THE VINTAGE
veranda, and he noticed that it was full of small bubbles, like water that had stood in the sun, showing that the fermentation was not yet over. He caulked this up with a lump of resin, and then moved all the casks out of the shade for an hour or two, so that the heat might hasten the second fermentation, which naturally was slower and less violent than the first. The cask and a half of fine wine, however, he did not touch; there it was better that the fermentation should go on slowly and naturally.
That evening Mitsos went out fishing, as the work of wine-making was over for the present. In four or five days he would have to go over to Epidaurus to get the resin from the pine-trees, but just now there was nothing more to be done. Later on the vines would have to be cut back, but Constantine preferred delaying this till the leaves fell and the sap had sunk back again into the roots and main stem.
Though the day was one of early autumn, and in most years the serenity of summer would continue into the middle or end of October, the top of the hills above the farther side of the gulf had been shrouded all day in thick storm-boding clouds, and as sunset drew near these spread eastward, making a sullen sky. The sun, as it dropped behind them, illumined their edges, turning them to a dark translucent amber, and the afterglow, which spread slowly across the heavens, cast a strange lurid light through the half opaque floor of cloud. The night would soon fall dark, perhaps with storm. It was very hot, and the land breeze was but a languid air, and blew as if weary with its travel over the broiling plain, but there was quite enough of it, with Mitsos' economical methods, to send the boat along at a good pace. He sailed almost. before it ont seaward for two miles or so, meaning to fish from the island, but then changed his
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