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There were forty men riding in the troop, all lancers, saving a few slingers and bowmen. They rattled over the hard Way at a pace of fifteen miles an hour. It was an immense, rock-paved road this Appian Way straight, wide, and level, flinging its arches over fen, river, and valley, and breaking through hill and mountain to the distant sea.
Against the rocks a few mean houses leaned apologetically, but on every side rose the ruins of a proud, dead past: a past beginning with the ruts of chariot-wheels graven on the rock-paved street. I thought, as I looked at the sordid little village of to-day, which had crawled into the very midst of the fortress, of some words I'd read last night: "a rat in the heart of a dead princess."
What vast sums of money and what great amount of labor must have been expended on these old high-ways of the time when this territory was occupied by the Romans! And where Rome walked she left her path well made, and she left the impress of her thought in rock-paved road, or in the lasting marble of her pillared temples and carven tombs. "By the Watch-Tower"
The whole petty business of living seemed a long way behind me now. Languidly at last I opened my eyes. Within three yards of me, in the open rock-paved glade where I had fallen, stood the Thing. As softly as I had opened my eyes I shut them. I had an annoyed conviction that they were deceiving me a very unworthy thing for eyes to do that were soon to be closed in death. Again I lifted my lids.
The lower floor communicated by two doorways with the narrow, rock-paved sidewalk. The pulperia or drinking shop of the proprietress, Madama Timotea Ortiz, occupied the ground floor. On the bottles of brandy, anisada, Scotch "smoke" and inexpensive wines behind the little counter the dust lay thick save where the fingers of infrequent customers had left irregular prints.
"You can tell me about the boats as we go. That's what takes my eye. What's that big one coming in?" "Rotterdammer. The one behind her is a coaster Menacho, Puig & Co. Look up stream there's a big Cunarder just swinging out. Hello, there's the Rosenthal and Montoya stuff now!" A string of heavily-laden drays moved slowly down the rock-paved street. "Lights out! Protect yourself!" thought Steve.
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