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Title: The Vintage
A Romance of the Greek War of Independence
Author: Edward Frederic Benson
Illustrator: George Percy Jacomb-Hood
Release Date: September 6, 2014 [EBook #46782]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VINTAGE ***
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THE VINTAGE
_A Romance of the Greek War of
Independence. By_ E. F. BENSON
_Author of "Limitations" "Dodo"
"The Judgment Books" etc._
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
"And the wine-press was trodden without the
city, and blood came out of the wine-press"
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1898
[Illustration: "'COME AND SIT DOWN'"]
THIS ROMANCE
DEALING WITH THE REGENERATION OF HER PEOPLE
IS DEDICATED BY PERMISSION
TO
HER MAJESTY
OLGA
QUEEN OF THE HELLENES
CONTENTS
PART I
THE VINEYARD
I. The House on the Road To Nauplia
II. The Coming of Nicholas Vidalis
III. The Story of a Brigand
IV. The Midnight Ordeal
V. Mitsos Picks Cherries for Maria
VI. The Song from the Darkness
VII. The Port Dues of Corinth
VIII. The Mending of the Monastery Roof
IX. The Singer from the Darkness
PART II
THE EVE OF THE GATHERING
I. Mitsos Meets His Cousins
II. Mitsos and Yanni find a Horse
III. Mitsos Has the Hysterics
IV. Yanni Pays a Visit to the Turk
V. The Vision at Bassae
VI. Three Little Men Fall Off their Horses
VII. Mitsos Disarranges a House-roof
VIII. The Message of Fire
PART III
THE TREADING OF THE GRAPES
I. Te Deum Laudamus
II. Two Silver Candlesticks
III. The Adventure of the Fire-ship
IV. The Training of the Troops
V. The Hornets' Nest at Valtetzi
VI. The Entry of Germanos
VII. The Rule of the Senate
VIII. The Song from Tripoli
IX. Private Nicholas Vidalis
X. The Fall of Tripoli
XI. Father and Daughter
XII. The Search for Suleima
XIII. Nicholas Goes Home
XIV. The House on the Road to Nauplia
ILLUSTRATIONS
"'COME AND SIT DOWN'"
"'I AM FATHER ANDRÉA,' HE SHOUTED"
"HALF CARELESSLY SHE THREW INTO THE BOAT THE ROSES SHE HAD PICKED"
"SHE KISSED HIM LIGHTLY ON THE FOREHEAD"
"MITSOS SURVEYED HIM WITH EASY INDIFFERENCE"
"YANNI WAS STRUGGLING IN THE GRASP OF TWO MEN, THE GREEK AND THE TURK"
"KATSI AND A FINE SELECTION OF COUSINS ACCOMPANIED THE TWO"
"AFTER SUPPER MITSOS EXPOUNDED"
"IN THE CENTRE OF THE GREAT CHAMBER STOOD ONE WHOM IT DAZZLED HIS EYES
TO LOOK UPON"
"'AH, BUT IT IS GOOD TO BE WITH YOU AGAIN'"
"MITSOS TORE UP GREAT HANDFULS OF UNDERGROWTH AND THREW THEM ON"
"MIXED WITH THE NOISE OF THE SINGING, ROSE ONE GREAT SOB OF A THANKFUL
PEOPLE BORN AGAIN"
"BOTH THE BOYS, SEIZING THEIR OARS, ROWED FOR LIFE"
"CASTING HIMSELF DOWN THERE, IN AN AGONY BITTER SWEET, HE PRAYED"
"MITSOS, FLYING AT HIM LIKE A WILD-CAT"
"BORNE IN A CHAIR ON THE SHOULDERS OF FOUR MONKS"
"HE HAD CLAMBERED UP AND DROPPED DOWN ON THE OTHER SIDE"
"UNBUCKLING HIS SWORD, HE LAID IT ON THE TABLE"
"YANNI WAS BY HIM WITH A BRILLIANT SMILE ON HIS FACE"
"'WOULD YOU SLAY ME, FATHER?' SHE CRIED AGAIN"
"BY AN EFFORT HE RAISED HIMSELF ON HIS ELBOW"
"'SULEIMA!' CRIED MITSOS"
THE VINTAGE
Part I
THE VINEYARD
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE OF THE ROAD TO NAUPLIA
Nauplia, huddled together on the edge of its glittering bay, and
grilled beneath the hot stress of the midsummer noon, stood silent as a
city of the dead. Down the middle of the main street, leading up from
the quay to the square, lay a scorching ribbon of sunshine, and the
narrow strips of shadow, sharp cut and blue, spoke of the South.
Along one side of the square ran the barracks of the Turkish garrison
of occupation, two-storied buildings of brown stone, solid but airless,
and faced with a line of arcade. These contained the three companies of
men who were stationed in the town itself, less fortunate in this oven
of heat than the main part of the garrison who held the airier fortress
of Palamede behind, overlooking the plain from a height of five
hundred feet. Down the west side stood the quarters of the officers,
and opposite, the prison, full as usual to overflowing of the native
Greeks, cast there for default of payment to the Turkish usurers of
an interest of forty or fifty per cent. on some small loan; for these
new Turkish laws of 1820 with regard to debt had made the prisons more
populous than ever. A row of shops and a couple of cafés along the
north struck a more domestic note.
A narrow street led out of the square eastwards, and passing the length
of the town, burrowed through the wall of Venetian fortification in
the manner of a tunnel. On the right the outline of the gray fortress
hill, precipitously pitched towards the town in a jagged edge like
forked lightning, rose steep and craggy, weathered by the wind in
places to a tawny red, and peppered over with sun-dried tufts of grass.
Along the base of this the road ran, cobbled unevenly in the Turkish
fashion, and after passing two or three villas which stood white and
segregate among their gardens of flowering pomegranate and serge-clad
cypress, struck out into the plain. Vineyards and rattling maize fields
bordered it on one hand; on the other, beds of rushes and clumps of
king-thistles, which peopled the little swamp between it and the bay.
The spring had been very rainless, and these early days of June saw the
country already yellow and sere. The clumps of succulent leaves round
the base of the asphodels were dried and brown; only the virile stems
with their seeding sprouts remained green and vigorous.
The blinding whiteness of the forenoon gave place before one of the day
to a veiled but unabated heat, and sirocco began to blow up from the
south. Furnace-mouthed, it raised mad little whirlwinds, which spun
across the road and over the hot, reaped fields in petulant eddies,
and powdered all they passed with fine white dust. Two or three hawks,
in despair of spying their dinner through this palpable air, and being
continually blown downwind in the attempt to poise, were following
the example of the rest of the world, and seeking their craggy homes
on the sides of Palamede till the tempest should be overpast. A few
cicalas in a line of white poplars by the wayside alone maintained
their alacrity, and clicked and whirred as if sirocco was of all airs
the most invigorating. The hills of Argolis to the north were already
getting dim and veiled, and losing themselves in an ague of heat.
By the roadside, a mile from the town, stood a small wine-shop, in
front of which projected a rough wooden portico open to the air on
three sides, and roofed with boughs of oleander, plucked leaf and
flower together. A couple of rough stools and a rickety table stood
in the shade in order to invite passers-by to rest, and so to drink,
and the owner himself was lying on a bench under the house wall in
wide-mouthed sleep. A surly-looking dog, shaggy and sturdy, guarded his
slumbers in the intervals of its own, and snapped ineffectually at the
flies.
Directly opposite the wine-shop stood a whitewashed house, built in
a rather more pretentious style than the dwellings of most Greek
peasants, and fronted by a garden, to which a row of white poplars
gave a specious and private air. A veranda ran around two sides of
it, floored with planks, and up the wooden pillars, by which it was
supported, streamed long shoots of flowering roses. A low wooden
settee, cushioned with two Greek saddle-bags, stood in the shade of the
veranda, and on it were sitting two men, one of whom was dressed in the
long black cassock of a priest--both silent.
Then for the first time a human note overscored the thundering of
the hot wind, and a small gray cat scuffled round the corner of the
veranda, pursued by a great long-limbed boy, laughing to himself. He
was dressed in a white linen tunic and tight-fitting linen trousers;
he had no shoes, no socks, and no hat. He almost fell over the settee
before he saw the two men, and then paused, laughing and panting.
"She was after the fish," he explained, "and I was after her. She shall
taste a slapping."
One of the two men looked up at the boy and smiled.
"You'll get into mischief if you run about in the heat at noonday
without your cap on," he said. "Come and sit down. Where are your
manners, Mitsos? Here is Father Andréa."
Mitsos knelt down, and the priest put his hand on the boy's rumpled
black hair.
"God make you brave and good," he said, "and forgive all your sins!"
"Now sit down, Mitsos," said his father. "Who is going to taste a
slapping?"
The boy's face, which had grown grave as he received the priest's
blessing, dimpled into smiles again.
"Why, my cat, Psepséka," he said. "The greedy woman was going down to
the cellar where I put the fish, and I went after her and caught her by
the tail. She spit at me like a little she-devil. Then she scratched
me, and I let go. But soon I will catch her again, and she shall pay
for it all twice over, Turkish fashion. See!"
He held out a big brown hand, down which Psepséka had scored three red
lines.
"What a fierce woman!" said his father. "But you're overbig to run
about after little cats. You're eighteen now, Mitsos, and your uncle
comes here this evening. He'll think you're a boy still."
The boy looked up from his examination of his hand.
"Uncle Nicholas?" he asked.
"Yes. Go and wash your hand, and then lay the table. Put some eggs to
boil, and get out some bread and cheese, and pick some cherries."
Mitsos got up.
"Will the father eat with us?"
"Surely; and put your shoes on before you come to dinner."
And without waiting the boy was off into the house.
The priest looked up at Mitsos' father as he disappeared.
"He is full young yet," he said.
"So I think, and so perhaps Nicholas will think. Yet who knows what
Nicholas thinks? But he is a good lad, and he can keep a secret. He is
strong too; he walked from here to Corinth last week, and came back
next day, and he grows like the aloe flower."
The priest rose and looked fiercely out over the garden.
"May the God of Justice give the Turks what they have deserved!" he
cried. "May He send them bitterness to eat and death to drink! May
their children be fatherless and their wives widows! They had no mercy;
may they find none! The curse of a priest of God be upon them!"
Mitsos' father sat still watching him. Eleven years ago Father Andréa
had been obliged to make a journey to Athens to settle about some plot
of land belonging to his wife, who had lately died, and, if possible,
to sell it--for under the Turkish taxes land was more often an expense
than a revenue. He had taken with him his only daughter, a girl of five
or six years of age, pretty even then, and with promise of wonderful
beauty to come. On his way home, just outside Athens, he had been
attacked by some half dozen Turks, and, after a desperate, hopeless
resistance, had been left on the road more dead than alive, and his
daughter had been carried off, to be trained, no doubt, to the doom of
some Turkish harem. He must have lain there stunned for some hours,
for when he awoke again to an aching consciousness of soul and body,
the day was already reddening to its close, and the shadow of the
hills of Daphne had stretched itself across the plain to where he lay.
Wounded and bleeding as he was, and robbed of the money he had got
for the land, he had dragged himself back to Athens, and stayed there
for weeks, until his hope of ever finding his Theodora again had faded
and died. For it was scant justice that was given to the Greeks by
their masters, who treated them as a thoughtless man will scarce treat
an animal that annoys him. Rape, cruelty, robbery was their method of
rule, and for the unruly a noose.
Since that time one thought, and one only, possessed his brain, a
thought which whispered to him all day and shouted to him in sleep--the
lust for vengeance; not on one Turk alone, on those who had carried
Theodora off, but on the whole of that race of devils. For eleven years
he had thought and schemed and worked, at first only with nothing more
than wild words and bloody thoughts, but of late in a soberer belief
that his day would come; for organized schemes of throwing off the
Turkish rule were on foot, and though they were still things only to be
whispered, it was known that agents of the Club of Patriots were doing
sure and silent work all over the country.
Father Andréa was a tall, finely made man, and, to judge from his
appearance, the story that he would tell you, how he and his family
were of pure Greek descent, had good warrant. He came from the
southwest part of Argolis, a rough, mountainous land which the Turks
had never entirely subdued. His father had died five years before, but
when Andréa went home after the capture of his daughter, the old man
had turned him out of the house and refused to see him again.
"A child is a gift which God has given the father," said he; "it were
better for him to lose himself than lose God's gift; and now we, who
are of the few who have not mixed with that devil-brood--we are fallen
even as others. You have brought disgrace on me, and on our dead, and
on our living, and I would sooner have seen you dead yourself than hear
this from your lips!"
"They were six to one," said Andréa, "and they left me for dead. Would
to God they had killed me!"
"Would to God they had killed you," said his father, "and her too."
"The fault was not mine. Will you not forgive me?"
"Yes, when the fault is wiped out by the death of Theodora."
"Of Theodora? What has she done?"
"She will grow up in shame, and mate with devils. Go!"
Five years passed before they met again. But one day Andréa's father,
left lonely in his house, moved by some vague desire which he hardly
understood himself, saddled his mule and went to Nauplia, whither
Andréa had gone. He was very old and very feeble in body, and perhaps
he felt that death could not be far from him; and to Andréa's cry of
welcome and wonder--"I have come to you, my son," said the old man,
"for otherwise we are both alone, and--and I am very old."
Day by day he used to sit looking up and down the road for Theodora.
There was a bend in it some quarter of a mile farther up, and
sometimes, when the spring days were warm to his bones, he would hobble
up to the corner and sit waiting for her there, where he could command
a longer stretch of country. But Theodora came not, and one evening,
when he came back, he sank into a chair without strength and called
Andréa to him.
"I am dying," he said, "and this is no season to waste idle words. When
Theodora comes back"--he always clung to the idea that she would come
back--"tell her that I waited for her every day, for I should have
loved to see her again. And if you find it hard, Andréa, to forgive
her, forgive her for my sake, for she was very little and the fault was
not hers; nor is it yours, and I was hard on you; yet if I had loved
you not, I should have cared the less. But if, when the day comes,
you spare your hand and do not take vengeance on the Turks to the
uttermost, then may my ghost tear you limb from limb, and give you to
the vultures and the jackals."
The old man rose from his chair.
"Vengeance!" he cried; "death to man, woman, and child. Smite and spare
not, for you are a priest of God and they are of the devil. Smite,
smite, avenge!"
He sank back in his chair again, his head fell over on to his shoulder,
and his arms rattled against the woodwork. And with vengeance on his
lips, and the desire of vengeance in his heart, he died.
From that day a double portion of his spirit seemed to have descended
on Father Andréa. One hope and one desire ruled his life--to help in
wiping out from Greece the whole race of Turks. To him innocent or
guilty mattered not; they were of one accursed brood. But though the
longing burned like fire within him, he kept it in, choking it as it
were with fresh fuel. He was willing to wait till all was ready. For
a year or two large organizations had been at work in North Greece
collecting funds, and, by means of secret agents, feeding and fanning
the smouldering hate against their brutal masters in the minds of the
people. Soon would the net be so drawn round them that escape was
impossible. And then vengeance in the name of God.
Mitsos had encouraged a small charcoal fire to heat the water, and he
went to fetch the eggs. Two minutes of puckered brow were devoted to
the number which he was free to boil. His father usually ate two, the
priest--and he cursed his own good memory--never ate more than one, and
he himself invariably ate as many as he could possibly get. He looked
at the basket of eggs thoughtfully. "It is a hungry day," he said to
himself, "and the hens are very strong. Perhaps father might eat three,
and perhaps Father Andréa might eat two. Then I am allowed three, a
tale of eight."
Mitsos drew a sigh of satisfaction at this liberal conclusion, and his
eyes began to smile; his mouth followed suit, and showed a row of very
white teeth.
"It is such a pity that I am always hungry," he said to himself; "but
when Uncle Nicholas measures me he will see I have grown."
And putting the eight eggs into the pot, he ran off to pick the
cherries.
For the last year both Constantine, Mitsos' father, and the boy had
worked the little land he owned, like common laborers. Two years before
a Turkish pasha, Abdul Achmet by name, in passing through the country
had been struck by the Avilion climate of Nauplia, and had built a
house on the shore of the bay. The land belonged to Constantine, and
the Turk had promised him a fair price for it, feeling that a less
scrupulous man would have taken it off-hand. At the same time he
intimated that if he would not take a fair price for it, he would
get no price at all. The money, of course, was still owing, and on
Constantine's old vineyard stood the house, now finished. Abdul Achmet,
who was Governor of Argos, took up his quarters here permanently,
with his harem; for it was within easy distance of Argos, and on warm
evenings the women were often seen in the garden looking over the
sea-wall which separated it from the bay, a wall some ten feet high,
over which creepers sprawled and flamed. Abdul himself was a fat,
middle-aged Turk, slow of movement and sparing of speech. In temper of
mind he was a Gallio, and his neglect to pay Constantine the money he
owed him was as much due to negligence as to the usual Turkish method
of dealing with Greeks, which was not to pay at all. His harem, for the
years had long since quenched the ardor of his body, were given a good
deal of freedom, and were allowed to wander about the garden, which was
walled off from the country road, as they pleased.
Constantine had applied several times for payment, but had already
given up hopes of securing any equivalent for the land seized. He was a
Greek of the upper peasant class--that is to say, of the first class of
the country--who lived on their own land and employed labor. Like his
race, he was thrifty and industrious; but now, between the loss of his
vineyard and the iniquitous increase in the last year's taxes, which
promised to grow indefinitely, he found it difficult to do more than
make a sparing livelihood. He and Mitsos worked all the spring with
the laborers in the harvest-field, and in the autumn, when they had
finished making the wine from a half-acre of vines still left them, as
laborers in the neighboring vineyards.
Constantine felt the change in his position acutely. Instead of being
a man with men under him, he was himself obliged to work for his
bread, and, what was an added bitterness, it was by gross injustice,
and through no fault of his own, that he was thus reduced. Every year
the taxation became more and more heavy; only six months before he had
been obliged to sell his horse, for a new tax was levied on horses, and
all that remained were an acre or two of ground, a pony, his house,
and his boat. But of late he seemed to have taken up a patient,
uncomplaining attitude, which much puzzled the growling Greeks whom he
met at the cafés. While others grumbled and cursed the Turks beneath
their breath, Constantine would sit with a quiet smile on his lips,
looking half amused, half indulgent. Only two nights before a neighbor
had said to him, point blank:
"You have suffered more than any of us, except perhaps those who have
daughters. Why do you sit there smiling? Are things so prosperous with
you?"
The question was evidently prearranged, for the two or three men
sitting round stopped talking and waited for him to answer.
Constantine knocked the ashes out of his chibouk before replying.
"Things are not prosperous with me," he said; "but I am a man who can
hold his tongue. This I may tell you, however: Nicholas Vidalis comes
here in three days."
"And then?"
"Nicholas will advise you to hold your tongues, too. He will certainly
tell you that, and it may be he will tell you something besides. I will
be going home. Good-night, friends."
And now, when Father Andréa was cursing the Turks in the name of God,
though Constantine crossed himself at that name, he watched him with
the same smile. Then he said:
"Father Andréa, I ask your pardon, but Nicholas does not like too much
talk. He says that talking never yet mended a matter. You know him--in
these things he is not a man of many words, save where it serves some
purpose."
The priest turned round.
"You are right and wrong," he said; "Nicholas is a man of few words;
but I have made a vow that for every time the sun rises, and at every
noonday and every sunset, I will curse the Turk in God's name. That vow
I will keep."
Constantine shrugged his shoulders slightly.
"Well, here is Mitsos. Do not curse before the boy. Mitsos, is dinner
ready?"
Mitsos wrinkled up his forehead till his eyebrows nearly disappeared
under his curly hair.
"Yes, it is ready; but for me, I can find one shoe only."
"Well, look for the other."
"I have looked for it," said the boy, "but it is not, and I ache for
emptiness."
He raised his eyes appealingly to his father, but Constantine was firm.
"You must find it first," he said. "Come, Father, let us go in."
Father Andréa followed him, leaving Mitsos half-shod and disconsolate.
CHAPTER II
THE COMING OF NICHOLAS VIDALIS
An hour later, Mitsos, having found his shoe and eaten his dinner in
decency, was curled up in the shady corner of the veranda fast asleep.
He had been out fishing most of the night before, and as the harvest
was over there was no work on hand except to water the vines when the
sun was off the vineyard, which would not be before four. He slept, as
his father said, like a dog--that is to say, he curled himself up and
fell into a light sleep, from which any noise would arouse him--as soon
as he shut his eyes.
He was an enormous boy, of the Greek country type, close on the edge
of manhood, with black, curly hair coming down onto his shoulders,
straight, black eyebrows, long, black eyelashes, and black eyes. His
nose was short and square-tipped, his mouth the fine, scornful mouth
of his race, quick to reflect the most passing shades of emotion.
His hands and face were of that inimitable color for which sun,
wind, and rain are the sole cosmetic--a particularly soft, clear
brown, shading off a little round the eyes and under the hair. As he
slept, with his head thrown back, there showed on his neck the sharp
line where the tanning ended and the whiter skin began. He had that
out-door appearance which is the inheritance of those whose fathers
and grandfathers have lived wholesomely in the open air from sunrise
to sunset all their lives, and who have followed the same course of
life themselves. He had kicked off his shoes again, and his hands were
clasped behind his head, and what would at once characterize him to any
one who was acquainted with the Greek peasant race was that both hands
and feet were clean.
He slept for a couple of hours, and was awakened by the pale,
dust-ridden sunshine creeping round the corner of the veranda and
falling on his head. At first he rolled over again with his face to the
wall, but in a few moments, realizing the uselessness of temporizing,
he got up and stretched himself lazily and luxuriously, with a
cavernous yawn. Then he went round to the stone fountain which stood at
the back of the house and plunged his head into the bright cool water
to finish the process of awakening, and, seeing that the tall shade of
the poplar had stretched its length across the vineyard, took up his
spade and went off to his work.
The stream, which passed through their garden and out into the bay
below, ran for some half-mile along a little raised aqueduct, banked up
with earth to keep it to its course. It passed between small vineyard
plots on each side, so that the water could be turned into them for
irrigation, and Mitsos went out of the garden gate straight into their
vineyard, which lay just above.
Each of the vines stood in its several little artificial hollow dug in
the ground, and he first cleared the water-channels in the vineyard of
all accumulated rubbish and soil, so that, when he let the stream in,
it might flow to all the trees. Having done this, he went back to the
aqueduct and removed a spadeful of earth from the bank, which he placed
in the bed of the stream itself, stamping it down to keep it firm, so
that the whole of the water was diverted into the vineyard. Standing,
as he did, a few feet above the surface of the vines, he could see when
the water had reached them all, and then, hooking out his temporary dam
from the bed of the stream, he replaced it, so as to again send the
water back into its channel; then, jumping down, he hoed away round
the roots of the vines, so that the water might sink well in close to
them, for there had been no rain for weeks, and they must be thoroughly
watered.
The sun was off the land, but it was still very hot, for the sirocco
had increased in violence and was sweeping over the fields like the
blast from the pit. On the windward side of the trees the dark rich
green of the vine-leaves was powdered over with the fine white dust
driven up from the bare, harvested fields. Mitsos stopped now and then
to wipe the sweat off his forehead, but otherwise he worked hard and
continuously, singing to himself the peasant song of the vine-diggers.
His work was nearly over when he saw his father coming towards him. The
latter stood for a moment on the edge of the bank, looking at what the
boy had been doing.
"Poor little Mitsos," he said, "you have had to work alone to-day! I
was obliged to go into Nauplia. You have watered the vines very well.
You have finished, have you not?"
"There are three more vines here," said Mitsos, "which are yet to be
dug. But it won't take long."
His father stepped down into the vineyard.
"You can go and rest," he said. "I'll finish those."
Mitsos threw down his spade.
"Oh, it is hotter than hell!" he said. "Uncle Nicholas will be roasted
coming across the plain."
"He will want a bath," said Constantine. "Do you remember his making
a bath last year out of those spare planks? I suppose it holds water
still?"
"I wish it didn't hold so much," said Mitsos; "it holds six cans."
Constantine laughed.
"And Mitsos' back will ache, eh?"
"I hope not; but it is a great affair to carry six cans of water from
the fountain."
Constantine worked on for half an hour or so, while Mitsos looked on.
"There, that is finished," he said, at last. "You won't go fishing
to-night, will you? The wind is too strong."
"It may go down at sunset," said Mitsos; "but there are enough fish for
to-night and to-morrow night, unless this hot weather turns them. But I
put them in the cellar in water, and I expect they will keep."
They walked back together, but as soon as they got onto the road they
saw that three mules were standing opposite the house. Constantine
quickened his pace.
"Nicholas must have come," he said. "He was ever quicker than a man
could expect. Come, Mitsos."
The veranda was full of boxes and rugs, and the two went through into
the house. A man was sitting on a low chair by the window. As they came
in he got up.
"Well, Constantine," he said, "how is all with you? I have just come.
And Mitsos, little Mitsos is growing still. I will give you a hundred
piastres when you are as tall as your father. It is the devil's own
day, Constantine, and I am full inside and out of this gritty wind. Man
is not a hen that he should sit all day in the dust. May I have a bath
at once? Mitsos, we made a bath together. The mule men will help you to
fill it."
He laid his hand on Mitsos' shoulder.
"You look fitter than a mountain hawk," he said. "Get me plenty of
water, and give me ten minutes of scouring, and then we will talk
together while I dress."
Mitsos left the room, and Constantine turned to his brother-in-law.
"Well?" he asked.
"He is a fine boy," said Nicholas; "I must see if he can be trusted."
"A Turk would trust him," said his father, eagerly.
"Ha! we shall not require that. But in the face of fear?"
Constantine laughed.
"He does not know what fear is."
"Then he has that to learn," said Nicholas, "for the bravest men
learn that best. No one can be brave until he has known the cold fear
clutching at the stomach. However, we shall see."
Nicholas was dressed like Constantine, in Albanian costume, with a
woollen cloak thrown over one shoulder, a red embroidered jacket, cut
very low and open, showing the shirt, a long fustanella and white
leggings, tied with tasselled ends. He was tall and spare, and his face
seemed the face of a man of forty who had lived very hard, or of a man
of fifty who had lived very carefully. In reality he was nearly sixty.
He was clean shaven and very pale in complexion, as one who had never
lived an out-door life; but you might have been led to reject such a
conclusion, if you remarked the wonderful clearness and freshness of
his skin. His eyes looked out from deep under a broad bar which crossed
his forehead from temple to temple; they were large and dark gray in
color, and gathered additional depth from his thick black eyebrows.
His nose was finely chiselled, tending to aquiline, with thin, curved
nostrils, which seemed never still, but expanded and contracted with
the movement of the nostrils of some well-bred horse snuffing some
disquieting thing. His mouth was ascetically thin-lipped, but firm and
clean cut. His hair, still thick and growing low on his forehead and
long behind, was barely touched with gray above the temples. His head
was set very straight and upright on a rather long neck, supported
on two well-drilled shoulders. In height he could not have been less
than six feet three, and his slightness of make made him appear almost
gigantic.
"I have travelled from Corinth to-day," he continued, "and there is
much to tell you. At last the Club of Patriots have put the Morea
entirely into my hands. I have leave to use the funds as I think fit,
and it is I who shall say the word for the vintage of the Turks to
begin. Are there men here whom you can trust, or are they all mule-folk
and chatterers?"
"The main are mule-folk," said Constantine.
"The mule-folk can be useful," remarked Nicholas; "but the man who
travels with a mule to show the way goes a short journey. They follow
where they are led, but some one has to lead. But is there not a priest
here--Father Andréa, I think--with a trumpet for a voice? I should like
to see him. As far as I remember, he talked too much, yet you would not
call him a chatterer."
"He curses the Turk in the name of God three times a day," said
Constantine. "It is a vow."
"And little harm will the Turk suffer from that. Better that he should
learn to bless them, or best to keep a still tongue. Well, little
Mitsos, is the bath ready? You will excuse me, Constantine, but I am an
uneasy man when I am dirty. Come to my room in ten minutes, Mitsos, and
tell me of yourself."
"There is little to tell," said Mitsos.
"We will hope, then, that it is all good. By the way, Constantine, I
have brought some wine with me. Mitsos will drop it into the fountain,
for it must be tepid. Tepid wine saps a man's self-respect, and if a
man, or a boy either, doesn't respect himself, Mitsos, nobody will ever
respect him."
Mitsos followed him out of the room with his eyes, and then turned to
his father.
"My hands are so dirty from that vine-digging," he whispered. "Do you
think Uncle Nicholas saw?"
"He sees everything," said his father. "Wash, then, before you go up to
his room."
Mitsos adored his uncle Nicholas with a unique devotion, for Nicholas
was a finer make of man than any he had ever seen. He had been to
foreign countries, a feat only attainable by sailing for weeks in big
ships. He had been able to talk to some French sailors who had once
been wrecked, within Mitsos' memory, on the coast near, and understand
what they said, though no one in the place, not even the mayor, could
do that; indeed the latter, before Nicholas had interpreted, roundly
asserted that they spoke as sparrows speak. Then Uncle Nicholas was
constantly going on mysterious journeys and turning up again when he
was least expected, but always welcome; and he had a wonderfully low,
soft voice, as unlike as possible to the discordant throats of the
country folk; and he had long, muscular hands and pink nails. Also he
could shoot wild pigeon when they were flying, whereas the utmost that
the mayor's son, who was the acknowledged Nimrod of the neighborhood,
could do, was to shoot them if they were walking about. Even then he
could only hit them for certain if there were several of them together
and he got very close. Also Uncle Nicholas was omniscient: he knew
the names of all birds and plants; he could imitate a horse's neigh
so well that a grazing beast would leave its fodder and come to his
voice; and once when Mitsos was laid up with the fever he had picked
some common-looking leaves from the hedge and boiled them in water, and
given him the water to drink, the effect of which was that next morning
he awoke quite well. Above all, Nicholas told the most enchanting
stories about what he had seen at the ends of the earth.
So Mitsos washed his hands and went up to Nicholas's room, finding him
already bathed and half dressed. His dusty clothes lay on the floor,
and he pointed to them as Mitsos came in.
"I shall be here four days at the least," he said, "and I want these
washed before I go away. The most important thing in the world is to be
clean, Mitsos."
"Father Andréa says--" began the boy.
"Well, what does Father Andréa say?"
"He says that to love God and hate the devil--I think he means the
Turk--is the most important thing."
"Well, Father Andréa is right. But you must remember that I am right
too. Sit you in the window, Mitsos, and talk to me. What have you been
doing since I was here?"
"Looking after the vines," said Mitsos, "since the reaping was over.
And I go fishing very often, almost every night."
"Then to-morrow we will go together; to-night I have much to say to
your father."
"Will you really come with me?" asked the boy. "And will you tell me
some more stories?"
"Yes, I have a new set of stories, which you shall hear--I want to know
what you will think of them. How old are you?"
"Eighteen, nineteen in November; and my mustache is coming."
Nicholas turned the boy's face round to the light.
"Yes, an owner's eye might detect something. Why do you want a
mustache?"
"Because men have mustaches."
"And you want to be a man," said Nicholas; "but a man makes his
mustache, not his mustache the man. But before we go down I have one
thing to say to you, a thing you must never forget: if a Turk ever asks
you if you know aught about me, where I am, or where I may be going,
you must always say you know nothing. Say you have not set eyes on me
for more than a year. Do you understand? That must be your answer and
no other."
"I understand, just that I have not seen you for a year, and know
nothing about you."
"Yes. Whatever happens, do you think you can always answer that and no
more? I may as well tell you that if you answer more than that, if,
when you are questioned--I do not say you will ever be questioned, but
you may be--you tell them where I am, or whether I am expected here, or
anything of the kind, you will perhaps be killing me as surely as if
you shot me this moment with my own gun. Do you promise?"
"Of course, I promise," said Mitsos, with crisp, boyish petulance.
"And should they threaten to kill you if you do not tell them?"
"Why do you ask me?" he said. "I have made the promise."
Nicholas laid his hand on the boy's shoulder, and with a flashing
eye--"And, by God, I believe you are one to keep it!" he said.
The sirocco blew itself out during the night, and a light north wind
had taken its place when day dawned. A smell extraordinarily clean was
in the air, and the whole sky was brisk with the sparkling air of the
south. Northwards from Nauplia the sharp mountainous outlines of the
Argive hills were cut out clear against the pale cobalt of the heavens,
glowing pink in the sunrise, and all their glens and hollows were
brimmed with bluest shadow. To the west, a furlong away, the waters of
the bay gleamed with a transparent, aqueous tint; you would have said
that two skies had been melted together to make the sea. Beyond, the
hills over which the Turkish road to Tripoli wound like a climbing,
yellow snake, lay still in darkness. The lower slopes were covered with
pines; above, the bare, gray stone climbed up, shoulder by shoulder,
to meet the sky. By degrees, as the sun rose higher, the light struck
first the tops, and flowed caressingly down from peak to spur, and spur
to slope, till it reached the lower rounded hills at the base, and then
flashed across the bay and the plain of Argos. There it caught first
the tawny fortress walls of the citadel which kept guard over the town,
then the town itself which clustered round its base, until suddenly
from Constantine's house the sun swung over the rim of the hills to the
northeast, and the whole plain leaped from shadow into light.
There had been a heavy dew during the night, and the close-reaped
cornfields were a loom of gossamer webs, hanging pearly and iridescent
between the stubble-stalks, and in the vineyards the upper surface of
the broad, strong leaves was wet and shining, as if with a fresh coat
of indescribable green. In that first moment of light and heat all the
odors of flowering plants, grafted on the wholesome smell of moist
earth, which had been hanging as if asleep close to the ground all
night, rose and dispersed themselves in the air. A breath of wind shook
the web of sweet smell out of the mimosa trees that grew at the gate
of Constantine's garden, and sent it spreading and shifting like the
gossamers in the fields on to the veranda, and in at the open windows.
The border of wild thyme by the porch trembled like a row of fine
steel springs as the wind passed over it, and gave out its offering
of incense to the morning. A sparrow lit on a spray of rose and flew
off again, scattering dew-drops and petals. The world smiled, breathed
deep, and awoke.
During the morning Mitsos was chiefly employed in making coffee, for
many of the leading Greeks, to whom the secret of the imminent uprising
was known, came from Nauplia to see Nicholas, and to each must be
offered a cup of Turkish coffee. Nicholas sat in the veranda with his
narghilé, which he smoked without intermission, and he appeared to
be giving instructions to his visitors. Among the first to come was
Father Andréa, whom he treated with great respect. When he rose to go,
Nicholas accompanied him as far as the back gate, which led into a
field path towards his house, and Mitsos, who was washing cups at the
fountain screened behind bushes, heard them go by talking.
As they parted he heard Nicholas say, "Above all, be silent. We shall
want you to talk later, and to talk then with the full voice. At
present a word overheard might ruin everything, and the devil himself
scarcely knows when he is being overheard. Even now Mitsos, whom you
never noticed, but whom I noticed, knows all I say to you. Mitsos, come
here."
Mitsos came, cup in hand, flushed and angry.
"You are not fair to me, Uncle Nicholas," he said. "I was not
listening. I could not help hearing."
"No, little one, I am not blaming you," said Nicholas; "I only wanted
Father Andréa to see. That is an instance to hand, father; please let
there not be more. And here is my offering to the Christ and to my
patron saint for having brought me here safely."
Nicholas was punctual to his promise to Mitsos, and soon after sunset
they went off together to where the boat was lying. Mitsos carried a
couple of big pewter ladles, a bag full of resin, a wicker creel for
the fish, and two spears, while Nicholas walked on a little ahead with
the net wound round his shoulders. They were to begin the evening's
work with the spears, and later when the moon was up to sail across the
far side of the bay, where they would use the sweep-net in the shallow
water, where the bottom was sandy and shelving. But the nearer shore of
the bay was rocky, descending rapidly into deep water, and was no place
for netting. Nicholas, however, got into the boat in order to arrange
the net and dispose the lead in what he considered a more satisfactory
manner, leaving the boy to do the spearing alone.
Mitsos took off his linen trousers, fastening his shirt round his waist
with a leather belt. He then slung the creel and the bag round his
neck, and putting a half handful of resin into the ladle, set light to
it, took the spear in his right hand, and rolling up his sleeves to the
shoulder, stepped into the sea. He held the flare close to the surface,
so that its light showed clearly on the bottom of the shallow water, a
luminous lure for the fish. The spear he held ready to bring down if he
saw anything.
It was a scene which Rembrandt would have painted with the hand of
love. The moon was not yet risen, but in the clear starlight the
edges of the serrated hills were sharply etched against the sky, and
the water of the bay, just curdled by the wind, lay vast and sombre
across to the farther shore. The light from the resin-flare vaguely
showed the lines of the boat in which Nicholas was preparing the net,
but all was dim except Mitsos' figure and a few feet of glittering,
flame-scribbled water round him. The highest light was cast on his
brown down-bent face and on his left arm bared to the shoulder, which
stood out as clear-cut as a cameo against the darkness behind, and as
he moved, the water, which lapped about his knees, was stirred into
fire-crested ripples. The sea was slightly phosphorescent, and his
trail was palely luminous like the Milky Way. Now and again, with a
sudden splendid motion, down went the poised spear with a splashing
cluck into the sea, and he would draw it up again, sometimes with a
red mullet, sometimes with a thin brill flapping and struggling on the
point. More rarely he missed his aim, and looked up at Nicholas smiling
and showing his white teeth.
At the end of half an hour the latter had finished his fresh leading
of the net, and as a stiffer breeze had awoke, ruffling the surface
of the water and making it difficult to see the fish distinctly, they
started to sail across the bay. Mitsos waded out to the boat, trousers
and shoes in hand, set the big brown sail, and giving a vigorous shove
or two with the oar sent the boat round so that it caught the wind. In
a moment it heeled over without stirring, and then the whisper of its
moving came sibilantly from the forefoot, and gathering speed it glided
on across the dark water.
Nicholas had taken the rudder, and Mitsos sat down beside him.
"Eight mullet and a dozen other fish," he said. "That is no bad catch
for half an hour. Put her head for under that point, Uncle Nicholas. Do
you see it? There is a house with a light burning a little above it."
"I see. It will take nearly an hour with this wind. Well, what is it?"
"Will you tell me some of the new stories, Uncle Nicholas?"
"No, we will keep the stories for when we go home. It will take us
twice as long to get back against this wind. They are long stories."
For nearly an hour they sailed on in comparative silence; the wind had
freshened, and from over the hills towards Tripoli there came blinking
flashes of summer lightning. The lamp in the house above the point to
which they were steering had been put out, but in the half-darkness of
the summer night the promontory itself was clearly visible. Towards the
east the hills were blocked out with a strange intensity of blackness,
for the moon was on the point of rising behind them, and the deep
velvet blue of the zenith had turned to dove-color.
"Now for our fishing, Mitsos," said Nicholas, as they drew near to the
shore. "Can we run the boat in behind the promontory?"
"Yes, there is four feet of water right up to the land. Just there the
shore is steep. I will take in the sail."
"There is no need. As soon as we pass the corner it will be dead calm."
Nicholas put the helm hard to port as soon as they were opposite the
little point; next moment the sail flapped like a wounded bird against
the mast, and they ran up to the rocks. Mitsos jumped out and tied the
boat up.
They lifted the net on shore, and made their way round the wooded
headland to the little bays which they were to fish. Here the shore was
sandy and shelving, and sprinkled with clumps of succulent seaweed
which grew up from the rocks below, a favorite feeding ground, as
Mitsos knew, for mullet and sole. Nicholas had put on Constantine's
long fishing-boots, reaching up to his hips, before he left the boat,
Mitsos, as before, merely taking off his shoes and trousers.
The net was some twenty-five yards long, and Mitsos, taking one end
into his hand, stepped into the water at right angles to the shore.
He waded out till the net was taut between them, and then Nicholas
followed. As soon as the latter was some ten yards from land they both
moved shorewards up the little bay, which lay in front of them, getting
gradually nearer to each other as they approached the beach, till
when they were within five or six yards of the land they were walking
together, the net trailing in a great bagging oval behind them. The
resistance of the water, the dragging of the lead along the bottom,
and, it was to be hoped, the spoils enclosed made no small weight,
and it was a quarter of an hour or so before they got it in. The moon
had risen, and it was easy to see the silvery glitter of the fish as
they lay fluttering in the dark meshes of the net. The flat, brown
soles, however, required a more careful search, and the sound of their
flapping, rather than the eye, led to their discovery.
They fished for an hour or two with only moderate success, until Mitsos
proposed they should try a little farther down the coast, where shoals
of a certain fish, as small as the whitebait, and as sweet, grazed the
watery pastures. Here the depth was somewhat greater, and before going
in Mitsos divested himself of his shirt, leaving it on the rocks, and
went in completely naked. Nicholas, who had put himself entirely under
his directions, waited in the shallower water near the shore till the
boy had waded out to where the water covered him to the waist; then, as
before, they moved in converging lines towards the shore.
They had approached to within about twenty yards of the beach, and
within about five yards of each other, when Mitsos stopped and pointed
back. The upper edge of the net, fitted at intervals with corks to keep
it floating, was visible on the bright surface of the sea, trailing in
an irregular oval. But inside this oval the moonlit water was strangely
agitated and unquiet, quivering like a jarred metal-plate, and from
moment to moment a little silvery speck would glitter on it.
"Look," he said to Nicholas, "the little fish are there. We must be as
quick as we can. Sometimes if the shoal begins jumping they will all
jump out."
And bending forward to get his whole weight into the work, he pushed
forward towards the land.
The moonlight fell full on his body, dripping and glistening from the
waist downwards with the salt water, and threw the straining muscles
which line the spine, and those chords behind the shoulder-blade which
painters love, into strong light and shadow, as he pulled against the
weight of the dragging net. Already the water came only to his knees,
and the catch was imminent, when suddenly from the net there came a
rustle and a splash like myriad little pebbles being thrown into the
sea, and he turned round just in time to see the whole shoal, which
glistened like a silver sheet, rise and drop into the water outside.
"The little Turks," he said, angrily, "they are all gone."
"Better to pull the net in and look," said Nicholas; "a part only may
have leaped."
Mitsos shook his head.
"When they go like that it is all of them," he said.
Mitsos was quite right. There was a stray fish or two still in the net,
but so few that they were hardly worth picking out.
"That will do for to-night, won't it?" he said. "We have fished all the
best places."
Nicholas assenting, he lay down and rolled over in the warm, dry sand
once or twice, and then standing up brushed the wet stuff off his body.
Then spreading the net out on the rocks higher up on the beach, Mitsos
went off to fetch his shirt. Nicholas employed himself in picking up a
few stray fish, and put them into the creel. Then rolling up the net
they walked back to the boat.
CHAPTER III
THE STORY OF A BRIGAND
The wind, which had taken them straight across the bay, still blew
freshening from the same quarter, and was dead against them. They would
have to make two long tacks to get home--the first, right across to the
island in the middle of the bay; the second, back again to the head of
it; and as soon as they were well off on the outward tack, Mitsos went
to the stern of the boat and sat down by Nicholas.
"It is time for the stories, is it not?" he said.
"Yes, we will have the stories now."
Nicholas paused a moment.
"Mitsos," he said, "I am going to tell you about a part of my life of
which I have never spoken to you before, for, until now, I have only
told you boys' stories to amuse a boy. But now I am going to tell you a
story for a man. This all happened before you were born, twenty years
ago, when I was a brigand."
Mitsos stared.
"A brigand, Uncle Nicholas? You?"
