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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.
Coming down the other branch road opposite to them was the zinc-roofed diligence, which had left Ciudadella in chill darkness at a quarter to five. At their sign the driver brought the ramshackle conveyance to a stand, and they squeezed into the stuffy interior.
For during the gale there had been absolutely no steam communication with Mahon from the Continent, and to Ciudadella steamers never run at any time. "Of course," said Haigh, slowly swinging round the contents of his glass and blinking thoughtfully at them "of course there's the cable, which nine days out of ten is in working order.
We rose the low cliffs of Eastern Minorca about half-way across; but rain came on directly afterwards, and in the thickness we lost them again. In that odd way in which things one has glanced through in a book recur to one when they are wanted, I had managed to recall something I had once conned over in a Sailing Directions about Ciudadella.
The armament of Toulon, consisting of the fleet commanded by M. de la Galissonniere, and the troops under the duke de Richelieu, arrived on the eighteenth day of April at the port of Ciudadella, on that part of the island opposite to Mahon, or St. Philip's, and immediately began to disembark their forces.
"It's a queer gamble this, take it through and back, and it's remarkably like roulette in being a game where a system doesn't pay. As long as we worked haphazard we did wonders. As soon as we tried to do a rational thing, and make that harbour at Ciudadella, we got euchred. Well, I dare say we both know how to take a whipping without howling over it.
We made a landfall that afternoon off some of the high ground in North-east Mallorca, and Haigh gave over champing his cold cigar-butt, and delivered himself of an idea. "Isn't there another harbour in Minorca besides Port Mahon?" I said I believed there were some half-dozen small ones. "Any this west side?" "Ciudadella, about in the middle." "Know anything about it?"
He recalled all his advanced parties; and, in particular, a company posted at Fornelles, where a small redoubt had been raised, and five companies at Ciudadella, a post fortified with two pieces of cannon, which were now withdrawn as soon as the enemy began to disembark their forces.
"Nothing, except the fact of its existence; and as we have no vestige of chart, I don't exactly see how we are to learn anything more." "Precisely. Then, my dear chap, to finish this cruise consistently, Ciudadella must now become our objective. It would take us another day to run round under the lee of the island to Port Mahon, and days are valuable.
"And as," I added, "the port captain at Ciudadella wires that he has had no single incoming vessel during the last ten days, and we know that none have come into Port Mahon except the fleet and the Antiguo Mahones and ourselves, we've arrived at the most unpickable deadlock that two grown men ever scratched their heads over."
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