A little farther along, a massive figure, joyously arrayed in a suit of maize-coloured corduroy, a lilac-check shirt and a green hat, gladdened our vision.
"That is the present English Consul," said the padre, who seemed to be on good terms with everybody. "I shall introduce him to you."
The British Vice-Consul blushed when presented to genuine natives of the country he represented. His knowledge of the language was rudimentary, and after a few tentative efforts the conversation lapsed into Spanish. As the Boy said, it was quicker.
The padre had promised to call at three to take us to see the excavations in process on a slope just outside the city. And after lunch I strolled out to the fields in search of Ivizan wild flowers. Within a five minutes' walk of the town I soon gathered an armful—purple and yellow and white and yellow toad-flaxes, pink asters, blood-red poppies, big cream chrysanthemums, little blue and white iris, a handsome garlic-smelling pink flower, wild mignonette, both the tall and the dwarf asphodel, a yellow pheasant's eye, one or two unfamiliar blossoms, and, best of all, many regal spikes of the tall crimson gladioli that were growing among the green corn.
The padre was punctual to a moment, and we were soon mounting the rocky hill just beyond the city wall where the excavations were going on.
There was nothing in the appearance of the place to suggest that underneath our feet there existed Phœnician catacombs. Great spikes of the handsome evil-smelling asphodel were blooming all around, and two men in wide felt hats and abbreviated blouses, standing by some heaps of soil, were the only visible sign of the important work that was being done.
When we reached them we saw that their labour consisted of passing the earth that had been brought to the surface through a fine sifter, and that close by yawned a hole overhung by a rope running on a wheel attached to a rough tripod.
The Boy was the only one of the party daring enough to accept the invitation to descend. Leaving his coat behind, he slid down the rope and vanished through a hole in the bottom of the shaft. The younger workman followed. While we awaited their re-appearance we noticed that many bones, earth-coloured, light in weight and brittle to the touch, mingled with the mounds of refuse, and that bits of broken pottery and fragments of iridescent glass leavened the heaps.
Soon the Boy and his guide, earth-stained and perspiring, for the underground atmosphere was close and hot, scrambled their way back to the surface.
The Boy's account was that when he had swung himself down the shaft he and his guide entered the subterranean passage, feeling as though he were entering his own grave, in place of merely going to view that of other people. Passing through an outer hall, they came to a narrow chamber where, by the light of an acetylene lamp, a being looking like a gnome or a ghoul was sitting on the edge of a long stone coffin grubbing in the dust and ashes that filled it.