"Brigand, outlaw, klepht, whatever you like to call it. A man with a
price set on his head--it is there now for you to take if you like--a
man without any home but the mountains. Yet one may do worse than live
in the mountains, Mitsos, and drink to the 'good bullet,' praying one
might be killed rather than fall alive into the hands of the Turk.
The first part of my story is like many other stories I have told you
before; it is the second part, when I tell you why I was a brigand,
that will be new to you--a story, as I have said, not for a boy, but
for a man.
"I used to live then at Dimitzana, in Arcadia, and I became a brigand
on the night that my wife died. Why and how that happened comes later.
Well, there I was living in the mountains round Arcadia, sheltering and
hiding for the most part of the day in the woods, but keeping near some
mountain path, so that if a Turk or two or three came by I could--how
shall I say it?--do business with them. For a month or two I was
a-hunting alone, and then I was joined by other men from Dimitzana, who
also had become outlaws. With them I went hunting on rather a larger
scale--we used to take Turks and get ransoms for them. But never did we
take or molest a Greek or lay hands on any woman, Greek or Turk. For
the most part we were very fortunate, and all the time we lost but few
men, and of those the heads of none fell into the hands of the Turks,
for if one was wounded beyond healing we all went and kissed him and
said good-bye; and then one cut his head off and buried it, so that the
Turks should not dishonor him."
Nicholas paused a moment, and then laughed gently to himself.
"Never in my life shall I forget when we took Mohammed Bey--a fat-belly
man, Mitsos, and a devil, with a paunch for two men and a woman's skin.
To see him tied on his mule, crying out to Allah and Mohammed to rescue
him and his dinner from the infidels, as if Mohammed had nothing better
to do than look after such swine! I told him that he would only spend
a day or two with us in the mountains until his friends ransomed him,
adding that we would do our best to make him comfortable. But he wept
tears of pure oil and said that Mohammed would avenge him, which, as
yet, the Prophet has omitted to do. But there is one drawback to that
sort of life, little Mitsos--one cannot keep clean. Sometimes, if one
is travelling or being pursued, one has to go a whole day, or more,
without water to drink, much less to wash in. Once, I remember, we had
been all day without water, and could not find any when we stopped for
the night; but there was a heavy dew, and, though it was a cold night,
we all sat without our shirts for an hour, laying them on the ground
until they were wet with dew, and then wrung them out into our mouths.
Ah, horrible! horrible!"
Nicholas spat over the side of the boat at the thought, and then went
on.
"For the most part we lived up in the mountains to the north of
Arcadia, but somehow or other when summer came we all began to head
southward again. We never spoke to each other of where we were going,
for we all knew. And one evening, just before sunset, we were on the
brow of a big wooded hill above Dimitzana and looked at our homes
again. Homesickness and want of water--these were the two things which
made me suffer, and I would drink the wringings of a shirt sooner than
be sick for home.
"All next day we stopped there, sitting on that spur of wooded hill
looking at home as if our eyes would start from our heads. Now one of
us and then another would roll over, burying his face in his hands, and
the rest of us would pretend not to notice. I cannot say for certain
what the others did when they buried their faces like that; for myself
I can only say that I sobbed--for some had wives there, and some
children. And it hurts a man to sob unless he is a Turk, for Turks sob
if the coffee is not to their taste.
"That evening I could not bear it any longer, and I said to the others,
'I must go down and see my house again.' They tried to stop me, for it
is a foolish thing for an outlaw to go home when there is a price on
his head; but I would not listen to them.
"And I went down to the village and walked up the street, past the
fountain and past the church. I met many Greeks whom I knew, but I
made signs to them that they should not recognize me. Luckily for me
the garrison of Turks had been changed, and though I passed several
soldiers in the street, they stared at me, being a stranger, but did
not know who I was.
"Then I went up past the big plane-tree and saw my house. The windows
were all broken and the door was down, for that, too, had the Turks
done in their malicious anger at not finding me there. And on the
door-step my father was sitting. He was very old, eighty or near it,
and he was playing with a doll that had belonged to my daughter."
Nicholas paused a moment.
"Mitsos," he went on, "you do not know what it is to feel keen,
passionate joy and sorrow mixed together like that, ludicrously. It
is not right that a man should have to bear such a thing, for when
I saw my father sitting there nursing the doll I could not have
contained myself, not if ten companies of angels had been withstanding
me or twenty of devils; and I ran up to him and sat down by him, and
kissed him, and said, 'Father, don't you know me?' But he did not say
anything. He only looked at me in a puzzled sort of way, and went on
nursing his doll.
"It is odd that one remembers these little things, but the stupid face
of the doll, somehow, I remember better than I remember the face of my
father.
"I stopped in the village for an hour, perhaps more, and I swore an
oath which I have never yet forgotten and which I will never forget.
In the church we have a shrine to the blessed Jesus and another to His
mother, and one to St. George, and to each of them I lit tapers and
prayed to them that they would help me to accomplish my oath. They have
helped me and they will help me, and you, Mitsos, can help me, too."
The boy looked up.
"What was your oath, Uncle Nicholas," he said, "and how can I help you?"
He laid his hand on Nicholas's knee, and Nicholas felt it trembling.
The story was going home.
"I will tell you," he said; "but, first, I must tell you how it was I
became an outlaw. This was the way of it:
"You never knew my wife: she died before you were born. She was
the most beautiful and the best-loved of women. That you will not
understand. You do not know yet what a woman is to a man, and your
cousin Helen, to whom the doll belonged, would have been as beautiful
as her mother. A fortnight before I became an outlaw there came a new
officer to command the garrison at Dimitzana. He was a pleasant-seeming
man, and to me, being the mayor of the village, he paid much attention.
He would sit with us all in the garden after dinner. Sometimes I asked
him to take his dinner with us; sometimes he asked me to dine with him.
But Catharine always disliked him; often she was barely civil to him.
He had been in the place nearly a fortnight when I had to go away for
a night, or perhaps two, to Andritsaena for the election of the mayor,
for I had some little property there, and therefore a vote in the
matter. I left about midday, but I had not gone more than four hours
from the town when I met a man from Andritsaena, who told me that the
election would be an affair of form only, as one of the two candidates
had resigned. So I turned my horse round and went home.
"It was dark before I got to the village, and I noticed that there was
no light in my house. However, I supposed that Catharine was spending
the evening with some friend, and I suspected nothing. But it got later
and ever later and she did not come, so at last I went out and called
at all the houses where she was likely to be. She was not at any of
them, and no one had seen her. Then unwillingly, and with a heart grown
somehow suddenly cold, I determined to go to the officer's quarters and
ask if he had seen her. There was a light burning in one of the upper
windows, but the door was locked.
"It was when I found that the door was locked that I drew my pistol
from my belt and loaded it, and then I waited a moment. In that moment
I heard the sound of a woman sobbing and crying from inside the house,
and the next minute I had burst the door open. The room inside was
dark, but a staircase led up from it through the floor of the room
above, and I made two jumps of it. Helen--she was only seven years
old--ran across the room, perhaps knowing my step, crying 'Father,
father!' and as my head appeared the officer fired. He missed me, and
shot Helen dead.
"Before he could fire again I fired at him. He fell with a rattling,
broken sound across the floor, and never spoke nor moved. Catharine was
there, and she came slowly across the room to me.
"'Ah, you have come,' she said; 'you are too late.'
"I sat down on the bed, and my throat was as dry as a sirocco wind, and
laid the double-barrelled pistol, still smoking, by me. Neither of us,
I am sure, gave one thought to the man who was lying there, perhaps
hardly to Helen, for dishonor is worse than death; and for me I could
say no word, but sat there like a thing broken.
"'You are too late,' she repeated; 'and for me this is the only way.'
"And before I could stop her she had taken up the pistol and shot
herself through the head.
"The shots had aroused the soldiers, and two or three burst in up the
stairs. With the officer's pistol, for I had no time to reload mine, I
killed the first, and he went bumping down the stairs, knocking one man
over. Then I opened the window and dropped. It was not more than ten
feet from the ground, and I had only a few feet to fall."
He paused a moment and stood up, letting go of the rudder and raising
his hands.
"God, to whom vengeance belongs," he cried, "and blessed Mother of
Jesus, and holy Nicholas, my patron, help me to keep my vow."
He stood there for a moment in silence.
"And my vow--" he said to Mitsos.
"Your vow--your vow!" cried Mitsos. "The foul devils--your vow is to
root out the Turk, and to-morrow I, too, will light tapers to the holy
saints and make the vow you made. Christ Jesus, the devils! And you
must show me how to keep it."
"Amen to that," said Nicholas. "Enough for to-night, we will speak of
it no more."
He sat down again and took the rudder, and for five minutes or so there
was silence, broken only by the steady hiss of the water round the
boat, and then Mitsos, still in silence and trembling with a strange
excitement, put about on the second tack. Nicholas did not speak, but
sat with wide eyes staring into the darkness, seemingly unconscious of
the boy.
This second tack brought them up close under the sea-wall of Abdul
Achmet, and the white house gleamed brightly in the moonlight. Then, as
Mitsos was putting about again on the tack which would take them home,
Nicholas looked up at it and spoke for the first time.
"That is a new house, is it not?" he said.
"Yes, it is the house of that pig Achmet," said Mitsos.
"Why is he a pig above all other Turks?"
"Because he took our vineyard away and said he would pay a fair price
for it. Not a piastre has he paid. Look, there are a couple of women on
the terrace."
Two women of the house were leaning over the wall. Just as they went
about Nicholas saw a man, probably one of the eunuchs, come up out of
the shadow, and as he got up to them he struck the nearer one on the
face. The woman cried out and said to him, "What is that for?"
Nicholas started and looked eagerly towards them. "Did you hear,
Mitsos?" he said, "she spoke in Greek."
"One of those women?" said Mitsos. "And why not?"
"How do you suppose she knows Greek?"
"Yes, it is strange. We shall not get home in this tack."
CHAPTER IV
THE MIDNIGHT ORDEAL
For the next two days Nicholas devoted himself to the education of
Mitsos. He took the boy out shooting with him and taught him how to
stand as still as a rock or a tree, how to take advantage of the
slightest cover in approaching game, and how, if there was no cover, to
wriggle snake-wise along the ground so that the coarse tall grass and
heather concealed him. There were plenty of mountain hares and roe-deer
on the hills outside Nauplia towards Epidaurus, and they had two days'
excellent shooting.
They were walking home together after sunset on the second day, and
slung over the pony's back were two roe-deer, one of which Mitsos had
shot himself, and several hares which Nicholas, with a skill that
appeared almost superhuman to the boy, had killed running. The pony was
tired and hung back on the bridle, and Mitsos, with the rope over his
shoulder, was pulling more than leading it.
"And if," Nicholas was saying to him, "if you can approach a roe-deer
as you approached that one to-day, Mitsos, without being seen, you can
also approach a man in the same way, for in things like these the most
stupid of beasts is man. And it is very important when you are hunting
man, or being hunted by him, which is quite as exciting and much less
pleasant, that you should be able to approach him, or pass by him
unseen. After two days I shall be going away, but I shall leave this
gun behind for you."
"For me, Uncle Nicholas?" said Mitsos, scarcely believing his ears.
"Yes, but it shall be no toy-thing to you. For the present you must
go out every day shooting, but you must take the sport as a matter
concerning your life or death, instead of the life and death of a piece
of meat. Stalk every roe as if it were a man whose purpose is to kill
you, and if ever it sees you before you get a shot you must cry shame
on yourself for having wasted your time and my gift to you. But go
fishing, too, and treat that seriously. Do not go mooning in the boat
just to amuse yourself, or only for the catching of fish. Before you
start settle how you are to make your course, in two tacks it may be,
or three, and do so. Practise taking advantage of a wind which blows no
stronger than a man whistling."
"I can sail a boat against any one in Nauplia," said Mitsos, proudly.
"And Nauplia is a very small place, little Mitsos. For instance, we
ought to have got back from our fishing in two tacks, not three. And
study the winds--know what wind to expect in the morning, and know
exactly when the land breeze springs up. Go outside the harbor, too;
know the shapes of the capes and inlets of the gulf outside as you know
the shape of your own hand."
"But how can I shoot and fish, and also look after the vines and get
work in other vineyards in the autumn?"
"That will be otherwise seen to. Obey your father absolutely. I have
spoken to him. Also, you stop at home too much in the evenings. Go and
sit at the cafés in the town and play cards and draughts after dinner,
yet not only for the sake of playing. Keep your ears always open, and
remember all you hear said about these Turks. When I come back you
must be able to tell me, if I ask you, who are good Greeks, who would
risk something for the sake of their wives and children, and who are
the mules, who care for nothing but to drink their sour wine and live
pig-lives. Above all, remember that you haven't seen me for a year--for
two, if you like."
Mitsos laughed.
"Let it not be a year before you come again, uncle."
"It may be more; I cannot tell. You are full young, but--but--well, we
shall see when I come back. Here we are on the plain again. Give me
that lazy brute's bridle. Are you tired, little one?"
"Hungry, chiefly."
"And I also. But, luckily, it is a small thing whether one is hungry
or not. You will learn some day what it is to be dead beat--so hungry
that you cannot eat, so tired that you cannot sleep. And when that day
comes, for come it will, God send you a friend to be by your side, or
at least a drain of brandy; but never drink brandy unless you feel you
will be better for it. Well, that is counsel enough for now. If you
remember it all, and act by it, it will be a fine man we shall make of
the little one."
Nicholas went to see the mayor of Nauplia the next day, and told
Mitsos he had to put on his best clothes and come with him. His best
clothes were, of course, Albanian, consisting of a frilled shirt, an
embroidered jacket, fustanella, gaiters, and red shoes with tassels. To
say that he abhorred best clothes as coverings for the skin would be
a weak way of stating the twitching discomfort they produced in him;
but somehow, when Nicholas was there, it seemed to him natural to wish
to look smart, and he found himself regretting that his fustanella
had not been very freshly washed, and that it was getting ingloriously
short for his long legs.
The mayor received Nicholas with great respect, and ordered his wife to
bring in coffee and spirits for them. He looked at Mitsos with interest
as he came in, and, as Mitsos thought, nodded to Nicholas as if there
was some understanding between them.
When coffee had come and the woman had left the room, Nicholas drew his
chair up closer, and beckoned Mitsos to come to him.
"This is the young wolf," he said. "He is learning to prowl for
himself."
"So that he may prowl for others?" said Demetri.
"Exactly. Now, friend, I go to-morrow, and while I am away I want you
to be as quiet as a hunting cat. I have done all I wanted to do here,
and it is for you to keep very quiet till we are ready. There has been
much harm done in Athens by men who cannot hold their tongues. As you
know, the patriots there are collecting money and men, but they are so
proud of their subscriptions, which are very large, that they simply
behave like cocks at sunrise on the house-roofs. Here let there be no
talking. When the time comes Father Andréa will speak; he will put the
simmering-pot on the fire. I would give five years of my life to be
able to talk as he can talk."
"The next five years?" asked Demetri.
Nicholas smiled.
"Well, no, not the next five years. I would not give them up for fifty
thousand years of heaven, I think. Have you any corn?"
"Black corn for the Turk?"
"Surely."
Demetri glanced at Mitsos, and raised his eyebrows. "Even now the mills
are grinding," he said.
"Let there be no famine."
Mitsos, of course, understood no word of this, and his uncle did not
think fit to enlighten him.
"You will hear more about the black corn," he said to him. "It makes
good bread. At present forget that you have heard of it at all. Have
you got these men for me?" he asked, turning again to Demetri.
"Yes; do you want them to-day?"
"No. Mitsos will go with me as far as Nemea, and they had better join
me there to-morrow night. Turkish dress will be safer."
He rose, leaving the brandy untasted.
"Will you not drink?" asked Demetri.
"No, thanks. I never drink spirits."
Nicholas left next day after sunset, for a half-moon would be rising
by ten of the night, and during the day the plain was no better than
a grilling-rack. Already also it was safer for Greeks to travel by
night, for it was known or suspected among the Turks that some movement
of no friendly sort was on foot among them, and it had several times
happened before now that an attack had been made upon countrymen,
who were waylaid and stopped in solitary mountain paths by bands of
Turkish soldiers. They were questioned about the suspected designs of
their nation, on which subject they for the most part were entirely
ignorant, as the plans of their leaders were at present but sparingly
known, and the interview often ended with a shot or a dangling body.
But through the incredible indolence and laziness of the Turks, while
they feared and suspected what was going on, they contented themselves
with stopping and questioning travellers whom they chanced on, and made
no increase in the local garrisons, and kept no watch upon the roads
at night. Nicholas, of course, knew this, and when, as now, he was
making a long journey into a disaffected part of the country, where
his presence would at once have aroused suspicion--and indeed, as he
had told Mitsos, there had been a price put on his head twenty years
ago--he travelled by night, reaching the village where he was to stay
before daybreak, and not moving again till after dark.
Accordingly he and Mitsos set off after sunset across the plain towards
Corinth. The main road led through Argos, which they avoided, keeping
well to the right of the river bed. Their horses were fresh, and
stepped out at an amble, which covered the ground nearly as quickly as
a trot. By ten o'clock the moon was swung high in a bare heaven, and
they saw in front of them a blot of huddled houses in the white light,
the village of Phyctia. Again they made a detour to the right, in order
to avoid it, for a garrison of Turks was stationed there, turning off
half a mile before its outlying farms began, so as not even to run the
risk of awakening the dogs. Their way lay close under the walls of
the ancient Mycenæ, where it was reported that an antique treasure of
curious gold had lately been found, and as they were in plenty of time
to reach Nemea by midnight, Nicholas halted here for a few minutes, and
he and Mitsos looked wonderingly at the great walls of the citadel.
"They say the kings of Greece are buried here, little Mitsos," said he;
"and perhaps your beard will scarce be grown before there are kings of
Greece once more."
Beyond Mycenæ they followed a mountain path leading through the woods,
which joined a few miles farther up the main road from Corinth to
Argos, and as it was now late, and the ways were quiet, Nicholas saw
no reason for not taking this road as soon as they struck it, and they
wound their way up along the steep narrow path towards it.
The moon had cleared the top of Mount Elias behind them--the moon
of midsummer southern nights--and shone with a great light as clear
as running water, and turning everything to ebony and gleaming
cream-colored ivory. Mitsos was riding first, more than half asleep,
and letting his pony pick its own way among the big stones and bowlders
which strewed the rough path, when suddenly it shied violently, nearly
unseating him, and wheeled sheer round. He woke with a start and
grasped at the rope bridle, which he had tied to the wooden pommel on
the saddle-board, to check it. Nicholas's pony had shied too, but he
was the first to head it round again, and Mitsos, who had been carried
past him, dismounted and led his pony, trembling and restive, up to the
other. Nicholas had dismounted too, and was standing at the point where
the bridle-path led into the main road when Mitsos came up.
"What did they shy at?" Mitsos began, when suddenly he saw that which
stopped the words on his tongue.
From a tree at the juncture of the paths, in the full, white blaze of
the moonlight, hung the figure of a man. His arms were dropped limply
by his side, and his feet dangled some two feet from the ground. On his
shoulder was a deep gash, speaking of a struggle before he was secured,
and blood in black clots was sprinkled on the front of his white linen
tunic. Above the strangling line which went round his neck the muscles
were thick and swollen and the glands of the throat congested into
monstrous lumps.
But Nicholas only stopped the space of a deep-drawn breath, and then,
throwing his bridle to Mitsos, drew his knife and cut the rope. The
two horses shied so violently as Nicholas staggered forward with his
murdered burden that Mitsos, unable to hold them both, let go of his
own and clung with both hands to the bridle of Nicholas's horse, while
his own animal clattered off down the path homeward. Then soothing its
terror from the other, he led it past into the main road, where he tied
it up to a tree some twenty yards on, and himself returned to where
Nicholas was kneeling over the body.
He looked up and spoke with a deadly calm. "We are too late," he said;
"he is quite dead."
And suddenly, after the hot-blooded, warm-hearted nature of his race,
this strong man, who had lived half his life with blood and death and
murder to be the companions of his days and nights, burst into tears.
Mitsos was awed and silent.
"Do you know him, Uncle Nicholas?" he asked, at length.
"No, I do not know him, but he is one of my unhappy race, whom this
brood of devils oppresses and treats as it would not treat a dog.
Mitsos," he said, with a gesture of fire, "swear that you will never
forget this! Look here, look here!" he cried. "Look how they have
made of him an offence to the light; look how they killed him by a
disgraceful death, and why? For no reason but because he was a Greek.
Look at his face; force yourself to look at it. The lips are purple;
the eyes, as dead as grapes, start from his head. He was killed like
a dog. If they catch you alone in such a place they will do the same
to you, to you whose only offence is, as this poor burden's has been,
that you are Greek. Look at his neck, swollen in his death struggle. Do
you know how the accursed men killed Katzantones and his brother? They
beat them to death with wooden hammers, sparing the head only, so that
they might live the longer. Katzantones was ill and weak, and cried out
with the pain; but Yorgi, as he lay on the ground, with arms and legs
and ankles and hands broken, and lying out of semblance of a man, only
laughed, and told them they could not kill a fly with such puny blows."
The boy suddenly turned away.
"Enough, enough!" he said. "I do not wish to look. It is too horrible.
Why do you make it more frightful to me?"
Nicholas did not seem to hear what he said, and went on, in a sort of
savage frenzy.
"Look, look, I tell you!" he cried, "and then swear in the name of God,
remembering also what I told you of my wife and child, that you will
have no pity on the race that has done this--on neither man, woman,
nor child; not even on the poor, weak women, for they are the mothers
of monsters who do these things. This is the work of the men they
bear--this and outrage and infamous lust, and the sins of the cities
which God destroyed."
He was silent a moment, and then spoke more calmly.
"So swear, Mitsos, in the name of God!"
And Mitsos, with quivering lips of horror, but suddenly steeled, looked
at the dead thing and swore.
"And now," said Nicholas, "take hold of the feet, and we will give it
what burial we can. Stay, wait a moment." He tore off a piece of the
man's tunic, and, dipping his finger in the blood that still was wet
on the shoulder, wrote in Turkish the word "Revenge," and fastened it
to the end of the rope which still dangled from the tree. Then he and
Mitsos took the body some yards distant into the copse that lined the
road, and tearing up brushwood gave it covering. On this they laid
stones until it was completely concealed and defended against the
preying creatures of the mountain.
Then Nicholas bared his head.
"God forgive him all his sins," he said, "and impute the double of them
to his murderers. Ah, God," he cried, and his voice rose to a yell,
"grant me that I may kill and kill and kill; and their souls I leave to
Thee, most Just and most Terrible!"
They went to where Nicholas's horse was tied up, and he, hearing the
other had bolted, made Mitsos mount his, as he would have to walk back,
and himself went on foot. It was in silence that they climbed the pass,
but in another hour they came to the junction of the two roads from
Nemea and Corinth, and Nicholas told his nephew to go no farther.
"It is safer that I should go alone here," he said; "and it is already
late, and you will have to walk. Waste no time about getting back to
the plain; the nights are short."
He paused for a moment, looking affectionately at the boy.
"Thus are you baptized in blood," he said, then paused, and he
moistened his lips. "A great deal may depend on you, little one," he
went on. "I have watched you growing up, and you are growing up as I
would have you grow. Distrust everything and everybody except, perhaps,
your father and myself, and be afraid of nothing, while you suspect
everything. At the same time I want you, and many will want you; so
take care."
He put his hands on his shoulders.
"I shall be back in a year or six months, or perhaps to-morrow, or
perhaps never. That does not concern you. Your father and I will always
tell you what to do. And now good-bye."
He kissed him on the cheek, mounted his horse, and rode off, never
looking behind. Mitsos stopped still for a moment looking after him,
and then turned to go home.
Five minutes more brought Nicholas to the edge of the village where
the three men whom Demetri had sent were waiting for him. One of them
was a Greek servant, who held Nicholas's horse while he dismounted
and changed his Albanian costume for a Turkish dress; the others were
leaders of local movements against the Turks, and were going with him
to Corinth. Like Nicholas himself, they all spoke Turkish.
Nicholas dressed himself quickly, but then stopped for a moment
irresolute. Then--
"Take the horse on," he said to the servant. "I will go on foot awhile."
Mitsos meantime was walking quickly along the road back towards Argos.
He would scarcely acknowledge to himself how very much he disliked
the thought of taking that bridle-path through the woods, for the
recollection he retained of that end of rope dangling from the tree,
with the fragment of tunic fluttering in the breeze, and that heap of
white stones glimmering among the bushes, was too vivid for his liking.
Even his pony would have been companionable; but his pony, as he hoped,
was near home by this time.
Once or twice he thought he heard movements and whispered rustlings in
the bushes, which made his heart beat rather quicker than its wont.
Ordinarily he would not have noticed such things, but the scene at the
crossroad still twanged some string of horror within him.
However, the road must be trod, and keeping his eyes steadily
averted--for like his race he held ghosts in accredited horror--he
marched with a show of courage past the spot, and began making his way
down the rough bridle-path.
Thin skeins of clouds had risen from the sea, and the moon was
travelling swiftly through them, casting only a diffused and aqueous
light; but the path, with the glimmering white stones of its cobbling,
showed clearly enough, and there was no fear of his missing his way.
But about a couple of hundred yards down the path he heard a noise
which made his heart spring suddenly into his throat and stay there
poised for a moment, giving a little cracking sound at each beat. The
sound needed not interpretation; two men, if not three, were running
down the main road he had just left. Instantly he had left the path,
and striking into the bushes at the side moved quickly up the hill
again, hoping to turn them off the scent. But as they came nearer he
stopped, still crouching in the bushes, and though he was, as he knew,
very indifferently concealed, he dared not go farther among the trees
for fear that the sound of his steps crackling among the dry brushwood
should lead them to him, and, remembering Nicholas's lessons in the
art of keeping still, he waited. His pursuers, if pursuers they were,
seemed to go the more slowly as they turned into the path he had just
left, and soon he caught sight of them through the tree trunks. There
were two of them, and he saw they were Turks. As they came nearer he
could hear them speaking together in low tones, and then one ran off
down the path, in order, so he supposed, to see whether he was still on
ahead.
Mitsos drew a long breath; there was only one to be reckoned with now,
and stealing out of the bush where he had been crouching, he moved as
quietly as he could farther into cover. But a twig cracking with a
sharp report under his foot revealed his hiding, and the man who had
waited in the path shouted out to the other. The next moment they were
in pursuit.
As he pushed through the trees that seemed to stretch out fingers to
clutch him, Mitsos felt in his belt for the knife he always carried
with him, but to his wondering dismay found it had gone. Never in his
life could he remember being without it; but this was no season to
waste time, and knowing that his only chance lay in running he plunged
along through the bushes in order to get back to the path and match his
speed against theirs. But his pursuers were close behind him, and in
jumping, or trying to jump, a small thicket which closed his path, he
caught his foot and fell.
Then came cold fear with a clutch. Before he had time to recover
himself they had seized him. Once he let out with his right hand at the
face of one of the men, who just avoided the blow, and then both wrists
were seized. They whipped a cord round his legs, tied his hands behind
his back, and carried him off straight to the tree from which the end
of the rope and its ghastly legend were still hanging.
A third Turk was sitting there on the ground in the shadow smoking, and
as the others came up he said a word to them in Turkish which Mitsos
did not understand. Then one of his captors turned to him, and speaking
in Greek, "Tell us where Nicholas Vidalis is," he said, "and we will
let you go."
Silence.
"We know who you are. You are Mitsos Codones, the son of Constantine,
from Nauplia, and he is your uncle."
Mitsos looked up.
"That is so. But I have not seen him for a year--more than a year," he
said.
One of the men laughed.
"Tell us where he is," he said, "and we will let you go, and this for
your information, for you were seen with him yesterday in Nauplia," and
he held out a handful of piastres.
This time Mitsos laughed, though laughing was not in his thoughts, and
the sound was strange to his own ears.
"That is a lie," he said; "he has not been at Nauplia for a year. As
for your piastres, if you think I am telling you a lie, do you suppose
that I should speak differently for the sake of them? Be damned to your
piastres," and he laughed again.
"I will give you one minute," said the other, "and then you will hang
from that tree if you do not tell us. One of your countrymen, I see,
has cut the rope, but there will be enough for a tall boy like you."
They strolled away towards where the third man was sitting, leaving him
there bound.
"Perhaps the end of the rope might help him to speak," said one. But
the third man shook his head.
What Mitsos thought of during these few seconds he never clearly knew,
and as far as he wished for anything, he wished them to be quick. He
noticed that the edge of the moon was free of the clouds again, and it
would soon be lighter. He felt a breeze come up from the east, which
fluttered the rag of tunic hanging from the rope, and once a small
bird, clucking and frightened, flew out of a thicket near. Then the
two men came up and pulled him under the tree. The end of the piece of
tunic flapped against his forehead.
They untied the rope, and the one made a noose in it, while the other
turned back the collar of his coat. Then the rope was passed round his
throat and tightened till he felt the knot behind, just where the hair
grows short on the neck.
"One more chance," said the man. "Will you tell us?"
Mitsos had shut his eyes, and he clinched his teeth to help himself not
to speak. For a moment they all waited, quite still.
"Then up with him," said the man.
He waited for the choking tension of the rope, still silent, still with
clinched teeth and eyelids. But instead of that he felt two hands on
his shoulders, and fingers at the knot behind, and he opened his eyes.
The third man, who had been silent, was standing in front of him.
"Mitsos," he said, "my great little Mitsos."
For a moment the world spun dizzily round him, and he half fell, half
staggered against Nicholas.
"You!" he said.
"Yes, I. Mitsos, will you forgive me? I ought to have been certain of
you, and indeed in my heart I was; but I wanted to test you to the
full, to put the fear of death before you, for it was needful that I
should give convincing proof to others. My poor boy, don't tremble so;
it was necessary, believe me. By the Virgin, Mitsos, if you had hit
one hundredth part of a second sooner one of these men would have gone
home with no nose and fewer teeth. You hit straight from the shoulder,
with your weight in your fist. And that double you made up the hill was
splendid. Mitsos, speak to me!"
But the boy, pale and trembling, had sunk down on the ground with bent
head, and said nothing.
"Here, spirits," said Nicholas, and he made Mitsos drink.
He sat down by him, and with almost womanly tenderness was stroking his
hair.
"You were as firm as a rock," he said, "when you stood there, and I saw
the muscle of your jaw clinch."
Mitsos, to whom spirit was a new thing, recovered himself quickly with
a little choking.
"I wasn't frightened at the moment," he said; "I was only frightened
before, when I knew I was caught."
Then, as his boyish spirits began to reassert themselves, "Did I--did I
behave all right, Uncle Nicholas?"
"I wish to see no better behavior. It is even as your father told me,
that you were fit for the keeping of secrets."
Mitsos flushed with pleasure.
"Then I don't mind if it has made you think that, though, by the
Virgin, my stomach was cold. But if I had had my knife there would have
been blood let. I cannot think how I lost it."
Nicholas laughed.
"Here it is," he said. "It was even I who took it away from you while
you were dozing as you rode. I thought it might be dangerous in your
barbarous young hands."
Mitsos put it back in his belt.
"I am ready now. I shall start off again."
Nicholas rose, too.
"I will come with you as far as the plain, and then my road is forward.
The piastres were a poor trick, eh?"
"Very poor indeed, I thought," said Mitsos, grinning.
The uncle and nephew walked on together, and the other two men strolled
more slowly after them. Nicholas could have shouted aloud for joy. He
had found what he had sought with such fastidiousness--some one whom
he could trust unreservedly, and over whom he had influence. To do
him justice, the cruelty of what he had done made his stomach turn
against himself; but he was associated with men who rightly mistrusted
everybody, except on convincing proof of their trustworthiness. Mitsos
had stood the severest test that could be devised without flinching. He
was one of ten thousand.
At the end of the woods they parted. Mitsos' nerve had come back to
him, and the knowledge that he had won Nicholas's trust, combined with
the fascination the man exercised over him, quite overscored any grudge
he might have felt, for Nicholas's last words to him were words to be
remembered.
"And now, good-bye," he said. "You have behaved in a way I scarce
dared to hope you could, though I think I believed you would. You have
been through a man's test, the test of a strong, faithful man. Others
will soon know of it, and know you to be trustworthy to the uttermost.
Greece shall be revenged, and you shall be among the foremost of her
avengers."
So Nicholas went his way northward and Mitsos towards home, and just as
the earliest streak of dawn lit the sky he reached his father's house.
The truant pony was standing by the way-side cropping the dew-drenched
grass.
CHAPTER V
MITSOS PICKS CHERRIES FOR MARIA
At Nauplia the summer passed quietly, though from other parts of the
country came fresh tales of intolerable taxation, cruelty, and outrage,
hideous beyond belief. But this Argive district was exceptionally
lucky in having for its governor a man who saw that it was possible
to overstep the mark even in dealing with these infidel dogs; partly,
also, Nicholas's visit, his injunctions to the leading Greeks to keep
quiet, and his hints that they would not need to keep quiet long
produced a certain effect; as also did an exhortation delivered by
Father Andréa, in which he spoke of the blessings of peace with a
ferocious tranquillity which left no loop-hole for misconstruction.
July and August were a tale of scorched and burning days, but the vines
were doing well, and the heat only served to ripen them the sooner.
In some years, when the summer months had been cold and unseasonable,
the grapes would not swell to full ripeness till the latter days of
October, and thus there was the danger of the first autumn storms
wrecking the maturing crop. But this year, thanks to the heat, there
was no doubt that they would be ripe for gathering by the third week in
September, and, humanly speaking, a fine grape harvest was assured.
A certain change had come over Mitsos since the events of the night
recorded in the last chapter. He suddenly seemed to have awoke to a
sense of his budding manhood, and his cat, much to that sedately minded
creature's satisfaction, was allowed to shape her soft-padded basking
life as she pleased. He used to go out in the dewiness of dawn, while
it was still scarce light, to try for a shot at the hares which came
down from the hills at night to feed in the vineyards, and at evening
again he would lie in wait near a spring below Mount Elias to shoot
the roe when they came to water. But during the day there was no mark
for his gun, for the game went high away among the hills to avoid the
broiling heat of the plains, or stayed in cover of the pine woods
upon the mountain-sides, where the growth was too thick for shooting,
and where some cracking twig would ever advertise a footstep, however
stealthy.
But the sudden and violent winds of the summer months had set in, and
sailing gave him day-long occupation. He made it his business to know
the birth-hour of the land-breeze, the length of the dead calm that
follows, and the hour when the sea-breeze again winnows the windless
heaven; to read the signs of the thread-like streamers in the upper
air, which mean a strong breeze; the vibration on the sea's horizon,
like the trembling of a steel spring, which means heat and calm, and
the soft-feathered clouds, with dim, blurred outlines that tell of
moisture in the air, which will fall the hour after sunset in fine,
warm, needle-pointed rain. His boat might often be seen scudding across
the bay and into the water of the gulf outside, skirting round the
promontories, running up into the creeks and inlets until, as Nicholas
had told him he should do, he got to know the shape of the land as
he knew the shape of his own head. Above all, he would practise
beating out to sea in the teeth of the sea-breeze, running out to a
given point in as few tacks as possible, and then, when the sea-breeze
died away, he would put into some inlet, fish for a little, and sleep
curled up in the bottom of the boat, awake with the awakening of the
land breeze, and run back again, close hauled, past Nauplia, and up to
the side of the bay, where he beached his boat. In these long hours
alone on the sea he would sit in the stern, when the boat was steady
on some two-mile tack, thinking intently of the new life for which he
was preparing himself. Though Nicholas's stories, and the tales of
oppression and outrage with which all mouths were full, made personal
to him the longing for vengeance on that bestial breed, it was Nicholas
himself who was the inspirer, and his indignation was scarce more than
an image in a mirror of Nicholas. His uncle had long been acquiring
that domination a man can have for a boy, and the main desire and
resolve of his mind was to obey Nicholas, whatever order he might lay
on him, and this resolve to obey was rapidly becoming an instinct
over-mastering and unique. His father, far from making objections to
his spending his time in sailing and shooting, encouraged him thereto,
for Nicholas had bade him hire labor whenever he wanted a lad in
Mitsos' place, saying that the club at Athens had authorized him to
make payments for such things. Mitsos, in fact, had definitely entered
into the service of his country, and it was only right that his father
should be compensated for the loss of a hand.
But during these months there was little or no farm-work to be done.
Early in July Constantine had put up a little reed-built shed to
overlook his vineyard, and there he spent most of the day scaring away
the birds that came to eat the grapes, and playing with his string of
polished beads, which he passed to and fro between his hands, every
now and then stopping to sling a pebble at a bird he saw settling in
the vines. The sparrows were the greatest enemies, for they would
fly over in flocks of eighty or a hundred and settle in different
parts of the vineyard, and when he cleared one quarter and turned
to clear another, the first covey would be back and renewing their
depredations on the grapes. He had an almost exaggerated repugnance
in taking the funds of the club unless it was absolutely necessary
to hire an extra hand, and until the last week before the harvest he
managed alone; but then--for the grapes were tight-skinned and juicy,
and a single bird holding on to a bunch with its claws and feeding
indiscriminately from this grape and that would spoil the hundredfold
of what it ate--he hired a boy from Nauplia, and erected another shed
some fifty yards off. There they would sit from sunrise to sunset, and
at sunset Mitsos returned brown and fresh, with a song from the sea,
with his black hair drying back into its crisp curls after his evening
bathe, and an enormous appetite. He and Constantine sat together till
about nine, and then Mitsos would go off to the cafés, following
Nicholas's instructions, and play cards or draughts, ever pricking an
attentive ear when comments on the Turks were on the board. Nicholas's
directions, however, that there should be no talking of the great
matter, was being obeyed too implicitly for Mitsos to pick up much; but
he acquired great skill at the game of draughts, even being able to
play three games at a time.
One evening, just before the vintage began, he returned earlier than
usual with a frown on his face. His father was sitting on the veranda,
not expecting him yet.
"Have you heard," said Mitsos, "what these Turks have in hand about the
vintage?"
"About the vintage? No."
"Instead of paying one-tenth to the tax-collector, we are to pay
one-seventh; and instead of paying in grapes, we pay in wine."
"One-seventh? It is impossible!"
"It is true."
"Where did you hear it?"
"In the last hour at the café in the square. They are all clacking and
swearing right and left, and the soldiers are patrolling the streets."
Constantine got up.
"I must go, then," he said. "This is just what Nicholas did not want to
happen. Have there been blows between the soldiers and the Greeks?"
"Yanko knocked a Turkish soldier down with such a bang for calling him
a dog that the man will never have front teeth again. They took him and
clapped him in prison."
"The fat lout shall eat stick from me when he comes out. I suppose,
as usual, he was neither drunk nor sober," said Constantine. "As if
knocking a soldier down took away the tax. Is Father Andréa there?"
"I passed him just now on the road," said Mitsos, "going to the town."
Constantine got up.
"Stop here, Mitsos," he said; "I will catch Father Andréa up, and make
him tell them to be quiet. He can do what he pleases with that tongue
of his."
"But mayn't I come?" said Mitsos, scenting an entrancing row.
"And get your black head broken? No, that will keep for a worthier
cause."
Constantine hurried off and caught Father Andréa up before he entered
the town.
"Father," he said, "you can stop this, for they will listen to you.
Remember what Nicholas said."
Father Andréa nodded.
"I heard there were loud talk and blows in the town, and I am on the
road for that reason. Nicholas is right. We must pay the extra tax, and
for every pint of wine we pay we will exact a gallon of blood. Ah, God,
how I have fasted and prayed one prayer--to wash my hands in the blood
of the Turks."
"Softly," said Constantine, "here is the guard."
The guard at the gate was unwilling at first to let them pass, but
Andréa, without a moment's hesitation, said that he was a priest going
to visit a dying man who wished to make a confession, with Constantine
as witness, and they were admitted.
"God will forgive me that lie," he said, as they passed on. "It is for
His cause that I lied."
Since Mitsos' departure the disturbance had increased. There were
some forty or fifty Greeks collected in the centre of the square,
and Turkish soldiers were coming out one by one from the barracks
and mingling with the crowd. The Greeks, according to their custom,
all carried knives, but were otherwise unarmed; the Turks had guns
and pistols. There was a low, angry murmur going up from the people,
which boded mischief. Just as they came up Father Andréa turned to
Constantine.
"Stop outside the crowd," he said, "do not mix yourself up in this.
They will not touch me, for I am a priest."
Then elbowing his way among the people, he shouted: "A priest--a priest
of God! Let me pass."
The Greeks in the crowd parted, making way for him as he pushed
through, conspicuous by his great height, though here and there a
Turkish soldier tried to stop him. But Andréa demanded to be let into
the middle of them with such authority that they too fell back, and he
continued to elbow his way on. He was already well among the people
when two voices detached themselves, as it were, from the angry, low
murmur, shrilling up apart in loud, violent altercation, and the next
moment a Greek just in front of him rushed forward and stabbed a Turk
in the arm. The soldier raised his pistol and fired, and the man turned
over on his face, with a grunt and one stretching convulsion, dead.
There was a moment's silence, and then the murmur grew shriller and
louder, and the crowd pressed forward. Andréa held up his hand.
[Illustration: "'I AM FATHER ANDRÉA,' HE SHOUTED"]
"I am Father Andréa," he shouted, "whom you know. In God's name listen
to me a moment. Silence there, all of you."
For a moment again there was a lull at his raised voice, and Andréa
took advantage of it.
"The curse of all the saints of God be upon the Greek who next uses his
knife," he cried. "Who is the officer in command?"
A young Turkish officer standing close to him turned round.
"I am in command," he said, "and I command you to go, unless you would
be seized with the other ringleaders."
"I shall not go; my place is here."
"For the last time, go."
"I offer myself as hostage for the good conduct of the Greeks," said
Andréa, quietly. "Blood has been shed. I am here that there may be
no more. Let me speak to them and then take me, and if there is more
disturbance kill me."
"Very good," said the officer. "I have heard of you. But stop the riot
first, if you can. I desire bloodshed no more than you."
The group had now collected round them, still waiting irresolutely, in
the way a crowd does on any one who seems to have authority. Father
Andréa turned to them.
"You foolish children," he cried, "what are you doing? The Sultan has
added a tax, it is true, but will it profit you to be killed like dogs?
You have knives, and you can cut a finger nail with knives, and these
others have guns. This poor dead thing learned that, and he has paid
for his lesson. Is it better for him that he has wounded another man
now that he has gone to appear before God? And those of you who are not
shot will be taken and hanged. I am here unarmed, as it befits a priest
to be. I am a hostage for you. If there is further riot you yourselves
will be shot down like dogs, or as you shoot the little foxes among the
grapes and leave them for the crows to eat; I shall be hanged, for I
go hostage for you; and the tax will be no less than before. So now to
your homes."
The crowd listened silently--for in those days to behave with aught but
respect to a priest was sacrilege--and one or two of the nearest put
back their knives into their belts, yet stood there still irresolute.
"Come, every man to his home," said Andréa again. "Let those who have
wine-shops close them, for there has been blood spilled to-night."
But they still stood there, and the murmur rose and died, and rose
again like a sound carried on a gusty wind, until Andréa, pushing
forward, laid his hand on the shoulder of one of the ringleaders.
"Christos," he said, "there is your home, and your wife waits for you.
Go home, man, lest you are carried in feet first."
