D'Artagnan, the King Maker — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

14 Avoid a New Inn. haps, had been in civilized parts, for it was lettered in Latin characters, “The Black Petrel,” but the hanger of it at the inn front had probably judged the literacy of his neighbors justly in surmounting the line with a daub of asphaltum, representing a flying blackbird. “The Black Petrel,’ read the stranger, if he could not recognize the delineation, “assuredly, I see the creature, but where is its nest?” He must have had excellent sight for, presently, he spied an all but invisible column of smoke, spirally ris- ing out of a hole in the overhanging cliff. This was one of those holes made by pressure of the sea in a mistral, when these outlets became “spouting horns.” It oozed out like a dying whale’s “blow,” fine as spun- drift. | The air was dry, and the smoke almost instantly was dissipated. But the traveler could distinguish spray from smoke by another good faculty of his—smell. “Cooking!” he muttered, beginning to champ his mus- tache, as his horse had been champing his bit, “and on a generous system, I take it. There is conger, olives, onions, pork and I know not what in that mess. If it be but for one diner, then I have to meet a Titan in his cave. Certainly, the inn has withdrawn its kitchen into the solid earth. But why? I was not so badly misin- formed, after all! There was a village, and there is an inn, though cramped up in the mountain.” He seemed to be one of those spirits, common to an earlier period, who went to discover and did not wait until another had preceded them and made a chart for euidance. He alighted nimbly in spite of the extremely heavy boots worn by riders, which would turn a musket ball, and unbitted his grateful horse. He was sure that it would not stray far, where nothing alluring presented, and that no one, a judge of horseflesh, would attempt to decoy it afar. So he walked, disembarrassed, toward the hollow of the bluff, with a firm and graceful tread, al- though the boots, with their other disadvantages, were a new purchase, Gomichooks: co =|