Enticing, that ‘rumour’, a faint whisper from a distant conch, echoes of the sea rebounding around the ravine.  And those half-whittled arrows, who whittled them, and why were they left without being completed?

‘From the islanded sea the rumour of far-away conches comes echoing up the ravines; while, scattered round them on the grass, among the half-whittled arrows, thorny green carapaces split open to show the dark gleam of chestnuts in the dew.’

Source: Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, introduction by Michael Gorra, New York: New York Review of Books, 2006 (1958), p. 229