The man, directly and individually addressed by a stronger, turned
and went, and the others began to melt away till there were only left
in the square the Turkish soldiers and Andréa. Then he spoke to the
officer again:
"I am at your disposal," he said, "until you are satisfied that things
are quiet again."
The officer stood for a moment without replying. Then, "I wish to treat
you with all courtesy," he said, "and you have saved me a great deal
of trouble to-night. But perhaps it will be better if you stop in my
quarters for an hour or two, though I think we shall have no more of
this. With your permission I will give you in custody."
And with the fine manners of his race, which the Greeks for the most
part could not understand and so distrusted, he beckoned to two
soldiers, who led him off to the officer's quarters.
The Turkish captain remained in the square an hour longer, but the
disturbance seemed to be quite over, and he followed Father Andréa.
"You will smoke or drink?" he said, laying his sword on the table.
"I neither smoke nor drink," answered Andréa.
The officer sat down, looking at him from his dark, lustreless eyes.
"It is natural you should hate us," he said, "and but for you there
would have been a serious disturbance, and not Greek blood alone would
have been shed. I am anxious to know why you stopped the riot."
Father Andréa smiled.
"For the reason I gave to the rioters. Is not that sufficient?"
"Quite sufficient; it only occurred to me there might be a further
reason, a further-reaching reason, so to speak. I will not detain you
any longer. I am sure no further disturbance will take place."
Andréa rose, and for a moment the two men faced each other. They were
both good types of their race: the Greek, fearless and hot-blooded; the
Turk, fearless and phlegmatic.
"I will wish you good-night," said the captain; "perhaps we shall meet
again. My name is Mehemet Salik. You owe nothing to me nor I to you.
You stopped the riot and saved me some trouble, but it was for reasons
of your own. I have detained you till I am satisfied there will be no
more disturbance; so if we meet again no quarter on either side, for we
shall be enemies."
"I shall neither give quarter nor ask it," said Andréa.
The vintage began the next week, and for the time Mitsos had to
abandon his boat and gun for the wine-making, since he alone knew
the particularities of manufacture which Constantine practised--the
amount of fermentation before finally casking the wine, the measure
of resin to be put in, and the right quality of it, all which were as
incommunicable as the unwritten law of tea-making for an individual
taste. The small vineyard close to the house, which was all that was
left to them after the seizure of the bigger vineyard by the Turk,
contained the best vines, which, being nearer to hand, had inevitably
received the better cultivation. These again were divided into two
classes, most of them being the ordinary country stock; but the other
was a nobler grape from Nemea, which yielded the finest wine. They were
always gathered last, and fermented in a barrel by themselves.
The evening before the grape-picking began, several girls from
neighboring farms came to find labor in the gathering for a couple of
days, as the harvest would not be ripe in other vineyards for a day or
two yet. Constantine engaged four of them, who came early next morning,
just as he and Mitsos were getting out the big two-handled panniers in
which the grapes were carried to the press from the vineyard, which lay
dewy and glistening under the clear dawn. Spero, the boy who had been
employed for the last week in scaring birds, was also engaged for the
picking, and in all they were seven. For the larger half of an hour
they all picked together, until two of the big baskets were full and
the treading could begin. The press, an old stone-built construction,
moss-ridden and creviced outside, and coated inside with fine stucco,
stood close to the house. The bottom of it sloped down towards a
small wooden sluice which opened from its lower end, and which could
be raised from the inside when there was sufficient must trodden to
fill one of the big shallow casks in which it was fermented. Mitsos
had spent the previous day in washing and scouring it with avuncular
thoroughness, scrubbing the sides with powdered resin, and when Spero
had wanted to assist in treading the grape instead of gathering, he
looked scornful, and only said:
"We do not make wine for you to wash in. Get you back to the picking."
They poured the first two big panniers of grapes into the press just as
the sun rose, stalks and all, and after turning his trousers up to the
knees, and scrubbing his feet and legs in hot water, Mitsos stepped in
and began the treading. The purple fruit was ripe and tight-skinned,
and the red stuff soon began to splash and spurt up, staining his legs.
Another basket came before he had got the first two well under, and
by degrees the pickers gained on him. The day promised a scorching,
and the press, which had at first stood in the shade, had been swung
round into the full blaze of the sun before a couple of hours were
over. About nine o'clock Constantine, who had just carried up another
basket with Spero, and stayed for a moment looking at Mitsos dancing
fantastically in the sun, saw that there was already stuff enough to
fill a cask.
"There is food for a cask there," he said to Mitsos, "but it is not
trodden enough yet. You will not keep pace without some one to help
you."
Mitsos paused a moment and wiped his face with the back of his hand.
"I am broiled meat," he said. "Yes, send one of the girls. Make her
wash first."
Constantine smiled.
"There speaks Nicholas," he remarked, "who is always right."
So Maria was sent to help Mitsos. She was a pretty girl, about
seventeen years old, fawn eyed and olive skinned. As she stood on the
edge of the press before stepping in, with her shoes off and her skirt
tucked up, Mitsos found himself noticing the gentle curve of her calf
muscle from the ankle to behind the knee, and how prettily one foot,
pink from the hot water, broadened as she rested her weight on it for a
moment. He gave her his hand to help her down into the press, and their
eyes met.
"We shall do nicely now," he said.
Constantine meantime had fetched one of the casks, open at the top,
and with a tap at the bottom, about six inches above the other end,
from which the fermented liquid would be drawn off when it was clear,
and placing it under the sluice, looked over to see if the must was
sufficiently trodden. No baskets had come in for a quarter of an hour,
and Mitsos and Maria between them had reduced the whole must to one
consistency.
"It is ready now," he said to Mitsos; "raise the sluice."
The must had risen above the ring by which the sluice was raised at
the lower end of the press, and Mitsos and Maria groped about for half
a minute or so before they found it. Once they tightly grasped each
other's fingers, and both exclaimed triumphantly, "I've got it."
Maria found it first; but the wood had swollen with the scouring of the
day before and it was stiff, so Mitsos had to raise it himself. Then
with a gurgle and a gulp the purple mass of pulp, juice, stalks, and
skins poured riotously out, splashing Constantine, and foaming into the
cask with a lusty noise. When it was three-quarters full Mitsos closed
the sluice again, for in the process of fermentation the must would
swell to the top, and Constantine and Spero took the barrel, clucking
as it was moved, off into the veranda out of the sun, and covered it
with a cloth.
They all rested for an hour at mid-day, and ate their dinner in the
shade of the poplar by the spring. The others had brought their food
with them, with the exception of Maria, who said she was not hungry and
did not care to eat. But Mitsos, pausing for a moment in his own meal,
saw her sitting close to him looking rather tired and fagged from the
morning's work, and fetched her some bread and some fresh cheese, cool
and sweet from the cellar, and Maria's want of appetite vanished before
these things. After dinner they all lay down and dozed for that hour of
fiercest heat, when, as the poet of the South says, "even the cicala is
still," some in the veranda, some in the shade of the poplars. Mitsos
was the first to wake, and he, under a stern sense of duty, aroused
himself and the others. Maria had disposed herself under a farther
tree, where she lay with her hands clasped behind her head, and her
mouth half open and set with the rim of her white teeth. She had drawn
up one leg, and her short skirt showed it bare to above the knee.
Mitsos stood looking at her a moment, thinking how pretty were her long
eyelashes and slightly parted mouth, and wondering why it had never
occurred to him before that she was pretty, when she woke and saw him
standing in front of her. She sat up quickly and drew her skirt down
over her leg, and a faint tinge of red showed under her skin.
"Is it time to go on?" she said; "and I am nothing but a bag of sleep."
"I will help you up," said Mitsos, putting out his hand.
But she stretched herself, smiling, and got up without his assistance.
Then the work went on till nearly sunset; a second cask and a third
were filled, which were taken away to the veranda, where they were put
on trestles and covered like the first; and, as there would not be time
to fill a fourth before sunset, they stopped work for the day.
Mitsos and Constantine ate their supper together, but afterwards Mitsos
said he would not go to the café to-night, he was sleepy, and to-morrow
would be as to-day. The two sat there in silence for the most part, the
father smoking and playing with his beads, and Mitsos lying full length
on the floor of the veranda intermittently eating a cherry from the
remains of their supper.
About nine he got up and stretched himself.
"I am for bed," he said. "How pretty Maria is. I wonder why I never
noticed before that girls were pretty."
Constantine smiled.
"We all notice it sooner or later," he said. "I noticed it when I was
about as old as you."
"Did you? What did you do then?"
"God granted me to marry the one I thought the prettiest."
"My mother? It is little I remember of her. But I am not going to marry
Maria. Yet she is even very pretty."
The second day was devoted to picking the remainder of the ordinary
grapes, which Mitsos and Maria trod, as on the day before, and Mitsos
feeling a desire--to which he had hitherto been a stranger--to look
well in a girl's eyes, told her stories about the shooting, and his own
prowess therein--for all the world like a young cock-bird in spring and
the mating-time strutting before his lady. The girls were not required
for the third day's picking, and in the evening Constantine paid them
their two days' wage. Mitsos walked back with Maria through the garden,
and together they washed their feet of the must at the spring. A little
further on they came to the cherry-tree, and here he told her to hold
out her apron while he picked a little supper for her, again taking
pride to swing himself with an unnecessary display of gymnastics from
one bough to another, while Maria looked on from below with up-turned
eyes bidding him be careful, and saying, as was indeed true, that there
were plenty of cherries on the lower boughs, and his exertions were
needless. Something in his conduct seemed to amuse her, for as they
said good-night at the gate she broke out into a laugh, and, with the
air of a great, fine lady to a pretty boy, "Good-night, little Mitsos,"
she said; "and will you come to my wedding?"
Mitsos, in spite of his determination of the night before, felt a
perceptible shock.
"Your wedding? Whom are you going to marry?"
"Yanko. At least, so I think. He has asked me, and I have not said no."
"Yanko Vlachos? That ugly brute?"
Maria laughed again.
"I don't find him ugly--at least, not to matter."
Mitsos recollected his manners.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I like Yanko very much. He knocked a
Turkish soldier down last week--such a bang on the back of his head!"
"Oh, he's a very good man," said Maria, walking off with a great,
important air.
Mitsos went slowly back to the house, his strutting over.
The third day was devoted to the gathering of the finer grapes, which
were fermented by themselves in a separate cask. These the two boys and
Constantine picked together, until all the trees but one were stripped,
but instead of throwing them in stalk and all, they picked each grape
separately off the bunches and shed them into the cask, until there was
a layer some fifteen inches deep. Mitsos trod these as before, while
his father and Spero went on picking, and when they were sufficiently
pulped he poured on to them about a quart of brandy. More grapes
were then put in, trodden, and more brandy added. When the cask was
three-quarters full they moved it away with the others, but covered it
more closely with two layers of thick woollen blanket. The remainder of
the fine grapes were sufficient to fill another half-cask.
Then there came the final act of the grape-gathering, a page of pagan
ritual surviving from the time when the rout of Dionysus laughed and
rioted through the vineyard. Mitsos fetched a big bowl from the house,
and Constantine cut all the grapes from the remaining vine. These he
placed in the bowl and left in the middle of the vineyard for the birds
to eat.
For the next two days the must required no attention, though the
fermentation, owing to the heat of the weather, was going on very
rapidly, and by the end of the second day the thin acrid smell mingled
strongly with the garden scents. Once or twice Constantine raised the
cloths which covered the casks to see what progress it made, or drew a
little from the tap at the bottom. But the stuff was still thick, and
had not cleared sufficiently to be disturbed yet.
On the second day Mitsos went off to get fresh resin for the wine.
The ordinary pine resin was generally used by Greeks for this, but
Constantine always preferred the resin from the dwarf pine, which
was less bitter and finer in quality. The sides of Mount Elias were
plentiful with the common pine, but the dwarf pine only grew on the
hills round Epidaurus, a five hours' journey. Mitsos took his gun with
him on the chance of sighting and slaying game, and started off on
his pony before dawn, for the way wound over low, unsheltered hills,
a day-long target for the sun; but before he reached the shoulder of
mountain in which was cut the old grass-grown theatre, about which
the dwarf pines grew, the sun, already high, had drawn up the heavy
dews of the night before, and the air was quivering with heat like
a man in an ague fit. The growth of these pines was that of bushes
rather than trees, some of them covering a space of ten yards square,
gnarl-trunked, and sprawling along the ground. On some dozen of them he
selected a place near the root and cut off a piece of bark a few inches
square in order that the resin might ooze from the lips of the wounded
trunk, placing below each a flat stone to catch the dripping. In a few
days' time there would be sufficient resin collected for the year's
wine. On several trees he found the incisions he had made in previous
years, in some of which, where the flow of resin had continued after
he had removed it for the wine, it had gone on dripping until a little
pillar, like the slag-wax from a candle, stood up between the stone and
the tree. He cut off one of these to see whether it was still good, but
the damp had soaked into it, and the outside surface was covered with a
gray fungus growth which rendered it useless.
He ate his dinner under shelter of the more shady trees which grew
higher up the slope, and waited till the sun had lost its noonday heat,
listening lazily to the bell on the neck of his pony, which was grazing
on the hill-side above, dozing and wondering what the next year would
bring for him. He had no idea what Nicholas would call on him to do,
but he was willing to wait. The love of adventure and excitement was
fermenting in him, though he was contented to go on living his usual
life from day to day. Nicholas, he knew, would not fail; some day, he
knew not when, the summons would come, and he would obey blindly. Then
he thought of the horrible scene which Nicholas and he had looked on
three months ago, when they saw that dead, misshapen thing dangling
from a tree, and his blood began to boil and the desire to avenge the
wrongs done to his race stirred in him.
"Spare not man, woman, or child," Nicholas had said.
He lay back on the short turf and began to think about Maria. Supposing
Maria had been a Turkish woman, and Nicholas had put a knife into his
hand while he was looking at her mid-day sleep beneath the poplars, and
told him to kill her, would he have been able? Could he have struck
anything so soft and pretty? Fancy that heavy lout, Yanko, marrying
Maria; he was all fat, and sat drinking all day at the wine-shop, yet
he was never drunk, like a proper man, and he was seldom sober. Then
Mitsos for the first time in his life became analytical, though his
vocabulary boasted no such word. Why was it that since the day he stood
in front of Maria as she lay asleep he had regarded women somehow with
different eyes? What was it to him whether Yanko or another had her?
Hitherto he had thought of women in the obvious, work-a-day light in
which they are presented to a Greek boy, as beasts of burden, hewers of
wood and drawers of water, inferior beings who waited on the men, and
when alone chattered shrilly and volubly to each other like jays, or a
bushful of silly, jabbering sparrows--creatures altogether unfit for
the companionship of men. But since that moment he or they had changed;
there was something wonderful about them which men did not share,
something demanding protection, even tenderness, affording food for
vague, disquieting thought. He had not understood at all, not having
known his mother, why Nicholas had spoken as he had of his wife, except
in so far that she was a possession of which the Turks had robbed him.
But Mitsos could think of nothing the loss of which would make him
devote his life to the extermination of the race that had robbed him of
it. Even if the Turks took away his gun he realized that he would not
wish to destroy the whole race for that. The brutal hanging of a man
was a different matter; a man was a man, and a woman--Well, that woman
was Nicholas's wife. Suppose the Turks killed Maria, would that be
worse than if they killed, say, Nicholas? Well, not worse, not nearly
so bad in fact, but, somehow, different.
Thus knocked Mitsos at the door of the habitation called love, and
waited for its sesame.
CHAPTER VI
THE SONG FROM THE DARKNESS
When Constantine looked at one of the casks of fermenting wine on the
fourth day, he saw that the crust of skins, stalks, and stones had
risen to within six inches of the top, like coffee on the boil, and
was thickly covered with a pink, sour-smelling froth. The fermentation
was at its height, and it was time to mix up the crust with the fluid
again to excite it even further. In one cask, into which the ripest
fruit from the more sun-baked corner of the vineyard had been put, this
crust had risen even higher, and threatened to overflow. The ordinary
custom in Greece at this time was for a naked man to get into the cask
and stir it up again, a remnant, no doubt, of some now insignificant
superstition; but Constantine, though he still put the grapes of one
vine in a bowl for the birds to eat, did not think it necessary to make
this further concession, but only stirred up the frothing mass with an
instrument like a wooden pavier. The crust was already growing thick
and compacted, and it was ten minutes' work to get it thoroughly mixed
up again with the fluid in each case, and from the seething, bubbling
surface there rose thickly the sour fumes of the decomposing matter,
heavily laden with carbonic-acid gas. One cask leaked slightly round
the tap at the bottom and was dripping on the floor. A little red
stream had trickled down to the edge of the veranda, and he noticed
that it was full of small bubbles, like water that had stood in the
sun, showing that the fermentation was not yet over. He caulked this up
with a lump of resin, and then moved all the casks out of the shade for
an hour or two, so that the heat might hasten the second fermentation,
which naturally was slower and less violent than the first. The cask
and a half of fine wine, however, he did not touch; there it was better
that the fermentation should go on slowly and naturally.
That evening Mitsos went out fishing, as the work of wine-making was
over for the present. In four or five days he would have to go over to
Epidaurus to get the resin from the pine-trees, but just now there was
nothing more to be done. Later on the vines would have to be cut back,
but Constantine preferred delaying this till the leaves fell and the
sap had sunk back again into the roots and main stem.
Though the day was one of early autumn, and in most years the serenity
of summer would continue into the middle or end of October, the top
of the hills above the farther side of the gulf had been shrouded all
day in thick storm-boding clouds, and as sunset drew near these spread
eastward, making a sullen sky. The sun, as it dropped behind them,
illumined their edges, turning them to a dark translucent amber, and
the afterglow, which spread slowly across the heavens, cast a strange
lurid light through the half opaque floor of cloud. The night would
soon fall dark, perhaps with storm. It was very hot, and the land
breeze was but a languid air, and blew as if weary with its travel over
the broiling plain, but there was quite enough of it, with Mitsos'
economical methods, to send the boat along at a good pace. He sailed
almost before it out seaward for two miles or so, meaning to fish
from the island, but then changed his mind, and went back on tedious
tacks to the head of the bay, the water seeming to him a thick thing,
and the boat going but heavily. Dark fell, dense and premature, and
when an hour later he put the boat about on the last tack he had to
keep two eyes open as he neared the land; but as there were no other
boats abroad, he did not think it necessary to light his lantern at
the bows. Against the dark sky and the dark water it would hardly have
been possible to see the brown-sailed craft from more than forty yards
distant, and even then, if the thin white line of broken water at the
forefoot had not caught the eye, or the stealthy, subdued hiss as it
cut through the sea fallen on the ear, it might have passed close and
unnoticed. Then, with a curious suddenness, he saw faintly the white
glimmer of the sea-wall of Abdul Achmet's house straight in front of
him, and knew that in the dead darkness he had taken too starboard a
course. However, by running up as close as possible to this, one tack
more would certainly take him across to the fishing bay where he was
bound, and sitting rudder in hand, he waited till the last possible
moment before putting about. He had, however, forgotten that the wall
would take the wind from him, and when he was about fifty yards off,
the sail flapped once and fell dead against the mast, and the boom
swung straight, the line of white water faded from under the forefoot,
and the hiss of the motion was quenched. He got up for an oar, so as
to pull her round again, when quite suddenly he heard the sound of a
woman's voice from the terrace singing. For a moment or so he stood
still, and then his ear focussed itself to the sounds. She was singing
a song Mitsos knew well, a song which the vine-tenders sing as they are
digging the vines in the spring of the year, and she sang in Greek:
"Dig we deep around the vines,
Give the sweet spring showers a home,
Else the fairest sun that shines
Sends no sparkle to our wines,
Lights no lustre in the foam."
He could not see the singer; all he saw was the circle of black night,
the faint lines of his boat a shade blacker against it, and just ahead
the white glimmer of the wall. The voice, low and sweet, came out
of the darkness like a bird flying through a desert--a living thing
amid death. Mitsos stood perfectly still, strangely and bewilderingly
excited. Then he took up his oar and turned the boat's head round,
rowed a few strokes out, and waited again. But the voice had ceased.
He felt somehow unaccountably shy, as if he had intruded into another's
privacy; but having intruded, he was determined to make his presence
known. So just as the sail caught the wind again he stood up in the
stern, and in his boyish voice answered the unseen singer with the
second verse:
"Dig we deep, the summer's here;
Saw we not among the eaves
Summer's messenger appear,
Swallows flitting here and there,
Through the budding almond leaves?"
The boat bent over to the wind, the white line streaked the water, and
he hissed off into the night again.
He sat down, let go of the tiller, and let the boat run on by itself.
He had never known that that common country song was beautiful till
he had heard a voice out of the darkness sing it--a voice low, sweet,
soft, which might have been the darkness itself made audible. Who was
this woman? How did she, a Greek, come to be in the house of a Turk?
Then with a flash of awakened memory he brought to mind the evening
when he and Nicholas had sailed home after fishing; how a man came up
and struck a woman who was leaning on the sea-wall; how she had cried
out and said, in Greek, "What was that for?"
The flapping of the sail in the last breath of the wind roused him
and he looked up; the breeze had died out, and he was floating in the
middle of a shell of blackness. He had no idea where he was until he
saw the lights of Nauplia, where he least expected them, on the left
of the boat instead of behind him, dim, and far away. For his craft,
left to itself, had of course run straight before the land-breeze out
into the mouth of the gulf, and now the breeze had died out and he was
miles from the land. That did not trouble him much; fishing was a minor
consideration, and spending the night in the boat was paid for by a
shrug of the shoulders. He wanted one thing only--to get back to the
white glimmering wall, to the voice from the darkness.
A puff of hot air wandered by the boat, the sails shivered for a moment
and were still again. A veiled flash of lightning gleamed through the
clouds over the Tripoli hills and was reflected sombrely across the
sky, and a peal of thunder droned a tardy answer. A faint rim of light,
like the raising of tired eyelids, opened over the sea, and he saw the
ropes of his boat stand out sharp against it. Then, suddenly, there
came from the hills a sound he knew, and knew to be dangerous--the
shrill scream of a mountain squall from the highlands to the west of
the gulf. He sprang to the ropes and had the sail down just before it
struck him, but in less than a minute the bows were driven round, and
the white tops of little waves began to fleck the bay. He felt the salt
spray on his face and hands, and laughed exultantly. This was what he
wanted.
With a joy in the danger of the thing he hoisted the sail, struggling
and pulling to be free, and in a moment he was tearing back straight to
the head of the gulf, with the rudder pushed hard a-port.
At the pace he was going the boat was quite steady, cutting through
the waves instead of rising to them, and now and then one was flung
over the bows like a white rag. The wind screamed, the white snakes
of foam flew by, and, bareheaded, Mitsos clung with both hands to his
rudder, controlling the course of the boat like the rider of a restive
horse, laughing to himself for some secret glee, and every now and then
shouting out a verse of the vine-diggers' song. Before long the wall
appeared again, and he took in his sail; the water was already rough,
and was dashing up against it; but he let the boat drift on till he was
within thirty yards of it. The rim of light over the sea had widened,
and he could see the edge of the top of the wall quite distinctly, and,
behind, the tall sombre cypresses in rows. But there was no one there.
* * * * *
Just then the rain began hissing into the sea like shot, and for a few
minutes turning the whole surface milky white. Mitsos, frowning and
peering awhile into the darkness, put up his collar, and with some
difficulty proceeded to put about. The wind was blowing hard ashore,
and he had to take down the sail altogether and row. Even then he
seemed hardly to be making way against the maddened air, and it was
a quarter of an hour's hard work to get far enough from the shore to
sail again. Then he fetched a long tack towards Nauplia, and from
there managed to handle the boat back opposite the shore where his
house stood. The surf was breaking nastily on the rock-ridden beach,
and he had to get through a narrow channel, both sides of which were
shoal water, not sufficiently deep to allow the boat to pass. But he
had the light from his own house and that from the café opposite to
steer by, and he knew that he could run in when they were in a line. As
he neared the shore he could see it was impossible to bring the boat
round sharply enough, and while there was yet time he beat out again
for a quarter of a mile and approached it more directly. This time he
was successful, and the boat skimmed past the tumbled water on each
side--and as he passed he saw sharp-toothed rocks foaming and gnashing
at him--safe into the smoother water of his anchorage. Constantine was
waiting up for him, and when his tall figure appeared in the doorway,
he looked up with relief.
"Mitsos, you shouldn't sail on nights like these," he said; "the best
seamen in the world might not be able to handle a boat in such a
squall. How did you get in?"
"It's easy enough when you get the lights from the house and the café
in a line," said Mitsos; "besides, I was six miles out in the bay when
the squall came down."
"Six miles out? You have not been long getting back," said his father,
marvelling at the lad's knowledge.
Mitsos walked to the door to close it, turning his back on Constantine.
"No, there was a fine wind to sail on," he said, and whistled the
vine-diggers' song beneath his breath.
Constantine did not ask any more questions, and Mitsos went to make
himself some hot coffee and get out of his wet clothes, for he was
drenched from head to foot.
Two days after this the ordinary wine had cleared completely, and it
was racked into fresh casks, for if it stood too long on the lees in
contact with the skins and stalks it would become bitter. The crust
itself Constantine removed from all the barrels and put into the still
for the making of spirits. This only required one man to look after,
and on the day Mitsos went to Epidaurus to get the resin he employed
himself with it.
The apparatus was of the simplest. He placed all the crusts from the
barrels in a big iron pot, under which he lit a slow charcoal fire;
into a hole in the lid of this, which screwed on to the body, he
inserted a bent iron pipe, on to which he screwed another pipe made
in spirals. A big wooden tub filled with water, through the bottom of
which passed a third pipe fitting at one end into the spirals which
lay in the water, and communicating at the other with the glazed jar
into which the spirit was to be stored, completed the apparatus. The
fire drove off the alcohol from the fermented crust in a vapor, which
distilled itself into spirit as it passed through the tube that lay in
the cold water, and dripped out at the farther end into the jar.
He finished the day's work by soon after five, and, having business
in Nauplia, set off there at once; so that Mitsos, returning a little
later from Epidaurus with the resin, found him out, and, without
waiting to get any food, he set off again at once down to the bay.
It was drawing near that moment when all the beauty of the day in sea,
land, and sky is gathered into the ten minutes of sunset. The sun,
declining to its setting, was dropping slowly above a low pass in the
hills, shining with an exceeding clearness, and it was still half an
hour above the horizon when Mitsos got into the boat. The land-breeze
was blowing temperate and firm, and his boat dipped to it gently, and
glided steadily on the outward tack. Between him and the Argive hills
hung a palpable haze of thinnest blue; but the whole plain slept in
a garment of gold, woven by the level rays. The surface of the water,
unruffled under the shadow of the land, was green and burnished like a
plate of patinated bronze, and the ripple from the bows broke creamily
and flowed out behind the boat in long, feather-like lines. As the sun
neared its setting, the golden mist grew more intense in color, and
the higher slopes of the mountains turned pink behind their veil of
blue. The sky was cloudless from rim to rim, except where, low in the
west, there floated a few thin skeins of vapor, visible against the
incredible blue only because they were touched with red. Just as Mitsos
neared the wall on his second tack the sun's edge was cut by the ragged
outline of the mountain, and in ten minutes more it would have set.
She, the nameless, ineffable she--and Mitsos never questioned that
this was the sweet singer--was leaning on the edge of the wall looking
seawards. She saw Mitsos sitting in the stern of his boat, and guessed
at once--for few boats passed so close--that it was he who had sung
the second verse of the vineyard song two nights ago, and that it was
his boat which passed close under the wall last night, when the other
women of the harem were there with her. She had not known till she saw
him that she wished to see the owner of that half-formed boyish voice,
which had come so pleasantly out of the darkness; and now, when she did
see him, she looked long. He, too, was looking, and her eyes made a
bridge over the golden air that lay between them and brought them close
together.
The boat drew nearer, and she dropped her eyes and began playing with
a spray of roses that trailed along the top of the wall. She picked
a couple of buds, smelled them, and then very softly she began the
first verse of the vine-diggers' song.
[Illustration: "HALF CARELESSLY SHE THREW INTO THE BOAT THE ROSES SHE
HAD PICKED"]
The boat had got under shelter of the wall, and drifted windlessly
near. Mitsos was still looking at her; her eyes were still cast down.
She sang the first verse through, and the first two lines of the second
verse, and then apparently she recollected no more, for she stopped,
and from the boat Mitsos sang very softly the two lines that followed.
Still, without looking up, she sang them after him; he finished the
verse, and she sang the whole through.
From the bay the sun had set, but the mountains on the east glowed
rosier and rosier every moment. All that Mitsos saw was a girl's
slender figure wrapped in a loose white cloak, with a gold band round
the waist--a hand that held two rosebuds, a face veiled up to the eyes,
eyes down-dropped, and eyelashes that swept the cheek.
"There is a third verse," he said.
Then she looked up, and her eyes smiled at him, and they were as black
as shadows beneath the moon.
"I will learn that another night," she said, softly, "if it be you will
teach me; and this is for your teaching. Go, now; others are coming."
Half carelessly she threw into the boat the roses she had picked, and
turned away.
Mitsos waited a moment longer, and then, hearing voices in the garden
behind the wall, rowed quickly away. His thoughts were a song; his
mind, one sweet secret frenzy, that made the heart quick and the eye
bright. All the common details of life were seen and taken in by him
but dimly, as sounds come dimly to a sleeper, and are but the material
out of which he weaves a golden vision; for the first splendor of
love, hackneyed as a theme, but as an experience from generation to
generation ever new, was dawning on him.
* * * * *
Maria was married next morning, and Mitsos went without emotion to
the wedding. The bride and bridegroom appeared to him to be admirably
suited to each other.
About four o'clock that afternoon the lad was just about to set off
down to the shore when his father appeared.
"We'll finish with the wine this evening," he said. "Come and begin at
once, Mitsos."
Mitsos paused a moment.
"I was just going sailing," he said. "Cannot it wait till to-morrow?"
"No; it had better be finished now. Besides, you can sail afterwards.
Come, it won't take a couple of hours."
"Uncle Nicholas told me to sail every day," he began.
"And to obey me, Mitsos."
Mitsos stood for a moment irresolute, but soon his habit of obedience
reasserted itself.
"Yes, father," he said; "I am sorry. I will come."
The casks in which the first fermentation had taken place had been
thoroughly scoured with boiling water, which had quite got rid
of the sour-smelling fermented stuff, and they were to rack the
cleared resinated wine back into them. They filled each cask again
three-quarters full, and into the remaining space they poured a portion
of the fine wine, dividing it equally among all. To Mitsos the process
seemed insufferably long and tedious. The sun had set before the casks
were filled, and it was dark before the work was over. Never before,
it seemed to him, had the taps dribbled so dispiritingly. His father
now and then addressed some remark to him, which he barely answered,
and after a time they both lapsed into silence. Mitsos knew that he was
behaving badly, and he thought he could not help it. Perhaps she was
there; perhaps--bewildering thought--she was even wondering why he did
not come. How could he simulate the slightest interest in the wine of
grapes when the wine of love was fermenting within him, driving him mad
with those sweet, intoxicating fumes for which there is no amethyst?
At last it was over. No, he would not eat now; he would eat when he
came in, and ten minutes later he was on his way. Soon the wall began
to glimmer in front of him. Something, it looked only like a white
shadow, was leaning on it, and as he drew nearer he heard again the
voice singing low in the darkness, singing the common country song
which had become so beautiful.
CHAPTER VII
THE PORT DUES OF CORINTH
Nicholas got safely across to Corinth early in the morning after he
had parted from Mitsos, but was obliged to wait there two days for a
caique to take him to Patras. The revolution for which the leading
Greeks throughout the Peloponnese were preparing was there in the hands
of the Archbishop Germanos. Like Nicholas, he too had felt the cruel
appetites of the Turk, and, like Nicholas, he was willing to leave
revenge unplucked until the whole scheme was ripe to the core. An agent
of his had met the latter at Corinth, bidding him come, if he had a few
days to spare, at once; if not, as soon as he could. But as Nicholas
had left Nauplia with the idea of proceeding to Patras at once, he sent
the messenger back, saying he was on his way, but that for greater
security he would come by sea. That he was suspected of being concerned
in intrigue against the Turk he knew, and as his plans were now already
beginning to be thoroughly organized, and the club had made him their
principal agent in the Morea, he wished to avoid any needless risk in
passing through the garrisoned towns on the gulf.
On the second day, however, a Greek caique laden with figs was starting
from Corinth, and Nicholas went on board soon after dark, and about
midnight they started.
For a few hours an easterly breeze drew up from the narrow end of
the gulf, but it slackened and dropped between three and four in the
morning, and daylight found them becalmed, with slack sails, some
eight miles out to sea, and nearly opposite Itea. To the north the
top of Parnassus wore morning on its face, and stood high above them
rose-flushed with dawn, while they still lay on a dark, polished plain
of water as smooth as glass. On the opposite side of the gulf, but
farther ahead, Cyllene and Helmos, on the north side of which last
winter's snow still lay heraldically in bars and bezants, had also
caught the light, which, as the sun rose higher, flowed like some
luminous liquid down their slopes, wooded below with great pine forests.
Nicholas had pillowed himself on the deck, and woke when the sun had
risen high enough to touch the caique. The captain and owner of the
boat, who had been all night in the little close cabin below, came up
as he roused himself and sat down near him.
"The wind has dropped altogether," he said; "we may be here for hours.
Are you in a hurry to get on?"
Nicholas filled his pipe very carefully.
"I am never in a hurry," he said, "if I am going as quick as I can.
I would make a wind if I could, but I cannot, and so I am content to
wait. If swearing would do any good I would even swear, but I find it
has no effect on the elements. You have a good heavy cargo."
"A good, heavy cargo?" said the man. "Yes, and we should have a dipping
gunwale if those devils had not seized six crates of figs at Corinth."
"The Turks?" asked Nicholas.
"Who else? Port dues, they call them. Much of a port is Corinth--a heap
of stones tumbled into the water, and five rickety steps."
"Harbor dues! They are a new institution, are they not?"
"A month old only," said the man; "but if I hear right they will not be
very much older when they are taken off again."
"Taken off? How is that?" asked Nicholas, blandly.
"They say there will soon be a great cutting of the swines' throats. I
spend my life on the sea, and for the most part my ears are empty of
news; but surely you know what was being said at Corinth?--that before
a year is out we Greeks shall not have these masters any longer."
One of the crew was standing near, and the captain motioned him to go
farther off.
"I do not like to say this before my own men," he said; "but why should
I not tell you? you will be landed at Patras, and you will go your way
and I mine. Besides, for all your Turkish clothes you are no Turk,
for they are a short-legged folk. I heard it at the café last night.
Four Turks were talking about the arms which they say the peasants
are collecting. They spoke of one Nicholas Vidalis as a leader--they
expected to take him, for word had come to them that he was travelling
to Corinth."
"Thus there are disappointed men," thought Nicholas. Then aloud, "Who
is this Nicholas?"
"Nay, I know him not," said the man. "I am from the islands. I thought
it might be you could tell me of him."
"From which island?" asked Nicholas.
"From Psara."
Nicholas lit his pipe with a lump of charcoal and inhaled a couple of
long breaths, silent, but with a matter in balance.
Then, looking straight at the man, he said:
"I am Nicholas Vidalis, the man whom the Turks would dearly like
to catch. But at present they catch me not, for I am a clean and
God-fearing man, and I hate the Turk even as I hate the devil, for the
two are one. And now there are two ways open to you--one is to give
me up at Patras, the other to try to help me and others in what we
are doing. For this will be no time for saying 'I have nothing to do
with this; let those who will fight it out.' You will have to take one
side, and you had better begin at once. See, I have trusted you with my
secret, because you may be of use to me. You come from Psara, and you
probably know the coast of Greece as a man knows the shape of his boots
and gaiters. We have got plenty of men to fight on land, and plenty to
pay them with; what we want are little ships, which, in case of need,
will hang about the Turks if they try to escape from their destruction,
and sting them as the mosquito stings the slow cattle in the evening."
Nicholas paused for a moment, and his face lit up with a blaze of
hatred.
"For it is already evening with them," he cried, "and when the day
dawns night shall have swallowed them, and they will awake no more. Do
you know what is the strongest feeling that ever grips a man's heart?
No, not love, nor yet fear, but revenge. And if you had suffered as I
have suffered you would know what it is to be filled with one thought
only--to see blood in the sunrise and blood in the setting of the sun;
to feel that you have ceased to be a man and have become a sword. That
is what I am, and the hand that holds me is the right hand of God. And
by me He will smite and spare not. And when there are no more to smite,
perhaps I shall become a man again, and live to see peace and plenty
bless a free people. But of that I know nothing, and I do not greatly
care. Come, now, what answer do you give me?"
Nicholas rose to his feet; the other had risen too, and they faced each
other. There was something in the earnestness and intensity of this man
with one idea which could not but be felt, for enthusiasm is the one
fact that cannot be gainsaid, a noble disease in which contagion ever
makes infection. And his companion felt it.
"Tell me more," he said, eagerly; "but wait a moment--here is the wind."
He hurried aft to give orders to the men. Far away on the polished
surface of the water behind them, smooth and shining as a sealskin,
a line had appeared as if the fur had been stroked the wrong way. In
a couple of minutes the men were busy with the ropes, and two stood
ready to slacken the sheets of the heavy square sail if the squall was
violent, and one stood at the tiller, for some cross-current had turned
the boat round, and it would be necessary to put about. Meantime the
rough line had crept nearer, and behind it they could see the tops of
little waves cut off by the wind and blown about in spray. A couple of
men had put out the long sweep-oars, and were tugging hurriedly at them
to get the head of the boat straight before the wind before it struck
them. But they were not in time; the wind came down with a scream,
the boat heeled over till the leeward gunwale touched the water, and
the mast bent; then, and with a perfect precision, the sheets were
slackened for a moment to let her right herself; and, braced again, she
began to make way, and in a few seconds they were scudding straight
down the gulf almost directly before the wind, till, with their
increasing speed, it seemed to die down again. The water all round them
was broken up into an infinite number of little green foam-embroidered
wave troughs, through which, at the pace they were going, they moved as
quietly as a skater over smooth ice.
Nicholas had a careful eye to the handling of the boat during these
operations, and he saw that the little crew of six men knew their work
perfectly, and that they were quick and prompt at the moment when a
mishap might easily have occurred. He never let slip the smallest
opportunity which might some day prove to be useful, and he knew
that for anything like united action it would be necessary for the
Greeks to have, if not command of their sea-coast, at any rate the
power to communicate with each other. The outbreak, as he would have
it, would take place first in the Peloponnesus, but, not to fail of
its completeness, it would have to spread over the north. Patras and
Missolonghi were within a few miles of each other by sea, but unless
there was free communication by the waterway they would be powerless
for mutual support. To some extent both his fear and his hope were
realized.
Half an hour later he and Kanaris, the captain of the boat, were
breakfasting together, and Nicholas was explaining to him exactly what
the weakness of the movement was, and the necessity for conjunction
between the sea and land forces. He wished him, he said, to continue to
exercise his trade for the sake of appearances, but always to be ready
at a moment's notice. When the outbreak took place it was quite certain
that many of the Turks, especially those on the sea-coast, would try
to escape by sea. That must not be; it was no polite or diplomatic war
on which they were to embark; their aim from the first must be the
annihilation of the Turks. He told him in detail how this means of
escape was to be cut off, as will appear later, and as he unfolded his
bloody plan Kanaris's heart burned within him, and he promised, in the
name of God, to help him gather that red vintage.
About mid-day the wind went down, and they lay becalmed again; but
Nicholas, who, as he had said, was never in a hurry when he was going
as quick as he could, felt that his time could hardly have been better
employed. Kanaris, it appeared, was of a large Psarian clan; for
generations he and his had been seafaring folk, men of the wind and
wave, whose help Nicholas knew to be so essential. He promised, if
possible, to come to Psara himself before the year was out; but he said
that his hands were very full, and he could pledge no certainty.
For three hours or so they lay on a tossing water, for the wind of the
morning had roughened the narrow sea, which so quickly gets up under a
squall from the mountains, and great green billows came chasing each
other down from the east beneath the brilliant noonday sun, which
turned them into a jubilant company of living things. The boat, lying
low in the water with its heavy cargo, reeled and rolled with a jovial
boisterousness, alternately lifting up sides all ashine with the sea
over the crest of a wave, and burying itself again with a choking
hiccough in its trough. The sun drew out from the crates of figs their
odor of mellow luxuriance, which hung heavy round the boat, dispersed
every now and then by a puff of wind which blew in the salt freshness
of the sea.
By four o'clock, however, the wind, still favorable, sprang up again,
and on they went into the sunset, the black nose of the boat pushing
and burrowing through the waves, and throwing off from its sides
sheets of spent foam. As the hours passed Kanaris felt ever more keenly
the fascination and strength of this strange man, and after supper they
sat together in the stern watching the heavens reel and roll above
them, and the top of the mast striking wildly right and left across a
hundred stars. Nicholas, perched on the taffrail, balancing himself
with an exquisite precision to every movement of the boat, talked in
his deep low voice of a thousand schemes, all blood-stirring, with
the Turk for target. For no one knew better than himself the value of
personal power, and the success of his proselytizing had been to a
large extent, even as in the case of Mitsos, the outcome of his own
individuality, which could so stir the minds of men, and fan to a flame
the smouldering hatred against the Turks, and cause it to leap up in
fire.
Germanos, the Metropolitan Bishop of Patras, had only just risen next
morning when his messenger came back, having travelled through the
night to announce Nicholas's coming, and also report the same talk in
the cafés which Kanaris had heard. The bishop smiled to himself at
the idea of any untoward fate laying hands on Nicholas, and told his
servant to let it be widely known that Nicholas had been taken and
killed.
"For," as he said, "the Turks will be delighted to believe that (and
men always succeed in believing what they wish), and all Greeks to whom
Nicholas is more than a name will know that this is one of those things
which do not occur. I am ready for breakfast, and let a room for my
poor dead friend be got ready, and also a bath in which the body may be
washed."
Germanos was a splendid specimen of a Greek of unmixed blood, now
nearly or quite extinct. His family came from the island Delos,
still unviolated by the unspeakable race, and from generation to
generation they had only married with islanders. He was rather above
the middle height, and his long black cassock made him appear taller.
In accordance with Greek rite, neither his hair nor beard had ever
been cut, and the former flowed black and thick onto his shoulders,
and his beard fell in full rippling lines down as far as his waist.
Though for three or four years his life had been one long effort of
organizing his countrymen against the Turks, the latter had never
suspected his complicity, and he intended to take the fullest advantage
of their misplaced confidence in him. Though Germanos had not trodden
the world so widely as Nicholas had done, he was nevertheless a man
of culture--shrewd, witty, and educated. And Nicholas too, though for
the sake of the great cause he would have condemned himself cheerfully
never to speak to a man of his own rank and breeding again, found it
a pleasant change, after his incessant wanderings among peasants, to
mix with his own kind again. His few days with Constantine at Nauplia,
it is true, he had much enjoyed, for it was impossible not to be
happy when that apostle of happiness, the little Mitsos, was by; and
Constantine, too, was of the salt of the earth. He only arrived in the
evening, just before dinner, and they sat down together as soon as he
had washed.
"There is a good man to hand, I think, to-day--the captain of the boat
I came by," said he. "I suggested he should come and talk with us
to-morrow. I would have brought him with me, but he was busy with his
fig cargo."
"My dear Nicholas, you are indefatigable. I do not believe there is
a man in the world but you who would wake at dawn on the gulf and
instantly set about making a proselyte. You should have been a priest.
