until we ultimately found ourselves entangled in a maze of these same thick walls of stone.
And a maddeningly ingenious maze it proved. For as we wound about, the talayot appeared to dodge us, sometimes popping up before us, sometimes lurking behind; often seeming comparatively near, more often looming at a wholly unexpected distance away, and always encircled by these impenetrable gateless walls of stone.
Finally, leaving me on the lee-side of a wall—it wasn't really the lee-side: in such a wind there is no lee side; but they thought it was the lee-side—the men departed, determined to scale the offending obstacles and to get there somehow. After a time the Boy returned to free me from the brambles round which the tempest had twisted my veil and chiffon scarf, holding me prisoner; and to report that, after some climbing, the Man and he had succeeded in reaching the talayot, and that they thought if I didn't mind some rough scrambling I might manage to get there.
So ten minutes later, breathless, wind-tossed and earth-stained, with torn gloves and scratched boots, I too reached the goal of our desires, to find it nothing but an immense heap of stones, with no trace of opening or any apparent reason for existence.
The Man, who, in spite of the decided opposition offered by the elements, had succeeded in scaling the top of the talayot, declared it to be merely a greatly magnified cairn, and there and then announced his adoption of Dr. Guillemand's theory that the primary reason for the origin of these much-disputed heaps was simply the need for clearing the fields of stones. I must confess that to me the really interesting thing regarding these vast memorials of a vanished race is the fact that, while everybody is free to conjecture, no one, not even the wisest, can boast the smallest knowledge of their meaning.
Just behind the talayot, separated from it by certain thick walls, stands another relic of prehistoric times in the shape of a taula, or table stone—one huge slab placed horizontally on the top of a massive upright stone. And while the Man held on to something with one hand and tried to sketch with the other, I sheltered from the blast on the farther side.