At the end of half an hour, they stopped at Pompeii for a moment, and Jerry, through the opposite window, recognized the station and the paltry inn beyond. As the train drew out again, he caught brief glimpses of the ancient city, dull red-brown walls among the silver-gray of the olive-trees.
The train sped on southward. It dipped into little vales, and wound its way up and into the hills that ring themselves around the plain of Pæstum. In an hour's time they pulled up at a small town on the left of the track. Jerry made out the name of the station, enameled in big white letters on a blue field, Battapaglia. The guard came by, unlocking the compartment doors, and as the men in his compartment got out and left their luggage behind them, Jerry concluded that here was to be a wait of some minutes. He therefore followed the example of his fellow travelers, and stepped down upon the sunny platform. It was very hot. Tab mopped his face with his handkerchief and turned down the brim of his Panama all around.
"Graniti, signor? Citron? Orang'?"
A small boy had singled him out, probably because he was the only forestiere on the platform, and was offering him syrupy drinks cooled with cracked ice. For a soldo Tab secured a glass of sherbet, fruit-juice and water half frozen and very delicious. It was so refreshing that he bestowed an extra soldo on the vender in sheer gratitude. The lad rewarded him with a curt "grazie," and a look half grateful and half suspicious, and then hastened on to urge his wares on other travelers. Jerry looked after him in amusement at the fringe made by the tatters of his trousers, and in lazy admiration of the sinewy brown arms left bare by the sleeveless cotton shirt and of the jaunty poise of the curly head.
The train still waited.
Jerry lighted a cigarette and got into the shadow of the cars. Presently a big express came thundering out of the pass in the hills with a roar, and rushed away to southward on the main track.
"Pronto! Partenza! Partenza!" cried the guard, with a blast of his horn.
The road was again clear, the express-mail having passed. The passengers clambered aboard, and settled themselves in their former places. The old man with the Virginia had purchased a copy of "Il Papagallo," though it was a mystery how he could have got hold of it in such a place. He clucked oilily as he read, occasionally calling the attention of his nearest neighbor to some gaudy cartoon or some political pasquinade. Jerry speculated in regard to what it might all be about, and was filled with that vague sense of baffled irritation which comes from seeing others enjoying jokes in a language one cannot understand.
Mile after mile of level track, flanked by the interminable cinder-covered berms. Once in a while the level was broken by clumps of dusty cactus, ugly and forbiddingly aggressive in the sun. To the right, beyond a flat, gorse-grown waste, relieved only by an occasional palm or oleaster, Tab could discern the blue shimmer of the sea. To the left, he could see only the same dull plain, bounded by bluish hills, which rose about it like the seats of some titanic amphitheatre. Now and again two or three buffaloes, their black hides caked with patches of yellow mud, lay in their wallows or stood contemptuously indifferent to the noisy train, which beside them seemed so impertinently modern.