What made you see a patriot in him?"
"It was a long shot," said Nicholas. "He spoke without sympathy of
the new Turkish harbor dues at Corinth, and told me my capture was
imminent. I risked it on that."
The archbishop frowned.
"New harbor dues? It is time to think of harbor dues when there is a
harbor."
"So he said," answered Nicholas. "Their methods have simplicity. They
seized six crates of his figs."
"We are commanded," remarked Germanos, "to love all men. I hope I
love the Turk, but I am certain that I do not like him. And I desire
that it will please God to remove as many as possible of his kind to
the kingdom of the blest or elsewhere without delay. I say so in my
prayers."
Nicholas smiled.
"That gives a double sound," said he; "you pray not for their
destruction, but for their speedy salvation. Is that it?"
"To love all men is a hard saying; for, indeed, I love my nation, and I
am sure that the removal of the Turks will be for their permanent good.
What does the psalmist say, though he was not acquainted with the Turk,
'I will wash my footsteps in the blood of the ungodly'?"
"As far as I can learn the ungodly were expecting to wash their
footsteps in my blood at Corinth," said Nicholas; "but they behaved as
it is only granted to Turks to behave. They expected me twenty-four
hours after I had gone away."
"How did things go at Nauplia?"
"Better than I could possibly have expected. I found the very man, or
rather the boy, I wanted in my young nephew."
"The little Mitsos? How old is he?"
"Eighteen, but six feet high, and with the foot of a roe-deer on the
mountains. Moreover, I can trust him to the death."
"Eighteen is too young, surely," said Germanos. "Again, you can
trust many people to just short of that point, and they are the most
dangerous of all to work with. I could sooner work with a man I could
not trust as far as a toothache!"
In answer Nicholas told him of that midnight test, and Germanos
listened with interest and horror.
"You are probably right then, and I am wrong," he said; "and a boy can
move about the country without suspicion where a man could not go. But
how could you do so cruel a thing? Are you flesh and blood--and a young
boy like that?"
"Yes, it was horrible!" said Nicholas; "but I want none but those who
are made of steel. I knew by it that he was one in a thousand. He
clinched his teeth, and never a word."
"What do you propose to do with him now?"
"That is what I came to talk to you about. It is time to set to work in
earnest. The Club, as you know, have given me a free hand and an open
purse. Mitsos must go from village to village, especially round Sparta,
and tell them to begin what I told them and to be ready. The Turks are,
I am afraid, on the lookout for me, and I cannot travel, as you say, in
the way he can without suspicion."
"What did you tell them to begin?" asked Germanos.
"Can you ask? Surely to grind black corn for the Turk. It must be done
very quickly and quietly, and chiefly up in the villages there in
Maina. You say you are collecting arms here?"
"Not here, at the monastery at Megaspelaion. Many of them have been
bought from the Turks themselves. There lies a sting. The monks carry
them in among the maize and reed stalks. Father Priketes was met the
other day by a couple of their little Turkish soldiers, who asked why
they were carrying so many reeds, and he said it was to mend the roof.
Reeds make a capital roof."
"Yes, the monastery roof will want many mules' loads of mending," said
Nicholas. "Do you suppose they suspect anything?"
"Certainly, but they have nothing to act on; besides, I would be
willing to let them search the monastery from top to bottom. Do you
remember the chapel there, and the great altar?"
"Surely."
"The flag-stone under the altar has been taken up and a hole made into
the crypt. The door into the crypt, which opens from the passage in the
floor below, has been boarded over and whitewashed, so that it looks
exactly like the rest of the passage wall. It is impossible to detect
it. Mehemet Salik, the new governor in Tripoli, appointed only this
month from Nauplia, was there last week and examined the whole place.
He is a young man, though suspicious for his age."
"That is good," said Nicholas. "Your doing, I suppose. How many guns
have you?"
"About a thousand, and twice as many swords. In another month we shall
be ready. Megaspelaion makes a far better centre than Patras would, as
it is so much nearer Tripoli. That is where the struggle will begin."
"Who knows?" said Nicholas. "When we are ready we will begin just where
it suits us. Personally, I should prefer--" He stopped.
"Well?"
"It is this," said Nicholas. "It is no gallant and polite war we
want; we do not want to make terms, or treaties, or threats. We want
to strike and have done with it; to exterminate. I should prefer, if
possible, striking the first blow either at Kalamata or Nauplia. Then
the dogs from all round would run yelping into Tripoli, as it is their
strongest place, and so at the end there would be none left."
"Exterminate is no Christian word, Nicholas. The women and the
children--"
"The women and children," said Nicholas, rising and pacing up and down
the room; "what are they to me? Once when I was an outlaw I spared
them--yes, and spared the men, too, only sending them riding back face
to the horse's tail. But did they spare my wife and my child? If there
is a God in heaven I will show them the mercy they showed me!"
Germanos was silent a few moments, and waited till Nicholas had sat
down again.
"Will you drink more wine?" he asked; "if not, we will sit on the
balcony; it is hot to-night. I think you are right about striking the
first blow somewhere in the south, so that they shall go to Tripoli. I
had thought before that it would be better to strike at the centre. But
your plan seems to me the wiser. Come outside, Nicholas."
Germanos's house stood just out of the town, high up on the hill, which
was crowned by the castle, and from his balcony they could see the
twinkling lights in the fort below like holes bored in the dark, and
beyond the stretch of starlit water, and dimly on the other side of
the gulf the hill above Missolonghi shouldering itself up in the faint
black distance. Before long the moon rose above the castle behind
them, and turned the whole world to silver and ebony. Cicalas chirped
in the bushes, and the fragrance of the southern night came drowsily
along the wind. Every now and then a noise would rise up for a moment
in the town, shrill to its highest, and die away again.
A boy brought them out coffee, made thick and sweet in the Turkish
manner, and two narghilés with amber mouth-pieces, and brazen bowls for
holding the coarse-cut tobacco. On each he placed a glowing charcoal
ember, and handed the mouth-pieces to the two men. For a long while
they sat in silence, and then Nicholas spoke:
"It will be no time for mercy--I shall go where my vow leads me, and I
have vowed to spare neither man, woman, nor child. I will show them the
mercy they showed me, and no other."
"God make you merciful on that day, as you hope for mercy," said
Germanos. "For me, I shall not be a party to any butchering of the
defenceless. There will be plenty of butchers without me. Blood must
be shed; it cannot be otherwise. Fight and spare not, but when the
fighting is over let the rest go out of the country, for we will not
have them here. But for massacre, I will not make myself no better than
a Turk!"
The two narghilés bubbled in silence again for a few minutes, and at
last Germanos broke in with a laugh:
"The Turks all think you are dead," he said. "I told the boy to let it
be widely known that you had been killed at Corinth. It is just as well
they should believe it. Mehemet Achmet, the sleepiest man God made, was
here this afternoon, and he regretted it with deep-seated enjoyment.
They seemed to know all about you here!"
"But none in Patras know me by sight," said Nicholas, "and as I am dead
they never will. It is possible that it may prove useful to me. What
are your plans for to-morrow?"
"We will do what you like. It might be well for you to see
Megaspelaion. We could get there in a day if the wind held to Vostitza.
They have, as I said, a curious little crypt there, which is worth a
visit."
Nicholas smiled.
"It is impossible for a man to see too much," he said, "just as it is
impossible for a man to pretend to know too little. I would give a
fortune, if I had one, for a face like my brother-in-law Constantine's,
for it is as a mask in carnival time, behind which who knows what may
be? Yet there is force in him, and Mitsos obeys him as--as he obeys me!
And yet he is too large a lad to take commands easily."
"Perhaps no other influence has come in yet. To fall in love, for
instance, sometimes makes a good lad less obedient than an orphan to
his parents."
"The little one in love would be fine," said Nicholas. "He would send
the whole world to the devil. Why, shooting is the strongest passion he
has known yet, and he shoots as if all the saints were watching him."
"I hope some of them are," remarked Germanos, "and that they will
especially watch him when he is inclined to send the whole world to the
devil. I hope Mitsos will not think of including me."
"I will warn him when I see him next. I shall go on there, I think,
in November. I must get back to Maina first and see my cousin, Petros
Mavromichales, who is the head of the clan, and find out if the clan
are prepared to rise in a body. That man Kanaris was handy enough with
his boat, but I would back Mitsos to sail against him in any weather."
"Ah! that fire-ship is a horrible idea of yours, Nicholas."
"Horrible, but necessary. We must not have supplies of arms and
gunpowder coming to the Turks by sea, and there must be no escape out
of the death-trap which we will snap down on them. And now let me tell
you all that is in my mind, for it may be we shall not meet again till
the great Vintage is ripe for the gathering."
For an hour or so Nicholas talked eagerly, unfolding his schemes,
Germanos listening always attentively, sometimes dissenting, but in the
main approving. He spoke of the Club of Patriots in north Greece, who
had given him leave to act in their name until the time came for them
to send a delegate who would act openly; for at present if it became
known that the leading men of Greece, many of whom were in official
positions under the Turks, were concerned in schemes of revolution, the
whole project would be a pricked bubble. He sketched the rising of the
peasants, in whom the strength of the war would lie; the flame that
should run through the land, as through summer-dry stubble, from north
to south and east to west; and it seemed in after years to Germanos
that a spirit of prophecy had been on the man.
And as Nicholas went on another vision rose before the bishop's eyes:
the vision of his church, the mother of their hearts, throned not only
there, but in the glory of an earthly magnificence, in visible splendor
the bride of her Lord. Therein to him was food for hope and aspiration,
and his thoughts drifted away from war and bloodshed to that.
And when Nicholas had finished he met an eye that kindled as his own,
but with thoughts that were not spoken, but partook of their sweet and
secret food in silence and self-communing.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MENDING OF THE MONASTERY ROOF
Kanaris had finished his unlading the same evening, and he was ready at
daybreak to take Nicholas and Germanos as far as Vostitza, a fishing
village lying some four miles from the mouth of the gorge, at the top
of which stands Megaspelaion. Here the archbishop and Nicholas would
get mules and reach the monastery the same evening. Vostitza, with
their fair wind, was not more than four hours from Patras, and on
arriving there the archbishop went straight to the house of the Turkish
governor, from whom he procured mules, and to whom he introduced
Nicholas as his cousin; and the three talked together a while over a
cup of coffee, discussed the idle rumors that were abroad concerning
a movement against the Turks among the Greeks, and found cause for
comfort as lovers of peace in the undoubted fact that Nicholas had been
killed two days before at Corinth. He was a turbulent, hot-headed man,
said the archbishop, and did not value the blessings of tranquillity.
His cousin also had met him, a quarrelsome, wine-bibbing fellow, quoth
Nicholas; he could have had no more appropriate end than a brawl in a
wine-shop.
Thus they chatted very pleasantly and harmoniously while their mules
were being made ready, and Said Aga, who was no man of the sword, being
rotund and indolent in habit, was much relieved to find that Germanos
scoffingly dismissed the idea of any hostile movement being on foot
among the Greeks. True, there had been disturbances lately; a Turkish
tax-collector had been killed at Diakopton, three miles from Vostitza.
Had they not heard? The news had come yesterday!
"Alas! for this unruly people," said Germanos. "What was the manner of
it?"
"I hardly know," said Said Aga. "It was the usual story, I believe. He
had taken to himself a Greek woman, and the husband killed him. The man
has fled, but they will catch him, and he will suffer, and then die.
For me, I shrug my shoulders at these things. We Turks have certain
customs, and the Prophet himself had four wives, and when we are the
lords of a country we must be obeyed."
"True," said Nicholas, "quite true, and we must submit. It is not the
will of God that all men should be equal."
He caught Germanos's eye for a moment.
"I am glad that you think there is nothing in these rumors," went on
Said Aga. "Your countrymen would hardly be so foolish as to attempt
anything of the sort. But the rumors are somewhat persistent. It was
even said that the monks at Megaspelaion were collecting arms, and my
colleague Mehemet Salik, a very energetic young man who was lately put
in charge at Tripoli, thought best to make an inspection there. But he
was quite satisfied there was no truth in it."
Germanos laughed heartily.
"That is a little too much," he said. "You may at least rest assured
that we priests of God are men of peace. Our mules, they tell me, are
ready. A thousand thanks, Excellency, for your kindness."
They mounted and rode up the straying village street, paved with
big, uneven stones. The villagers were all out in the fields for the
fruit harvest, and the rough, shaggy-haired dogs, keeping watch in
the deserted house-yards, came rushing out barking and snarling with
bared teeth at the sound of their mules with their tinkling bells and
iron-shod feet grating over the cobbles. The mule-boys paid little
attention to their noisy menaces, though now and then some dog more
savage or less wisely valorous than his fellows would come within stick
distance, only to be sent back with better cause for crying than before.
But in ten minutes or so they got clear of the village, and taking
one of the field roads struck across the plain towards the mouth of
the gorge, about four miles distant. The grapes were not yet so far
advanced as at Nauplia and still hung hard, and tinged with color
only on the sunward side; but the fruit harvest was going on, and
under the fig-trees were spread coarse strips of matting on which
the fragrant piles were laid to dry. A few late pomegranate-trees
were still covered with their red wax-like blossoms, but on most the
petals had fallen, and the fruit, like little green-glazed pitchers,
was beginning to swell and darken towards maturity. The men were at
work in the vineyards cutting channels for the water, and through the
green of the fig-trees you could catch sight every now and then of the
brightly-colored petticoat of some woman picking the fruit, or else
her presence was only indicated, where the leaves were thicker, by the
dumping of the ripe figs onto the canvas strips below. The sun was
right overhead before they struck the mouth of the gorge, and the heat
intense--a still, fruit-ripening heat in the heavy air of the plains.
But as they approached the hills a cooler draught slid down from
between the enormous crags, bearing on it the voice of the brawling
torrent, which is fed by the snow of Cyllene and Helmos, and knows not
drought.
Here the country was given up to olives and wheat, and occasional
clumps of maize near the bed of the stream. The oleanders were still
in flower, and their great clusters of pink blossom marked the course
of the river. Another mile took them to the ford, on the far side of
which the path began to climb through the ever-narrowing gorge. Further
up they found it impossible to keep to the course of the stream, for
the road had been washed away in places and not repaired, and leaving
it on their right, they turned up over a steep grassy stretch of moor,
sprinkled here and there with pines. Looking back they could see below
them the hot luxuriant plain they had left, trembling sleepily under
the blue haze of heat, and further off the shimmering waters of the
gulf. As they ascended the vegetation changed: pines entirely took
the place of the olives, and the grass, all brown and dead below from
the summer's heat, began to be flushed with lively green, and studded
with wild campanulas and little blue gentians, throbbing hotly with
color. Then descending again they passed along the upper slope of the
cliffs above the gorge and saw before them the deep, sheltered valley
stretching up to Kalavryta, a land of streams and a garden of the Lord.
The sun was already near its setting when they joined the main road
leading up to the monastery from the valley, and they struck into a
train of some half-dozen mules covered and enveloped in loads of reeds,
the tops of which brushed rustling along the ground behind like some
court lady's dress. Two of the monks from the monastery were in charge
of these, and when they saw who it was with Nicholas they stopped and
kissed the archbishop's hands. As they moved forward again he said:
"I see you are carrying reeds, my sons. From where did they come, and
for what purpose?"
"From Kalavryta, father," said one. "We have six mules laden with them.
The monastery roof needs mending."
"That is good. Observe, Nicholas, how fine these reeds are. They seem
to be a heavy load. The monastery roof, they say, wants mending."
The younger of the two monks smiled.
"A great many things want mending, father!" he said. "We are making
preparations for mending them."
Nicholas, who was in front, checked his mule.
"And have you black corn," he said, "good black corn for the Turk?"
The monk shook his head.
"I do not understand," he said.
Germanos smiled back at Nicholas.
"A roof for the monastery first, Nicholas," he said; "there will be
time for the good black corn when the roof is mended. And now, my son,
I will ask you to go forward quickly and tell Father Priketes, with my
salutations, that my cousin and I will arrive very soon. We shall stop
with him for a day, or it may be two, for we wish to superintend this
mending of the monastery roof, and see that it is well done for the
glory of God."
Another half-hour through the gathering dusk brought them in sight of
the monastery, which from the distance was indistinguishable from the
face of the cliff, against which it was built. Chains of light shone
from the narrow windows, row above row, some from the height of all
its twelve stories, twinkling a hundred feet above them, as if from
cottages perched high on the cliff, others larger and nearer from the
windows of the sacristy and library. To the right stood the great
gateway, about which several moving lanterns seemed to show that the
news of their coming had anticipated them, and that due preparations
were being made to receive the archbishop. As they got close they
could see that the monks were pouring out of the arch, and taking
their places in rows on each side of the terrace leading up to the
gate. In front of them stood the novices, some mere boys of fourteen
and fifteen, but all dressed alike, and all with long hair, that had
never known the scissors, flowing onto their shoulders. In the centre
of the gateway--a tall, white-bearded figure--stood Father Priketes,
who helped the archbishop to dismount, and then knelt to receive his
blessing. Germanos paused a moment as he entered, and said in a loud,
clear voice to them all:
"The peace of God be upon this holy house and all within it, and His
blessing be upon the work"--and his voice dwelt on the word--"upon the
work you are doing."
Nicholas was already known to Father Priketes, but the latter looked as
if he had seen a ghost when he caught sight of him.
"We heard you were dead," he said.
Nicholas smiled.
"I am delighted to know it, father," he said. "Do not destroy the idea,
if you please."
They passed on to Father Priketes's rooms, where they were alone.
"I see your repairs are going on steadily," said Germanos. "We passed
some laden mules on the way. Nicholas wished much to see what you were
doing. He is--how shall I say it?--our overseer; we are the workmen. He
will tell us when the work must be finished. Let us go at once to the
chapel, my brother, and thank St. Luke, your founder, and the Blessed
Virgin, that they have brought us here safe. That is the first duty of
the soldiers of God."
Father Priketes led the way to the chapel, and pushed open the great
brazen door for Germanos to enter. He knelt in turn before the great
altar, the altar to the Beloved Physician, and before the black relief
of the Virgin, made, as tradition says, by the hands of St. Luke
himself, and said for himself and Nicholas a thanksgiving for the
aid of the Saints which had brought them safely to the end of their
journey. They then supped with Father Priketes, and went back to the
chapel.
The place was but dimly lighted with oil lamps, and after locking the
door behind them--for at present only a few of the monks had been
trusted with the secret of the crypt--the father lighted a lantern and
led the way up to the east end. Then after crossing himself he drew
from underneath the altar a small crowbar, and creeping under with the
lantern, he prized away a square paving-stone, which covered a hole
large enough for a single man to creep through. Rough wooden steps
had been erected from the floor of the crypt up to the level of this,
and one by one they descended. The crypt was some forty feet long by
twenty broad, and the light of the lantern struck from all the walls
a reflection of steel. Since Germanos's last visit, they had largely
added to the number of arms, and on a hasty glance Nicholas reckoned
that there could not be less than fifteen hundred guns.
His eyes glistened as he moved the lantern round the walls, and he
turned to Father Priketes.
"This will make a hole in the Turks bigger than the hole in your roof,"
he said. "You have enough, I think. They will be hungry, these reeds;
grind their food for them, and do not let them feel stint of that."
"Already?" asked Father Priketes.
"Already! It is August now, and when our vineyards are green with the
fresh leaves in the spring, the juice of the greater vintage shall be
spilled. And there will be a mighty gathering; the wine-press will be
running red, and fuller than the vats of Solomon. Where can you stow
the food for all these hungry throats?"
"There is room here, is there not?"
"Surely, room and to spare; but it would not be well to keep it here.
Whoever enters here must carry a light; a chance spark, and he may cry
to the Virgin in vain."
Father Priketes paused a moment.
"You shall take a walk with me to-morrow and we will see. You are
satisfied at present?"
"I shall never be satisfied," said Nicholas. "I should not be satisfied
if I saw all the armaments of angels in array against the Turk. But it
is time to think of other things. Could you raise men at once?"
"Five hundred in one minute from within these walls," said Father
Priketes, "and two thousand more in the time it would take an eager man
to climb up here from Kalavryta."
Nicholas looked round again, smiling as a man smiles to look on one he
loves.
"This feeds my soul," he said. "And swords too, little sickles for the
gathering! Look you, perhaps we shall not meet again till after our
vintage has begun; but remember this: After four months from now, we
cannot tell when the day of the beginning of the gathering will come,
and so be ready. Whatever the archbishop orders, do it, for he and I
work together. And, O Father, let no man take thought for himself on
that day. What matters it to whom the honor and the glory go, if once
Greece is free? If you desire such things, I give to you now by bequest
all the honor and riches that may come to me. Forgive me for saying
this, but that is the only loophole where failure may creep into our
camp, and that I fear more than ten Sultans and their armies. I say the
same thing to all, and I remind myself of it daily. I have been chosen
to conduct this matter, for the present, in the Morea, and I will give
my life and all I possess to it; and in company with others, of whom
the archbishop is one, and Petros Mavromichales, of Maina, another, I
will do my best, so help me God, honestly and without a selfish mind.
The moment a single dissentient voice is raised, not in the matter of
councils or plan of actions, on which we will listen to all that is to
be said, but of command and obedience, I only ask leave to serve in
the ranks. Let us deliberate together by all means till the time comes
to act, but when that time comes, and a word of command goes through
the country, let there be no delay. For all will depend, so I take it,
on the speed with which we act when we come to action. This is the
beginning and the end of success, and all that lies between."
"But how is the word of command to come," said Father Priketes, who had
secretly hoped for a little independent campaign, "if you are not with
us? Must I not act on my own judgment?"
"No, a thousand times no," said Nicholas. "What I have seen here shows
me that you in Megaspelaion and Patras will be no small portion of our
first success. How the war will spread afterwards, God knows; but when
the first grapes are cut it will be you, so I think, to garner them.
This is why you must obey absolutely. Nothing will be left to your
judgment. A message will come, and you will obey."
"How am I to tell who your messenger is?"
Nicholas smiled.
"Some afternoon, when you are sitting in the spring sunshine, or
perhaps some night in this next winter, when you are sleeping, a monk
will come to you and say, 'There is a man here, or a boy it may be, or
a girl even, who wishes to see you, and we cannot understand what he
means.' Then you will delay not, but go and see what it is. You will
say, 'I am Father Priketes; you have a message for me?' And the message
will be in this form: 'I am bidden to ask you if there is corn to be
given to those who need it?' And you will say, 'Is it black corn they
need, and are the needy hungry, or are they Turks?' And the messenger
will say, 'Send black corn for the Turks to Kalamata or Kalavryta, or
wherever it is, and let two hundred or five hundred or a thousand men
carry it.' Other instructions may come as well, but always in that
form. And as you obey, so may the Lord give you a place among His
saints in heaven."
Father Priketes was silent for a moment.
"You are right, Nicholas," he said; "and I swear by the picture of the
mother of God that I will obey in all things. Come, shall we go up
again?"
They climbed up into the chapel, and went out down the vaulted stone
passage to the story below, where another passage, whitewashed and
boarded on both sides, led to the monks' library and Father Priketes's
own rooms. Nicholas, who carried in his hand an olive-wood stick,
tapped the panelling carelessly as he went along, and once stopped a
moment and smiled at Germanos.
"The wall seems to be a little less thick here than at other places,"
he said. "Mehemet Salik, however, was too cunning to attend to such
simple things."
"The Lord be praised for making so many clever men," said Germanos,
piously. "To have a fool for an enemy has been the undoing of more good
people than Satan himself."
They went on to Father Priketes's room where they had supped before,
and Nicholas lit himself a pipe.
"That is quite true," he said. "A fool is always blundering into the
weak place by accident--there is nothing so disconcerting; whereas a
clever man is on the lookout for less patent weaknesses, and passes
over the patent ones on purpose. And the Turk is both clever and
indolent--a very happy combination."
"For us," said Priketes, who had, as Nicholas once said, a wonderful
faculty for seeing that which was obvious.
"As you say, for us," said Nicholas; "and we intend to profit by it.
And now, father, with your leave I will go to bed. I have seen all I
came to see, and think I had better push on to-morrow. You will find,
no doubt, a prudent place for your granary. It is impossible to be
too prudent now, just as it will be more than possible to be too wary
hereafter. When once we get into the open we keep there until all is
finished."
"Where do you go now?" asked Germanos.
"Southwards," said Nicholas. "I must travel as widely as I can in
Messenia, and also see my cousin Petrobey. The Maina district will be
raised by him. If once the war begins, as I would have it to begin, I
shall be at ease about the rest. Only the beginning must be as sudden
as the thunderbolt. Ah, but there is fever in my blood for that!"
Nicholas, as his custom was, rose early next morning and went from the
dark-panelled room, where he had slept, down towards the chapel. The
great green bronze bell hanging in the wooden balcony outside had just
begun to ring for matins, and the sound, grave and sonorous, floated
out over the valley like a dream. He waited there awhile looking at
the blackened Byzantine paintings which covered the roof, till the
monks began trooping up the cobbled passage, and with the first of them
he went inside the chapel. From the centre of the roof hung a great
gilt candelabrum in the form of a crown, and from side to side of the
building ran a row of silver lamps--some thirty in number--which had
been burning all night, but looked red and dim in the fresh morning
light. Set in the gilt altar-screen were the paintings of the Panagia
and of Christ, and at the south end--more precious to the faithful than
all--the wax relief of the Virgin and Child. The silver panel, behind
which it is placed, had been opened, and Nicholas, with the others,
made his obeisance before it. The head of the Virgin and the head of
the Child are all that can be seen, and these are black with age; the
rest is one mass of chased gold. The crown which the Child wears is
studded with rubies and emeralds grown dim; His mother's crown is less
magnificent; and on the silver rail in front of it hang the offerings
of those to whom, in the days of faith, its contemplation had brought
healing of many diseases. Over the gate to the altar hung two stoles of
red velvet, in which the priest who said the mass would robe himself.
A border of gold holly leaves ran down them on each side, and down the
middle they were embroidered with floreated and cusped ornaments in
red and gold, in the centre of each of which was worked the figure of
Christ. On the north wall, by the easternmost of the monks' stalls,
hung the picture of the daughter of the Emperor Palæologus. She is
dressed in a red cloak with golden eagles embroidered over it; her hair
is golden auburn, and she raises a face charmingly childlike and naïve,
and holds up hands of prayer to the gracious figure of the Virgin who
stands beside her.
Priketes and Germanos were the last to enter, and when the short
prayers were said, Nicholas went out with them, and they walked up
and down the terrace awhile talking. Some of the elder monks, with
their purple cassocks trimmed with fur wrapped closely round them,
sat outside the iron-sheeted gate, under the fresco of Adam and Eve
being driven out from Paradise, which fills the triangular space above
it, watching them with eager attention, for it had become known who
Nicholas was and what his errand. On their right rose the enormous
mass of the monastery, crowned by an overhanging cliff of gray rock,
which the smoke from the chimney had stained in places to a rich
vandyke-brown, in the hollow of which, as in the hollow of a sheltering
hand, the great pile of buildings stood, seeming rather to have been
the core round which the rock rose than to have been built into it. In
front the ground fell rapidly away into the valley, but was terraced up
into little gardens, full of cypresses and poplars or figs and plane
trees; under these stood many little wooden arbors, trellised over with
vines, where the brethren spent their tranquil days; and a hundred
riotous streams--some conducted down wooden shoots, some straying over
the paths--rattled headlong to join the river below. Further down, the
hill-side was covered with low-growing scrub, and on the opposite side
of the valley, the village of Zachlórou hung on by teeth and nails to
the climbing moor. A company of swallows cut curves and circles in the
thin morning air, their black backs showing metallic, like oxidized
steel in the sunlight, and a great flight of white pigeons clattered
out of the rock above and settled in a cloud by the fountain. In one of
these little arbors Germanos and Nicholas drank their coffee and smoked
a pipe of the monastery tobacco until the latter's horse was brought
round. Then, rising,
"We shall meet again," he said, "when the vintage is ripe, or, if
we meet not, we shall both be laborers in the treading; you here, I
perhaps in the south. So now, father, give me your blessing, for I must
go on my way."
CHAPTER IX
THE SINGER FROM THE DARKNESS
November went out with a fortnight of cold showers and biting winds,
and the woodcock came down in hundreds to the plain of Nauplia. Often
when the curtain of cloud which veiled Mount Elias day by day was rent
raggedly in two by some blast in the upper air, the higher slope of
the mountain, it could be seen, was sprinkled with snow. Then the peak
would again wrap itself in folds of tattered vapors as a beggar throws
his torn cloak over his shoulder, and perhaps would not peer through
the mists again for a couple of days. Down in the plain scudding
showers swept across from north to south and east to west, and the
earth, still thirsty from the long drought of the summer, drank them in
feverishly as a sick man drains the glass by his bedside and turns to
sleep again.
Mitsos had many round oaths for this horrible weather, but like a wise
lad cursed and had done with it. The bay and the sweet possibilities
of the bay were only in the range of thought, but the woodcock were
more accessible, and with something of the air of a martyr he would
pass a long day on the uplands towards Epidaurus, and come back, after
the fall of dark, with a leash of woodcock, and an appetite which
bordered on the grotesque, singing and contented. But later in the
evening he would be twitched by an eager restlessness, and make many
journeys to the door to see if the weather had cleared, or showed signs
of clearing, only to be met by a buffeting clap of windy rain in the
face, which made him close it again quickly, for where was the use,
he argued, of lying rolling and rocking off the white wall if he was
to be alone there? Once or twice during this fortnight he had sailed
by it, but his wages were only a wetting. Constantine was somewhat
puzzled and perplexed at Mitsos' behavior about this time, but he took
it all with his habitual serenity of tolerance, and likened him in
his own mind to a colt who is just beginning to find out that he is a
horse, and, knowing his own strength and learning his needs, whinnies
and kicks up his heels. He knew that it would be useless to try to
extract unvolunteered information out of Mitsos, and he guessed more
nearly to the truth than he knew, that Mitsos' somewhat spasmodic moods
were merely the natural results of his budding manhood, and were as
inexplicable to him as they were to his father. Meantime, though they
had neither heard nor seen anything more of Nicholas, Constantine felt
that Mitsos was growing in the way he would have him grow, and was
increasing in self-reliance and surefootedness of mind just as he was
increasing in bodily strength and stature.
But Mitsos was exercising more self-control than his father gave him
credit for. That acquaintance with Suleima, the Greek girl in the harem
of the Turk, begun so strangely, had ripened no less strangely. He had
sat below the wall night after night and talked to her from his boat,
rocking gently in the swell, or standing still and steady in the calm
water, till with a sign she motioned him away, seeing some other woman
of the harem or one of the servants come out into the garden.
Then Suleima had made a confidante of one of the elder women, who,
seeing Mitsos' handsome, laughing face, had given her sympathy, and,
what was better, a practical exhibition of it, and had promised
to watch in the garden so that they might talk without fear of
interruption; stipulating, however, through Suleima as interpreter,
half laughing, yet half in earnest, that Mitsos should give her a kiss
for every time she watched for them. Suleima had felt herself flushing
as she interpreted this into Greek, but Mitsos' tone reassured her as
he answered,
"She might as well do it for nothing. Oh, don't translate that, but say
we are very much obliged. Pay-day is long in the house of a Turk."
Then there came an evening, only just before the weather had broken,
when Mitsos took down to the boat a little rope ladder. Suleima had
told him that he was to come there late, not before midnight, and she
would have gone to her room early, saying she was not well. Then, if
possible, she would come out to him, and they would go for a sail
together.
It was an evening to be remembered--to be lived over again in
memory. Her reluctance and eagerness to come; the terrorizing risk
of discovery, which none the less was a whetstone to her enjoyment;
her delight at getting out, though only for an hour or two; her
half-frightened, childish exclamations of dismay as Mitsos put about,
when the water began to curl back from the forefoot of the boat as
they went hissing out to sea before the wind; her face looking as if
it was made of ebony and ivory beneath the moonlight, with its thin,
black eyebrows, and long, black eyelashes; her sense of innocent
wickedness, as in response to Mitsos' entreaties she unveiled it
altogether; her curious, fantastic story of how she was carried off
years ago by a Turk, and had forgotten all about her home, except
that her father was a tall man with a long, black dress; her pretty,
hesitating pronunciation of Greek; her bewildering treatment of himself
as if he was a boy, as he was, and she a person of mature experience,
as she was not, being a year younger than he; the view which she took
of this moonlight sail as just a childish freak, heavily paid for if
discovered, and to be repeated if not, while to him it was the opening
of heaven. Then, as he still remained serious, looking at her with
wide eyes of shy adoration, she too became just a little serious as
they turned homewards, and said that she liked him very much, and that
old Abdul Achmet was a fat pig. Then in answer to him--Oh, no, she was
quite content where she was, except when Abdul was in a bad temper or
the eunuch beat her. There was plenty to eat, nothing to do, and they
were all much less strictly looked after than in other harems, for
Abdul was old and only cared for one of them. For herself she was a
favorite servant of his chief wife, and not really in the harem. It was
not very exciting, but if Mitsos would come again now and then and take
her for sails she would be quite happy. Finally, it was useless for him
to come except when it was fine, for the harem was always locked up in
wet weather, and she would not be able to get into the garden. Also,
she hated rain like a cat.
Then intervened the fortnight when the climate of Nauplia, which for
the most part is that of the valley of Avilion, gave way to the angry
moods of a child--to screaming, sobbing, and steady weeping. The
surface of the bay was churned up by the rain and streaked with foam by
the wind, and the big poplar-tree, under which Maria had slept, shook
itself free of its summer foliage and stood forth in naked, gnarled
appeal to the elements. For a fortnight the deluge continued, but on
the night of the 1st of December, Mitsos, waking at that strange moment
when the earth turns in her sleep, and cattle and horses stand up and
graze for a moment before lying down again, saw with half an eye the
shadow of the bar of his window cast sharply onto the floor of his
bedroom by the slip of the crescent moon, which rode high in a starry
sky, and when he woke again it was to see a heaven of unsullied blue
washed clean by the rain.
Half the day he spent dreaming and dozing in the veranda, for he meant
to be out on the bay that night, and after his mid-day dinner he went
down to overhaul the boat, taking with him his fishing-net and a bag
of resin. He had wrapped up in the centre of the net the pillow from
his bed, for Suleima had said that the net on which she sat before
smelled fishy. But after supper that night he found himself beset by a
strange perplexity, the like of which he had never felt. His fustanella
was old and darned; it was hardly suitable. It did very well before,
but somehow now--and the moon would be larger to-night. The perplexity
gained on him, and eventually he took out and put on his new clothes,
only worn on festa days, which were thoroughly unsuitable for rough
fishing by night. He brushed his hair with extreme care, and wished it
was sleek and smooth like Yanko's, instead of growing in crisp, strong
curls, put his red cap rakishly on the side of his head, and laced up
his brown cloth leggings to the very top. All this was done with the
greatest precision and seriousness, and he went down-stairs on tiptoe
for fear of wakening his father, who was already abed, and had left
injunctions with him to lock the door and take the key with him if he
was likely to be late.
It was about half-past ten when he set off, and the moon had risen.
It took him an hour or more to reach the dim, white wall, for the
breeze was yet but light and variable. As he neared it he began to
feel his heart pulsing in his throat, as it had done one night before
when he passed the scene of the hanging by the wayside, but somehow
differently, and he peered out anxiously into the darkness to see if
there was any one there. Something white glimmered on the wall, down
went his sail, and a few minutes later the nose of his boat grated
against the stone-work.
She gave a little chuckling laugh.
"I thought you would come," she said, "on the first night of stars.
They are all in bed. I listened at Mohammed's door; he was Mohammed no
more--only a grunt and a snore."
Mitsos said nothing, but threw the ladder and rope on the wall and
sprang up himself.
"Yes, I have come," he said. "Ah, how I have been cursing this
rain--may the saints forgive me!--but I cared not, and cursed."
Suleima looked at him a moment.
"Why, how smart you are!" she said. "Is it the Greek use that a man
goes fishing in his best clothes? Oh, my clean fustanella!" she cried,
looking sideways on him.
Mitsos smiled. The best clothes had been a good thought, in spite of a
momentary confusion.
"Hush!" he whispered, "we will talk in the boat. I will hold the
ladder. There, it is quite steady."
The girl stepped lightly down the rungs, and Mitsos, directing her to
sit still, threw the ladder and rope back and let himself down onto the
side of the boat.
"Where shall we go to-night?" he asked.
The girl laughed gently--the echo, as it were, of a laugh.
"Oh, out, out to sea," she said; "right away from this horrible place.
Where shall I sit?"
Mitsos took the pillow out of the net and put it for her at the stern
of the boat.
"See," he said. "I remembered that you said the net smelled fishy,
and I have brought you my pillow to sit on. There--is there a more
comfortable seat in all Greece?"
She sat down, and the boy busied himself with the boat for a few
minutes. He had to row out a dozen strokes or so until they got from
under the lee of the wall, and the wind, catching the sail, slowly
bulged it out taut; the boat dipped and bowed a moment and then began
to move quickly forward towards the mouth of the bay. He stood a few
seconds irresolute until Suleima spoke.
"Well, have you finished?" she asked.
"Yes. We shall run straight before the wind as far as you like."
She pointed with her hand to the seat beside her.
"Come and sit by me," she said.
There was silence between them for several minutes--she with a smile
hiding in the depths of her dark eyes; he, serious and tongue-tied. The
air was full of the freshness of the night and of the sea, but across
that there came to him some faint odor from her--a warm smell of a live
thing, too delicate to describe. Then she drew from her pocket a small
box and opened it.
"See what I have brought you," she said--"Rahat-la-koom. How do you
call it in Greece? Sweets, anyhow. Do you like sweets?"
She took a lump of the sticky, fragrant stuff out of the box and
offered it to Mitsos as a child offers sweets to another child.
"Do you like it?" she asked again. "Abdul gave me the stuff last night.
I was afraid when he gave it to me, but he did not stop. As I told you,
I am not of the harem."
Mitsos flushed. Suleima spoke with the _naïveté_ of a child, and yet
somehow it made him ashamed to think that even he was sitting alone
with her, and furious at the thought that that fat Turk, whom he had
seen at Nauplia only a few days before, should dare to give her sweets.
"How silent you are, Mitsos!" she went on. "Tell me what you have been
doing all this time. For me, I have done nothing--nothing--nothing. I
have never been so dull."
Mitsos looked up suddenly.
"Are you less dull now?" he said. "Do you care to come out like this
with me?"
"Surely, or else I should not come. I think I have even missed you,
which is odd, for I never missed any one before. I care for none of
those in the house, and some I hate."
Mitsos took her hand in his.
"Promise you will never hate me," he said.
Suleima laughed.
"That is a big thing to promise," she said, "for 'never' is the
greatest of all words, greater even than 'always'; but I don't feel as
if I should ever hate you. I liked you since the first, even before I
had ever seen you, when you sang that song out of the darkness. It was
very rash and foolish of you, for Abdul would make nothing of having a
sailor-boy shot. Supposing I had been--well, some one else--I should
have told Abdul, and thus there would have been no more songs for
Mitsos."
"But because it was you, you did not?" asked Mitsos, awkwardly. "Yet if
it had not been you, I should not have sung to you."
The girl's hand still rested in his, but suddenly she disengaged it.
"You are talking nonsense," she said, quickly, yet finding nonsense
somehow delightful; "of course, if you had not sung to me you would not
have sung to me. By the way, Zuleika--"
She stopped suddenly.
"Who is Zuleika?" said Mitsos; "and what of her?"
"Oh, nothing. Zuleika is the woman who watched to see that no one came
while we talked. She's quite old, you know, though not as old as Abdul.
Well, why shouldn't I tell you? Zuleika is getting impatient for her
payment. She watched four times, she said, but I am sure it was only
three. Won't you pay her?"
Mitsos got up and stood in front of her.
"Zuleika, what is Zuleika to me?" he said again.
The girl stared at him for a moment. "Are you angry, Mitsos? Why should
you be angry? But--but--"
Mitsos turned away impatiently.
"Why are you angry?" repeated the girl. "Is it because of what Zuleika
said? I told you because I thought it would please you. Most men, I
think, would like to hear that sort of thing. Zuleika says you are the
handsomest boy she ever saw, and she is pretty herself--at least I
suppose she is pretty."
Mitsos had the most admirable temper, and though it had been touched in
a quarter where he could not have anticipated attack, he regained it in
a moment.
"Never mind Zuleika," he said, sitting down again; "go on talking to
me. I like to hear you talk, and give me your hand again. Put it in
mine; it is so soft and white. I never saw a hand like yours!"
Suleima laughed.
"There you are, then. Oh, Mitsos, don't squeeze it so; you hurt me!
What shall I talk about? I have nothing to talk about. Nothing ever
happened to me. Zuleika--"
"Don't talk about Zuleika!" said Mitsos, between his teeth.
"Well, you told me to talk. I don't want to talk about Zuleika. Oh,
Mitsos, look how far we are out! There is Nauplia behind us. We must go
back!"
"No, not yet."
"But we must! It will take us an hour or more to get back! Please let
us go back, Mitsos?"
Mitsos sat still a moment.
"Tell me you don't want to go back," he said, in a whisper.
"Of course I don't; why should I tell you that? I should like to be
thus with you always, you alone, and no other."
Mitsos sprang up.
"I'll put about," he said.
There were two or three moments of confusion, as the heavy sail flapped
and shook. The wind had veered a point towards the east, and they
could get back in a couple of tacks. Mitsos stood up till the boat had
settled down on the homeward journey, and then, with the tiller in one
hand, he sat down again by Suleima's side.
"It will be fine weather now," he said, "and will you come out with me
again? You tell me you like it."
Suleima nestled a little closer to him. "Yes, I like it," she said,
"but we must not go too often. But if you care to, you can come to
the wall in fine weather always, and I will tell you whether it is
possible. And, Mitsos, next time we go out bring your spear and resin,
and let me see you fish. I should like to see you do that. Do you catch
many?"
"The devil fly away with the fish!" said Mitsos. "I would sooner talk
to you."
"How funny! I would sooner you fished; and, you see, we can talk, too.
Will you let me help?"
Mitsos took up one of her hands again.
"It would be a heavy net you could draw in!" he said. "You have never
felt the tug of a shoal."
"A whole shoal?" asked Suleima. "How many fish go to the shoal?"
Mitsos laughed. "Fifty for each of your fingers," he said, "and a
hundred to spare. Sometimes they all swim together against the net, and
though they are very little, many of them are strong, and pull like a
horse. I cut my finger to the bone once against the net-rope. Look,
here is the mark."
He held up his great brown hand, and Suleima traced with her little
finger a white scar running up to the second joint of his forefinger.
"How horrid!" she said, concernedly, still drawing her finger up and
down his. "Did it bleed much?"
"Half a bucketful. I must put the boat on the other tack. Take care;
the sail will come across again."
The air struck cold as they went more into the wind, and Suleima
wrapped her black bernouse more closely round her and nestled under
shelter of the lad.
"You are cold?" he asked, suddenly.
"No, Mitsos, not if you sit like that. But isn't it ice to you? Have
another piece of Rahat-la-koom?"
[Illustration: "SHE KISSED HIM LIGHTLY ON THE FOREHEAD"]
Mitsos grinned, showing his white teeth. "That will keep out the cold
finely," he said. "Give it me yourself!"
