Just then a big white caique, all sails open to the wind, was gliding majestically across the opening of the bay, its little landing boat dancing and skipping on the waves behind it. And closer to the shore was a tiny puffing steam launch belonging to the Naval School. Andromache, whose eyes were the best, declared that she could recognize the officers on board. "I am sure that one there is the Admiral," she said, "I can see his hair white in the sun." "Now then!" jeered the others, "can you not count the stripes also on the sleeve of his uniform?" But Chryseis had been unpacking the baskets. "We will eat now," she announced quietly, and there was not one to say "no" to her. Before they had left the house even the children themselves had exclaimed at the quantity of cold "keftedes" which Athanasia had prepared for them, but there were very few left when they had eaten as much as they wanted. There were some "skaltsounia"[24] too, smothered in fine sugar; and of these there were none left at all; but there never are, of course. There were plenty of grapes, and the peaches about which Nikias had been anxious. Pavlo amused himself by digging holes in the hard sun-baked earth, and planting the kernels as far down as he could reach,-- "So that when you come up here another time, you will find peaches growing ready for you." The boys laughed at him. "We had better not come here for two or three months, and by then your trees will of course be laden with fruit." Pavlo had lived much alone, and he was accustomed to people who meant exactly what they said. "No," he said slowly, "I did not mean in two or three months, but some time." "Even if they were ever to become trees, without watering or digging or anything," said Andromache, struggling with Philos, who had left his dinner to attack the roots of a monster lentisk bush, "do you think the shepherds would leave any peaches on them?" But the word "shepherd" reminded Iason of their object. "I am going down there," he said, pointing to the left, where the bushes were rarer and the gray crags began. "It looks cave-y. Leave the baskets there under that bush. No one will touch them." The children began to scramble down towards the rocks, and the scent of the thyme as they crushed it mingled little by little with the fresh smell of the sea, as they got nearer and nearer the shore. The search for the cave was very thorough. Every big bush growing near a rock was pushed aside, every shadow was peered into. "You never know," as Iason said, "how small the entrance may be!" But after all it was by pure accident that they found it. VII