When the ferry blows its whistle, there is a hasty gathering of newspapers and cameras. The travelers stub out their cigarettes and call for the bill, which by now most of them are prepared to recognize as the logariasmos. They need not hurry, though they do not know it, for the whistle is only the signal for putting on board three trucks loaded with bales of wool. It also brings out of one of the square houses the captain of the ferry, in a white cap, white shirt, and shorts, who sits down in the café, on one of the chairs vacated by his passengers, and orders what seems to be his breakfast. In the hot sun the passengers wait by their cars while planks are laid from the wooden pier to the iron flap of the ferry. The trucks are guided aboard—with some difficulty but little excitement—and the handful of foreign cars now follow.

The first car is a red Triumph with an Irish number plate, whose owner pulls a face when he realizes that he is to pay for the privilege of being first on board not only by being last off but also by being wedged between two of the wool trucks, one of which is shedding, in a light breeze, wisps of wool from a torn bale. The Irishman, who—like most Irishmen who own red Triumphs—looks like an Englishman, is young and good-looking and, since he eventually manages a short laugh at his wool-gathering predicament, appears to be good-natured. The beauty of his wife (who had laughed earlier and longer) is reminiscent of the twenties: her dark-red hair curves in to her cheeks, and her build is willowy. She wears a great straw hat, a pink shirt, and cerise trousers, and she fairly springs up the ladderlike stairs leading to the upper deck.

In the next car, a Volkswagen, are two American women—certainly teachers, possibly college professors. The stocky one, who is driving, fits the car efficiently into a square of the deck and even exchanges a few words of Greek—awkward Greek, self-conscious Greek, but Greek—with the seaman who is waving the cars up the ramp. Her friend, the lanky one, lifts an immense woven handbag from the back of the car and checks the necessities for the crossing—sunglasses, a thermos, post cards, a notebook, a phrasebook, and two crushable cotton hats that have followed their destiny. These ladies wear seersucker dresses that have dripped and are dry, and canvas sneakers over white socks. Up they go, enthusiastic, purposeful, to the passenger deck, where they find for themselves, injudiciously, a place in the sun.