They were rapidly approaching the wall, and in ten minutes more Mitsos
stood up and took in the sail. The speed slackened, and, standing at
the bows, he leaned forward, and, thrusting out with the pole, he
brought the boat alongside. Then, springing up again, with the rope
in his hand, he told Suleima to throw him up the end of the ladder.
This he held down with his foot on the far side of the wall while she
climbed up, pleasantly feeling the muscles of his leg strain as she
stepped onto the rope.
The ground on the inside was a foot or two below the top of the wall,
and, standing on the top a moment before stepping down, she suddenly
bent her head down to him, and, brushing back his curls with her hand,
kissed him lightly on the forehead.
"Good-night, little Mitsos," she whispered.
Then all in a flash her face flushed. "Mitsos," she said, quickly, and
with a curious shyness, "promise me you will never kiss Zuleika; she is
an old witch!" and without waiting for his reply she ran across to the
dark house.
Mitsos sat perfectly still, tingling and alert, and he felt the blood
throb and beat in his temples. He half started from his place to run
after her, and half raised his voice to call, but remembered in time
that he was close to the Turk's house. Something which let the two sit
together like children was dead, but something had taken its place, and
his heart sang to him.
He dropped down again into the boat, and for half an hour more he sat
there without stirring, hearing the ripples tap against the side, and
seeing them break in dim phosphorescent gleams of light. Then, with
wonder on his lips and a smile in his eyes, he went silently home
through the still night.
It was the night of the 1st of January, 1821, and Mitsos and Suleima
were again sailing across the bay; this time, however, not out to sea,
but to the shelving bays underneath the Tripoli hills, the scene of
the fishing with Nicholas. It was the first time the two had been able
to go out together since the night last recorded, for on that occasion
Suleima had been caught by the eunuch coming in from the garden.
Luckily for them both, Mitsos had not been seen, and her excuse was
that she had a headache and could not sleep, so had sat in the garden
for a while. Nothing more could be got out of her, and Zuleika, for
one reason or another, had been loyal enough to preserve silence. But
Suleima got beaten, and she judged it more prudent not to have any more
headaches for a time. But as the fate that watches over wooings would
have it, one night a fortnight afterwards the eunuch was found drunk, a
particularly heinous crime, and, to one of his religion, blasphemous;
and he was, therefore, dismissed. Suleima was sedulous to note the
habits of his successor, and observed with much approval that he went
to bed early and slept soundly, and at length she ventured to resume
her excursions. She had more leisure than usual after her detection,
for she was solitary behind lock and key; she had no sweets to eat, and
her thoughts were ever with Mitsos. She, who had hardly seen a man,
and had certainly never in the last ten years spoken to one except to
the black, thick-lipped eunuch and Abdul Achmet, whose small, sensual
eyes looked at her like a mole's about his fat, pendulous cheeks, could
hardly believe that they and Mitsos, with his sun-browned, boyish face
and fit, slender limbs, were creatures of the same race. From the
first time that she had seen him only dimly as he sat in his boat,
swaying regularly and gracefully to its motion, and heard him singing
the old song which she remembered from her childhood, she had thought
how charming it would be to live on his pattern, as free as the spring
swallows, wholesomely and cleanly in the open air. Surely he had
caught something, indefinable perhaps, but none the less certain, from
wind and sun--a something which reminded her of a clear, light summer
morning, when it was so pleasant to come out of the close, perfumed
house, to have a breath of a more airy fragrance thrown at her by the
sea-breeze, and feel with a cool shock a few dew-drops from the great
climbing rose about the door shaken onto the bare flesh by the wind;
for, unlike the Turks, she came of an outdoor race, and the inherited
instinct had not been altogether eradicated by her hot-house, enclosed
life.
Then by degrees this feeling had grown less general, but more personal.
It was doubly delightful to be able to talk confidentially and
naturally, as one child talks to another, to some one of her own age.
She liked talking to Zuleika, but she preferred talking to Mitsos; it
was a pleasure to make him laugh and show the milkiness of his white
teeth, and she could always make him laugh. Zuleika had hideous teeth;
one was all black and discolored, and for whole days together she would
sit, a sloppy, dishevelled object, by the fire, saying it ached. She
felt quite sure that Mitsos' teeth never ached, and for herself she
did not know what aching meant. Again, when Abdul Achmet laughed, his
cheeks wrinkled up till his eyes were nearly closed, and two queerest
little dimples were dug one on each side of his mouth. What would
happen, she had thought once, if she made him laugh and then held his
eyes open so that they could not shut? She would have liked to try.
Then Mitsos--she felt it in her bones--evidently liked her very much,
in quite a different way from which any one had liked her before.
Zuleika liked her in a tepid, intermittent manner; but when her tooth
ached she ignored her altogether, and had once slapped her in the face
for a too obtrusive sympathy. And when Abdul came and took her chin
between his fingers and turned up her face to his, and told her that
she was getting very pretty, she turned cold all over. It reminded her
of the way he had pointed at one of the turkeys in the yard and said it
was becoming beautifully fat. Again, it had been quite unaccountably
delightful to sit close to Mitsos and shelter under him from the wind,
to be close to him and know him near. Finally, when they parted that
night, and she had brushed back the curls from his forehead and kissed
him, her feeling had been more unaccountable still. She had done it
unthinkingly, but the moment it was done a whole mill-race of thoughts
went bubbling unbidden through her head. She wanted to do it again,
she wanted him to take her in his arms and press her close to him--she
would not mind if it hurt. She hated Zuleika. She understood in a
moment why, if Mitsos knew the least part of what she felt, he should
have been angry when she told him what Zuleika said, and the next words
had come out of her mouth outstripping, so it seemed, her thought. Then
she had felt suddenly shy and frightened; she longed to stop where she
was, for surely Mitsos understood what was so intimate to her. And so,
being a woman, she instantly ran away, and never looked behind.
To-night she had sat by the wall for half an hour before he came, and
the thought that perhaps he would not come had brought into her eyes
silent, childish tears. He must come; she could not do without him. For
herself she would have sat on the wall every night for months to go out
with him; surely he could not be tired in a week or two of coming and
not finding her there. But with the rising of the moon she had seen
a sail far away that got nearer, and at last the boat grated gently
against the wall.
"Is it you, Mitsos?" she whispered, and for answer the rope was flung
up to her, and her young, black-eyed lover sprang to her side. She
descended the ladder silently and stood in the stern; while he joined
her, and with a vigorous push they were floating again alone in the
centre of the vast, dim immensity. He set the sail and came and stood
in front of her.
"Suleima," he whispered, "last time you kissed me. Will you let me kiss
you?"
"Yes, Mitsos," she said, with a great, shy, bold joy in her heart, and
put her face up, and he would have kissed her lightly on the forehead
as she had kissed him. But suddenly that was impossible; they were no
longer children, but lovers, and the next moment his arms were flung
round her neck, her mouth pressed close to his, and each kiss left them
hungrier for the next.
The wind was straight behind them, and they sat where they had sat
before, and talked in low voices as if in fear of the jealousy of
the stars and the night. Mitsos had got his fishing-spear and bag of
resin on board, and after a while, at Suleima's suggestion, they went
straight before the wind to the bay, where Mitsos said he could catch
fish if she cared to see him. Half an hour's sail brought them across,
and, grounding the boat by a bush of blackthorn that grew thick on the
top of the rocks on the edge of the tideless sea, he took Suleima in
his arms and waded through the shallow water to the head of the bay
where he would fish, to save her the tramp through the undergrowth,
which was thick and soaked with the night dews. She was but a feather's
weight in his strong arms, her head lay on his shoulder, and she threw
one arm round his neck for greater security. He made her a nest under
a clump of rushes that grew on the edge of the dry sand, and then went
back for his fishing things. To carry Suleima to land, he had only the
shallowest water at the edge of the sea to walk through, and he had
just turned up the bottom of his trousers; but where he was going to
fish it would be deeper, and, as usual, he slipped them off, buckling
his shirt, which reached to his knees, round his waist. He then lit his
flare, and, stepping off into the deeper water, which was half-thigh
deep, he went slowly along, peering cautiously at the bright circle of
light cast by the resin.
Fish were plentiful, and Suleima, from her nest near, clapped her hands
and laughed delightedly when Mitsos speared one larger than usual, and
held it up flapping and wriggling to show her. She got so excited in
his proceedings that she left her seat, and walked along the edge of
the sand parallel with him, observing with the keenest interest what he
did. Then, when she got tired of watching, Mitsos declared he was tired
of fishing, and waded to shore with a creel full of fish.
Suleima had brought with her some Turkish tobacco, which she had taken
from the house, and gave it to Mitsos to smoke. The other women of the
harem all smoked, she said; for herself she had tried it once, but
thought it horrid to the taste. But Mitsos might smoke it--yes, she
would even light his pipe for him; and with a little pout of disgust
she lit it at the flare and handed it to him, and he smoked it while
they looked the fish over.
It was a night for the great lovers of romance to be abroad in; the air
was of a wonderful briskness, making the pulse go quick, yet gentle and
soft; the moon had set behind the hills to the west, and they sat close
together beneath the wonderful twilight of stars, in a little sheltered
nook beneath a great clump of tall, singing rushes. On the ground, in
front, lay the resin flare, already burning low; but as Mitsos would
fish no more that night he did not replenish it. Lower and lower it
burned, but now and then it would shoot up with a sudden leap of flame,
revealing each to the other, and Suleima would smile at Mitsos; but
before she could see his mouth smile in answer, the flame would die
down again into a flickering spot on the glowing, bubbling ash. But in
the darkness she knew he smiled back at her; a whispered word would
pass from one to the other, and the last flicker of flame showed a
lover to the sight of each. Then drawing closer in the darkness, as if
by some law which was moving each equally, their lips met again in the
kiss that seemed to have never ceased between them. And the wind sang
gently in the rushes, while before them spread the broad waters of the
bay, just curdled over by the breeze; above, the austere stars burned
down on them; behind, rose the empty-wooded hills, where once the soft
armies of Dionysus revelled in love and wine, rising into the peaks
above Tripoli.
* * * * *
The wind dropped for a moment, the rushes were silent, and in the lull
Mitsos heard a mule bell behind them no great way off. He sat up and
peered across the vine-grown strip of plain which lay between them and
the mountain, but the skeins of night mist hung opaque and pearly gray
above it.
In a few minutes, however, the sound got sensibly nearer, and the two
rose and moved a score of yards farther down the beach, for a footpath
round the head of the bay to Nauplia led across the top of it. Then
across the sound of the bell they could hear the pattering footsteps of
the mule, and in a few minutes more it and its rider emerged from the
path which lay through the vineyards onto the open ground at the head
of the beach. Just then the rider checked his beast, dismounted, and
tied some grass round the tongue of the bell in order to muffle it, and
struck a light with a flint and steel which he caught in tinder, and
blew it gently till it sufficed to light his short chibouk. His face
was towards them, and in the glow of the kindled tobacco it stood out
vividly from the dark. It was Nicholas.
He mounted again and rode on, but Mitsos sat still, breathing hard and
vacantly, and seeing only Nicholas's face standing out like a ghost in
the darkness. Suleima touched him gently on the arm.
"Who was it?" she said. "He did not see us."
"It was my uncle," said Mitsos, in a dry voice. "No, he did not see us."
Then his self-control gave way, and he flung himself back on the ground.
"I am afraid," he said--"I do not know what is going to happen. He has
come for me. I know it."
"For you?" asked Suleima. "What do you mean?"
"I shall have to go," said Mitsos. "Holy Virgin, but I cannot. I know
nothing about what he wants me to do. I only know that I may--that I
shall have to go away; that I shall have to leave you and perhaps never
see you again. Oh," he cried, "I cannot, I cannot!"
Suleima was frightened.
"Mitsos, do not talk like that," she said, half sobbing; "do not be so
unkind."
Mitsos recovered himself and felt ashamed.
"Oh, dearest of all and littlest," he said, soothingly, "I am a stupid
brute to frighten you. Everything will be all right--I will come
back--it is sure that I will come back. Only I promised him to do what
he told me, and help him in something--it does not matter what--and I
expect he has come to tell me he wants my help."
"Will not you tell me what it is?" asked Suleima, willing to be
comforted.
"No, I promised I would keep it secret. But this I may tell you.
You know they say--never repeat this--that the Greeks are going to
rise against the Turks and turn them out. There may be fighting and
bloodshed. But you hate the Turks as much as I do, darling, so you will
be as glad as I if this comes true. Perhaps it might even happen that
Abdul's house may be attacked, but you are quite safe if you will only
do one thing. If ever it is attacked do not be afraid, but call out in
Greek that you are a Greek and no Turk. And, oh, Suleima, pray to the
Virgin and the Blessed Child that that day may come soon, for it will
be thus and then that we shall be able to go together always."
"Is it about that you are going away?" said Suleima, with a sudden
intuition.
Mitsos longed to tell her, but his promise to Nicholas kept him dumb.
Then, as he had to answer, he lied boldly and unreservedly.
"It has nothing whatever to do with it," he said. "But oh, Suleima,
forgive me for so frightening you--I did not mean what I said. And
will you come to the wall again as often as you can? I may have to go
away--indeed, I am afraid that is sure, but I do not know for how long.
The first night I am back I shall come again to the wall, the dear
white wall where we first met."
Suleima felt quite comforted. She was sure that nothing could go really
wrong as long as Mitsos drew breath, and she bent down his head and
kissed him.
"Yes, Mitsos, I will come to the wall whenever I can, hoping only that
you may be there, because, you know, I care for you more than all the
rest of the world. And now carry me back to the boat, strong-armed one.
It is time I went back."
Mitsos stooped and lifted her up. As his hands were full, he hung the
creel round his neck, and Suleima carried the extinguished flare. His
heart was a dead weight within him, for he felt certain why Nicholas
had come; but he was apparently his old cheery self, and Suleima forgot
about the rather disquieting moments just after Nicholas had passed.
What he should do he could not form the least idea; at present it
seemed to him impossible that he should go away and leave her. He felt
willing to throw to the winds all he had promised Nicholas. Nicholas
had told him that he should be one of the foremost of his country's
avengers. He shrugged his shoulders, for just now the desire for
vengeance on Turks was less than the memory of a dream. Were there
not plenty of others to avenge Greece? Why should he give up all that
was dearest to him, this dear burden that was his, and go out on an
undesired adventure?
But as long as Suleima was with him he stifled all these thoughts,
while the boat skimmed seawards on the outward tack. They put about
opposite the island and ran straight for the wall. The wind had
freshened, and to Mitsos the boat seemed to be going terribly fast, for
he grudged each moment. But he had quite lulled Suleima's disquietude,
if not his own, and she lay with her head on his shoulder, half asleep,
looking up now and then into his wide-open eyes, and pressing her arm
more closely round his neck. He had to rouse her when he must get up
to take in the sail, and she smiled at him sleepily like a child just
wakened.
Then he fixed the ladder, and she climbed up, clung to him for a moment
without words, for there was no need of speech between them, and went
quickly and silently across the garden.
It was after two when Mitsos landed opposite his house, and he saw with
some surprise that there were lights still burning. He opened the door,
and, bending his head to pass under the low jamb, entered. Constantine
and Nicholas were sitting there, Constantine silent, Nicholas talking
eagerly, and Mitsos observed that he held his pipe unlit in his hand.
His uncle sprang up when he came in.
"Ah, he is here! Mitsos, the time has come. You must go at once."
Mitsos looked at him a moment steadily and silently--their eyes were on
a level--and then he turned aside and put down the fishing-creel in the
corner. His decision, though the result of years, was the deed of only
a moment.
Then he faced Nicholas again.
"I am ready," he said; "tell me what I have to do."
Part II
THE EVE OF THE GATHERING
CHAPTER I
MITSOS MEETS HIS COUSINS
Since August Nicholas had been travelling about the Peloponnesus,
being received everywhere with a sober, secret welcome as one of the
accredited leaders of the revolution. The Turks, through whose Kismet
the truth of the ever-increasing rumors had begun to break, had long
held him in indolent suspicion, but had taken no steps to counteract
the report of his death, for they hoped--if Turks can be said to
hope--somewhat ingeniously, but wholly mistakenly, that such news would
prove to be a cooling draught to this ill-defined fever of revolution.
The Greeks, however, as Germanos had said, knew "that Nicholas was not
the sort of man who died," and Turkish ingenuity went strangely wide of
its aim. In fact, it enabled Nicholas to move about more freely, and to
take a liberal advantage of the fact that he was supposed to be beyond
the reach of war and rumor of war. Indeed, in October, finding himself
back at Corinth, where he had business with one of his fellow-workers,
he had filled an idle afternoon with carving a little wooden cross
on which he painted his name, and below, with a two-handled meaning,
the text, "The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised." He
was to leave Corinth that night, and after the dark had fallen he and
his host went to the Greek cemetery and planted this eloquent little
monument over a newly made grave. When it was discovered it caused a
certain amount of intelligent amusement among the Greeks; but the Turks
seemed to miss the point of the joke. Not even they would have dared to
disturb a Greek cemetery, for the dead had in their eyes a sacredness
which the living altogether lacked; and it remained there for a year,
when subsequent events saw it planted over the most honored grave in
Greece.
December and the first half of January Nicholas had spent in the
country of his kin, south of Sparta, and it was from there he had fled
in haste to Nauplia, for his presence in Maina, which was notably
patriotic, had become too insistent to be disregarded, and the Turkish
governor of Tripoli, Mehemet Salik, had demanded of the Greek bey
of that district, Petros Mavromichales, usually known as Petrobey,
that he should be given up on the old charge of brigandage. Petrobey,
like Germanos, was of high rank, and the Turks seemed to have had no
suspicion that he himself was a leader of the revolution; but, as a
matter of fact, he and Nicholas, who was staying with him at the time,
read the letter together and consulted what should be done.
Nicholas was disposed to shrug at it altogether, or merely to send
back an answer that he was officially declared to be dead and
buried--witness the grave and its monument; but Petrobey thought
otherwise. His own usefulness to the cause was immensely increased by
the fact that he at present stood outside suspicion, and he advised
Nicholas to retire where they were not likely to look for him, while he
himself would prosecute a vigorous and indubitably unsuccessful search
elsewhere, as an evidence of his own unimpeachable fidelity. Had not
Nicholas got a brother-in-law--his own cousin--at Nauplia? Nauplia
was an excellent hiding-place, for it was under the very nose of the
Turkish governor, and people always looked everywhere else first. But
it would be necessary to have some extremely trustworthy person who
could communicate between them; and Nicholas had spoken to him of his
nephew. This nephew lived at Nauplia, did he not? How very convenient!
Nicholas should go to Nauplia and send his nephew back to Maina, where
he could be very useful.
With this, Petrobey wrote an exceedingly polite letter to Mehemet
Salik, saying that his house was Mehemet's house, and that he himself
was honored by the commands of the deputy of the Shadow of God.
Nicholas, it was true, as he had learned by inquiry, had been seen
lately in Maina, or so gossip would have it; but as they had been told
that he was dead not long ago at Corinth, there might be some confusion
on this point. However, the bearers of the letter to the deputy of the
Serene Presence would be his witnesses that he had sent out twenty men
to scour the country-side, and no doubt the hound of hell, if still
alive, would be found. He should in this case be sent with spitting to
Tripoli.
Petrobey was the head of the numerous and powerful clan of the
Mavromichales, the thews and sinews of the revolution. He himself,
though a Greek, was governor of the district of Maina, and had been
appointed to this post by the Sultan, for the attempt to put the
government of Maina, or rather of the Mavromichales, into the hands of
a Turkish official, had not proved a success, the last three Turkish
governors not having been permitted by the clan to hold office for more
than a month. His brothers and cousins were mayors and land-owners
of the villages for miles around, and, like Nicholas's family, with
whom they were connected twenty times in marriage, it was their
pride that they had kept their blood clean and not mated with devils,
and the wrong done to Nicholas's wife they took for a wrong done to
themselves, demanding, so they swore, "a red and hot apology." So when,
in the presence of the five soldiers who had brought Mehemet's letter,
Petrobey sent for his brother-in-law Demetri, and told him that that
bastard cousin of the clan, Nicholas Vidalis, was being sought for by
the deputy of the Shadow of God who cast his serene effulgence over
Tripoli, Demetri was suitably astounded, and the Turkish soldiers were
much impressed. They had the further satisfaction an hour later of
seeing twenty mounted men set off southwards in search of Nicholas,
following well-authenticated information; and later in the afternoon
they themselves took horse on their return journey to Tripoli, having
drunk a little more than was good for them at Petrobey's expense, the
bearers of that reply the sentiments and wording of which were an
edification.
Nicholas and he supped together, and it was arranged that Nicholas
should start that night from Panitza, so as to reach Gythium before
morning.
"I regret," said Petrobey, "my dear cousin, that I cannot speed you on
your way myself, and can send none of our clan with you; but perhaps
it would be outstepping the bounds of prudence if I went myself, and,
as you know, the Mavromichales of this immediate district have gone to
look for you southwards. They will no doubt be back from their quest
before midnight; but I should advise your setting out before then."
Nicholas laughed.
"I shall do very well, my cousin," he said. "I shall reach Nauplia in
two days or three, and send Mitsos back at once. He is absolutely and
entirely trustworthy. I think I told you of the test."
"You did. He should be very useful to us; for it is time, I think, that
the mills were set grinding, and a boy like that can go freely to and
fro without suspicion. Your health, dear cousin; I will break my custom
and drink wine with you. I drink to you and to vengeance."
The men clinked glasses, emptied them, and filled them again.
"I do not easily forget," said Nicholas, "and the Turk shall not easily
forget me. The corn will grow high this summer, for the fields will be
rich. Your health, dear cousin, and the memory of one whom we forget
not!"
They sat in silence for a space, for Petrobey knew that Nicholas spoke
of his wife, and having finished their meal they drank their coffee,
and Nicholas's horse was brought round. The two men walked to the end
of the village together, the lad leading the horse behind, and there
they stopped a moment.
"I may not see you again," said Nicholas, "till the feast is ready.
And on that day, my cousin, you and I will fall to with good appetite.
I wish you a good appetite for that feast." And after the manner of
relations and friends they kissed each other, and Nicholas mounted and
rode off.
Eight days after his departure Mitsos arrived, having passed without
impediment through Tripoli and Sparta. Following Nicholas's directions,
he had kept his ears very wide open at Tripoli in his lodging at
a Greek inn, and he had heard things which he thought might be of
interest. First and foremost the letter which Petrobey had written to
the deputy of the Shadow of God had been received, and was supposed
to have given satisfaction, for Mitsos had fallen in with one of the
Turkish soldiers who had taken it, who reported that the matter was to
be left entirely in Petrobey's hands, which seemed a mark of confidence
in his fidelity. Also, the meeting of primates and bishops at Tripoli,
which usually took place at the beginning of April, was summoned for
the beginning of March. Lastly, Mehemet Salik was fortifying with
feverish haste the walls of the city.
Mitsos had spent the second night at Sparta; the third at Marathonisi,
a town on the coast; and the noon of the fourth day saw him climbing
the steep hill into Panitza. His horse was tired with the four days'
journey, and a couple of miles below the village he got off and walked
behind it, cracking his whip every now and then, partly to encourage
it, and partly because he could crack a whip louder than mortal
man. Petrobey, who was outside the big café at the entrance to the
village, saw the tired horse and the extremely vigorous-looking young
giant walking by its side as they passed, and, after a few moments'
inspection, said to a young man who was sitting with him:
"That is he, no doubt. Nicholas seems to have chosen well."
The two got up and followed the boy till he, seeing them, stopped and
asked for Petros Mavromichales's house.
"And what do you want with Petrobey?" asked that gentleman.
Mitsos surveyed him with easy indifference, raising his eyebrows
slightly at the question.
"See, friend," he said, "I have my business, and you, for all I know,
have yours. If you will tell me where is his house, good; if not, I
will ask some one else."
[Illustration: "MITSOS SURVEYED HIM WITH EASY INDIFFERENCE"]
Petrobey laughed.
"You are Mitsos, no doubt," he said. "Welcome, cousin, for Nicholas's
sake and your own."
"I really am very sorry," said the boy; "but how should I know? I have
come from Nauplia. Uncle Nicholas arrived safely."
"That is good, and you have arrived safely, which is also good. This is
my son Yanni, Mitsos, and your cousin. Yanni, take your cousin's horse
and then join us."
Mitsos hesitated a moment before giving the bridle to Yanni.
"Thank you very much," he said; "but I can put the horse up myself if
you will show me where. My father told me always to put it up myself.
They laughed at me at the inn at Tripoli for doing so."
"Indeed," said Petrobey, glancing at the boy's shoulders; "I would
never laugh at you, Mitsos. What did you do?"
"I knocked one of them down," said Mitsos, genially, "and thus there
was no more laughter."
"The horse will be all right here," said Petrobey, smiling. "Give Yanni
the bridle, lad."
Mitsos obeyed, and they went into the house, where dinner was being got
ready. Dinner was a daily crisis in the house of Petrobey, and, leaving
the two boys in the veranda, he went round to the kitchen for fear that
the cook, who, he said, was a man to whom God had not granted a palate,
should be too harsh on the sucking-pig which they were to eat.
"Can you conceive," he said, on his return, spreading out his hands
with a gesture of eloquent despair, "the fool stuffed the last one
I ate with garlic! Sucking-pig stuffed with garlic! A man without a
palate, little Mitsos!"
Yanni burst out laughing at this, and Petrobey turned to him with
good humor shining in his great rosy face, which he tried most
unsuccessfully to school into severity.
"Yanni, too," he went on, "that lumpy son of mine, does not know quail
from woodcock, and lights his pipe before he has finished his wine.
Come, boys, dinner first; we will talk afterwards. Bring the mastic,
son of a locust," he bawled into the kitchen.
During dinner Petrobey hardly spoke, because speech spoils food. He ate
sparingly and slowly, dwelling on each mouthful as on a mathematical
problem. His face grew anxious as the time for sucking-pig approached,
and his deep-gray eyes bore an expression of profound thought as
he laid down his knife and fork, after putting the first piece of
crackling into his mouth. Then his face cleared again, and he drank a
little water briskly, for, except rarely, he did not touch wine.
"Hardly crisp enough," he said, curling his long gray mustache up from
his lips. "Hardly crisp enough, but creditable. What say you, Mitsos?"
The latter exhibited a phenomenal appetite after his journey from
Marathonisi, and Yanni looked on in admiration, which eventually
expressed itself Homerically:
"You are a good man," he said, "because you eat well."
After dinner they sat out in the sun under the shelter of the southern
veranda, and here Mitsos learned what he had to do.
"Your uncle Nicholas," said Petrobey, "has told me that I can trust you
completely; and I have many things to tell you, any of which, if you
chose to give information to the Turk, would see me, and many others
besides, strung to the gallows."
Yanni, who was lying on a straw mat near Mitsos, refilled his pipe and
grinned.
"Me among them, Mitsos," he said, glancing up at his big cousin. "You
will please to remember that."
But Mitsos did not answer, and only looked gravely at Petrobey.
"We shall no longer be cursed by these devils," continued he, "for
the Turks will vanish out of our land like snow in summer. What you
and Yanni have to do is to go through a certain district, calling at
certain villages, and speaking to certain men. This first journey, on
which you will set out to-morrow, will take you a fortnight or so--ah,
but the victuals will be poor, little ones, but perhaps you don't mind
that--and then you will come back here. And remember, Mitsos, that
you will be doing what none of us could do; for two boys, dressed as
peasants dress, driving a couple of seedy mules laden with oranges,
can pass where Nicholas and I could not. On this first journey Yanni
will go with you, for he knows the country, but after that there will
probably be other work for him to do, and also for you--plenty. You
will go to the houses of these men and ask this question, 'Are you
grinding corn?' and they will answer, 'Corn for the hungry, or corn for
the Turk?' And you will say, 'Black corn for the Turk. If you have not
begun grinding, begin, and grind quickly.'"
Mitsos was listening breathlessly.
"What does it all mean?" he asked.
Petrobey smiled, and unslinging his powder-flask from his belt, shook
out a little into his hand, and tossed it into the air.
"Pouf!" he said; "black corn for the Turk."
Mitsos' eyes flashed.
"I understand," he said; "black corn, and good for Turks."
"For the first journey that will be all," went on Petrobey. "Yanni will
be with you, and it will be simple enough. After that you may have to
go here, there, anywhere. You will certainly have to go to Nauplia,
where you will find Nicholas; and Yanni will, I am afraid, have to go
to Tripoli for a little while."
"The black devil take Tripoli," muttered Yanni.
"And why does Yanni go to Tripoli?" asked Mitsos.
"Perhaps he will not, but if he goes it will be as a hostage for my
good conduct. But there is no need to be so round-eyed, Mitsos; we
are not going to have him murdered. I shall not behave badly till he
is safe again. Dear me, yes, I wish I could go instead. Mehemet Salik
has a cook of a thousand. But--who knows?--idle words may reach the
Turks at Tripoli, and if so I shall send Yanni as a hostage. But about
this journey you must be as quick and quiet as you can. Never answer
any questions about Nicholas or me or yourselves--you cannot be too
careful. Never sleep in a village when you have given a message. Sleep
mostly by day out in the woods and travel at night, though you must
be careful to arrive at the village where you give these messages by
day in the manner of ordinary peasants. Finally, be ready to run, if
running is possible; if not, to fight. Which would you prefer?"
Mitsos kicked out a leg tentatively.
"I have no marked choice," he said; "perhaps I would rather fight."
"I hope no need will come. Try to avoid any suspicion. I don't think
you need provoke any. But if you do, remember that you must try to run
away first. The point is that you should do your business quietly."
Yanni turned round and looked at Mitsos.
"You would prefer fighting, would you not, cousin?" he said. "But I
don't see how there will be either fighting or running to do, father.
We only go to friends, give our message, and pass on."
Petrobey got up.
"That is what I hope," he said, "but you cannot tell. Some of those
whom we thought our friends may be treacherous. And now I have to see
Demetri, and you boys can stop here, or you can take Mitsos to see some
of his cousins, Yanni. We will talk again this evening."
Petrobey whistled to the great sheep-dog, wolfish and savage, who
got up, and with all his hackles raised made a second examination of
Mitsos' legs, growling gently to himself. The boy sat quite still under
this somewhat trying inspection, and the dog after a few moments laid
his head on his knee and looked him in the face. Mitsos lifted his hand
very gently and stroked the brute's ears, while Petrobey watched them.
"There, go along," said Mitsos, after a few moments, and the stately
dog turned and walked across to Petrobey.
"That is curious," said the latter. "Osman is not usually friendly. I
suppose he saw you were not afraid of him."
Mitsos looked up smiling.
"I was horribly afraid," he said, "but I tried not to show it. Big dogs
are fools; they never understand."
"You will find that men are even greater fools; they always mistake
bluff for bravery," said Petrobey, walking off.
Yanni got up from where he was lying and sat himself in his father's
chair. He was a big-made young Greek, rather above the average height,
with a look of extreme fitness about him. His movements were all sharp
and nimble, like the movements of some young animal, and he rolled
himself a compact and uniform plug of tobacco for his chibouk with a
few passes of his quick fingers. His hands, like his father's, were
long and finely made, and Mitsos watched him admiringly nip off the
loose ends of the tobacco.
"How quickly you did that," he said. "Will you fill my pipe, too? I am
so glad we are going together, cousin."
"I, too. It is good to hunt in couples. It is a halving of the cold and
the tiredness, and a doubling of all that is pleasant. This is Turkish
tobacco, Mitsos, and it is better than ours. Father never smokes. So
when a Turk sends him a present of tobacco it is good for me. Have you
ever smoked the Turkish?"
Mitsos started, and a flush spread under the brown of his cheek.
"Yes, the other day only. I found it very good. Tell me more of the
journey."
"Old clothes, even very old clothes," said Yanni, "like poor peasants,"
and his Mavromichales's nose went in the air. "Old mules, and very
slow-going; but a pistol each, new pistols with two mouths that speak
like the lightning. Father gives us one each. On the mules a load of
stupid oranges and a couple of blankets each. Come to the other side of
the house, cousin; we can see our first day's journey from there."
Panitza stood high on the scrub-covered slope leading up to the pine
forests and the naked crags of Taygetus. Sixteen miles to the north
rose the spearhead of the range, Mount Elias, sheathed in snow for a
couple of thousand feet down, and cut against the intense blue of
the sky with the keenness and edge of steel. From Panitza their path
lay for five or six miles along the upward slope, and where it struck
the ridge they could see the huddled roofs of a village, which Yanni
said was Kalyvia, where they delivered their first message. From there
the track crossed a pass and went down the other side towards the
sea. It was rough, cold going on the heights, and it would be a full
day's journey to get down to Platsa, where they would sleep. After
that they would travel chiefly by night, and sleep when and where they
could, avoiding as far as possible all villages but those where they
were charged with messages. "Oh, it will be very good," said Yanni.
Mitsos' thoughts went aching back to the bay of Nauplia; but he agreed.
Besides, he would go to Nauplia again soon.
It had been an immense relief to him that he was not going alone,
though in that moment when Nicholas had told him that the time was come
he had made his self-surrender absolute, and would have taken upon him
any outrageous task which might have been imposed. But the four days
of travelling alone from Nauplia had been like a sick man's dream. He
had set off at daybreak, and taking the same path by which Nicholas had
come the evening before, he reached in an hour the little bay where he
had fished, and sat down under the clump of rushes where they had sat
together, looking at the well-known places with the eyes of a dog that
comes back to a deserted house which has once been home. In the sand he
could see the footprints made by his own bare feet as he came up from
the water, and close beside them the print of Suleima's little pointed
shoes. They had overlooked two or three small fish, which were lying
still fresh and clean after the cool night, where they had emptied
the creel to count their spoils, and by them was the dottle of the
pipe he had smoked. And at the sight of these little things the child
within him cried out against his fate. Nothing in the world seemed of
appreciable account except the need of Suleima. Yet it was no less
impossible to go back: even as he said to himself that he would return,
he knew that Nicholas's gray, questioning eyes were unfaceable. He was
hedged in by impossibilities on every side. And then because there was
something more than the child within him, some stuff out of which real
men are made, he got up, and mounting again went on his way. All that
day and the next days his heart-sickness rode him like a night-hag,
and it was but a heavy-souled lad who trudged so bravely into Panitza
cracking his whip. But to be among people again, and men who received
him cousin-fashion--for in those days the tie of blood was a warm
reality--had an extraordinary sweetness for him, for he felt lonely
and sick for home; above all, to find that for the present he would be
with Yanni, a boy of his own age, who took for granted that they were
going to have the best of hours together, and only knew one side of
things, and that the cheerful side, was surpassingly pleasant. Again,
because he was beginning to be a man, the confidence placed in him
made him feel self-reliant, and because he was still a boy the unknown
adventurous days in front of him were very tonic to the spirit. And so
it was, that when they set out early next morning, Petrobey, looking
after them, said to Demetri that Nicholas was a very wise man; and
Mitsos whacked his mule gayly over the rump, and whistled the "Song of
the Vine-diggers" with more than cheerfulness of lip, and took the road
with an open heart.
CHAPTER II
MITSOS AND YANNI FIND A HORSE
It was a morning to make the blood go blithely. There had been a slight
frost during the night, and the rough grass in the ditches was stiff
and sprinkled with the powdered cold, and the air was brisk in the
nostrils. To the right the ground fell away sheerly to the outlying
hills bordering the plain, which lay unrolled beneath them like a
colored map, with extraordinary clearness, in counties of yellow-green,
where the corn was already springing, alternating with territories of
good red earth, showing where the leafless vineyards stood. Beyond
again lay the dim, dark blue of the sea, and across that, more guessed
at than seen, the stencilled shapes of the hills beyond the gulf. Their
path, a cobbled Turkish road, ascended steadily, skirting about the
edges of the deep ravines, and making detours round the acuter slopes
which rose above them to the top of the mountain ridge; and the mules
ambled slowly along with their panniers of oranges on either side,
while Mitsos and Yanni walked behind, dressed in their roughest peasant
clothes, talking of the thousand things of which boys talk. It took
them nearly three hours to reach the foot of the last slope on which
the village stood, and here they halted for half an hour to eat and
drink, in order that they might pass straight through without waiting
after giving the message.
Yanni, who knew the village, soon recognized the house to which they
were going, which stood somewhat apart from the others, and had a low
outlying building a stone's-throw below it.
"That is the house," he said, "and that shed near is the mill. There
is a big stream coming down from the mountains there which turns the
wheel."
"They should grind quickly, then. Shall we go on?"
The house in question they found was entered from a yard, the door of
which was closed, and their knocking only seemed to rouse a dog inside
to the top pitch of fury. But at last a woman came out on the wooden
balcony overlooking the street, and asked them what they wanted.
"We want Yorgi Gregoriou," shouted Yanni. "Ah, do you not remember me?"
The woman took up a piece of wood and threw it, as a man throws with
force and precision, at the dog inside. The barking broke off short in
a staccato howl, and Mitsos guessed that she had hit.
"Yanni Mavromichales, is it not?" asked the woman.
"Surely."
She disappeared into the house, and in a moment her step was heard
across the yard. As soon as the door was opened the dog flew out like
a cork from a bottle, only to find himself between the devil and the
deep sea--his mistress, an authentic terror, standing on one side, and
Mitsos' whip flirting out at him like the tongue of a snake on the
other. So he scuffled away to a safe distance and barked himself out of
all shape.
"Come in, Yanni," said Gregoriou's wife. "What brings you here?"
"A message from Petrobey to Gregoriou."
The woman's eye travelled slowly up to Mitsos' face, as if she could
only take him in by sections.
"And the giant?" she asked. "Is he from a fair?"
Yanni shouted with laughter.
"No; it is my cousin. But we are in a hurry, as we go far to-day. Where
shall we find Gregoriou?"
"He is at the mill. You will find him there, and then come back and
drink a glass of wine."
The stream that worked the mill was confined within a masonry-laid
bed for a hundred yards above the house, to narrow its course and
concentrate its energy. From the end of the yard ran out a tall,
stout-built wall; along the top of this the water was conducted to a
wooden shoot, below which was the mill-wheel. The mill seemed to be
in full working order, for an ear-filling booming came from within,
shaking the rickety door on its hinges. The two tried the latch, but
found it locked, and it was not till Yanni had shouted his name that it
was cautiously opened.
"Yanni Mavromichales?" queried a voice from inside.
"No other."
"What do you want?"
"This only. Are you grinding corn?"
There was a pause, but the door was still held ajar only.
"Corn for the hungry, or corn for the Turk?" asked the voice.
"Black corn for the Turk."
The door was opened and a little wizened man appeared on the threshold.
He had a white beard, cut close and pointed, and a pair of heavy
eyebrows. His face was a map of minute wrinkles, as the sea is covered
with ripples under the land-breeze, and two suspicious eyes peered
narrowly out from under their overhanging brows. Mitsos was standing
close to the door, and this grotesque little apparition, as he opened
it, gave a shrill squeal of dismay, and would have shut it again had
not Yanni prevented him.
"Who is that?" asked the little man, pointing to Mitsos.
"My cousin," said Yanni, "who comes with me on the business of the
corn. Oh, all our necks are in one noose. Do not be afraid."
The little old man seemed strangely reassured at this brutality of
frankness, and setting the door wide--"Come in, both of you," he said,
shortly.
Inside the noise of the mill was almost deafening, but Gregoriou pinned
the wheel, the two stones stopped grinding, and only the water splashed
hissing down the channel.
"Black corn, did you say; black corn for the Turk?" said the little
old man, peering into Yanni's face, with blinking eyes, like a noonday
owl. "I grind corn all day, for there will be many hungry mouths. Look
you, I am no fighting man; I leave that to those who are taller than
the pillars in the church, like this cousin of yours; but where would
the fighting be without such as I? But, lad, don't give hint of this to
the woman-folk, else I shall have the clan of them a-screaming round me
like the east gale in the mountains."
He rubbed his hands together and broke out into a screeching cackle of
a laugh, which showed a row of discolored, irregular teeth.
"Look here," he said, opening a bin behind the door, "is not this good,
strong corn? I have ground it all myself. None but I have ground it."
His face took an expression of diabolical cunning.
"They have promised to buy it of me, all at a sound price," he said;
"but it is not that so much that makes my heart go singing--it is that
I want it to do its work well, and give the Turk an indigestion of
lead. This is good business for me. I will be a rich man, and I shall
have brought death to many devils."
He slipped back to the lever that brought the wheel under the stream,
and as the stones began to turn again, from their lips there dribbled
out a black powder, which he scooped up in a wooden ladle and emptied
into a cask. Then, seeing that the door was still open, he gave another
shrill animal cry of fright and sprang to lock it. "Charcoal!" he
shouted to them across the rumbling din of the stone, "charcoal ground
fine, for so it is the more nourishing. And here are the sulphur and
saltpetre. To-night I shall mix them carefully--oh, so carefully--and
I shall be glutted with the thought that there will be a red death for
every stroke in the mixing."
And then he got him back to the stones and fed them tenderly with fresh
lumps of charcoal, as one would feed a sick dog.
Mitsos and Yanni were in a hurry to take the road again, and so they
left him absorbed in the grinding, and heard the key grate in the lock
as soon as they got outside.
From Kalyvia their road topped the watershed of the mountain, and
thereafter descended in leaps and strides, almost due west, down to
the plain which skirts the bay of Kalamata. They got to Platsa, where
they were to sleep that night, an hour before dark, and for the sake
of appearances drove their mules to the market-place, and made a
display of selling their cargo of oranges. The khan where they put up
consisted of two rooms, one occupied by the owner and his family, the
other being the café of the village. They sat up smoking and talking
till it emptied, and then made themselves beds of their blankets and
saddle-bags. The village was inclined to inquisitiveness, but Mitsos
told them that they had come from Sparta with oranges and were going
home to Tsimova--a possible, and even a plausible, explanation of their
presence; and with that the village must be content.
They descended next day onto the coast and into the warm fresh air of
the Greek lowlands in winter, and Mitsos called the hierarchy of Heaven
to witness that only the shrewdest pinch of cold would drive him again
into foul khans while there were trees to sleep under and good grass
beds for the limbs. If rooms untenanted by the grosser vermin were
supposed to be beyond the reach of orange-sellers, he would have no
room at all, but only God's out-door inn.
Mid-day brought them to Prastion, and to the delivery of the second
message. They had no trouble in finding the recipient, for he was
the mayor of the village, and was known to be in his vineyard hoeing
vines. Yanni waited with the mules in the street, while Mitsos went to
seek him. He looked up as the lad came striding towards him across the
hollowed vine-beds.
"You are Zaravenos?" asked he.
Zaravenos assented slowly and suspiciously, as if he would sooner have
been some one else.
"Are you grinding corn?"
The man put down his mattock and looked round suddenly to see that
there was no one within hearing.
"Yes, yes," he said, quickly. "But of what corn do you speak--corn for
the hungry, or corn for the Turk?"
"Black corn for the Turk."
"Praise the Virgin. But is the time come? Tell me who sent you; was it
Nicholas, whom I know well?"
Mitsos thought of Petrobey's injunctions.
"Nicholas? Who is Nicholas?" he said. "But this I have to tell you: if
you have not begun, begin, and grind quickly. That is all."
The man looked at him again.
"Surely you are Mitsos," he said. "Nicholas told me about a mountain of
a Mitsos, whom perhaps he would send to us. Why do you not tell me? I
have no better friend than Nicholas. He was here a month ago. Where is
he now? Is he safe?"
But Mitsos shook his head.
"I do not know whom you mean," he said, though his heartstrings
thrummed within him.
