With the sapphire bay of Puntal at his back, his knees clasped between
interlacing fingers, Benton sat on the stone sea-wall and affected to
whistle up a lightness of heart. Near at hand sprawled a picturesque
city, its houses tinted in pea-greens, pinks and soft blues, or as white
and decorative as though fashioned in icing on a cake.
Clinging steeply to higher levels and leaning on buttressing walls, lay
outspread vineyards and cane fields and gardens. Splotching the whole
with imperial and gorgeous purple, hung masses of bougonvillea between
trellis and masonry. At a more lofty line, where the sub-tropical
profusion halted in the warning breath of a keener atmosphere, came the
scrub growth and beyond that, in succeeding altitudes, the pine belt,
the snow line and the film of trailing cloud on the white peaks.
Out of the center of the color-splashed town rose the square tower of
the ancient cathedral, white in a coat of plaster for two-thirds of its
height, but gray at its top in the nakedness of mossy stone.
To its dilapidated clock Benton's eyes traveled repeatedly and anxiously
while he waited.
From the clock they wandered in turn to the road circling the bay, and
the cliff at his left, where the jail-like walls of the King's Palace
rose sheer from the rock, fifty feet above him.
From the direction of the Cathedral drifted fragments of band music, and
the bugle calls of marching platoons. Everywhere festivity reigned,
working great profits to the keepers of the wine-shops.
Manuel Blanco turned the corner and Benton slipped quickly down from his
perch on the wall and fell into step as the other passed.
"It is difficult to learn anything, Señor." The Spaniard spoke low as
he led the way outward from the city.
"Puntal is usually a quiet place and the festivities have made it like a
child at a fiesta. One hears only 'Long live the King--the Queen!'
There are to be illuminations to-night, and music, and the limit will be
taken off the roulette wheels at the Strangers' Club. Bah! One could
have read it in the papers without leaving Cadiz."
"Then you have learned nothing?"
"One thing, yes. An old friend of mine has come for the festivities from
the Duke's estate. He says the pass is picketed and a guard is posted
at the Look-out Rock."
"The Look-out Rock?" Benton repeated the words with an inflection of
inquiry.
"Yes--look above you at the hill whose summit is less high than the
ridge peaks--there below the snow." Blanco suddenly raised his voice
from confidential undertone to the sing-song of the professional guide.
"Yonder," he said, scarcely changing the direction of his pointed
finger, "is the unfinished sanatorium for consumptives which the Germans
undertook and left unfinished." Two soldiers were sauntering by, smart
in newly issued uniforms of tall red caps, dark tunics, sky-blue
breeches, and polished boots. "That point," went on Blanco, dropping his
voice again, as they passed out of earshot, "is three thousand, five
hundred feet above the sea. From the rock by the pines--if you had a
strong glass, you could see the Galavian flag which flies there--the eye
sweeps the sea for many empty leagues. One's gaze can also follow the
gorge where runs the pass through the mountains. Also, to the other
side, one has an eagle's glimpse of the Grand Duke's hunting lodge.
There is an observatory just back of the rock and flag. The speck of
light which you can see, like a splinter of crystal, is its dome, but
only military astronomers now look through its telescope. There one can
read the tale of open shutters or barred windows in the house of Louis,
the Dreamer. You understand?"