The dinner hour calls the Basques now to the houses or to the inns, and,
under the light, somewhat gloomy, of the noon sun, the village seems
deserted.

Ramuntcho goes to the cider mill which the smugglers and pelota players
frequent. There, he sits at a table, his cap still drawn over his eyes,
with his friends: Arrochkoa, two or three others of the mountains and the
somber Itchoua, their chief.

A festive meal is prepared for them, with fish of the Nivelle, ham and
hares. In the foreground of the hall, vast and dilapidated, near the
windows, are the tables, the oak benches on which they are seated; in the
background, in a penumbra, are the enormous casks filled with new cider.

In this band of Ramuntcho, which is there entire, under the piercing eye
of its chief, reigns an emulation of audacity and a reciprocal, fraternal
devotion; during their night expeditions especially, they are all one to
live or to die.

Leaning heavily, benumbed in the pleasure of resting after the fatigues
of the night and concentrated in the expectation of satiating their
robust hunger, they are silent at first, hardly raising their heads to
look through the window-panes at the passing girls. Two are very young,
almost children like Ramuntcho: Arrochkoa and Florentino. The others
have, like Itchoua, hardened faces, eyes in ambuscade under the frontal
arcade, expressing no certain age; their aspect reveals a past of
fatigues, in the unreasonable obstinacy to pursue this trade of
smuggling, which hardly gives bread to the less skilful.