For six days the two went on travelling in a northerly direction,
sometimes keeping close to the coast, sometimes visiting strange, gaunt
little villages perched high on the flanks of Taygetus. They travelled
for the most part at night, trying if possible to come by daybreak
within a mile or two of the village whither they were bound. They would
then turn off into some wood, or, if they were close to the coast, down
onto the beach, and, after tethering and feeding their mules, would
breakfast and sleep till about mid-day, when they entered the village,
delivered their message, and passed on. Sometimes it would be received
eagerly and with shining eyes, and the news would spread at once that
the time for which they were waiting had come. Sometimes, if there
were Turks about, it would be taken and answered with guardedness and
caution, and once the man to whom they had been sent shook his head and
said he knew nought of the matter. This was beyond doubt an occasion
when running away was necessary, and little time was lost in running.
They reached Kalamata on the seventh day--little did Mitsos think how
or when he would see it again--and after spending two nights there (for
they had been instructed not only to give messages to three leading
Greeks, but also to inquire of the strength of the Turkish garrison,
and see to the truth of the report which had reached Petrobey that the
fortifications there, as well as at Tripoli, were being repaired), took
a boat down the coast to the port of Tsimova, whence their road lay
southward through Maina, and then eastward back to Panitza, and it was
in this district that red-handed adventure met them.
They had now been twelve days from home, and Yanni remarked
discontentedly that there were only four more to come. He had never
spent more enchanting days than these in the company of Mitsos, with
whom in a healthy, boyish manner he had fallen completely in love.
Mitsos never lost his temper, and maintained an immense, great serenity
under the most disquieting conditions; as, for instance, when they lost
one of the mules during their morning's sleep the day before, when they
were up on the spurs of Taygetus, and had to hunt it high and low in a
blinding snow blizzard, and came back to find that the other mule had
made use of his solitude in rolling himself in some thorn bushes while
they were away, converting their blankets into one prickly fricassee.
The splendid cousin had gazed at them ruefully a moment, and "I would I
were a tortoise" was his only comment.
Mitsos had fully responded to the frankness of his cousin's adoration,
and had confided to him his interrupted love-story, which raised him in
Yanni's eyes to hero rank. Besides, he was big and strong and entirely
magnificent.
Mitsos had just awakened Yanni on this particular morning, reminding
him that it was after mid-day and they had a long tramp ahead of them
that afternoon. Nymphia, the next village to which they had a message,
lay below them on the plain, a mile or two distant. But Yanni refused
to go before he had eaten somewhat, and as remonstrance was vain, they
fished out bread and meat from the saddle-bags and made a meal. They
were sitting thus some thirty yards from the path, which lay through
the heart of an upland pine forest, when they heard the going of
four-footed steps, and Yanni got up to see if either of their mules had
slipped its tether and was preparing to give them another hunt. But it
proved only to be a Turkish soldier riding down in the direction of the
village to which they were bound. He asked the bush-bowered Yanni what
was his business there, and Yanni, who had a wholesome dislike of all
Turks, very rudely replied, "Breakfasting, pig," went back to Mitsos,
and thought no more of the matter.
The soldier rode quickly on through the village and turned into a
house that lay some half-mile below. He found no one there, and tying
his horse up went down across a couple of fields to a low, huddled
building, beside which stood a mill-wall. He knocked at the door and
was admitted at once.
"Krinos," he said to the man who opened it, "I passed a boy on the road
through the wood, whom I am sure I saw yesterday at Kyta, and two days
ago at Akia, only before there were two of them. It is worth while
waiting to see if he comes with a message to you."
"But if there are two of them," said Krinos (for God had made a
coward), "there are only two of us."
"Nonsense; admit one only; and this is a boy, and we are men. Besides,
there is no time to send to the village, and whom should we find there?
They are all Greek of the Greeks. And the boy may be here in a few
minutes. Remember, he is not to be killed yet. He has to speak first."
"If it is a Mavromichales he will never speak," said Krinos.
"That is yet to be seen. I will stand behind the door, seize him as he
enters, and if there are two of them, lock the door behind the first."
Now from Pigadia, where the boys had delivered the message to a man who
said he knew nought of the matter, they had been quite right to go on
their way as quickly as they could. The Turks had set spies all over
the country, since the rumors of an approaching outbreak had reached
them, who were instructed to affect sympathy and co-operation with
the revolutionists, and give information at headquarters of all they
could learn. The day after Mitsos and Yanni had left Pigadia, still
going northward towards Kalamata, this spy had had occasion to make a
journey southward. At Tsimova he had inquired whether the boys had been
seen, and hearing they had not, for they were then at Kalamata, gave
information to the Turkish magistrate, and went on his way. At Nymphia
he visited Krinos, who was also in Turkish pay, and told him to extract
any information he could if they came his way. From there he had taken
ship and gone on to Gythium, which was out of the boys' route.
The magistrate at Tsimova, with characteristic Turkish indolence,
holding a clew in one hand, would scarcely trouble to move the other in
pursuit. He just let the soldiers of the place know that there would
be some small reward given to any of them who apprehended either of
the boys; and one of them, the same who had seen Yanni on the wooded
path, being anxious that no other should bite at his cherry, had
obtained leave of absence and went a-hunting alone. He had seen Yanni
on the previous days at Kyta and Akia, and thought it worth while to
follow him on to Nymphia, where, as he knew, there was a Greek whom
his countrymen supposed to be a revolutionist, but who was really in
Turkish pay.
So the soldier hid behind the door, and Krinos went on grinding powder,
which he intended to sell eventually--not to the Greeks, but to the
Turks. The trap was neatly laid, and smelled of success.
Krinos's mill was of an old-fashioned type, consisting not of two
stones, but of one, which was hung with its axle horizontal to the
floor, in size and shape resembling a stone-roller, and underneath it
ran the long tray in which the corn or charcoal was ground. The tray
could be withdrawn for the emptying and filling, and he had just slid
it out, as the charcoal was already sufficiently powdered, when the
interruption for which he and the soldier had been waiting came. Krinos
had not time to put it back, and the stone remained revolving about
eight inches from the ground.
Yanni and Mitsos had gone cheerily down the hill-side ten minutes after
the Turk into the village, where Yanni met a slightly intoxicated
cousin, who grinned, and queried "Black corn?"
Yanni looked so important and mysterious at this that Mitsos burst out
laughing, and they all three stood in the road and laughed together
for no reason, except that one was drunk and two were of a merry mind.
Yanni went so far as to explain that they were in a hurry, but no
more; and, having inquired where Krinos lived, they passed through the
village and out towards the house.
Just below Krinos's house the ground sloped sharply away, so that
from the door only the roof of his mill could be seen. This prevented
Krinos, who was peering out of the mill-door to learn whether there
were two of them, from seeing either till they should pass the house
and begin to descend towards the mill. Mitsos tapped at the house
door, then knocked, and then shouted; but there was no answer. Yanni
followed, and in the court-yard saw a horse tied up. Mitsos had given
up the attempt to make any one hear, and he said to Yanni:
"He's not in. What are we to do?"
Yanni scratched his head thoughtfully.
"There's another building farther down which looks like a mill," he
said; "we will go there. But wait a minute, cousin; there is a thought
in my head."
"Out with it, then."
"Have you in your mind how that when we were breakfasting we heard a
horse on the path, and I went to see if it was either of our mules? You
remember it turned out to be a Turkish soldier; and this is the horse,
or my mother did not bear me."
Mitsos' eye brightened.
"Let us think a moment," he said. "What do you make of it?"
Yanni put his head on one side, like an intelligent but puzzled collie
dog.
"It is a nice horse," he said, vaguely, "and that is why I noticed it.
It would be rather amusing if--hush, I can hear the mill going! Krinos
must be there, and--and I shouldn't at all wonder if the Turk was there
also!"
Mitsos smiled serenely.
"It is a little trap," he said; "very pretty. What shall we do? What a
devil Krinos must be."
"It isn't certain," said Yanni; "but we'll make sure. This is the way.
The Turk saw only me, therefore I will go down there alone. I wonder if
there are any windows this side. Wait a minute while I see."
He stole out to the edge of the hill, and reconnoitred from behind a
bush.
Krinos was standing at the door, and even as Yanni looked, a head
wearing a red soldier's fez popped out and back again, and he crept
back with suppressed excitement in his eyes.
"They are both there," he said; "two of them and two of us. Oh,
Mitsos, this is very good! You see, we must go to deliver our message,
otherwise we should be doing better to run away now; but there is the
message to deliver, and that is the first order. This is what I will
do: Tie up your mule here, and get behind that bush. Then I will walk
down to the mill with my mule, and I expect when Krinos sees me he will
go back into the mill and wait; if he does, run down ever so quickly
and quietly--there are no windows this side--and hide behind the corner
of the house. Then will I come and knock at the door, and I expect
that when I give the message Krinos will let me in, and if you hear me
shout, in with you. There will be no running away."
"It won't go," said Mitsos; "there will be two of them. They may kill
you before I can get in."
"O best and biggest of fools!" whispered Yanni, excitedly; "this is
no time for talk. They will not want to kill me, for what would that
profit them? They will wish to take me to the Turks--and be damned to
all Turks!"
"You are right; come on."
Mitsos crept to his post behind the bush, after tethering his mule well
out of sight, and Yanni went unconcernedly down the hill-side. As he
had expected, as soon as Krinos saw him he strolled back into the mill
and shut the door. Yanni waited a moment, and beckoned to Mitsos, who
strode noiselessly down and stood behind the corner of the wall, while
Yanni came slowly on, reached the mill, and tapped at the door. A voice
from inside answered him.
"Who is that?" it asked.
"It matters not," said Yanni. "Are you grinding corn?"
"Corn for the hungry, or corn for the Turk?"
"Black corn for the Turk."
The door was thrown open and Yanni entered. The moment after it was
flung to again, and a half-muffled shout came from inside. Mitsos
sprang out and threw himself against the door, and went reeling in.
Yanni was struggling in the grasp of two men, the Greek and the Turk,
and Mitsos, without losing a moment, flung himself onto Krinos, who was
nearest him, and dragged him off with a throttling grip. Krinos dropped
his hold on Yanni and turned round to grapple with his new assailant,
whom, to his dismay, he saw towering half a head above him. At that
moment all Mitsos' cheerfulness and good spirits were transformed into
a white anger at the treachery of the man, and, tightening his hold, he
wrestled for his life. His extra four inches were counterbalanced by
Krinos's extra ten years of hardened bone and knitted muscle, and for
the first few seconds they toppled wildly about, and either might have
won the fall. But then Mitsos' height began to tell; he heard, with a
fierce joy, the cracking of some bone in its joint, and knew it came
not from him.
Then, for a moment, he felt his adversary's right arm slacken, and knew
that his hand was fumbling at his belt, whether for a knife or pistol
he could not tell. His own pistol was in his belt, but tumbling, as he
had, headlong into the middle of the fight, he had forgotten to take
it out. But there was no doubt what that fumbling at the belt meant,
and, throwing all his force into one effort, he lifted his opponent
off his feet and threw him. Krinos's left hand, with which, alone, he
was holding Mitsos, lost its grasp, and the man went head over heels
backward, and Mitsos, by the force of his own throw, fell forward half
across him. Just in front of them the millstone was turning with a slow
relentlessness, and for a moment Mitsos thought his own head was going
to strike it; but he fell free. Not so the other; there was a moment's
cessation of the noise; then came a hoarse cry of agony, a horrid
crack, and the stone began to turn again. Krinos's head had fallen
right beneath it, and it was cracked as a nut may be cracked in a hinge.
[Illustration: "YANNI WAS STRUGGLING IN THE GRASP OF TWO MEN, THE GREEK
AND THE TURK"]
There was no time for exultation. Mitsos picked himself up and gained
his feet just as Yanni and the Turk, who were still struggling
together, fell--the Turk uppermost. Mitsos saw him reach his hand to
the butt of his pistol and draw it, keeping his knee on Yanni while he
cocked it with the other hand. But in a moment he had done the same,
and the two reports were almost simultaneous. Just above Yanni's head
there appeared on the wooden floor a raking furrow, as if some wild
beast's claw had struck and torn it; but the Turk fell back, shot
through the head.
The smoke cleared away, and Mitsos pulled Yanni from under the soldier;
he lay quite still, and the edge of his black curls was singed and
burned. Mitsos propped him up against the wall, and ran to get water
from the millstream outside. When he came back Yanni's eyes were open,
and he was looking about in a dazed, confused way. Mitsos poured a
draught of it down his throat and sluiced his head, whereat Yanni
looked up and smiled at him.
"Did I not say it would be very good?" he murmured. "Oh, Mitsos, the
black devils!"
He sat up and looked round, then pointed at the dead body of the Turk.
"I think I was stunned by the fall," he continued. "I remember falling
and hitting my head an awful bang. So you shot him. Where is the other?"
He staggered to his feet and looked round at the millstone; it was
streaked and clotted with something dark and oily, and its edges
dripped with the same. Krinos's fingers, though he had been dead two
minutes at the least, still opened and shut, like seaweed under the
suck of a ground-swell, and the nails scratched impotently on the
rough-splintered floor.
"We fell--he fell there," said Mitsos. "Come outside, Yanni. It is not
good to stop here. Here, let me put my arm round you; you are unsteady
yet."
Mitsos looked anxiously round as they got out, but no one was in
sight. Yanni's mule had strayed into the field; and, after depositing
his cousin against the wall, Mitsos went after it, and, muffling its
bell with grass, led it round to the back of the mill, where Yanni
was sitting. The latter was quickly recovering, but he felt his head
ruefully.
"An awful bang!" he said. "Did he fire at me? My hair is burned."
"Yes," said Mitsos, "and I at him. Fancy a soldier so bad a shot; but
he was made silly at the sight of my pistol, I think. If he hadn't been
a fool of a man he would have first fired at me; for, indeed, he had
you safe. But I suppose there was no time to think."
"That was well for me," said Yanni.
Mitsos spat thoughtfully.
"Yanni," he said, "we must think very hard what we are to do next. If
Uncle Nicholas was only here! No one seems to have heard the shots,
and we must get away as quickly as we can. Are we just to leave things
as they are and go? Oh, do think, Yanni, and think quickly! My head is
just one buzzing."
"The black devils!" snarled Yanni. "Treacherous, black devils!"
"Oh, never mind them," cried Mitsos; "they are in hell. What are we to
do?"
Yanni's eye brightened.
"This will we do," he said. "There is much powder here. Blow up the
whole place. If we leave it as it is they will find those dead things.
Yes, Mitsos, that is the way."
Yanni got up.
"Come inside," he said, "and see if there is plenty of powder."
The two went back and stopped the mill-wheel, for it was a
blood-curdling thing to see its shredded burden carried round and
round. Mitsos dragged the headless wreck away and laid it by the Turk
in the centre of the room, while Yanni searched for the powder.
"Look," he said, at last, "here is a whole barrel. That will do our
work. I know how to make a train. I have done it at home to blow up
rocks. We must waste no time. Go back to the house, Mitsos, and bring
your mule--oh yes--and the Turk's horse, too; it will not do to leave
that, and take the lot into the woods above the path, lower down there.
Then come back here. I shall be ready. I will make a train that will
give us about three minutes."
Mitsos ran up to the house, as Yanni suggested, and led the two animals
down. He stopped at the mill to tie Yanni's mule to his own, and then
struck straight off the path into the trees, and tethered them all
some three hundred yards off where the trees grew thick. Then he went
back to Yanni.
Yanni had laid a train from the centre of the room, where the bodies
were, out under the door, making it of moist powder wrapped in thick
paper. He had waited for Mitsos to lift the barrel, for he was still
weak and unsteady, and they bored a hole through it, so that the dry
powder ran out into the end of the train, and then closed the lid tight
to increase the force of the explosion. Mitsos put the barrel in the
centre of the room, laid the two bodies on it, and placed over it all
the loose articles he could find.
"I will fire it," said he, "because it will be best to run, and you
can't run just now. Come out, Yanni, and I will show you where the
horses are. Look; do you see that big white trunk at the edge of the
wood? Walk there and keep straight on; you will find them two hundred
yards inside. Now go."
Mitsos waited till Yanni had disappeared, and then, locking the door
and pushing the key underneath it, fired the end of the train and ran
as hard as his legs would move after Yanni. He found him with the
beasts, having taken from the Turk's horse the trappings and saddle,
which bore the star and crescent, and thrown them into a thick bush. A
few moments afterwards a great quiver and roar came to them from the
direction of the village, and they knew that the powder had done its
work.
Mitsos made Yanni mount the Turk's horse, and they hurried off through
the trees, meaning to make a long detour and come down upon the next
village from the far side.
CHAPTER III
MITSOS HAS THE HYSTERICS
For a space they went on in silence; it was as much as Yanni could do
to grip his horse, for he still felt nauseous and giddy reelings in his
head, and Mitsos trotted behind, with an incessant stick for the mules
to make them keep up the pace. They were of the sedater sort, that
hitherto had strolled through life, and they did not take kindly to a
higher rate of going. But at the end of some half an hour Yanni reined
in.
"Let's go slow a bit," he said, "for we are out of the range of risks.
We are in our own country again; no one saw us go to the mill except my
cousin Christos, and they might pull his tongue out before he spoke.
Besides, there is nothing to say. The mill blew up. The matter is
finished."
Mitsos assented, and threw himself down on the ground panting and
blown, for the pace had been stiff. However, a few minutes' rest and a
drink from the wooden wine-flask set his blood to a slower time, and he
opened his mouth, and, to Yanni's intense astonishment, began to swear.
He was in a white-hot rage, and he cursed Krinos in the name of every
saint in heaven and every devil in hell, and labelled him with each
several vile and muddy epithet he knew, and of these the Greek tongue
boasts an inimitable profusion.
Yanni was still looking on in surprise when Mitsos' mood veered, and
he began to laugh, rocking himself to and fro.
"Did you hear his head crack?" he jerked out. "It cracked like a green
nut in September. No, it was more like a pomegranate under the heel.
Is my head as messy inside as that, think you, Yanni? He thought his
powder would make him a rich man, and the powder has made chicken-food
of him. Oh, Yanni, what shall I do? I shall laugh till the Judgment
Day."
Yanni's experience had not included an exhibition of hysterics, but
he judged that they were not healthy things, and must be stopped if
possible.
"Mitsos," he said, angrily, "don't make a fool of yourself. Stop
laughing at once. Stop laughing!" he shouted.
Mitsos stared at him a moment like a chidden child; the fit ended
as suddenly as it had begun, and he sat still a minute or two, idly
plucking the fragrant shoots of thyme, or tossing them in the air.
"It has been a great day, Yanni," he said. "This sort of adventure is
like wine to me. I think it must have made me drunk. And now I have
cursed that devil I feel better. But I was so angry all the way here
that I thought I should have burst. I wonder what made me laugh just
now. Uncle Nicholas told me once that men sometimes went crazed the
first time they killed any one. He told me that I should probably be
blooded before I came home again. My eyes! it was so funny," and he
began laughing again.
"Oh, Mitsos, dear Mitsos, for God's sake don't laugh. It's horrible to
hear you," said Yanni, with a sudden panic fear that Mitsos was indeed
possessed.
Mitsos made a great effort and checked himself.
"That's right," said Yanni, soothing him as he would soothe a child.
"Drink some more wine, and then stop quiet a while. Go to sleep if you
like."
Mitsos drank some wine, shifted to an easier position, and putting
his head on Yanni's knee, who was leaning against a tree-trunk just
above him, stretched out his great length, and in a couple of minutes
was fast asleep. Yanni was not very comfortable, but he sat as still
as a stone for fear of waking Mitsos. How odd it was, he thought to
himself, that this great cousin of his should have behaved so queerly.
He had been so perfectly cool and collected while there was anything
to be done, but as soon as the need for doing anything was over he was
just a baby. During his struggle with the Turk he remembered seeing
Mitsos' face as he threw Krinos, and that mask of fury seemed to bear
no resemblance to the cheerful cousin; he was like a wild beast. If
anything had been wanting to put the final touch on Yanni's conviction
that Mitsos was the king of men, it was that uprising of the wild beast
within him.
The sun had come out as they sat there and shone full onto Mitsos'
face, and Yanni, as gently as a woman, pushed his cap over his eyes
that it should not waken him, and with infinite craft filled his pipe
and managed to get a light from his flint and steel. He felt almost
jealous of this girl whom Mitsos loved. It was not fit that he should
go a-mooning after womankind, who were--so Yanni thought--an altogether
inferior breed. It was Mitsos' business to fight, and do the work of
fifty men. How splendid he had been one night at Kalamata, when they
sat in the café after supper! The keeper of the house had tried to
make Mitsos drunk, for the sport of seeing so long a pair of legs in
mutiny, and had promised him that if he could drink two okes of wine
he should not pay for them. This had suited Mitsos excellently, for
he was as thirsty as Sahara. He had drunk them in less than half an
hour, and, to show that he was as sober as a woman, he had played
draughts afterwards with one of the Greeks there, and beat him easily
in the first two games. Then his misguided little opponent had tried to
cheat, and Mitsos rising up, a tower of wrath, had dealt the other so
shrewd a blow over the head with the draught-board that he was fain to
play no more, for other reasons than that the draughts had rolled to
all corners of the café. Several men looking at the game had seen him
cheat, and applauded most cordially Mitsos' method of correction. They
then asked him to drink more wine, but Mitsos thanked them and refused,
saying he was thirsty no longer. However, they stopped on, smoking and
talking, as there was to be no journey the next day, and Mitsos had
sung the "Song of the Vine-diggers" as Yanni had never heard it sung
before, for his heart and voice were in harmony. Decidedly there was no
one in the world like him.
The inimitable cousin stirred in his sleep, woke, and stretched himself.
"Oh, little Yanni," he said, "what a brute I am! Have you been sitting
here all the time with my head on you? Why didn't you knock it off? But
the sun is getting low, and we must be on the road. How's the head?"
"Oh, it's all right," said Yanni; "a bruise like a walnut, but it
doesn't ache any more. You ride, Mitsos. I can walk perfectly."
Mitsos wrinkled up his nose.
"Indeed! Get on the horse."
And he broke out again with:
"Dig we deep around the vines."
They struck straight down the hill, guessing that they had gone
beyond the village where they meant to sleep, threading their way
slowly through the aromatic-smelling pines, and going softly on the
fallen needles. A gentle wind from the south whispered in the boughs
overhead, and Mitsos, purged by his sleep from the unwonted trouble
of his nerves, whistled and sang as they went along. The sun was near
its setting when they got out of the wood, but they found their guess
had been correct, and soon struck the road leading into the village
from the north. This village, Kalovryssi, was a stronghold of the
Mavromichales, and Yanni knew that they would have a great welcome when
they appeared. At the same time, there was a small depot of Turkish
soldiers there, and it had been worth while to take the precaution of
making a detour and entering from the north.
This Turkish garrison of Kalovryssi had a strangely comfortless life
of it, for the scornful clan, secure in their remote position, made
it quite clear that they were not to be interfered with in any way.
If the government thought fit to keep soldiers there, well and good,
they should be unmolested till the time came; but in the interval they
would be wise to keep exceedingly quiet, buy their provisions at double
price without a murmur, and if they ventured to meddle in any way with
the Mavromichales's womankind, why the Mavromichales would see to it.
Otherwise they did not interfere with the soldiers, except perhaps on
festa days, when the clan got drunk in honor of the saint and demanded
diversion in the evening. Then it is true they called them by shocking
names, and warned them for their own sakes to keep within barracks,
lest ignominious things should happen to them.
The two boys entered the village unmolested and went to the café,
where they were sure to find friends, and no sooner had they got there
than a great bearded man, as tall as Mitsos, came tumbling over chairs
and tables and took Yanni off his horse as if he had been a child; for
this clan were warm-hearted, Irish-souled folk, and the two were kept
like kings that night.
The great bearded man was Petrobey's brother, and to him Yanni knew
they might freely tell everything. Never in his life had that genial
giant been the prey of so many conflicting emotions. He positively
trembled with suspense when Yanni described how he had gone into the
mill alone, and kept interrupting him to say "Go on, go on." He stared
at Mitsos admiringly when he heard how that young man had won the fall
with Krinos, and gave a whistle of keen appreciation and cracked his
fingers when he learned that Krinos' skull had been crunched beneath
the stone. He wiped his forehead nervously when Yanni told him how he
had been thrown; he bit his lip when the Turk drew his pistol; and
finally, when Mitsos shot the soldier through the head, he sprang off
his chair, danced excitedly around the room, and embraced Mitsos with
much fervor. He choked with laughter when he heard how they had decided
to blow the mill up, and said "Pouf!" with loud solemnity when he was
told that the explosion had taken place satisfactorily; finally, when
Yanni came to Mitsos' hysterical fit in the wood his face clouded with
anxiety, and he ran to the cupboard and fairly forced down his throat
about half a pint of raw spirits.
"Well," he said, when the recital was over, "but this is a great day
for the clan. And you, too, are of the clan," he said, turning to
Mitsos, "and by the God above who made the clan, and the devil below
who made the Turk, the clan is proud of you. Ah, but there will be
a score of them in presently, and if the dear little Turks happen to
meet any of them in the street as they go home again, I would not
be surprised if we find them hanging upsidedown by the heels in the
morning. You will be near two metres high, Mitsos!"
[Illustration: "KATSI AND A FINE SELECTION OF COUSINS ACCOMPANIED THE
TWO"]
The clan, as Katsi Mavromichales had prophesied, soon learned that
there was something going forward, and dropped into his house in groups
of three and four to learn what it was. The recital had to be gone
through again to a most appreciative audience, for Katsi took on his
own broad shoulders the responsibility of making it public, and the
only thing that failed to make the harmony of the evening complete was
that the little soldiers had all gone home before the clan came out.
The latter contemptuously supposed the soldiers were tired, for were
they not little men? A few of the younger of the members had gone in
a party to the barracks and tried to rouse the little men by throwing
stones at the windows, but without result, and had subsequently
quarrelled so violently at the café over the rival merits of the two
corollaries, "The little men sleep sound" and "The little men are very
deaf," that Katsi had to go out and knock their heads together, which
he did with cheerful impartiality, the one against the other.
Confirmatory news of the effects of the explosion came from Nymphia
next morning, and fulfilled the most sanguine hopes. The mill, so said
the Greek who brought word, was blown to atoms, and as for Krinos,
he was as if he had never been. A broken skull had been found some
yards off, but of the rest of him no adequate remains were extant. It
appeared also that there had been another man with him at the same
time, for over forty teeth had been found by the enterprising youth of
the village, which was more than Krinos ever had.
Katsi and a fine selection of cousins accompanied the two for a mile or
so out of the village next morning to set them on their journey. There
were no more messages to deliver, for they were now in the country of
the clan, which was worked from Panitza by Petrobey, and Mitsos, as
the slayer of the Turk and the treacherous Krinos, enjoyed the sweet
sacrifices of hero-worship offered by his cousins. Two of them in
particular, of about his own age, could only look at him in a state of
rapt adoration, and feebly express their feelings by quarrelling as to
which should lead his mule. Yanni, good lad, grudged Mitsos not one
word or look of this admiration which was so showered on him; it warmed
his heart to see that others like himself recognized the greatness of
their splendid cousin.
On the brow of the hill above the village Katsi and the elder men
stopped and went back to their work, but the younger ones escorted them
as far as their mid-day halt--lithe, black-eyed young Greeks, girt
about with the dogs of the clan, Morgos and Osman, Brahim and Maniati,
Orloff and Machmoud, Psari and Drakon, Arapi, Cacarapi, Vlachos,
Mavros, Tourkos and Tourkophágos, Maskaras and Ali, all great, stately
dogs, shaggy-haired and eyed like wolves, and a contingent of smaller
dogs of the most rascally kind, Pyr and Perdiki, Canella and Fundouki,
who prosecuted an eternal feud with each other to keep themselves
fighting fit, and allowed no man to pass along the road until a passage
had been whipped through them by one or other of their masters. To
Mitsos, who had lived so much alone, with only the companionship of
his father, to be thrown suddenly among this crowd of boys of his own
age, who welcomed him as a cousin and hailed him as a hero, was an
incomparable pleasure, and with Nauplia, and all that Nauplia held,
getting nearer day by day, he was utterly content.
All that afternoon they travelled quietly on, keeping close to the
coast, and about sunset saw Mavromati, where they were to sleep,
perched high upon the hills below an eastern spur of Taygetus. The tops
of the range were covered with snow, and the low sun for a few minutes
turned the whole to one incredible rose. But below in the plain there
was already a hint of spring in the air; the worst of the winter was
passed, its armory of storms and squalls was spent, and the earth had
stirred and thrown forth the early crocuses. And something of spring
was in the hearts and in the eyes of the boys as they wondered, not
knowing that they wondered, what the year would bring. For another more
glorious spring was ready to burst forth, and that, which in Greece
through a winter of bleak and storm-smitten centuries had lain battered
by the volleyings of oppressive clouds, and bitten and stung with
frost, had meanwhile so drunk life into all its fibres from that which
would have done it to death, that already the green of its upspringing
was vivid on the mountain-side, and held promise of a perfect flower,
tyranny being turned into the mother of freedom, and smiting into
strength.
CHAPTER IV
YANNI PAYS A VISIT TO THE TURK
Their last day's journey to Panitza was no more than a five hours'
going, and by mid-day the two boys had crossed the ridge of mountain
which toppled above it, and saw it nestled in a hollow below them.
There, too, they found Petrobey himself, who had ridden out to meet
them, both to give them news and take theirs. After they had eaten,
Mitsos told their story, at which the soul of Petrobey was lifted high
within him, and he was filled with an exceeding joy when he heard of
the fate of Krinos.
"But all this spying and suspicion among the Turks make the next order
the more necessary," he said, when Mitsos had finished. "Yanni, lad, I
am very sorry, but it is Tripoli for you and Nauplia for Mitsos."
Yanni looked up at Mitsos.
"Oh, lucky one!" he said, below his breath, "see that Suleima has
forgotten you not."
Then aloud:
"When shall I have to go to that kennel, father?" he said.
"You can stay here two days or three, and then you and Mitsos will go
together. That Mehemet Salik has a sharp nose; but you shall be red
herring to him, Yanni, and he will smell no farther afield."
Yanni wrinkled up his face with an expression of pungent disgust.
"I want no Turk smelling round me," he said. "It is the devil's
business. How long must I be there, think you?"
"Not long, I hope. A month, perhaps. It will be an experience worth
paying for, even for you. They will treat you royally, for they have no
desire to make enemies among the clan. I want Mitsos to go with you as
your servant for a day or two, so that he too may have free access to
the governor's house and know where you will be in case they get more
alarmed and keep you close, so that when the time comes for your escape
he may easily find you."
"That will be a fine day for me," said Yanni.
"And what for me," asked Mitsos, "after I leave Yanni there?"
"You go to Nauplia with a letter from me for Nicholas, but I expect
you will stay there just as long as the gull when he dips in the sea
and out again. There will then be another journey for you northward
to Patras to speak with Germanos. However, Nicholas will tell you all
that."
Yanni sat up and pulled Mitsos' hair.
"O lazy dog," he said, "is it for this I pay you wages, that you should
lie in the grass by your master"--and he felt in his pouch and found
his tobacco gone--"and, by the Virgin! take his tobacco, and then not
be able to fill a pipe fit for a Turk to smoke?"
"Fill it for me, Yanni," said the other, returning the tobacco, "and
let go my hair before there is trouble for a little cousin of mine."
"You shall brush my clothes and sew my buttons," continued Yanni, "and
lay my supper, and eat of my leavings. It is a fine thing to have a
good strong servant. There's your pipe."
Mitsos reached out a huge hand, plucked Yanni's pipe from his mouth,
and lit his own at it.
"There is a good clean smell abroad to-day," he said. "It is the first
of spring. Just think; last year only I went out picking flowers with
the little boys and girls on this day, and here am I now a man of war.
It was good to sleep under the pines and wake to them whispering; was
it not, Yanni? Perhaps that will come again when the kennel-work is
over."
"Easter candles give I to the Mother of God," said Yanni, "for the days
that are gone, and a candle more for every day we journey together,
Mitsos."
"The Blessed Mother of God will have a brave lighting up one night,
then," said Petrobey, "if things go well with us. There's many a tramp
for you both yet. And who will be paying for the candles, little Yanni?"
The third day after, the two set out for Tripoli, Yanni trinketed out
in his best clothes, as was fit for the son of a great chief, and going
forward on a fine gray horse, Mitsos behind him on his own pony, in the
dress of a servant, leading the baggage-mule. Four days' travelling,
for they rode but short hours, being in no way very eager to get to
the "kennel-work," as Mitsos called it, brought them to Tripoli, where
Yanni went straight to the governor's house, leaving Mitsos outside in
the square with the beasts.
The house stood on one side of the square, but to those outside
showed only a bald face of wall, pierced here and there with a few
iron gratings. As Mitsos waited he saw a woman's face thickly veiled
peering out from one of these, and guessed rightly that here were the
women's quarters. An arched gateway leading into the garden and closed
by a heavy door, which had been opened to Yanni by the porter, and
shut again immediately after he had entered, alone gave access to the
premises. After waiting a few minutes the door was again opened, and a
Turkish servant came out to help him to carry in the luggage. But the
luggage was but light and Mitsos carried it all in himself, while the
porter, leaning on his long stick, and resplendent in his embroidered
waistcoat and red gaiters trimmed with gold, looked at him with
indolent insolence, playing with the silver-chased handle of his long
dagger. Behind the gate stood a small room for the porter, and on the
left, as he entered, the side of the block of building he had seen from
the street. A door was pierced in the middle of it, but the windows,
as outside, were narrowly barred. The path was bordered on each side
by a strip of gay garden-bed, and following the porter's directions he
went straight on and past the corner of the main block, from the end
of which ran out another narrow building right up to the bounding wall
away from the street. In front of this lay a square garden planted with
orange-trees and flowering shrubs, the house itself running from the
square to the bounding wall at the back.
This second block of narrow buildings was two-storied, the upper
story being faced by a balcony which was reached from below by an
outside staircase. Four rooms opened onto this, and, still following
his directions, he knocked at the first of the doors and a young Turk
came out, who, seeing Mitsos with the luggage, reached down a key and
proceeded to open the doors of the next two rooms. These, he said to
Mitsos, were his master's rooms, and the end room was a slip of a place
where he could sleep if his master wished to have him near. So Mitsos,
as Yanni did not appear, unpacked his luggage and waited for him.
Yanni came up presently, accompanied by the porter, and was shown into
his rooms, where Mitsos was busy arranging things. He shut the door
hastily, and, waiting till the steps of the porter had creaked away
down the balcony steps, broke out with an oath.
"The very devil, Mitsos," he said; "but this is no good job we are on.
Here am I, and from within this kennel-place I may not stir. I sleep
and am fed, and for exercise I may walk in that pocket-handkerchief of
a garden and pick a flower to smell, but out of these walls I don't
move."
Mitsos whistled.
"It is then good that I came," he said. "I suppose this Turk next door
is your keeper. Oh, Yanni, but we shall have bitter dealings with him
before you get out of this. I shall stop here to-night--there is a room
I may use next this--and you inside and I outside must just examine the
lie of things. I will go out now, round to the stables to see if the
horses are properly cared for, and before I come back I will have gone
round the outside of this place and seen what is beyond these walls.
And you look about inside."
Mitsos returned in about an hour. "It wasn't good," he said, "but it
might have been worse." From the square it was impossible to get into
the place, except through the gate, and equally impossible to get out.
To the right of the gate stood the corner house of the square, and
next to it a row of houses opening out on the street leading from the
square, and there was no getting in that way. On the left the long wall
of the back of the house looked out blankly into another corresponding
street running into the square, but farther down things were not
hopeless; for the house next Mehemet's stood back from the street in
the middle of its garden, and was enclosed by an eight-foot wall. "None
so high," quoth Mitsos, "but that a bigger man than you could get up."
Standing on the top of the wall, it would be possible to get onto the
roof of the block of buildings in which they were, and from there down
onto the balcony, which was covered in and supported by pillars, one of
which stood in front of Yanni's door. "And where a man has come, there
may two go," said Mitsos, in conclusion; "so do not look as if the
marrow had left your bones; Yanni."
"It's all very good for you," said Yanni, mournfully; "but here am
I cooped up like a tame hen for a month, or it may be more, in this
devil-kennel place, with a garden to walk in and an orange to suck. Eh,
Mitsos, but it will be a gay life for me sitting here in this scented
town. A fat-bellied, slow-footed cousin will you find when you come for
me. I doubt not I shall be sitting cross-legged on the floor with a
narghilé, and a string of beads, and a flower in my hair."
"Oh, you'll soon get fit again on the mountains," said Mitsos,
cheerfully. "I expect it will be quick going when I come to fetch you
out of this."
Yanni nodded his head towards the Turk's room next door.
"Some night when you come tramping on the roof overhead," he said,
"will he not wake and pluck you by the two heels as you come down onto
the balcony?"
Mitsos grinned.
"There will be fine doings that night," he said. "If only you looked
into the street we could arrange that you should be at the window every
night, and I could whistle you a signal; but here, bad luck to it! I
could whistle till my lips were in rags and you would not hear. I shall
have to come in myself."
Mitsos stopped in Tripoli two days, and before he left Yanni had
plucked up heart again concerning the future. However much the Turks
might in their hearts distrust the scornful clan, they could not afford
to bring that nest of hornets about their ears without grave reason.
Yanni had but to ask for a thing and he had it; it was only not allowed
him to set foot outside the house and garden. About his ultimate safety
he had no shadow of doubt. Mitsos had examined the wall again, and
declared confidently that he would not find the slightest difficulty in
getting in, and that their exit, with the help of a bit of rope, was
in the alphabet of the use of limbs. The Turk who was Yanni's keeper
was the only other occupant of that part of the house, the story below
being kitchens and washing-places not tenanted at night. "And for the
Turk," said Yanni, "we will make gags and other arrangements." In the
mean time he announced his intention of being a model of discretion and
peacefulness, so that no suspicion might be aroused.
Mitsos was to start on the third day, and it was still the grayness
that precedes sunrise when he came into Yanni's room equipped for
going. Yanni had told Mehemet Salik that his father could not spare him
longer, and that he was to go home at once; whereat Mehemet had very
courteously offered to put another Turkish servant at his disposal,
a proposition which Yanni declined with some alacrity, as such an
arrangement would mean another Turk in that block of building.
"And, O little Mitsos," said Yanni, "come for me as quick as may be. I
shall be weary for a sight of you. Dear cousin, we have had good days
together, and may we have more soon, for I have a great love for you."
Mitsos kissed him.
"Yes, Yanni," he said, "as soon as I can come I will, and nothing,
not Suleima herself, shall make me tarry for an hour till you are out
again."
"Ah! you have Suleima," said Yanni; "but for me, Mitsos, there is none
like you. So, good-bye, cousin; forget me not, but come quickly."
And Mitsos swore the oath of the clan to him that neither man, woman,
nor child, nor riches, nor honor, should make him tarry as soon as it
was possible for him to come again, and gave him his hand on it, and
then went down to saddle his pony with a blithe heavy-heartedness about
him, for on one side he was leaving an excellent good comrade, but on
in front there was waiting Suleima.
All day he travelled, and the moon which rose about midnight showed
him the bay just beneath him, all smooth and ashine with light. He had
taken a more roundabout path, so as to avoid passing through Argos at
night, and another hour of quick going brought him down to the head of
the sandy beach where he had fished with Suleima, and when he saw it
his heart sang to him. A southerly breeze whistled among the rushes,
and set tiny razor-edged ripples prattling on the pebbles, and sweet
was the well-remembered freshness of the sea, and sweet, but with how
exquisite a spice of bitterness, the remembrance of one night three
weeks ago. Then on again down the narrow path, where blackthorn and
olive brushed him as he passed, by the great white house with the
sea-wall he knew well, and into the road just opposite his father's
house. The dog rushed out from the veranda intent on slaughter of this
midnight intruder, but at Mitsos' whispered word he jumped up fawning
on his hand, and in a couple of minutes more Nicholas, who was a light
sleeper, and had been awakened by the bark, unfastened the door.
"Mitsos, is it little Mitsos?" said the well-known voice.
"Yes, Uncle Nicholas," he said, "I have come back."
Mitsos slept late the next morning, and Nicholas, though he waited
impatiently enough for his waking, let him have his sleep out, for
though he despised the necessities of life, such as eating and
drinking, he had the utmost respect for the simpler luxuries, such as
the fill of sleep and washing, and it was not till after nine that
Mitsos stirred and awoke with a great lazy strength lying in him.
Nicholas had had the great wooden tub filled for his bath, and while he
dressed made him coffee and boiled his eggs, for times had gone hard
with Constantine, and he could no longer keep a servant. And as soon as
Mitsos had finished breakfast he and Nicholas fell to talk.
First Mitsos described his adventure down to his parting with Yanni,
and the man of few words spoke not till he had finished. Then he
said--and his words were milk and honey to the boy:
"It could not have been better done, little Mitsos. Now for Petrobey's
letter."
He read it out to Mitsos:
"Dear Cousin,--This will Mitsos bring you, and I desire
no better messenger. He will tell you what he has been
doing; and I could hear that story many times without
being tired. Yanni, poor lad, is kennelled in Tripoli,
and in this matter some precision will be needed, for
now we are already being rung to the feast ['Petrobey
will not stick to home-brewed words,' remarked
Nicholas], and my poor lad must remain in Tripoli till
the nick of the moment. Once he is safe out we will
fall to, and he must not be out till the last possible
moment. Oh, Nicholas, be very careful and tender for
the boy. Again, the meeting of primates is summoned for
early in March. Moles and owls may not see what this
means. Some excuse must be found so that they go not;
therefore, cousin, lay hands on that weaving brain of
yours until it answers wisely ['What a riddling fellow
this is!' growled the reader], and talk with Germanos
through the mouth of Mitsos. A further news for you. The
monks of Ithome have turned warmly to their country, so
there will be no lack of hands in the south, and they
from Megaspelaion had better keep to their own country,
and outbreak at the same time as we at Kalamata, so
shall then be the more magnificent confusion, and from
the north as well as the south will the dogs run into
Tripoli. Some signal will be needed, so that on the day
that we rise in the south they too may make trouble in
the north; some device of fiery beacons, I should say."
Here Petrobey's epistolary style broke down and he finished in good
colloquial Greek:
"Oh, cousin, but a feast day is coming, and there will
be a yelp and a howl from Kalamata to Patras. By God!
I'd have given fifty brace of woodcock, though they
are scarce this year, to see that barbarian nephew of
yours throw Krinos under the millstone; and my boy Yanni
has the cunning of an old grandfather. I think Mitsos
can tell you all else. Come here yourself as soon as
you safely may. The mother of God and your name-saint
protect you!
"Petros Mavromichales.
"Tell Mitsos about the devil-ships. There will not be
much time afterwards."
Nicholas thumped the letter as it lay on the table.
"Now, Mitsos," he said, "tell me all that you have to do. Yes, take a
pipe and give yourself a few minutes to think."
Mitsos smoked in silence a few minutes, and then turned to Nicholas.
"This is it," he said. "First of all, I go to Patras--no, first I shall
go to Megaspelaion to tell the monks that they will be wanted in the
north and not the south, and arrange some signals, so that we from
Taygetus or Panitza or Kalamata can communicate with them. Then I go
to Patras, bearing some message from you to Germanos, whereby he shall
excuse himself from going to Tripoli with all the primates, for that
is a trap to get them into the power of the Turk. Then there is some
business about devil-ships which I do not understand, and at the last I
have to get Yanni safely out of Tripoli. But before that I imagine you
will have gone to my cousin Petrobey."
