At last the train, with a screaming of gritty brakes on the wheels, and the inevitable clanking and banging of cars and couplings, drew up beside a tiny station on the right of the track.
"Pesto! Pesto!"
The guard unlocked the compartment door, and Jerry stepped out. The station was smaller than any they had passed, and Tab smilingly reflected that the lodge at the entrance of his father's place at Dedham was bigger. He was the only passenger to alight, and no sooner was he out than the guard, like an overgrown mechanical toy, called out his "Pronto! Partenza!" blew his toy horn, and swung himself aboard again. The long train, with bitter metallic complaint at being obliged to go farther, drew past the little station, and rolled away toward a gap in the southern hills, far beyond which lies Tarento.
Taberman turned to the station master, a discouraged-looking individual who stood on the platform with his truncheon tucked under his arm, examining a batch of dispatches as if this were the first time such papers had ever come under his notice. Jerry's Italian vocabulary was limited to some score of words, with a few expressions, such as dolce far niente and the like, more ornamental than useful. As, however, he could perceive no sign of any temples,—or town either, for the matter of that,—he determined to question the capo.
"Bonn giorno," he began with a painful sense of effort, but with a mild self-congratulatory thrill at having said something in Italian.
"Buon' giorno," responded the station master, turning a pair of dull eyes and an emaciated face from the dispatches to Taberman.
Jerry spoke French moderately well, and resolved to address the official in that tongue, in the hope that the Italian might understand.
"Peut-être vous parlez Français?" he began.
"Cosa?" asked the Italian, obviously puzzled, as he stepped out of the sun into the shadow of the little station.
"What?" demanded Jerry in English, and with much the same puzzled air.