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Opposite the village on the other side of the little inland sea, is a second cluster of piled-up rocks thrust forth, like the fist of a giant, to defy the onslaught of Neptune, and on a plateau near the summit, is the skeleton of a house, built for a summer residence by a Russian Prince, who had a fancy for solitude and sea air, but abandoned for some reason before the interior was completed.
I did not answer then, for I felt as if I could not be awake. I had been lying in the lee of a huge mass of rock, amid stones and piled-up sand, upon which the sun beat warmly; the sky overhead was of a glorious blue; and there was nothing to suggest the horrors of the past night, but the heavy boom and splash of the billows which broke at intervals somewhere behind the rock.
And is there any form of piled-up wealth, bins of specie at the bank, or mountains of precious stones, rubies and sapphires and carbuncles, as we picture them in the subterranean treasuries of kings, that thrills the imagination with so dream-like a sense of uncounted riches, untold gold, as such natural bullion of the earth; pyramids of apples lighting up dark orchards, great plums lying in heaps of careless purple, corridors hung with fabulous bunches of grapes, or billowy mounds of yellow grain the treasuries of Pomona and Vertumnus?
Luxury was heaped on luxury, in soft lights from Indian lamps and lanterns, in the great divan, the deep lounge, the piled-up cushions, the piano littered with incongruous if artistic bijouterie; but everywhere, everywhere, books in those appealing bindings and with that paper so dear to every lover of literature.
And all that I have written of him is equally true and applies word for word, with only such changes of gender as are needed, to the woman citizen also. The present time is harvest home for the prophets. The happy speculator in future sits on the piled-up wain, singing "I told you so," with the submarine and the flying machine and the Marconigram and the North Pole successfully achieved.
This is the Cyclops wall surrounding the hill on which the temples stand. A difficult path, over piled-up fragments of marble and pieces of rock and rubbish, serves as a natural rampart against the intrusion of camels and horses; and this circumstance alone has prevented these sanctuaries of the heathen deities from being converted into dirty stables.
Far and wide, the country round us gleamed with bonfires; for it was the eve of the Ascension, when every contadino lights a beacon of chestnut logs and straw and piled-up leaves. Each castello on the plain, each village on the hills, each lonely farmhouse at the skirt of forest or the edge of lake, smouldered like a red Cyclopean eye beneath the vault of stars.
Noise, confusion, and shouting, pleasant smells and evil smells flowers and crushed cabbage; here it was peas and mint, there it was strawberries; then a whole wagon announced through the sides of its piled-up baskets that the load was cauliflowers.
No portion of the piled-up stones was higher than a man. In a good third of the barricade the stones did not reach above the knee. "It will at all events be good enough to get killed in," said a little street Arab who was rolling numerous flag-stones to the barricade. A hundred combatants took up their position behind it. Towards nine o'clock the movements of the troops gave warning of the attack.
There was not even one fisherman hanging about the front of the cottages, where all looked quiet and sleepy in the extreme, so, passing on, Aleck hurried round the head of the narrow rugged harbour, and was soon after making his way along the piled-up cliffs, keeping well inland so as to avoid the great gashes or splits which ran up into the land and had to be circumvented, where they ended as suddenly as they appeared, in every case being perfectly perpendicular, with the water running right up, looking in some cases black, still, deep and clear, in others floored with foam as the waves rushed in over the black, jagged masses of rock that had in stormy times been torn from the sides.
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