Spice and the Devil's Cave Read Online Free

Window, kept by an old fellow they call Pedro. It’s not much to look at, but you can get the best mutton and vegetable stew in there that’s made.”
    Once clear of the noisy quay, Nicolo stopped to look about him. Portugal… Lisbon … after all these months of doubt, of inward debate, of final decision, here they were, bright reality. His eyes, accustomed to the levels of Venice, mounted, with a sense of adventure, hillsides up which quaint, high-roofed houses seemed to climb on each other’s shoulders. Enchantments of colour caught, and held, his exploring eyes: sunlit walls broken by sociable little balconies and outside stairways; bursts of blossoming shrubs, a glowing patch of tiny, steep garden. Everywhere, Nicolo noted, was colour, virile, vivid, of an almost primitive quality, as if the crude essence of it had been laid on without care of shade or tone. The sky itself blazed, from zenith to horizon, a deep even blue. Where, he wondered, was the palace? Perhaps it was the solid gloomy structure that crowned that hill or, more likely, that larger building with dome and pillars half-way down the hillside.
    Mentally he contrasted the disciplined beauty of Venice – mellow sumptuousness, noiseless waterways – with the gay helter skelter of this hill city and the clatter of its cobblestone pavements. Life moved faster here, and more simply. That boy, for instance, milking his goats from door to door! … This woman urging you to buy from the tray of glistening fish she balanced on her head, and those men telling you how fresh were the vegetables in the baskets slung across their shoulders.
    In the square that the merchant had mentioned, Nicolo noticed the shops of linen drapers and silk mercers – not so different from the displays of the Merceria, only that a Venetian instantly missed the enormous variety which the Oriental trade gave to the shops of Venice.
    He found The Green Window without trouble, an amusing little place with one huge, green-cased window set into its diminutive, peaked front. Several men, unmistakably sailors, were eating and talking at a table. Nicolo sat down near them, and was promptly served with a bowl of the famous stew. The innkeeper was a quaint little man with kind eyes, and scrupulously anxious to please. Nicolo at once took a fancy to him, and ended by ordering a second portion of the stew.
    Half-way through his meal, he absently noticed that someone came in and dropped into a seat at the far end of the room, but immediately he forgot the incident in the talk of the sailors. They were now topping off with good red wine, and were in high spirits. Nicolo made out that they belonged to crews which were to sail that very day.
    â€œYou’ll be bringing back sugar and lumber, I suppose?” one of them asked.
    â€œYes, all the yew and cypress we can load without sinking her.”
    â€œThey say there’s no better hard wood than this Madeira timber” someone commented, “but, for big money, give me a good shipful of black men and a ballast of gold ore!”
    So that was where they were going, Nicolo said to himself – Madeira, one of the important Portuguese colonies. As for the reference to “black men”–
    â€œFrom your talk of blacks and gold,” cut in another. “I reckon you’re bound for Guinea.”
    Ah, the much talked of Guinea Coast-another of Portugal’s discoveries.
    â€œThat’s what!” was the hearty rejoinder, “And a bonus if we get back on schedule time!”
    â€œThat for your bonus”– a snap of the fingers –“when they get the water route to India going in good shape! Watch me enlist on the first trip!”
    More talk followed, of places that to Nicolo had been half myths: Cape Verde, the Azores, the Canaries.
    They went out, laughing and scuffling, and Nicolo, his fancy on fire, watched them roister down the street. As he got up to pay for his meal,