The cars had blundered over the dusty part of the road, and now their tyres crunched on the pot-holed surfaces of the mountain roads. They had mounted the first three gradients which led slowly along the first escarpments of the White Mountains. The road wound in and out of several frowning ravines, where white torrents broke from the parapets of rock, and the air was full of the cries of swifts. It had become purer and more limpid, and the atmosphere colder. They were glad of their coats. Behind them the ancient Cretan sea had petrified into an unearthly blueness.
“Soon we’ll be reaching Namia,” said Baird, stirring from his silence to examine the time. “I’ll drop off there and take the short cut across the range. You wouldn’t think you were so near to Cefalû—it’s just beyond the crag there, only lower down almost on the sea. You can just see the tip of the crag from here.”
Two hours had gone by before the little convoy rumbled up on to the cypress-edged plateau where the village of Namia turned its whitewashed box-like houses to the sunlight. Cefalû lay about a quarter of an hour’s drive due west along the road. It was at Namia, however, that the guide insisted on having a drink to brace himself for the trip round the labyrinth. Baird took the opportunity to dismount, as did the others. They stood for a while watching the eagles turning slowly below them, and the chequer-board of plain stretching away to the sea with the damp black patches of shadow from clouds racing across it.
“Well,” said Baird, whose heart was beating uncomfortably at the prospect of returning to the cave-mouth where Böcklin lay buried, “this is where I say good-bye to some of you. I shall see you again, Campion, tonight. Good-bye, Fearmax, Miss Dombey …,” he made the round of the company, shaking hands, having hoisted his rucksack on his back. They were almost embarrassed, for somehow up here in this country of cloud-swept peaks, this panorama of stage-mountains, the quality of parting seemed to have taken on a new meaning. An unexpected regret stirred in them as they said good-bye. As for Virginia, he was surprised at the warmth of her handclasp, the tenderness of her glance; and then his native intuition told him that she had transferred to him her feelings about Graecen, and that in her imagination it was to Graecen that she was saying good-bye. “Why the knapsack?” said Campion suddenly. “Leave it and we’ll bring it along to Cefalû.” Baird muttered something about having to take his lunch with him. In point of fact his knapsack housed the old army entrenching-tool which he had (to Hogarth’s mused interest) carried about with him for so long, unwilling to throw it away.
“Until later, then,” he said, and started off down the muletrack which led across the ravine. They stood silently in a semicircle and watched him go before getting back into the cars.
“Well,” said Campion, “what about the labyrinth?” The guide was run to earth in the cellar of a tavern, discoursing amiably over his third cognac. He managed to get the drivers together and start the procession going. Their dispositions had altered slightly after the halt and Campion now found himself with the Trumans instead of with Fearmax. A coolness had sprung up between himself and Mrs. Truman over the painting which he had tossed overboard in a fit of temper. She had been in a rather capricious mood that day, and had been addressing remarks to her husband through the open porthole of the saloon. For some reason this had irritated Campion.
“All right,” he’d said suddenly, with a savagery that had frightened her, “talk your bloody head off and move about. I’m a painter, you know, not a camera with a high-speed lens.” And with a sudden gesture he had flicked the painting overboard. It lay for a moment on the creamy wrack of the Europa, Mrs. Truman’s face floating steadily away from them. She gave a cry and ran to the rail. “What a shame, Campion,” she said. “What a shame,” and to her surprise he was smiling, his rage all consumed at her genuine anger and dismay. Without a word he gathered up his materials and went down to his cabin, where he sat for a while in a chair, smoking. Then, taking up his notebook, he started to copy the head once more in charcoal. The painting had been a rotten one anyhow; he had been glad of the excuse to destroy it, and at the same time to make her uncomfortable. She had not forgiven him, however, and repulsed all his efforts, at badinage with a cool civility. Campion was interesting, she told herself, but he was not going to run roughshod over her. She had hoped to take the painting back home with her; she had suddenly seen, in a sudden moment of revelation, what he had meant by calling her beautiful; it was herself, her real self that he was trying to capture, and nobody had ever paid any attention to Elsie Truman’s true self, save this eccentric and violent little man in the soiled beret. It was as if there had been something valuable to be learned from the painting: as if the act of destruction were a wanton and wasteful refusal to let her learn about herself.
The cars rumbled down the hill towards the village of Cefalû and the labyrinth.
The City in the Rock
They had at last arrived at the foot of the fantastic cone of conglomerate, to the sides of which clung the small group of brightly-coloured buildings which composed the village of Cefalû. The road ran out upon a causeway, and turned abruptly up a tree-lined gradient which brought them at last to the village itself, lying up against the mountain, one house overlooking the roof of the next, like the habitation of trolls or dolls. The cone sloped away downward with vertiginous directness into the blue sea, its sides dappled with coverts of green scrub, and broken by seams of red and grey rock. From above they could look down upon the bright roof of Cefalû, the house, in its quiet garden, and upon the little yellow rowing boats tethered to the moat beyond the garden.
All was still in the village as the convoy rattled through and took the stony path which led for another fifty yards to where the three dwarf cypresses marked the entrance to the labyrinth. The church bell chimed brokenly. A workman in blue trousers sat before a small glass of ouzo outside the door of the tavern. To him were confided the possessions of those who were to stay with Axelos.
“Well,” said Graecen, “now for the big adventure.” He was loading his box-lunch into the pockets of his overcoat and testing the battery of his torch. Firbank’s little bottle of chemicals lay snugly in his waistcoat pocket. The new process, he had explained, was smelly but infallible; Graecen had only to paint a rock-cutting with it to be able to tell whether the tools used in the cutting were of iron or not. Then there was the tiny blue lens through which he should see whether the grain showed its fine shades of black.… He hoped Axelos was not up in the Cefalû this morning.
The others had bundled out of the cars and were busy putting on coats at the suggestion by Fearmax that the corridors of the labyrinth might be extremely chilly. The guide himself had put on a tattered overcoat, and had produced a hurricane lantern which he now proceeded to light.
“I haven’t any light,” said Campion, and a chorus of voices answered him saying that their combined torches would be light enough to see by; the guide smiled amiably as he got to his feet. “Now,” he said, with the air of one about to conduct a delicate experiment, “forward please to follow.”
At first they hesitated, so narrow and uninviting was the entrance — a single corridor of orange-red rock which took a steep turn after five paces and passed out of sight. “It is little bigger than an Egyptian rock-tomb,” said Graecen fretfully, as he turned up the collar of his coat and felt for his torch. The guide turned back and beckoned. “Plenty light inside,” he shouted encouragingly and disappeared. They followed him one by one. “Not too fast,” said Campion, as they entered the stone cave and heard the church bell of Cefalû become suddenly very distant, and then at last smother out in the subterranean roar and splash of a spring hammering on rock.