The evening glow was on the hills when we left the watercourses and followed a track that led between fields of full-bearded rye dotted with blood-red poppies towards a picturesque white-walled _noria_. In the shadow of the trees close by the old Moorish well, which was encircled by a trellised vine, sat the farm folk enjoying the rest of the Sabbath. A guest in a mantilla was with them.
So far from resenting our intrusion they welcomed it. Seeing that we were interested in the working of the _noria_, the farmer ran forward and, seizing the long wooden donkey shaft, set the wheel revolving, and made the circle of buckets (which were not fashioned of earthenware as in Majorca, but formed from lengths of hollowed pine stem--a peseta each they cost, he told us) discharge their contents for our benefit, the primitive machinery, which made laudable objection to Sunday labour, protesting the while with groans and squeaks.
[Illustration: The Gates of the _Feixas_, Iviza]
His wife--who had received us with friendly looks and kindly greeting in the Ivizan dialect, that, while greatly resembling Majorcan, omits the harsher sounds, hastened further to reveal her good will by picking me the few blossoms within reach. Even the townified guest in the mantilla added a genial word of greeting.
Yes, the Majorcans had spoken truly when they said the people of the sister isle were courteous to strangers.
[Illustration: The Church of San Antonio, Iviza]
It was Monday morning, and when the Man went out in search of a subject to sketch, I lured him along by my favourite watercourses.
The sun beat warmly on the limpid water, in which the swarms of little fish, looking like vivified marks of exclamation, were ceaselessly flashing about. And on the surface herbage countless glistening frogs, green, golden, bronze, and chocolate, were perched, like little kings, each on his floating throne. It was with lamentable lack of monarchical dignity that each in turn, as he got hint of our approach, took an agile header into the water and disappeared.
Going on past the tall whitewashed gates that seemed to have so scant reason for existence, we reached the San Antonio road, and there in the shadow of a wall at the side of a bean-field the Man sat down to paint.