Nicholas nodded approvingly.
"You have a clear head for so large a boy," he said, "though apparently
you are not so crafty as Yanni. Now what we have to do, now this
moment, is to invent some excuse whereby Germanos and the primates will
find means to disobey Mehemet Salik when he summons them to Tripoli.
Oh, Mitsos, but it is a wise man's thoughts that we want."
Mitsos knitted his forehead.
"Can't they go there and then escape, as Yanni is to do?" he said,
precipitately.
Nicholas shook his head in reproof.
"Fifty cassocked primates climbing over a town wall! Little Mitsos, you
are no more than a fool."
Mitsos laughed.
"So Yanni often told me," he said. "I'm afraid it's true."
"Try and be a shade more sensible. Think of all the impossible ways of
doing it, and then see what is left, for that will be the right way.
Now first, they must either refuse to go point-blank or seem to be
obeying. Certainly they must not refuse outright to go; so that leaves
us with them seeming to obey."
"Well, they mustn't get there," said Mitsos; "so they must stop on the
way."
"That is true. Why should they stop on the way? We will go slow here."
"There must be something that stops them," said Mitsos, with extreme
caution.
"Yes, you are going very slow indeed, but it is a fault on the right
side. Something must stop them, which even in the eyes of the Turks
will seem reasonable and enable them all to disperse again, for they
will all go together from Patras. Oh, why did my mother give birth to a
fool?"
Mitsos suddenly got up and held his finger in the air.
"Wait a minute," he cried, "don't speak to me, Uncle Nicholas.... Ah,
this is it. We will imagine there is a Turk in Tripoli friendly to
Germanos. We will imagine he sends a letter of warning to Germanos. Do
you see? Germanos reads the letter aloud to the fathers, and they send
to Tripoli demanding assurance of their safety, and so disperse. Quick,
Uncle Nicholas, write a letter from the friendly Turk in Tripoli to
Germanos, which he will read the fathers on the journey."
Nicholas stared at Mitsos in sheer astonishment for a moment.
"Out of the mouth of big babes and sucklings!" he ejaculated. "Oh,
Mitsos, but it is no less than a grand idea. Tell me again."
Mitsos was flushed with excitement.
"Oh, Uncle Nicholas, but it's plainer than the sun," he cried. "I go to
Patras, and before now the summons for the primates and bishops will
have come. I take to Germanos your instructions that they assemble
as if to go, and make a day's journey or two days' journey. Then one
morning there comes to Germanos a letter from Tripoli, from a Turk to
whom he has been a friend. 'Do not go,' it says, 'without an assurance
of your safety, for the Turks are treacherous.' So Germanos sends back
a messenger to Tripoli to ask for an assurance of safety, and meantime
they all disperse again, and by the time the Turks can bring them
together with an assurance of safety or what not, why the feast, as my
cousin Petrobey says, will be ready."
Nicholas sat silent a moment.
"Little Mitsos," he said, at length, "but you are no fool. I was one to
say so."
Mitsos laughed.
"Will it do then?"
"It is of the best," said Nicholas.
The more Nicholas thought it over, the more incomparable did Mitsos'
scheme appear. It was amazingly simple, and, as far as he could see,
without a flaw. It seemed to solve every difficulty, and made the whole
action of the primates as planned inevitable. It would be impossible
for them to go to Tripoli, and by the time the demand for safety had
reached Mehemet Salik, and been granted, they would have dispersed.
The second piece of business was to let them know at the monastery
that their arms and men would not be needed, as Nicholas had expected,
in the south, but for a simultaneous outbreak in the north; and there
was also to be arranged some code of signals that could travel in
an hour or two from one end of the Peloponnesus to the other. The
simplest system, that of beacon-fires, seemed to be the best, and was
peculiarly well suited to a country like the Peloponnesus, where there
were several ranges of mountains which overtopped the long intervening
tracts of hills and valleys, and were clearly visible from one another.
From Taygetus three intermediate beacons could probably carry news to
the hills above Megaspelaion, and two beacons more to Patras.
There were, then, two messages to be conveyed to Megaspelaion--the
first, that their arms would be required in the north, so that there
was no need of their beginning to make depots of them southward, as
Nicholas had suggested in his last visit there; and the second, to
arrange a system of beacons with them. It was not necessary that Mitsos
should give the first message himself, as Nicholas had told them to
be ready to receive a messenger--man, woman, or child--who spoke of
black corn for the Turk, though it must be delivered at once; but for
the second it were better that he carried with him not only a letter
from Nicholas, but also one from Germanos, with whom they would have to
arrange the beacons between Patras and the monastery. Also, he wished
Mitsos to take a message to Corinth, and go from there to Patras,
where he would see Germanos, and thence return by Megaspelaion, not to
Nauplia, for Nicholas would already have joined Petrobey, but back to
Panitza.
Mitsos nodded.
"But who will take the first message to Megaspelaion?" he asked.
Nicholas turned to Constantine.
"Whom do we know there? Stay, did not one Yanko Vlachos, with his wife
Maria, move on to monastery land a month or two ago?"
"Maria?" said Mitsos. "Maria is a very good woman. But I doubt if
Vlachos is any use. He is a wine-bibbing mule."
"Where does he live?" asked Nicholas.
"At Goura, a day's journey from Nemea."
"Goura? There are plenty of good folk there. You had better go out of
your way at Nemea, Mitsos, spend the night with Yanko, and arrange for
the message being taken; and then go back next day to Nemea, and so
to Corinth, where you will take ship. Pay him horse-hire and wage for
four days, if it is wanted. I will give you letters to Priketes and
Germanos. What else is there?"
"Only the business of the devil-ships, of which I know nothing; and to
get Yanni out of the kennel."
"The devil-ships can wait till Panitza. When will you be ready to
start?"
Mitsos thought of the white wall, and his heartstrings throbbed within
him.
"I could go to-morrow," he said. "The pony will need a day to rest."
Nicholas rose from the table and walked up and down once or twice.
"I don't want Yanni to stop at the house of that Turk longer than
is necessary," he said. "It was a bold move and a clever one of
Petrobey's, but it may become dangerous."
Mitsos said nothing, for it was a hard moment. Had not the thought
of this evening--the white wall, the dark house on the bay with
Suleima--been honey in the mouth for days past, and become ineffable
sweetness as the time drew nearer? Yet, on the other hand, had he not
sworn to Yanni the oath of the clan--that neither man, woman, nor child
should make him tarry? He desired definite assurance on one point.
"Uncle Nicholas," he said, at length, "if I went to-day would Yanni get
out of Tripoli a day sooner?"
Nicholas turned round briskly.
"Why, surely," he said; "when this business is put through there is
still but little more to do, but until it is all done Yanni is clapped
in his kennel. The moment it is over he is out."
Mitsos sat still a moment longer.
"I will start to-day," he said. "It is only a short day's journey to
Nemea. Write your letter, please, Uncle Nicholas, and then I will go."
"I don't know whether it really matters if you go to-day or
to-morrow," said Nicholas, seeing that the boy for some reason wished
to stop.
"No, no," broke out Mitsos. "You think it is better for me to go
to-day. The sooner the business is over the sooner Yanni comes out. You
said so."
Nicholas raised his eyebrows at this outburst. He did not understand it
in the least.
"I will write, then, at once," he said. "It is true that the sooner
Yanni comes out the better."
Mitsos stood with his back to him, looking out of the window, and two
great tears rose in his eyes. He was giving up more than any one knew.
Nicholas saw that something was wrong, but as Mitsos did not care
to enlighten him, it was none of his business. But he had a great
affection for the lad, and as he passed he laid his hand on his
shoulder.
"You are a good little Mitsos," he said. "The letters will be ready
in an hour. You will have dinner here, will you not, and set out
afterwards? You cannot go farther than Nemea to-night."
So after dinner Mitsos set out again, and it seemed to him as he went
that the heart within him was being torn up as the weeds in a vineyard
are rooted for the burning. And on this journey there was no thought
that he would soon come back. He was to return, Nicholas told him,
not to Nauplia, but to Panitza, where there would be work for him
to do until the time came for him to get Yanni out of Tripoli. By
then everything would be ready, the beacons would flare across the
Peloponnesus, and simultaneously in the north and at Kalamata the
outbreak would begin. The reason for this was twofold. The Greek forces
were not yet sufficiently organized to conduct the siege of Tripoli,
which was strongly fortified, well watered, and heavily garrisoned.
Kalamata, however, was a more pregnable place, the water supply was
bad inside the citadel, and the garrison not numerous. Again, it was a
port, and by getting possession of the harbor, which was not defended,
and separate from the citadel, they would drive those who escaped
inland to Tripoli. The movements in the north, too, would have the same
effect. Tripoli was the strongest fortress in the Peloponnesus, and by
the autumn, when, as Nicholas hoped, the Greeks would be sufficiently
organized to undertake the siege, it would be the only refuge left for
the Turks who were still in the country. Then it would be that the
great blow would be struck which would free the whole Peloponnesus. In
the interval the plan was as far as possible to cut the country off
from the rest of the world by a fleet which was being organized in
the islands, and by means of the fire-ships which should destroy the
Turkish vessels seeking to leave it, and prevent others from coming
into the ports. For practical purposes there were only four ports--at
Corinth, Patras, Nauplia, and Kalamata. The first two would be the
care of the leaders of the revolution in the north; for Kalamata and
Nauplia, Nicholas and Petrobey had arrangements in hand.
That night Mitsos slept at Nemea, and all next day travelled across the
great inland plain where lie the lakes. Through the length and breadth
of that delectable country the spirit of spring was abroad--crocuses
and the early anemones burned in the thickets, and the dim purple iris
cradled bees in a chalice of gold. Brimming streams crossed the path,
and the sunlight lay on their pebbly beds in a diaper of amber and
stencilled shadow, and Mitsos' pony at the mid-day halt ate his fill of
the young, juicy grass. But in the lad's heart the spring woke no echo;
he went heavily, and the glorious adventure to which he had sacrificed
his new-found manhood, fully indeed and without a murmur, seemed to
him a thing of little profit. And if he had known what hard days were
waiting for him, and the blank agonies and bitterness through which he
was to fulfil his destiny, he would, it is to be feared, have turned
his pony's head round and said that an impossible thing was asked of
him. But he knew nothing beyond this two-week task now set him, and to
this he was committed, not only by his promise to Nicholas--and, to do
him justice, his own self-respect--but by the oath of the clan, which
rather than fail in he would have sooner died.
The second evening a little before sunset he saw Goura close before
him, standing free and roomily on a breezy hill-side, and ringed with
vineyards. Behind lay the great giants of the mountain range--Helmos
cowled in snow, and Cyllene all sunset-flushed. Yanko's house proved to
be at the top of the village, and there he found Maria with a face all
smiles for his welcoming. Yanko was still in the fields, and Mitsos and
Maria talked themselves up to date with each other till he came home.
Oh yes, he was a good husband, said Maria, and he earned a fine wage.
He was as strong as a horse, and when he let the wine-shop alone he
did the work of two men. "And I am strong too," said she, "and when he
doesn't come home by ten in the evening it will be no rare thing for me
to bring him back with a clout over the head for his foolishness. And
why are you here, Mitsos?"
"Business," he said; "business for Nicholas. It is Yanko who can do it
for us. I may tell you about it, Maria, for so Nicholas said. He is
wanted to take a message to the monastery. Four days' horse-hire, if
he wishes, will be paid, and he will be doing a good work for many."
"On business against the Turk?" asked Maria.
"Surely."
Maria shook her head doubtfully.
"Yanko is a good man," she said, "but he is a man of the belly. So long
as there is food in plenty, and plenty of wine, he does not care. But
he will not be long; you shall ask him. It is so good to see you again,
Mitsos. Do you remember our treading the grapes together in the autumn?
How you have grown since then! Your height is two of Yanko, but then
Yanko is very fat."
Maria looked at him approvingly with her head on one side; she
distinctly felt a little sentimental. Mitsos reminded her of Nauplia,
and of the days when she was so proud of being engaged to Yanko while
still only seventeen, and of having Mitsos, whom she had always thought
wonderfully good-looking and pleasant, if not at her feet, at any rate
interested in her. She had been more than half disposed, as far as her
personal inclination had gone, to put Yanko off for a bit and try her
chance with the other; but she was safe with Yanko, and he did quite
well. But it both hurt her and pleased her to see Mitsos again--he
was better looking than ever, and he had a wonderful way with him, an
air of breeding--Maria did not analyze closely, but this is what she
meant--to which the estimable Yanko was quite a stranger. And this
brave adventure of his, of which he told her the main outlines; his
kinship to, and rapturous adoption by, the great Mavromichales' clan,
lent him a new and powerful attraction. And when Yanko's heavy step
was heard outside Maria turned away with a sigh and thought he seemed
earlier and fatter than usual.
[Illustration: "AFTER SUPPER MITSOS EXPOUNDED"]
Yanko, always sleek, had grown rather gross, and his red, shiny face
and small, boiled-looking eyes presented a strong contrast to Mitsos'
thin, bronzed cheeks and clear iris. But the husband seemed glad to see
him, and agreed that Mitsos' errand had best wait till after supper.
So after supper Mitsos expounded, and Yanko shifted from one foot to
the other, and seemed uncomfortable. "And," said Mitsos, in conclusion,
"I can give you horse-hire for four days."
Yanko sat silent for a while, then abruptly told his wife to draw
another jug of wine. Maria had a sharp tongue when her views were
dissentient from his, and he would speak more easily if she were not
there. Maria, who had listened to Mitsos with wide, eager eyes and a
heightened color, went off quickly and returned in equal haste, anxious
not to lose anything.
"It's like this," Yanko was saying. "What with this and that I've a lot
of farm work on my hands, and, to tell the truth, but little wish to
mix myself up in the affair; and as for four days' horse-hire, it will
pay my way, but where's my profit?"
Mitsos frowned.
"You won't go?" he said, half rising; "then I mustn't wait, but find
some one else."
At this Maria burst out:
"Shame, Yanko!" she said. "I have a mule-man for a husband. It is that
you think of nothing but piastres, and are afraid of taking on yourself
for two days such work as Mitsos spends his months in. Am I to sit here
and see you drinking and eating and sleeping, and never lift a hand
for the sake of any but yourself? Ah, if I was a man I would not have
chosen a wife with as little spirit as my husband has."
Maria banged the wine-jug down on the table, and cast a scornful look
at Yanko. Then she crossed over to Mitsos and took his glass to fill
it, filling her own at the same time.
"This to you," she said, clinking her glass at his, "and to the health
of all brave men."
Then with another scowl at Yanko:
"Can't you even drink to those who are made different to yourself, if
they are of a finer bake?" she said; "or is there not spirit in you for
that? I should have been a mile on the way by this time," she said to
Mitsos, "if it had pleased the good God to make me a man and send you
with such a message to me."
"You, Maria?" said Mitsos, suddenly.
"Yes, and how many days of horse-hire does Yanko think I should have
asked for my pains? Nay, I should have lit candles to the Virgin in the
joy of having such work given me to do, if I had had to beg my way."
Mitsos remembered Nicholas's directions.
"Will you go?" he said. "You would do it as well as any man. It is just
Father Priketes you have to ask for, and give the message."
"Nonsense, Maria," said Yanko; "a woman can't do a thing like that."
Maria's indignant speeches had a touch of the high rhetorical about
them, but Yanko's remark just stamped them into earnestness.
"You'll be drawing your own wine for yourself the next few days," she
said, "and I shall be over the hills doing what you were afraid of. I'm
blithe to go," she said to Mitsos, "and to-morrow daybreak will see me
on the way."
Yanko, on the whole, was relieved; it would have been a poor thing to
send Mitsos to another house in quest of a sturdier patriot than he,
and Maria's offer had obviated this without entailing the journey on
himself. Poor Yanko had been born of a meek and quiet spirit, and the
possession of the earth in company with like-minded men would have
seemed to him a sufficiently beatified prospect. He had no desire
for brave and boisterous adventure, new experiences held for him
no ecstasy: even in the matter of drinking, which was the chiefest
pleasure of his life, he maintained a certain formula of moderation,
never passing beyond the stage of a slightly fuddled head; and a
wholesome fear of Maria--not acute, but steady--as a rule, drove him
home while he was still perfectly capable of getting there. The rule
of his life was a certain sordid mean, which has been the subject for
praise in the mouth of poets, who have even gone so far as to call it
golden, and is strikingly exemplified in the lives of cows and other
ruminating animals. He was possessed of certain admirable qualities, a
capacity for hard work and a real affection for his eminent wife being
among them, but he was surely cast in no heroic mould. He had no fine,
heady virtues which carry their own reward in the constant admiration
they excite, but of the more inglorious excellences he had an average
share.
Mitsos arrived at Corinth next night after a very long day, and found a
caique starting in an hour or two for Patras. He had just time to leave
Nicholas's message to the mayor of the town, get food, and bargain for
a passage to Patras for himself and his pony. The wind was but light
and variable through the night, but next day brought a fine singing
breeze from the east, and about the time that he landed at Patras Maria
saw below her from the top of a pass the roof of the monastery ashine
with the evening sun from a squall of rain which had crossed the hills
that afternoon.
Her little pinch-eared mule went gayly down through the sweet-smelling
pine forest which clothed the upper slope below which the monastery
stood, and every now and then she passed one or two of the monks
engaged on their work--some burning charcoal; some cleaning out the
channels which led from the snow-water stream, all milky and hurrying,
after a day of sun, down to the vineyards; others, with their cassocks
kilted up for going, piloting timber-laden mules down home, and all
gave Maria a "Good-day" and a "Good journey."
Outside the gate a score or so of the elder men were enjoying the last
hour of sunlight, sitting on the stone benches by the fountain, smoking
and talking together. One of these, tall and white-bearded, let his
glance rest on Maria as she rode jauntily down the path; but when,
instead of passing by on the road, she turned her mule aside up the
terrace in front of the gate, he got up quickly with a kindled eye and
spoke to the brother next him.
"Has it come," he said, "even as Nicholas told us it might?" and he
went to meet Maria.
"God bless your journey, my daughter!" he said, "and what need you of
us?"
Maria glanced round a little nervously.
"I want to speak to Father Priketes, my father," she said.
"You speak to him."
"Have you corn, father?" she said.
A curious hush had fallen on the others, and Maria's words were audible
to them all. At her question they rose to their feet and came a little
nearer, and a buzzing whisper rose and died away again.
"Corn for the needy or corn for the Turk?" asked Priketes, while round
there was a silence that could have been cut with a knife.
"Black corn for the Turk. Let there be no famine, and have fifteen
hundred men ready to carry it when the signal comes, and that will
be soon. Not far will they have to go. It will be needed here, at
Kalavryta."
Maria slipped down from her mule and spoke low to Priketes.
"And oh, father, there is something more, but I cannot remember the
words I was to use; but I know what it means, for Mitsos, the nephew of
Nicholas, told me."
Father Priketes smiled.
"Say it then, my daughter."
"It is this: if you have guns stored in readiness southward, get them
back. It will not happen just as Nicholas expected. You will want all
your men and arms here."
"It is well. What will the signal be?"
"I know not; but in a few days Mitsos will come from Patras. Oh, you
will know him when you see him--as tall as a pillar, and a face like a
spring morning or a wind on the hill--and to see him does a body good.
He knows and will tell you."
"I will expect Mitsos, then," said Priketes. "You will stay here
to-night; there shall be made ready for you the great guest-room--for
you are an honored guest--the room where the daughter of an emperor
once lodged."
Maria hesitated.
"I could get back to some village to-night," she said. "I ought not to
delay longer than I need."
"And shame our hospitality?" said Priketes. "Besides, you are a
conspirator now, my daughter, and you must use the circumspection of
one. What manner of return would you make at dead of night to where
you slept before, with no cause to give? To-morrow you shall go back,
and say how pleased your novice brother was to see you--and the lie
be laid to the account of the Turk, who fill our mouths perforce with
these things--and how you had honor of the monks. Give your mule to the
lad, my daughter. It shall be well cared for."
So Maria had her chance, and took it. An adventure and a quest for
the good of her country were offered her, and she embraced them. For
the moment she rose to the rank of those who work personally for the
good of countries and great communities, and then passed back into her
level peasant life again. Goura, as it turned out, took no part in the
deeds that were coming. Its land was land of the monastery, and the
Turks never visited its sequestered valley with cruelty, oppression,
or their lustful appetites. Yet the great swelling news that came to
the inhabitants of that little mountain village, only as in the ears of
children a sea-shell speaks of remotely breaking waves, had to Maria
a reality and a nearness that it lacked to others, and her life was
crowned with the knowledge that she had for a moment laid her finger
harmoniously on the harp which made that glorious symphony.
Mitsos' work at Patras was easily done. Germanos was delighted with the
idea of the forged letter from the Turk, and was frankly surprised to
hear that the notion was born of the boy's brain. Being something of
a scholar, he quoted very elegantly the kindred notion of Athene, who
was wisdom, springing full-grown from the brain of Zeus, for Mitsos'
idea, so he was pleased to say, was complete in itself, mature from its
birth. Mitsos did not know the legend to which the primate referred,
and so he merely expressed his gratification that the scheme was
considered satisfactory. The affair of the beacons took more time,
for Mitsos on his journey south back to Panitza would have to make
arrangements for their kindling, and it was thus necessary that their
situation should be accessible to villages where Nicholas was known,
and where the boy could find some one to undertake to fire the beacon
as soon as the next beacon south was kindled. Furthermore, though
Germanos knew the country well, it would be best for Mitsos to verify
the suitability of the places chosen, "for," as the archbishop said,
"you might burn down all the pine-woods on Taygetus, and little should
we reck of it if Taygetus did not happen to be visible from Lycaon; but
we should stand here like children with toy swords till the good black
corn grew damp and the hair whitened on our temples."
As at present arranged, Mitsos would be back at Panitza on the 10th
of March, after which, as Nicholas had told him, there would be more
work to do before he could go for Yanni at Tripoli. It was, therefore,
certain--taking the shortest estimate--that the beacon signal could
not possibly occur till March 20th, but that on that evening and every
evening after the signalmen must be at their posts waiting for the
flame to spring up on Taygetus. For the beacons between Patras and
Megaspelaion there would be no difficulty; two at high points on the
mountains would send the message all the way, and the only doubtful
point was where to put the beacon which should be intermediate between
that on Taygetus and that on Helmos, which latter could signal to one
directly above the monastery. Germanos was inclined to think that a
certain spur of Lycaon, lying off the path to the right, some four
miles from Andritsaena, and standing directly above an old temple,
which would serve Mitsos as a guiding point, would answer the purpose.
If so, it could be worked from Andritsaena, and the priest there, at
whose house Mitsos would find a warm welcome if he stayed for the
night, would certainly undertake it.
Mitsos went off again the next day, with the solemn blessing of the
archbishop in his ears and the touch of kindly hands in his, and
reached Megaspelaion in two days. Here he had news of Maria's safe
arrival. "And a brave lass she is," said Father Priketes. The business
of the beacons was soon explained, and next morning Father Priketes
himself accompanied Mitsos on his journey to the top of the pass above
the monastery, in order to satisfy himself that from there both the
points fixed upon--that on the spur of Helmos, and also that towards
Patras--were visible.
Their way lay through the pine-woods where Maria had come three days
before, and a hundred little streams ran bubbling down through the
glens, and the thick lush grass of the spring-time was starred with
primroses and sweet-smelling violets. Above that lay an upland valley,
all in cultivation, and beyond a large, bleak plateau of rock, on the
top of which the beacon was to burn. Another half-hour's climb saw them
there, a strange, unfriendly place, with long parallel strata of gray
rock, tipped by some primeval convulsion onto their side, and lying
like a row of razors. In the hollows of the rocks the snow was still
lying, but the place was alive with the whisper of new-born streams. A
few pine-trees only were scattered over these gaunt surfaces, but in
the shelter of them sprang scarlet wind-flowers and hare-bells, which
shivered on their springlike stalks.
A few minutes' inspection was enough to show that the place was well
chosen--to the south rose the great mass of Helmos, and they could
clearly see a sugarcone rock, the proposed beacon site, standing
rather apart from the main mountain, some fifteen miles to the south,
just below which lay the village of Leondari, whither Mitsos was
bound, and towards Patras the contorted crag above Mavromati. Here, so
Priketes promised, should a well-trusted monk watch every evening from
March 20th onward, and as soon as he saw the blaze on Helmos, he would
light his own beacon, waiting only to see it echoed above Mavromati,
and go straight back with the news to the monastery. And the Turks at
Kalavryta, so said Priketes--for it was on Kalavryta that the first
blow was to descend--should have cause to remember the vengeance of the
sword of God which His sons should wield.
CHAPTER V
THE VISION AT BASSAE
From the village of Leondari, held in a half-circle of the foothills
of Helmos, where was to be the second link in the chain of beacons,
it was impossible to see Andritsaena; but the mass of Mount Lycaon
stood up fine and clear behind where Andritsaena was, and a series of
smaller peaks a little to the west would prove, so Mitsos hoped, to be
the hills above the temple. He and his host climbed the beacon-hill
and took very sedulous note of these, and next morning the lad set
off at daybreak to Andritsaena, which he reached in a day and a half.
The country through which he travelled, an unkind and naked tract,
was not suspected by the Turks to be tinged with any disaffection to
their benignant rule, and his going was made without difficulty or
accident. He found welcome at the house of the priest to whom Germanos
had given him a letter, and after dinner the two rode off, on a fair,
cloudless afternoon, to the hills above the temple, to verify its
visibility from Taygetus on the south and the crag of Helmos on the
north. An Englishman, whom the priest described as a "tall man covered
with straps and machines," had been there a year or two before making
wonderful drawings of the place, and had told them it was a temple to
Apollo, and that the ancient Greek name for it was Bassae. "Yet I like
not the place," said Father Zervas.
An hour or so after their departure, fleecy clouds began to spin
themselves in the sky, and as they went higher they found themselves
involved in the folds of a white fabric of mist, which lay as thick
as a blanket over the hill-side, and through which the sun seemed to
hang white and unluminous, like a china plate. This promised but ill
for the profit of their ride, but Zervas said it was worth while to
push on; those mists would be scattered in a moment if the wind got up;
he had seen them roll away as the housewife rolls up the bed-linen.
But as they got higher the mist seemed to thicken, and the sun was
expunged, and when, by the priest's computation, they must be near the
temple, they could scarcely see ten yards before them, and the gaunt,
contorted oak-trees marched swiftly into their narrow field of vision,
and out again, like ghosts in torment. Shoulder after shoulder of
gray hill-side sank beneath them, dripping with the cold, thick mist,
and unutterably waste, when, after moving ten minutes or more across
a featureless flank of hill, gigantic shadows peered at them from in
front, a great range of columns faced them, and they were there.
Mitsos' pony, tired with the four days' journey, was lagging behind,
and Mitsos had got off to relieve it on the steeper part of the ascent,
when suddenly there came from out of the chill, blank fog a scream like
that of a lost soul. For one moment a superstitious fear clutched at
the boy, and his pony, startled, went off at a nimbler pace to join the
other, and Mitsos had to break into a run to keep up. Then suddenly
the sun stared whitely through the mists, and in five seconds more the
wind, which had screamed so shrilly, was upon them. In a moment the
hill-side was covered with flying wreaths of vapor, which the wind tore
smaller and smaller till there was nothing left of them; it ripped
off ribbons from the skirts of the larger clouds, which it drove like
herded sheep down the valleys, and as Mitsos gained the ridge where the
temple stood, a brilliant sun sat in cloudless blue, looking down upon
the great gray columns. At their feet in every direction new valleys,
a moment before muffled in mist, were being carved out among the
hill-sides, and already far to the south the plain of Kalamata, rimmed
with a dim, dark sea, sparkled green through thirty miles of crisp
air. Down in the valley through which they had come some conflicting
current of air tilted the mist up in a tall column of whirling vapor,
as if from some great stewing-pot below, and as it streamed up into the
higher air it melted and dissolved away, and in five minutes the whole
land--north, south, east, and west--was naked to the incomparable blue.
Mitsos gazed in wonder at the gray columns, which seemed more to have
grown out of the hill than to have been built by the hands of men; but
the priest hurried him on.
"It is as I hoped," said he; "the wind has driven the clouds off; but
they may come back. We must go quickly to the top of the hill."
The lad left his pony grazing by the columns and ran up the brow of
the hill some two hundred feet above the end of the temple. Northward
Helmos lifted a snowy finger into the sky, and clean as a cameo on its
south-eastern face stood the cone above Leondari, as if when the hills
were set upon the earth by the stir of the forces of its morning it had
been placed there for their purpose. Then looking southward they saw
Taygetus rise shoulder above shoulder into the blue, offering a dozen
vantage points. But Father Zervas was a cautious man.
"It seems clear enough, Mitsos," he said; "but Taygetus is a big
place. This will I do for greater safety. You go straight south, you
say, and will be at Kalamata two evenings from now, and on the third
night you will sleep at some village on the pass crossing Taygetus over
to Sparta. On that night directly after sundown I will kindle a beacon
here, and keep it kindled for two hours, and in that time you will be
able to choose a well-seen place for the blaze on Taygetus. Look, it
is even as I said, the mists gather again; but the winds of God have
favored us, and our work is done."
Even as he spoke a long tongue of mist shot up from the valley
below, and came licking up the hill like the spent water of a wave
on a level beach, and Mitsos ran down quickly in order to find his
pony in case it had strayed even thirty or forty yards, before the
clouds swallowed them up again. But he found it where he had left it,
browsing contentedly on the spicy tufts of thyme and sweet mountain
grass, and for a couple of minutes more, before the earth and sky were
blotted out, he stared amazedly at the tall gray ruins which stood
there crowning the silence and strength of the hills, still unknown to
all but a few travellers and to the shepherds that fed their flocks
in summer on the hill-tops--a memorial of the life and death of the
worship of beauty, and the god of sunlight and health and imperishable
youth.
He waited there till the priest joined him, and was surprised to see
him cross himself as he passed by the door into the temple, and asked
why he did so.
"It is a story of a devil," he said, "which folks tell about here.
Whether I believe it or no, I know not, and so I am careful. We will
make haste down this valley, for it is not good to be here after night."
The mists had risen again over the whole hill-side, but not thickly,
and as they turned to go Mitsos looking back saw a strange shaft of
light streaming directly out of the ruined door of the temple--the
effect, no doubt, of the sun, which was near its setting, striking
through some thin layer of cloud.
"Look," he said to the priest, "one might almost think the temple was
lit from within."
Father Zervas looked round, and when he saw it dropped lamentably
off his horse and onto his knees on the ground, and began muttering
prayers, crossing himself the while.
Mitsos looked at him in surprise, and saw that his face was deadly
pale, and a strangling anguish gripped at the muscles of his throat.
The light cast through the temple door meantime had been choked by the
gathering mists, and when Father Zervas looked up from his prayers it
was gone.
"Quick, quick!" he cried to Mitsos; "it is not good to be here," and
mounting on his pony he fairly clattered down the hill-side, and did
not draw bridle till they had reached the main road from Andritsaena.
Mitsos followed, half amused, but conscious of a lurking fear in his
mind, a fear bred by the memory of the winter evenings of his childhood
when he used to hear strange stories of shapes larger than human, which
had been seen floating like leaves in the wind round the old temples on
the Acropolis, and cries that came from the hills of Ægina, where stood
the house of the god, but no human habitation, at the sound of which
the villagers in the hamlets below would bolt their doors and crouch
fearfully round the fire, "making the house good," as they said, by the
reiterated sign of the cross. Then as he grew older his familiarity
with morning and evening and night in lonely places had caused these
stories to be half forgotten, or remembered only as he remembered
the other terrors and pains of childhood--the general distrust of the
dark, and the storms that came swooping down from the gaunt hills
above Nauplia. But now when he saw the flying skirts of Father Zervas
waving dimly from the mist in front, and heard the hurried clatter of
his pony's feet, he followed at a good speed, and in some confusion of
mind. Zervas had stopped on reaching the high-road, and here Mitsos
caught him up.
"Ah, ah!" he gasped, "but it is a sore trial the Lord has sent me, for
I am no braver than a hare when it comes to dealings with that which is
no human thing. It is even as Demetri said, for the evil one is there,
the one whom he saw under the form of a young man, very fair to look
upon, but evil altogether, a son of the devil."
And he wiped a dew of horror from his brow.
Mitsos must have felt disposed to laugh had not the man's terror been
so real.
"But what did you see, father?" he asked. "For me I saw naught but a
light shining through the door."
"That was it, that was it," said Zervas, "and I--I have promised
Germanos to see to the beacon business, and on that hill shall I have
to watch while perhaps the young man, evil and fair, watches for me
below. I cannot pass this way, for my heart is cold water at the
thought. I shall have to climb up from the other valley, so that I pass
not the place; and then, perhaps, with the holy cross on my breast and
the image of the Crucified in my hand, I shall go unhurt."
"But what was it Demetri saw?" asked Mitsos.
"It was this way," said Father Zervas, who was growing a little more
collected as they attained a greater distance from the temple. "One
evening, a spring evening, as it might be to-day, Demetri, of our
village, whom I know, was driving his sheep down from the hill above
the temple, where the beacon will be; and, being later than he knew,
the sun had set ere he came down to where the temple stands; therefore,
as he could not herd the sheep in the dark down the glen, he bethought
himself to encamp there, for the night was warm and he had food enough
with him and wine for two men. Inside, the temple is of two rooms, and
into the hindermost of these he penned the sheep, and in the other
he lit a sparkle of fire and sat himself down to eat his supper. And
having finished his supper he lay down to sleep, but no wink of sleep
came near him, and feeling restless, he sat up and smoked awhile. But
his unrest gained on him, twitching at his limbs and bidding him go; so
out he fared on the hill-side to see if he could find sleep there--or,
at any rate, get air--for it seemed to him that the temple had grown
unseasonably warm, and that it was filled with some sweet and subtle
perfume. Outside it was cooler, and so, laying himself in a hollow of
the hill opposite the temple gate, he nestled down among the grasses
and again tried to sleep.
[Illustration: "IN THE CENTRE OF THE GREAT CHAMBER STOOD ONE WHOM IT
DAZZLED HIS EYES TO LOOK UPON"]
"But it seemed to him that from below there came dim songs such as
men sing on feast-days, and looking down to see whence such voices
came, he saw, even as you saw and I, a strong great light shining out
of the temple door, and next moment came a clattering and pattering
of feet, and out through the door rushed his sheep, which must have
leaped the barrier of boughs he had put up, and ran, scattering, dumb,
and frightened, in all directions. He got up and hurried down to stop
any that were left, for as for herding those that were gone he might
as well have tried to herd the moon-beams, for the night was dark but
for the space illuminated by that great light that shone out from the
temple. So down he ran, but at the temple door he stopped, for in
the centre of the great chamber stood one whom it dazzled his eyes to
look upon. Fair was he and young, and lithe as a deer on the mountains,
and from his face there shone a beauty and a glory which belong not to
mortal man; and the lines of his body were soft with the graciousness
of youth, but firm with the strength of a man. Over one shoulder was
slung a quiver of gold, and his left hand held a golden bow; golden
sandals were on his feet, and on his head a wreath of wild laurel. For
the rest, he was as naked as the night of full moon in May, and as
glorious. Two fingers of the hand which held the bow were rested on
the head of one of Demetri's rams, the father of the flock, and the
beast stood there quiet and not afraid. No other light was there in
the temple, but all the splendor which turned the place to a summer
noonday sprang from him. Only in front of the youth still smouldered
the fire by which Demetri had eaten his supper, and that seemed in the
blaze that filled the temple to have burned low and dim, like a candle
in the sunlight, and a little blue smoke from it came towards him, full
of some wonderful sweet perfume. The sheep, frightened, had collected
again round him, and in that light he could see to right and left score
upon score of their white heads and twitching ears; they stood close
to him and huddled, yet all looked at that immortal thing within the
temple. And as he stood there, stricken to stone, marvelling at the
beauty of the youth, and forgetting in his wonder to be afraid, the
god--yet no god was he, but only evil," said Zervas, hastily, again
crossing himself--"raised his eyes to him and said:
"'Thou that makest a sheep-pen of my sanctuary, art thou not afraid to
do this thing?
"But he spoke, so said Demetri, not harshly, and in the lustre of his
eyes there was something so matchless and beyond compare that he knelt
down and said:
"'Forgive me, Lord, for I knew not that it was thine.'
"Then said the other:
"'For penalty and yet for thine honor this ram is mine,' and he struck
the beast lightly on the head, at which it sank down and moved no more.
Then said the god again:
"'It is long since I have looked on your race; not so fair are they
now as they were in the olden days'--and in truth Demetri is an
ugly loon--'but this shalt thou learn of me, how joy is better than
self-sacrifice, and beauty than wisdom or the fear of God. Look at me
only, the proof is here.'
"And at this he held out his hand to him, but Demetri was suddenly
smitten by the knowledge that this beautiful youth was more evil than
the beasts of the field, and in wild despair he bethought himself of
his only safety, and made in the air, though feebly, for his heart
was nigh surrendered, the sign of the cross. With that a shuddering
blackness came over his spirit and his eyes, and when he came to
himself he was lying on the dew-drenched pavement of the temple, and
close to him the ram, dead, but with no violent mark upon him; and
looking in at the temple door, but coming not in, the rest of the
flock, of which none was missing; and morning was red in the east. That
is ten years ago, but Demetri will scarce speak of it even to-day, and
I had half thought before that it was an idle tale; but when I saw the
light shining out through the temple door an hour ago, it was freshly
borne to me that it was true, albeit one of the dark things of the
world at which we cannot even guess. Yet, as Christ protected Demetri,
He will surely protect me when I go on the beacon work, for it is His
work; but lest I tempt God, I will climb up that hill on the other side
and keep my eyes away from the temple, and plant the holy cross between
me and it."
Mitsos knew not what to make of all this. The fact that Demetri had,
in Zervas's phrase, wine for two men with him might have explained the
significance of what he had seen; but, being a Greek, his mind was
fruitful soil for all things ghostly and superstitious.
"It is very strange," he said; "yet, father, you will not go back from
the work?"
"I will do it faithfully," said Zervas, "for thus I shall be in the
hands of the Lord."
CHAPTER VI
THREE LITTLE MEN FALL OFF THEIR HORSES
It was the middle of March when Mitsos again found himself climbing
the steep hill-side into Panitza. Night had fallen two hours before;
clear and keen was the sky, and keen the vigor of the mountain air. The
crescent moon, early setting, had slipped behind the snowy spearhead
of Taygetus, but the heaven was all aglow with stars burning frostily.
His work had all been done quickly and well, and after he had seen the
beacon at Bassae, three nights before, shine like a glowworm to the
north, and then shoot out a little tongue of flame and lick a low-lying
star, he had travelled night and day, only giving himself a minimum of
sleep, and walking as much as he rode to spare the pony, that seemed,
as they came into Panitza with Mitsos only resting a hand on its neck,
to be the more weary of the two. He went up the village street to
Petrobey's house, but found the door into the court-yard closed, and
only Osman at first answered his knocking by furious barking.
"Osman, oh, Osman," called Mitsos, "be quiet, boy, and let them hear
within."
Osman recognized his voice and whined impatiently while Mitsos knocked
again. At last he heard the house door open, and Petrobey's voice
calling out:
"Who is there?"
"It is I, cousin," shouted the boy; "it is Mitsos."
Petrobey ran across the court-yard, and the next moment Osman tumbled
out to welcome Mitsos of the clan, and he led the pony in.
"Ah, it is good to see you, little Mitsos," said Petrobey. "You have
come very quick; we did not expect you till to-morrow."
"Yes, I have come quick," said Mitsos; "and, oh, cousin, do not talk to
me before I have eaten, for I am hungrier than the hares in winter, and
the pony is weaker than I for weariness."
"Give him me," said Petrobey, "and go inside; you will find supper
ready, and Nicholas is here."
"Nay, it is not fitting that you should look to the pony," said Mitsos.
"Little Mitsos, get you in," said Petrobey; "there are woodcocks for
supper and a haunch of roe-deer, but Nicholas and I have eaten all
the eels"; and he led the pony off, for he had heard from Nicholas
of Mitsos' oath to Yanni, and how, though for a reason Nicholas did
not understand, Mitsos had been very loath to leave Nauplia, but had
gone at once; and with that fine instinct, so unreasonable and yet so
beautiful, to wait on those a man admires, he wished to do this little
service for the boy. Nicholas and he had talked the matter over, and
Petrobey said it was clear that Mitsos was in love, and Nicholas was
inclined to agree, though as to the engager of his affections they
could risk no guess.
Mitsos ate a prodigious supper, and Nicholas having given him a handful
of tobacco for his pipe, he declared himself capable of talking, and
put forth to them a full account of his journey, and in turn asked what
news.
"Much news," said Petrobey, "a little bad and a great deal good. The
bad comes first, and it is this: Nicholas is afraid that it will soon
be known at Tripoli that he is here, and that will be an unseasonable
thing. Four days ago he met two Turkish soldiers, and he thinks they
recognized him. They were going to Tripoli, and it will not suit me at
all if they send again to ask me to find him, for we have other work to
do, and already the clan is moving up into the mountains so as to be
ready for the work, and to send twenty men again after Nicholas is what
I will not do."
"That is but a small thing, cousin," said Nicholas; "but it is the
thought of Yanni in Tripoli which sits heavy on me. At present, of
course, he is perfectly safe, but supposing a message comes that you
and I are ordered to be at Tripoli in three days."
Petrobey laughed.
"Mehemet Salik dare not," he said; "absolutely he dare not. How fat
little Yanni will be when he comes out. Turks eat five times a day.
They have no cause to suspect me, and if the worst comes to the worst,
he can but send out men to search for you."
Mitsos yawned.
"Yet I wish Yanni were here," he said, "for I love Yanni, and I have
sworn to him the oath of the clan. But I am sleepier than the wintering
dormouse. When do you suppose I may go for him, cousin?"
"In a week or less, I hope, and in the interval there is the fire-ship
work for you to learn. Of that to-morrow, so get you to bed, little
Mitsos."
Mitsos got up with eyes full of sleep and stretched himself.
"A bed with sheets," he said; "oh, but I thank the Mother of God for
beds."
"Also for woodcock and roe-deer," remarked Petrobey. "Good-night,
little one."
The next two days Mitsos spent in learning the working of the
fire-ship. Every morning before daybreak Nicholas used to leave the
village and lie hidden in the pine-woods on the hills above, returning
with Mitsos at nightfall. But on the second evening, as they got near
the house, they saw a Turkish soldier in the road, himself on horseback
and holding two other horses. Nicholas stepped quickly out of the
moonlight into the shadow, and beckoned to Mitsos to do the same.
"This means trouble," he said; "I knew it, I knew it. Go you in,
Mitsos, and I will wait in the alder clump by the mill, going out of
the village, for there will be news for you to bring me."
And he stole along in the shadow of the wall until he was out of sight.
Mitsos waited till he was gone, and then walked unconcernedly forward,
whistling the while. At the gate the soldier stopped him.
"Yassak," he said, which means "There is no passing."
Mitsos stared and stood silent a moment, running over in his mind his
small vocabulary of Turkish abuse.
"Ugh! cross-legged one, where is your hat?" he said, rudely and
cheerfully. "But why should I not see my cousin?"
