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He had seen three men, strangers, come up the road from Ferreiras and walk down that towards Alayor. The time was after midnight, and as he had finished the work which had detained him so long to wit, opening a vault for the reception of a fresh tenant on the morrow he strolled homewards after them.
But then I called to mind other Talayots I had seen before near Mahon and Alayor and Mercadal and Ciudadella, where the entering passage led from aboveground by a rapid incline, and where the cavity, when it existed, had doubtless been near the apex; and from this I took heart, thinking that whether or no there had been a chamber in the upper part of the building, and whether or no it existed still, didn't particularly matter to me.
Two fields off, towards clustered Alayor, a man was guiding a single-handed plough drawn by a small ox and a sixteen-hand mule. Scrambling down again, I went in a bee-line across the intervening walls. The ploughman saw me coming, and nothing loath, pulled up his team and desisted from scratching the furrow any further. A chat was just the thing he wanted.
Next day I lazed, and Haigh, taking his turn on duty, rode down to the neighbourhood of Talaiti de Talt, and brought back news that mystified us still further. The good woman who owned the farm knew nothing about the matter, neither did the ploughman from whom I had bought the three-angled hoe; but a stonemason in the cemetery above Alayor reported as follows:
But the guide carried pick and shovel. They struck the main road and held on along it till they reached the cemetery, and there struck off through Alayor, and on down the narrow lanes to Talaiti de Talt. Sadi and the Spaniard dug, and being used to the exercise, and working in the cool of the night, deepened their pit rapidly. Only the stars watched them at their labours.
Those were the last words I heard him speak. We climbed the roadside wall to set off, he towards Alayor, and I by the way I had come, and, so far as I know, never set eyes upon one another again. I strolled heavily on, musing sourly enough to myself, and feeling utterly dispirited.
Then I climbed the wall, and from the top glanced down the road which led from Alayor, and saw a sight which made me curse like a kicked arriero. Walking briskly up the stony track was a little man in unmistakably British tweeds. "An infernal prying tourist," thought I, "by all the powers of evil. Bear-led by a native, and coming to see Talaiti de Talt for a thousand.
At the towns of Alayor and Mercadal flocks of people of both sexes had assembled on the roadside to unite with the authorities in tendering our naval chieftain a cordial welcome, and in expressing their delight at his advent.
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