It was a forlorn little figure that knelt on a bench of the out-going
steamer next morning. A little figure clad for the journey in a short
outgrown print frock, with an old gray jacket which had once belonged
to her aunt, tightly buttoned over it.
Mattina was looking with wide open eyes at all the familiar landmarks
as they seemed to glide past her; at the big clock tower of the Naval
School with its waving flag, at the little coffee-house of the White
Cat down on the shore, at the Red House on the hill, at the Garden
on the mainland where she had often been with her mother to help in
the picking of the lemons, at the white blur far away in the hills,
which was the village of Damala. But when the steamer turned round
the corner by the lighthouse and Poros was hidden from her sight,
she twisted herself round and sat down on the bench, her back huddled
up like an old woman's, and her eyes fixed on the deck.
When the steamer stopped at Methana,[6] she stood up and watched the
shore, but it already seemed strange and foreign to her; the gray
rocks, bare of pine trees, the line of bathing houses, the bright
yellow colour of the water close to the land, which someone said came
from the sulphur of the baths, the big white hotel, the strange boatmen
rowing backwards and forwards; all was new and in some curious way
terrifying. The boatmen shouting to each other seemed to be shouting
at her, and the sun shining on the sea made so many glittering little
pinpricks of light that she closed her eyes not to see them.
After Methana, the steamer began to move a great deal more than it
had done at first, and she went back to her bench for fear she should
fall. For a short time she was interested in a little toddling boy
belonging to a woman who seemed asleep, her kerchief shadowing the
upper part of her face. The boy was not at all like Zacharia, being
much fatter, and with hair which was almost yellow, but he took bites
out of his koulouri all round, just as Zacharia did. Mattina made
timid advances to him, but he ran away from her to a white-bearded
old priest on the next bench, and began to wipe his wet little mouth
and hands, all over koulouri crumbs, on the black robes. Mattina
expected that the old priest would be angry, but he only smiled and
patted the little yellow head.
While she watched them, the priest's black figure seemed to mount
up, up, up, against the glittering sea, and then to sink down again
as though it were never coming up. It hurt her to look at it, and
she folded her arms on the back of the bench and laid her head on
them. Perhaps she was going to sleep; she had been up very early
that morning; but she did not feel at all sleepy, only very hot and
miserable. She began to long for a drink of water; perhaps she was
thirsty, but she felt afraid to move. Her uncle Yoryi when he had
put her on board had said, "Do not leave your seat, or someone may
take it."
The woman with the child had a pitcher with her; it stood on the deck
beside a big bundle and a little shining green trunk, studded with
brass nails; and the mouth of the pitcher was stopped by a bunch of
myrtle leaves. Mattina ventured to nudge the woman's elbow.
"Kyra," she asked, "may I drink from your 'stamna'?"
The woman opened her eyes with a little groan and, thrusting her arm
into an opening of the big bundle, pulled out a short thick tumbler
and handed it to her. Mattina poured some water into it and drank,
but somehow it tasted bitter, not like Poros water. She put the
tumbler back without even wiping it, and sank back on her bench.
How hot it was, and how miserable she felt!
She bent forward and hid her head in her arms.
It was so, that Yanni the messenger found her a little later when
they were outside Ægina.[7]
"Bah!" he exclaimed, pulling her head back, "what a colour is this? You
are as yellow as a Good Friday candle! The sea has spoiled you, I
see! Your head is giddy. Here, lie down! Put your head back on this
bundle! You will be better so."