Besides, their husbands had accustomed them to the use of coffee, the seaman's drink, and they tried to beguile their tedium with strong cups of the thick liquid.
A common interest, nevertheless, united these women miraculously when living alone.

When the carbineers inspected the houses in search of contraband goods smuggled in by the men, the Amazons worked off their nervous energy in hiding the illegal merchandise, making it pass from one place of concealment to another with the cunning of savages.
Whenever the government officers began to suspect that certain packages had gone to hide themselves in the cemetery, they would find there only some empty graves, and in the bottom of them a few cigars between skulls that were mockingly stuck up in the ground.

The chief of the barracks did not dare to inspect the church, but he looked contemptuously upon Mosen Jordi, the priest, as a simpleton quite capable of permitting tobacco to be hidden behind the altars in exchange for the privilege of fishing in peace.
The rich people lived with their backs turned on the village, contemplating the blue expanse upon which were erected the wooden houses that represented all their fortune.

In the summer-time the sight of the smooth and brilliant Mediterranean made them recall the dangers of the winter.

They spoke with religious terror of the land breeze, the wind from the Pyrenees, the _Tramontana_ that oftentimes snatched edifices from their bases and had overturned entire trains in the nearby station.