She had made the dangerous journey through an ocean of desert plains that had spread themselves out before them as the expedition advanced; she had slept in ranch houses whose roofs shed bloodthirsty insects; she had traveled on horseback through whirlwinds of sand that had shaken her from the saddle; she had suffered the tortures of hunger and thirst when losing the way, and she had passed nights in intemperate weather with no other bed than her poncho and the trappings of the horses.  Thus they had explored those lakes of the Andes between Argentina and Chile that guard in their pure and untouched desert solitude the mystery of the earliest days of creation.

Rovers over these virgin lands, shepherds and bandits, used to talk of glimpses of gigantic animals at nightfall on the shores of the lakes devouring entire meadows with one gulp; and the doctor, like many other sages, had believed in the possibility of finding a surviving prehistoric animal, a beast of the monstrous herds anterior to the coming of man, still dwelling in this unexplored section of the planet.

They saw skeletons dozens of yards long in the foot-hills of the Cordilleras so frequently agitated by volcanic cataclysms.  In the neighborhood of the lakes the guides pointed out to them the hides of devoured herds, and enormous mountains of dried material that appeared to have been deposited by some monster.  But no matter how far they penetrated into the solitude, they were always unable to find any living descendant of prehistoric fauna.

The sailor listened absent-mindedly, thinking of something else that was quickening his curiosity.

“And you, what is your name?” he said suddenly.

The two women laughed at this question, amusing because so unexpected.

“Call me Freya.  It is a Wagnerian name.  It means the earth, and at the same time liberty....  Do you like Wagner?”

And before he could reply she added in Spanish, with a Creole accent and flashing eyes: 

“Call me, if you wish, ‘the merry widow.’  The poor doctor died as soon as we returned to Europe.”

The three had to run to catch the train ready to start for Paestum.  The landscape was changing on both sides of the way, as now they were crossing over marshy portions of land.  On the soft meadows flocks of buffaloes, rude animals that appeared carved out in hatchet strokes, were wading and grazing.

The doctor spoke of Paestum, the ancient Poseidonia, the city of Neptune, founded by the Greeks of Sybaris six centuries before Christ.

Commercial prosperity once dominated the entire coast.  The gulf of Salerno was called by the Romans the Gulf of Paestum.  And this city with mountains like those of Athens had suddenly become extinguished without being swallowed up by the sea, and with no volcano to cover it with ashes.