"There is no passing," said the Turk, and with that he drew out his
pistol.
Mitsos hesitated a moment. He was quite willing to rush in and take his
chance of the bullet going wide, for he held the Turks in light esteem
as marksmen since the adventure with Yanni; but he doubted the wisdom
of the scheme, for there were, as the horses showed, at least two more
inside. So he turned on his heel.
"I shall go back home, then," he said. "Shall I find more little men
there saying I may not see my father? Go home, too, my little man, if
you are as wise as you are little, and eat sweets with the women of
your master's harem, and wash your dirty face."
The man answered nothing, for he knew well that to fire a shot in
a village of the Mavromichales was to put his own head into a nest
of hornets that could sting sore. He and the others had entered the
village very quietly after dark so as not to provoke any attention,
and had been fortunate enough to get to Petrobey's house without being
noticed. Mitsos went along quietly enough till he was out of sight, and
then ran as he had never run before to the alder clump where he would
find Nicholas.
"Quick, quick!" he whispered; "tell me what to do. There are Turkish
soldiers at Petrobey's, and they will not let me in. Oh, uncle, this
bodes no good for Yanni! What shall I do?"
"Ah, it is even so!" said Nicholas. "Sit you, Mitsos, and let us think."
For five minutes or so they sat quite silent. At last Nicholas spoke.
"I make no doubt what has happened," he said, "and it is all bad. These
men have come to Petrobey from Mehemet Salik, and it means his arrest.
They have him in the hollow of their hand, for if he goes not there
is Yanni in Tripoli, and go he must. What is before us is this: Yanni
must be got out of Tripoli at once, and Petrobey must escape on his
way there. How shall we do it? Oh, little Mitsos, think as you thought
before, and ask the blessed saints to speak to you and me."
Nicholas crushed his hands to his temples.
"And that is not all," he added. "The clan must be warned at once what
has happened, and it is useless for them to attempt the rescue of
Petros before Yanni is out of Tripoli, for so his life will be forfeit.
And I, too, I must--ah, I shall give myself up to those Turks!"
"But why, Uncle Nicholas?" asked Mitsos, fairly puzzled.
"Because it is easier for two men to escape than one, and also because,
if they get away from the village with me and Petrobey without alarm
given to the clan, they will make less haste to Tripoli, for if I am
with them they will not fear that I should get to Yanni first. Oh,
Mitsos, this is a good thought of mine! but the clan must keep very
quiet, and let the little men think they do not know what is happening."
"Then I am off for Yanni?" asked Mitsos.
"On the instant. Where is your horse?"
"At Petrobey's."
"Then go round to the house of some cousin; go to Demetri and get a
horse, and off with you. There is no time to lose. Stay, you do not
know where you and Yanni are to go from Tripoli. You must escape by
night and go straight over the hills to the edge of the upper Arcadian
plain, where stands Megalopolis; there strike southward over on to
Taygetus and find your way to the hill above Lada, on the top of the
pass, where you watched for the beacon from Bassae. We shall be there.
I shall go round the village and see that the whole clan know what has
happened and where they will join us on Taygetus; then I shall give
myself up. And now, little Mitsos, God speed; remember that we love
you, and be very careful and very quiet. Yanni's life depends on you."
So Mitsos stole off in the darkness to go to Demetri's house, and
Nicholas went back to the village to warn the clan. In an hour's time
messengers had started to the villages round saying what had happened,
and giving the clan to know where they were to go when the few
preparations which remained with regard to the storing of the powder
were completed, and also definitely saying that the outbreak would
begin, as soon as possible, by the siege of Kalamata. Then Nicholas
went to Petrobey's house and found the soldier still in the road
opposite with the horses.
"There is no passing," he said.
"You do not know to whom you are speaking," said Nicholas, haughtily.
"I am Nicholas Vidalis, of whom you may have heard."
The answer was what he anticipated, and he found himself covered by
the soldier's pistol, while the latter shouted to those inside: "Here
is Nicholas Vidalis!" Then, addressing Nicholas, he said, "Move, and I
shoot."
Nicholas stood quite still, for he had no wish either to move or to be
shot, while another soldier ran out from the house.
"I suppose you have authority for this," he said, "or there will be a
settling between us."
"The authority of Mehemet Salik," said the second soldier, "the
Governor of Tripoli, to arrest you and Petros Mavromichales and bring
you to Tripoli."
They had been speaking in Turkish, and Nicholas, with intention, asked
the next question in Greek.
"For what am I arrested?"
"I do not know Greek," said the soldier.
"God be praised for that!" thought Nicholas, and he repeated his
question in Turkish.
"For seditious designs against the sovereign power of the Sultan and
his deputy in Tripoli, Mehemet Salik."
Nicholas laughed.
"That sounds serious. Shall I go inside, gentlemen? I am your prisoner,
and I deliver up my arms," and he handed the soldier his pistol and
knife and stepped in. "I should advise you," he added, "to come in,
too, for if some of this hot-headed clan see a Turk standing there
he will not stand there long entire. Come in, friend, for though I am
maliciously accused that is no fault of yours, and I would not see your
blood nor the blood of my clan shed."
The soldier followed his advice and led the horses inside, barring the
gate behind him.
Petrobey had heard Nicholas's voice, and a great wave of relief came
over him. He had been sitting there quite silent, guarded by two
soldiers, in a dumb agony of fear, not for himself, but for Yanni. That
he himself could escape somehow or other on the way to Tripoli he did
not doubt, but his escape meant death to Yanni if still in the town,
as the letter from Mehemet said; while if he delivered himself up at
Tripoli, the moment the war of independence began, death to both of
them. His only consolation had been that Nicholas, at least, was safe.
He would have been back an hour before, unless in some way the alarm
had been given him, and his appearance now, coming in peacefully and
calmly, must mean that he knew what had happened, and had some wise
thought within him. Mitsos--and at the thought of Mitsos he looked up
suddenly at Nicholas, in the sudden hope that Mitsos had started for
Tripoli--and as he caught Nicholas's eye the latter nodded and smiled,
and Petrobey felt certain that Nicholas had answered the question he
had silently asked him.
Nicholas sat down cheerfully and continued to speak in Turkish:
"This is some strange mistake," he said, "but I shall not be sorry
to pay my respects to his Excellency in Tripoli, a duty which I have
hitherto neglected."
One of the soldiers smiled.
"And his Excellency will not be sorry to see you. He sent for you, if
you remember, last autumn, and your cousin wrote him a letter saying
that his bastard kinsman should be sought for and sent when found."
This was a little disconcerting, but Nicholas waved his hand lightly.
"A private quarrel merely between myself and my cousin," he said,
"which has long ago been made up. Eh, cousin?" Then, in Greek, "They
don't talk Greek, God be thanked!"
Petrobey nodded assent.
"We set off to-morrow, Nicholas," he said, "and that very early in the
morning. To-night we have guests with us, and it is time for supper.
Please seat yourselves, gentlemen. Poor fare, I am afraid, but we did
not know that we should be honored by your presence to-night."
Petrobey clapped his hands, and the servant brought the supper. He
was a big, strong lad of Yanni's age, the son of a small farm-holding
tenant on Petrobey's land, who had been left an orphan while still
quite a young boy. Petrobey had brought him up in his own house, as
half servant and half companion to Yanni, exacting little service, but
receiving complete devotion.
"Put on supper," he said, in Greek, "and keep your ears well open."
The boy brought in the food, and they all sat down together. The meal
had only been prepared for three, but as Mitsos was to have been one
of the three, and the Turks were small eaters, there seemed to be
plenty of food. All three soldiers, from living among the Greeks, had
relaxed their religious abstinence from wine, where the wine was good,
and the meal went on merrily enough, Nicholas, in particular, talking
and laughing with them, and speaking Turkish with wonderful fluency
and accuracy. Under pretext of Petrobey's not speaking Turkish at all
easily, it was soon arranged between him and Nicholas that he should
speak in Greek and Nicholas act as interpreter, translating into
Turkish the remarks he made to his guests, and his guests' conversation
into Greek; and so it came about that long before the meal was over
Petrobey was fully acquainted with Mitsos' departure for Tripoli and
also Nicholas's idea for the next day, and they discussed at some
length, without arousing the least suspicion, their own manner of
escape.
This, Nicholas suggested, should be made as soon as possible on the
journey; if it could be managed, at the first halt, for Mitsos would
have had twelve hours' start, and should have had time to get Yanni
safely out. The advantage of doing this early would be that they would
still be travelling in the country of the clan, who would, were it
necessary, turn out to cover their retreat; and Nicholas suggested
that they should have recourse to a very simple expedient, which he
had tried with success once before. The lad Constantine would come
with them, he proposed, carrying food for the mid-day meal, as it was
six hours to the next village; Nicholas, Petrobey, and the boy would
be quite unarmed; and the Turks, secure in the knowledge that Yanni
was still hostage, would not, he thought, attempt to bind them. That,
however, he would ascertain. During their meal, which should be ample
and full of wine, the boy should be instructed to cut the girths of
the Turks' horses, and get away home as fast as might be. Then after a
decent interval they should think about going on, and Petrobey and he,
mounting as quick as they could, should ride cheerfully off at full
speed across country towards Taygetus. "The soldiers," added Nicholas,
with admirable gravity, "will attempt to do the same, and I wish
little Mitsos was here to see them, for it does me good to see Mitsos
laugh."
All this was conveyed in short sentences, interpolated with Petrobey's
supposed replies to the Turks; and Petrobey, who had taken care that
Constantine should be in the room while it was going on, said to him,
carelessly, holding out his glass:
"If you completely understand, Constantine, fill my glass with water,
and then go; if not, give wine to Nicholas."
Constantine took the water-jug in his hand, filled Petrobey's glass,
and left the room.
Incidentally, Nicholas, while speaking in Turkish, had begged the
soldiers that they might start very early, for there would be big
trouble, he thought, among the clan, if they saw their chief riding
off guarded by Turks. His desire, he explained, was to get to Tripoli
as soon as possible, for, as they knew, Petrobey's only son was held
hostage there by Mehemet Salik, and he feared that if there was a
disturbance among the Mavromichales, or if--which God forbid!--the
clan were so foolish as to fire upon them, Petrobey might be held
responsible, and it would go hardly with the son. To this they
assented, saying also that, provided their two prisoners would come
unarmed, the hostage in Tripoli should be considered security enough,
and they should go like gentlemen upon a journey.
Though it was not very early next morning when they started, the
village, following Nicholas's directions of the night before, showed
no sign of life. But a closer observer might have noticed stealthy
faces at the windows hastily and suddenly withdrawn, for the clan,
who would have laid their money on Nicholas and Petrobey if all the
Ottoman forces were out against them, and who had a keen sense of
humor, regarded the affair as a practical joke of the most magnificent
order, for Nicholas had told them the night before what the method
of escape was to be. So the procession, with one soldier in front,
Nicholas and Petrobey in the centre, guarded on the outside by the
other two, with Constantine behind driving a pony laden with food and
wine for their mid-day meal, went unmolested, though watched by an
appreciative audience, out of the village and down the steep hill into
the plain. Nicholas relieved the tedium of the way with the most racy
and delightful stories, and then all went on in the utmost harmony.
Some three hours later they were come to a large and pleasant-smelling
pine-wood, and about half-way through this, where another bridle-path
joined the one they were in, leading up towards the farther
hill-villages of Taygetus, they chanced upon a clear way-side stream,
and here Petrobey proposed they should halt for their dinner. Abundance
of juicy grass grew round the water some thirty yards farther down, and
tethering the horses there so that they could not stray, for they would
be just out of sight of the place where their masters ate, Petrobey
told Constantine to get ready the food. However, the sun shone rather
warm on this spot, and at the suggestion of one of the soldiers they
moved a little higher up into the shade of the trees. Constantine
waited assiduously on the guests until all had eaten their fill, and
then, bringing more wine from a cold basin in the stream, where he had
put it to regain its coolness, he retired a little distance off to eat
of the remains of the dinner, execute his orders, and steal homeward.
The others drank and smoked and chatted for some quarter of an hour
more, till Nicholas, observing that the sun had already passed its
meridian, suggested that, as they had a long day before them, if they
were, as he trusted, to reach Tripoli the next night, it would be wise
to start. The soldiers assented, but drowsily, for they had again drunk
somewhat freely at their prisoners' expense, and they all moved off
to where they had left their horses and accoutrements. Nicholas could
not suppress a chuckle of amusement when he saw that Constantine had
taken the precaution of loosening the flint from the hammers of their
guns, and then saying suddenly to Petrobey, "Now!" the two ran forward,
unpicketed their horses, and swinging into the saddle, spurred them
through the belt of trees which separated them from the pathway towards
Taygetus. They heard an exclamation of dismay and surprise from the
soldiers, and the feeble click of a loose flint against the steel, and
the next moment they were off full gallop up the steep hill-road.
Then followed a scene which would have made the mouths of the clan to
be full of laughter, for the first soldier vaulted with some agility
into the saddle and started gallantly off in pursuit, closely followed
by the second, who had done the same. The first went bravely for about
six yards, the second for rather less, and then they rolled off right
and left, clutching wildly at their horses' manes, the one into the
stream, the other into a fine furze bush. The third, a bulky man,
was rather more fortunate, for, being incapable of jumping into the
saddle, he put his foot nimbly into the stirrup, only to find his horse
standing beside him barebacked and with an expression of innocent
surprise, and himself with the curious feeling experienced when we are
fain to walk up a step and find there is no step to walk up.
The next half-hour went wearily and hotly for them. By sacrificing
one girth they patched up the other two, and one went up the pathway
towards Taygetus in pursuit, while the other rode on to Tripoli. The
two most agile, as being the lighter weights, took these tasks upon
themselves, while the heavier one, who could not ride bareback without
pain to his person, walked sorrowfully on, a heavy saddle in one hand,
his horse's bridle in the other, a three-hours' tramp to the next
village, where he hoped to have his dilapidations repaired.
The adventures of the first who rode after the escaped prisoners
were short. Half an hour's ride brought him to the outskirts of a
village which was all humming like a hive of bees, and the humorous
Mavromichales, who inhabited it in some number, and who were excellent
marksmen, sent a few bullets whistling close round him--one went a
little to the right, another slightly to the left, a third sang sweetly
over his head, and a fourth raised a little puff of dust at his feet.
It occurred to him that they might perhaps be able to aim straighter
if they wished, for there was a devilish precision about the closeness
of the shots that made his heart turn cold, and with one more glance,
sufficient however to show him Nicholas and Petrobey bowing politely in
the midst of their clan, he turned tail, and just galloped back along
the road he had come.
CHAPTER VII
MITSOS DISARRANGES A HOUSE-ROOF
From Panitza to Grythium it was reckoned two days of twelve hours,
or three of eight, but Mitsos, who set off about ten at night, got
there within thirty hours of the time he started, thus arriving well
before daybreak on the second morning; and at sundown that day, looking
over the valley of Sparta from the hills leading up to the pass into
the plain of Tripoli, he timed himself to be there two hours before
sunrise, thus allowing plenty of time for Yanni and himself to get out
of the town before the folk were awake. But for the present, as the
moon was up, he pushed forward along the road, reserving his halt for
the two dark hours after midnight. He had eaten but little that day,
and his eyelids felt like the eyes of dolls, laden with weights that
would drag them down; but knowing that if he slept he would gravely
risk an over-sleeping, he paced up and down by the edge of the field
where he had tethered Demetri's pony, eating a crust of bread, which he
washed down with some rather sour wine he had got at Gythium. Now and
then he would pause for a moment, but he felt physically incapable of
keeping awake except by moving, and fearing to fall down and sleep if
he stopped, he began tramping up and down without cessation. Luckily
he had a pouch of tobacco and his pipe and tinder-box, and he smoked
continuously.
But it was better to be moving than waiting, and when he judged that
his pony--of which, like all wise men, he was more careful than of
himself--had had sufficient rest, he set out again. He had wrapped
his capote close round him, for the night was cold, and he was just
beginning to feel that if he hoped to keep awake, he had better get
down and trot by the pony's side, when the beast stumbled on a heap of
stones, and in trying to recover itself stumbled again, and pitched
forward right onto its knees, throwing Mitsos off.
Mitsos was unhurt and picked himself up quickly, but the poor brute was
cut to the bone, and stood trembling with pain and terror as Mitsos
examined it. For one moment the boy broke down.
"Oh, Holy Virgin!" he cried. "But what shall I do?" But the next moment
he steadied himself, and paused to think. It was still four hours
before daybreak, but by that time he and Yanni would have to be out of
the town, and Tripoli was still a two-hours' ride distant. To get there
in time with the pony was hopelessly out of the question, and to get
there on his own legs seemed out of the question too, for he was as
weary as a young man need ever hope to feel. But if there was a choice
it lay there. Meanwhile, what to do with the beast? To leave it there,
all cut, bleeding, and in pain, through the night, only to die on those
bare hills, was a cruel thing, and Mitsos decided quickly. He led it
very gently off the road among the trees, and with a strange feeling
of tenderness, for that it had carried him gallantly, and done all it
could do for him and Yanni, and had met death in the doing, kissed the
white star on its down-dropped head. Then drawing his pistol, he put it
to its ear, and, turning his eyes away, fired. The poor beast dropped
like a log, and Mitsos, with a sob in his throat, looked not behind,
but went back through the trees, and throwing away his coat, which only
encumbered him, set his teeth and went jog-trotting to Tripoli.
How the next hours passed he scarcely knew. He felt so utterly tired
and beaten that he was hardly conscious of himself, his very weariness
probably dulled his powers of sensation, and all he knew was that as
he pushed on with limbs dropping from fatigue, eyes aching for very
weariness, and a hammering of the pulse in his temples, the trees
by the road-side seemed to pass, of their own movement, by him like
ghosts. Now and then he tripped over the uneven, stony road, and it
scarce seemed worth while to make any effort to recover himself; and
more than once he felt and knew, but only dimly, that his trousers were
torn on the stones, and his knees were cut and bleeding. He thought of
the pony which had fallen and cut itself, and felt vaguely envious of
its fate.
Lower down the pass where the hills began to melt into the plain it
grew warmer, and in a half dream of exhaustion for a moment he thought
that a treeless hollow of the hills was the bay of Nauplia, lying cool
and dark beneath the night. Nauplia, the bay, the white wall--it seemed
that that time belonged to a boy called Mitsos, but not himself; a boy
who had been happier than the kings of the earth, whereas he was a
foot-sore, utterly beaten piece of consciousness, that would plod along
the white ribbon of road forever.
Then suddenly as he thought the sky lightened and grew gray with dawn,
and the next moment the day had broken with the swiftness of the South,
and when the sun lifted itself above the hills to the east, it showed
him Tripoli all shining in the dawn, still about a mile off.
Mitsos stopped dead. He was too late. During the day it would be
impossible for him to get into the governor's house, and during the
day, some time before the blessed night fell again, the soldiers from
Panitza would be there; Petrobey would have escaped, trusting to his
getting to Tripoli first; and Yanni would be.... Who was Yanni? Oh,
a boy he had travelled with once; they had had a fine time, and he
believed he had promised to come and get him out of Tripoli....
Then suddenly with a sob he beat his hands together.
"Oh, Yanni, Yanni!" he cried; "little Yanni!"
There had been a white frost during the night, and the fields were
all stiff and glistening. He had just enough sense to strike off the
road and lie down under the shade of a tree, sheltered from the sun
and untouched by the frost, and there rolled over on his side, and
next moment was sleeping deep and dreamlessly like a child tired with
play. There he lay without moving, one arm shielding his face from the
light, and when he woke it was past mid-day, the blessed gift of sleep
had restored him body and mind, the trouble in his brain had run down
like the tainted water of a spate, leaving it clear and lucent, and the
strength had come back to his limbs.
He sat there some quarter of an hour longer, thinking intently. He
had no self-reproach to interpose itself between him and his quest;
the accident had been purely out of his own control, and he had done
what would have seemed to himself impossible if he had not done it.
Then he took stock of the position; and the position was that the
soldiers might be expected at any time after four that afternoon; and
as it would not be dark till six, there was nothing to do but go on to
Tripoli and wait, watching the road from Sparta. If they came before
dark he determined to make an attempt to get in, desperate though it
might be, for when once they had given their report to Mehemet Salik,
there would be no more Yanni.
So he went on and ate at a Greek khan within the town, and then
strolled back to the square and examined the house again. Once the door
opened, and he went quickly down a side street for fear the porter, who
had seen him before, might recognize him; then he took another look
at the wall by which he hoped to get access to the house. Under the
influence of food and sleep the spirit of his courage had revived, and
about two o'clock he went back again down the street leading into the
Sparta road, and sitting down a little distance from it, kept his eyes
fixed on the point where it vanished round the first hill-side. Three
o'clock passed, four and five, and thin white clouds in the west began
to be tinged with rose, and Mitsos' heart tapped quicker; in another
hour it would be dark, and time for his attempt. He sat on there till
nearly six, and the darkness began to fall in layers over the sky, and
the colors to fade out of things; then giving one last look up the
road, he turned and went into the town again.
When he arrived at the square the little oil-lamps at the corners were
already lit, and the figures of men seemed like shadows. He turned
down the street where the low wall stood, but found to his annoyance
that only a few paces down was a café, which had been empty during
the day, but was now beginning to fill with guests--for the most part
Turkish soldiers; and he was obliged to wait. But these had apparently
only come in for a glass of mastic before dinner, and in a quarter of
an hour there were only left there the café-keeper, who seemed to be
dozing over his glass, and an old Greek countryman in fustanella dress.
Mitsos, who had stationed himself some hundred yards off, drew a deep
breath, and stole noiselessly back in the shadow of the wall.
By standing on a heap of rubbish which lay there he could get his
fingers on the top of the wall, and slipping off his shoes, so that his
toes might more easily make use of the crevices between the stones, he
worked himself slowly up, and in a moment was crouching on the top.
Then came the easier but the more dangerous task, for as he crept along
the roof of the house where Yanni was his figure would be silhouetted
against the sky; but the roof was not more than four feet above the top
of the lower garden wall, and bending over it he raised himself up and
wriggled snake-wise along the edge. Yanni's room, in front of which
stood the pillar by which he meant to climb down into the balcony, was
the second room from the end, and, judging the distance as well as he
could, he glided along for about nine feet, and then began to make
his way slowly down the roof. He had calculated the distance well,
and when he was about half-way down, the tiled roof, which was but
lightly built over laths, and was not constructed to bear the weight of
superincumbent giants, suddenly creaked beneath him, and next moment
gave way, and with a crash fit to wake the dead he was precipitated
with a shower of tiles right into Yanni's room, and within a few feet
of where Yanni was sitting, with his arms tied behind him.
Mitsos did not think whether he was hurt or not, but picked himself up
and showed himself to Yanni. Yanni gave one wild gasp of astonishment.
"Oh, dear Mitsos," he said, "you have not come too soon. Quick, cut
this rope!"
He whipped out his knife, and had hardly cut the rope when they heard a
key grate in the lock, and Mitsos, taking one step to behind the door,
sprang out like a wild-cat on Yanni's keeper--who lived next door, and
had not unnaturally come in to see what had happened--and threw him to
the ground, while Yanni without a second's hesitation bound a thick
scarf round his mouth by way of a gag.
"Now the rope," said Mitsos, and they tied his arms to his sides and
his legs together, and looked at each other a moment.
"There is the porter!" said Yanni; "he will be here. Shut the door,
Mitsos, and lock it inside."
Next they moved the bedstead and all the furniture they could against
the door, and barred the windows, and Yanni gave an additional twist to
the scarf that bound the Turk's mouth.
"There is not much time," said Mitsos; and pulling the table out of the
heap of furniture they had piled at the door, he climbed onto it, and
with one vigorous effort brought down all the tiles which were lying
loosely between the hole his entrance had made and the outside wall.
From the table he could easily spring up onto the top of the wall, and
lying along it reached down two great hands to Yanni. Yanni grasped
them, and with much kicking and struggling, not having Mitsos' inches,
he got himself on the top.
Mitsos turned to him with a suppressed bubble of laughter.
"Eh, Yanni," he whispered, "but it was truth you said when you told me
you would grow very fat. Come quickly. Ah, but there's the porter at
the door--one outside and one inside, and we two on the roof."
The descent was easily accomplished; by good luck the street was empty;
and waiting a moment for Mitsos to put on his shoes again, the two ran
as hard as they could down it, away from the square, keeping in the
shadow of the walls. From the end of it a cross street led out to the
western gate of the town, and drawing near cautiously they saw it had
been already shut, and a sentry was standing by it.
Once again Yanni's wit, wedded to Mitsos' strength, was to stand them
in good stead.
"Mitsos," he whispered, "he will open the gate for you, for it has been
market-day. Go, then, down the road, and I will follow in the shadow of
the wall. Then, when he opens the gate to you, hold him very fast, and
I will take the key from him and run through. And oh, cousin--but we
must be quick."
Mitsos did not quite understand the object of taking the key, but,
walking straight on, he asked to be let out.
"From the market?" asked the sentry.
"Surely, and going home to Thana," said Mitsos, naming a village near.
The man took out the key, unbarred and unbolted the door, and the
moment the lock was turned Mitsos grasped him tightly round the arms
from behind. The sentry was but a little man, and his struggles in
Mitsos' grasp were of the faintest; and when Mitsos, with a brilliant
smile, whispered, "You scream, I kill!" enforcing his fragmentary
Turkish with a precautionary nudge of the elbow, he was as silent as
the grave. In the mean time Yanni had passed them, and taking the
key from the lock fitted it into the outside of the gate and said,
hurriedly, to Mitsos:
"Quick, cousin! throw him away!"
Mitsos, still smiling kindly, lifted the Turk off his feet, and, with
a mighty swing, threw him, as Yanni suggested, onto the road, where he
fell, pitiably, in a heap, and, once free from Mitsos, called, in a
lamentable voice, for Mohammed the Prophet. Next moment Yanni had shut
the gate, locked it, and thrown the key away into the bushes that lined
the road.
The two looked at each other for a moment, and then Mitsos broke
into a roar of good, wholesome laughter, as unlike as possible to
the exhibition to which he had treated Yanni after the affair of the
powder-mill. Yanni joined in, and for a few seconds they stood there
shaking and helpless. Mitsos recovered himself first.
"Oh, Yanni!" he cried, "but I could laugh till morning were there not
other things to do! Come away; there will be no sleep for us this
night. No, we keep to the road at present and go westward. Come, we
will talk afterwards."
For two hours they jogged on as fast as Yanni could, for a month of
living in the confinement of a house and garden "has made a hole," as
he said, "in my bellows; and as for the fat of me, why, Mitsos, it's
a thing of shame." But there was no wind in him for more than the
running, and it was in silence they climbed the steep road into the
mountains between Tripoli and the plain of Megalopolis. These were cut
in half by a small valley lying between the two rows of hills, with
a sharp descent into it from each side, going down into which Yanni
recovered his wind a little. On the edge of the valley, as Mitsos knew,
stood a small khan, the keeper of which was his father's friend, and as
a light still shone in the window he and Yanni entered to rest awhile
and get provisions for the morning. Anastasis was glad to see him, and
asked him what he was doing there and at that time; and Mitsos, knowing
his man, told him in a few words the story of the escape, and begged
him, if there was pursuit from Tripoli, to say that they had just
passed, going to Megalopolis. "For you see," put in Yanni, observing
that their host's wits were not of the quickest, "we are not going to
Megalopolis, and it will be a fine gain of time to us if they seek us
there."
After an interval this appeared to Anastasis to be a most admirable
joke, and for five minutes more, as he was cutting them bread and meat,
he kept bursting out into a chuckle of delight, and turned to Mitsos,
saying, "Then they'll find you not at Megalopolis. Eh, who would have
thought it?"
But Mitsos hurried Yanni off again. They had not probably more than
half an hour's start, "though it will take them not a little time to
clear a way into your room," said Mitsos; and though, through the
steepness of the ascent, a horse could go no quicker than a man,
there was no time to waste, and they struck off the road a little
southward, straight in the direction of Taygetus. All night they went,
sometimes walking, but more often running, and when morning dawned
they found themselves on the lower foot-hills of Taygetus, but still
a day's journey from their rendezvous. But Yanni declared he could go
no farther for the present. His eyes were full of sleep; his stomach
was dust within him, and his legs were one ache. So Mitsos, after a
five-minutes' climb to the top of a neighboring ridge, came back with
the tidings that he could not discern man, beast, or village, and
decreed that they should lie here all day and not start again till near
sunset.
Then said Yanni: "It will be a long talk we shall have before sunset;
but, Mitsos, if the day of judgment was breaking not one word could I
say for myself till I have slept. Ah, but it is good to be with you
again!"
And he turned over and was asleep at once.
Mitsos was not long in following his example, but he woke first, and,
seeing by the sun that it was not much after mid-day, got up quietly,
so as not to disturb Yanni, and went in search of water. This he found
some quarter of a mile below and returned to Yanni, who had just awoke.
They took their food down to the spring and ate there, and then, at
Mitsos' suggestion, went back again to their first camping place, "for
where there is a spring," he said, "there may be folk, and we want folk
but little."
"And now," said Yanni, as they settled themselves again, "begin at the
beginning, Mitsos, and tell me all."
"I went straight to Nauplia the first night," he said, "and arrived
there very late--after midnight; then, next day, I went off."
"Next day?" asked Yanni. "Is that all you care about Suleima? Oh, tell
me, how is Suleima?"
Mitsos frowned.
"Oh, never mind Suleima," he said. "She is my affair. Well, next day--"
But Yanni interrupted him.
"Did you not see Suleima?" he asked.
"No."
"Why did you not wait that night and see her?"
"Uncle Nicholas had other work for me to do."
Yanni looked at Mitsos a moment and then laid his hand on his shoulder.
"Mitsos, dear Mitsos!" he said. "Oh, I am so sorry! It was not that,
you know, that made you go; it was the oath of the clan you swore to
me. Mitsos, don't hate me for it. Surely there is no one like you."
Mitsos looked up, smiling.
"Nonsense, Yanni! Is a promise and an oath a thing to make and break?
Besides, it seems to me it is pretty lucky I came when I did. What do
you suppose I should be thinking now if I had got back to Panitza and
found it was too late, for, in truth, I was not much too soon? What
if I had come to Tripoli, as it were, to-night, instead of last night?"
[Illustration: "'AH, BUT IT IS GOOD TO BE WITH YOU AGAIN!'"]
"I will tell you afterwards what you would have found," said Yanni,
suddenly looking angry. "Go on, little Mitsos."
Mitsos grinned.
"Little, who is little? I have a cousin smaller than I. Well, for my
story."
And Mitsos told him of his journey, of his expedition to Patras and the
monastery, and of the coming of the soldiers to Panitza.
"And for the rest," he concluded, "we shall have to ask Uncle Nicholas
and your father. There are not many things in the world of which I am
certain, Yanni, but one is that we shall find them safe and sound on
Taygetus."
Yanni pulled up a handful of sweet-smelling thyme and buried his face
in it for a moment.
"Ah, but it is good to be on the hills again, Mitsos," he said, "and
to be with you. I shall not forget the Mother of God. My story is very
short; I am glad it has not been longer."
"Tell me," said Mitsos.
"Well, for a week, or perhaps a fortnight, I ate and slept, and one day
was like another. I saw Mehemet Salik not more than once or twice, and
he used always to ask me if I was comfortable and had all that I wished
for. It is true that I wished for the hills and for you, but they were
things which he would not have given me, so I always said I wanted
nothing. Then for another week or so he would come and see me oftener,
and asked me about my father and the clan, and whether Nicholas had
been seen there again. And I, you may be sure, always told him that the
clan were good men and quiet livers, who worked hard in the fields,
and thanked God every day that their masters, the Turks, were kind and
just to them. That, it seems, was a mistake, for he smiled--these Turks
know not how to laugh, Mitsos, not with an open mouth--and said it was
very interesting to hear that from one of the clan themselves. And
about Nicholas, I said I had seen him when I was little."
"You were never otherwise," remarked Mitsos.
"Oh, cousin," said Yanni, "but your mother bore a silly loon. Am I not
to go on with my story, then?"
"Go on, big Yanni," said Mitsos.
"And so it went till but five or six days ago. And then on one
morning," said Yanni, suddenly flushing with anger, "he came in looking
white and cunning, with an evil face. The Turk who was my guardian
followed him--he is a good man, Mitsos, save that he comes of the
accursed race--and Mehemet said to me, 'So the clan are good men and
quiet, and they thank their God that they have such kind masters. And
you, Yanni, who are of the clan, you think they do wisely?'
"I don't think I answered him, for it seemed to me he wished for no
answer. And at that his anger suddenly flared up, and he said, 'Answer
me, you dog, or I will have your hide flayed off you.' And I noticed
it as curious, Mitsos, that his face grew white as he got angry,
whereas when a proper man is angry his face is as a sunset. But he
did not give me time to answer, for he went on, 'You are dogs, though
you are handsome dogs, you Greeks. But it is necessary to tie dogs up
sometimes. Thank God you have such a kind master, Yanni, and let your
hands be tied behind you quietly.'
"'Why should you do this?' I asked.
"'Be wise,' he said; 'I do not threaten twice.'
"So as there was none to help me, I let it be done."
Mitsos gave a great gulp.
"Oh, Yanni, by a cross-legged Turk!" he said.
"What was I to do? Would it have helped me to fight, and afterwards to
be beaten? But Mehemet, I saw, was more at his ease when it was done,
and drew his chair a little closer.
"'We shall soon teach you to be quiet and obedient like the rest of
your clan,' he said. 'And now for what I came to say. You will soon see
Nicholas again, for I have sent for him and for your father. If they
come, well and good; I do not really care whether they come or not--for
barking dogs hurt nobody. However, they have been barking too loud. And
if they do not come, my little Yanni, we shall have to think what to
do with you. I have not decided yet'--and the devil came closer to me,
Mitsos, and looked at me as a man looks at the fowls and sheep in the
market. 'Perhaps there will be a rope for that big brown neck of yours;
and yet I do not know, for you are a handsome boy, and I should like to
see you about the house, perhaps to hand the rose-water after dinner.
Let us see, we would dress you in a blue waistcoat with silver braid,
and a red kaftan, I think, and red leggings, with yellow shoes; but I
think we would give you no knife or pistol in your belt, for I fancy
you have a temper of your own. It is a pity that a handsome boy like
you should be so fierce. Perhaps we might even arrange that you were
fitted to attend on the women-folk. In any case you will be mine--you
will belong to your good, kind masters.'"
Yanni's voice had risen, and he spoke quickly, with a red-hot anger
vibrating and growing.
"He said it to me!" he cried, rising to his feet. "To me--free-born
of the clan, who have never had any dealings with the accursed race,
except to spit at them as they went by! And I--I sat there and said
nothing, but for this reason, Mitsos, that I remembered the oath of the
clan you had sworn, and I believed, as I believe that the holy Mother
of God hears me, that you would come, be it soon or late, and that he
should eat his words with a sauce of death to them--the black curse of
her who mocked at Christ upon him!"
"Steady, Yanni!" said Mitsos, looking up at his blazing eyes. "Sit down
and tell the rest."
"What, Mitsos," cried Yanni, "are you a block of stone or a log, you
who are of blood with us?"
"You know I am not. But Mehemet Salik is not on this hill-side.
Tell me the rest. If he was here he should never more return to the
bestialities of his daily life."
Yanni sat down again.
"Even so. Then day after day he would come in all white and cursing
as before, and say, 'The time is drawing near, my little Yanni. They
will be here to-morrow or the next day,' as it might be. And yesterday
morning he said, 'They will be here to-night.' And I--for I never
doubted you, Mitsos--I thought to myself, 'Then I shall not be here
to-night'; and as for them, I knew that they would never sit in the
house of a Turk. And--and that is all, I think."
There was a short silence, and Yanni stretched out his hand to Mitsos:
"So to you, dearest of all," he said, "I owe my life--once at the mill,
and now, once again, life and honor and freedom. Yet is the debt no
burden to me, because I love you. But still I would it were the other
way. I have no skill of speech, Mitsos, but I know certainly that
gladly would I give my eye or my right hand for you, and this is no
figure of talk only."
Mitsos took the hand held out to him and shut it between his, looking
at Yanni with a serious mouth, but a smile in his dark eyes.
"God send me tears for water and salt for bread," he said, again
quoting the oath of the clan, "if I fail you in your need, or love not
those who love you and hate not those who hate you."
The sun was already declining to the western hills, and presently after
they went down to the spring to eat and drink before they began the
tramp through the night. Neither of them had been over this ground
before, but it was likely that they would soon come into some path
leading from the Arcadian plain to one or other of the villages near
the Langarda pass; in any case, even though there were a night's
plunging through the heather undergrowth before them, it could scarcely
be more than a twelve-hours' journey. Thus, starting at six, they
would be at the place by dawn; and, after stowing the remains of their
provisions in their pockets, they began the ascent.
Upward they went out of the day into the sunset, and through the
sunset into moonrise, and from moonrise into the declining of the
moon. The air, warm below, soon grew colder, and their breath, as they
walked, hung frostily in the still night. Now and then a whiff of
some sweet-smelling shrub streamed across them, or again a roosting
pigeon, with a bold noise of its uprising, started still sleepy from
its perch in among the whispers of the fir, or a hawk, more cautious,
slid into the air. To Yanni, born on the mountain and bred in the open,
the spell of the sounds and scents that wander along the hill-side
at night was unutterably sweet, and sweet the comradeship of the
incomparable cousin. In Mitsos, too, the feeling towards the friend he
had saved from death, and worse than death, was father to a very tender
affection, for it was a gentle heart that beat so boldly at the hint of
danger, and the sweetness of self-sacrifice made him most content. The
child within him spoke to his spirit of Suleima, but the boy found his
wants fulfilled in the comradeship of Yanni, and made answer with talk
of brave adventures done in part and more to do.
About midnight they halted, and already they could see the heights no
long distance above them, dappled with snow, and Mitsos, observing
this, knew that they had come as high as they had need to go, for the
beacon-ground, he remembered, was itself just below the line where the
fresh snow lay. They had, an hour before, struck a sort of sheep-track
which led in the right direction, but they found that here it went
still upward, and leaving it to climb by itself, they struck off to the
right, after eating the remains of their food, to follow the contour
of the mountain through tracts of pines and open places, and across
the scolding streams that rattled down from the snows above, and round
deep-cut ravines that broadened out into the larger valleys. By degrees
the stars paled at the approach of day, and the dark velvet-blue of
the Southern night brightened to dove-color; a few birds awoke in the
bushes with sleepy, half-tuned twitterings, and then the sun, great and
bold, looked up over the rim of the mountain.
"Look, it is day," said Yanni. "Are we nearly there?"
"Yes," said Mitsos, "there is the beacon-hill. And who is that?"
Swiftly down the hill-side towards them came a great man, leaping and
running like a boy.
"Oh, quick, down with you," said Mitsos. "I think there is but one man
who can go like that; but it is best. Ah, I thought so; show him we can
run, too."
And in two minutes Nicholas, with a face as welcome as morning, was
with them.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MESSAGE OF FIRE
The Greek camp which was being formed here, nestled airily on the
unfrequented side of Taygetus, was square, half of it lying on each
side of a rattling stream (loud at this time from the melting snows)
which flowed down a steep ravine into the plain of Kalamata. It lay
about five hundred yards below the site of the beacon, a conspicuous
and stony plateau on the top of an isolated hill, separated on all
sides by steep, narrow gullies from the main mass of the mountain. It
was Nicholas who had chosen the spot, and chosen wisely, for while the
camp itself lay concealed and sheltered from the northern winds, the
top of the hill just above it, from which a man could run down in two
minutes to headquarters, was an eyry for observation. On the north it
commanded the Arcadian plain, the corner of which Mitsos and Yanni
had just crossed; on the west, the whole valley of Messenia, with its
capital, Kalamata, lay unfurled like a map; and directly under it to
the south wound the Langarda pass over Taygetus from Messenia to Sparta.
The camp was walled with a robust barrier of brushwood and peopled
with small huts, built on a framework of poles, between which were
interwoven branches of fir and heather, and roofed with reeds or furze.
In the centre, just on the right of the stream, stood the hut shared
by Petrobey and Nicholas, built in exactly the same manner as the
others, and only distinguished by a blue-and-white flag which floated
over it, bearing prophetically the cross of Greece risen above the
crescent of Turkey. Towards the top of the enclosure had stood a belt
of pines, most of which had been felled for building purposes, one here
and there only having been left to give support to a structure of much
more solid and weather-proof workmanship. It was divided inside into
two chambers, in one of which were stored powder and ammunition; in the
other the rifles and swords. Additional protection was given to the
powder-magazine by a coat of felt which was nailed on above the boards
of its roof.
The camp was all alive and humming like a hive of bees when the three
arrived, for a train of mules from the district round which Yanni
and Mitsos had made their first journey had just come in, bringing
the secret grindings of the mills from Kalyvia and Tsimova. This
was the first consignment of powder which had arrived, and Petrobey
was superintending its stowage in the magazine. Elsewhere the thin
blue smoke of wood fires, over which men were cooking their coffee
for breakfast, rose up straight into the air, and the flicking and
flashing of axes in the morning sun showed others still at work on
pine-felling. During the last two nights many parties of the clan and
the patriots from the villages round had been arriving with their
arms and provisions, and a herd of sheep and goats were browsing on
the scrub-clad sides of the ravine below the camp. Already there were
not fewer than two hundred men there, and before three days Petrobey
hoped that the whole depot, consisting of eight hundred men with arms
and ammunition, would be assembled. Farther along the sides of the
mountain there were three similar camps, and thus the total number of
men who would march down from Taygetus onto Kalamata would be a tale of
over three thousand. These were all drawn from Laconia, Argolis, and
the south of Arcadia, and the number would be raised to close on five
thousand by additions from the populous Messenian plain. The patriots
in the north of Greece would, at the beacon-signal, rise simultaneously
in Achaia as soon as the camps all contained their complement of men.
In the camp discipline and organization were thoroughly ordered and
carried out. A body of the younger and more active were stationed on
the top of the hill with instructions to report at once any movement
they might observe in the country round, and to stop _vi et armis_ any
Turk who was seen going up the pass from Messenia into Sparta, for fear
of news being taken to Tripoli of the assembling of the patriots. This
danger, however, was inconsiderable. All the camps were nestled away
from view in hollows of the unvisited mountain-sides, and the only
circumstance of suspicion was that within a few days many Greeks had
left their villages with laden mules, and with their flocks. Even this
was not unusual at the spring-time of the year, for it was common, when
April opened up the hills, to drive the flocks higher up to the juicier
mountain pasture, where the shepherds would spend weeks at a time
cutting down pines and burning them for charcoal. But this flight of
Petrobey and Nicholas and the escape of Yanni might easily have become
a signal of warning to the Turks, and until all was ready it was most
important that no communication of alarm should pass from Kalamata to
Tripoli. For the last few weeks the fortification of Tripoli had been
undergoing repair, and it was evidently expected that if a rising took
place the first attack would be directed there; or at any rate the
Turks thought it was safer to have some fortress in a fairly central
position, where the families of their countrymen scattered about the
country could take refuge from local disturbances.
All the cattle, all the arms, the mules and horses brought to the camp,
were put under the disposal of Petrobey. As he was the head of the clan
of Mavromichales, of whom the camp was chiefly composed, Nicholas had
felt it better that he should have absolute supremacy in all matters,
and, as he had said to Priketes, all that he asked for himself was the
right to serve. Petrobey was loath to take advantage of his generosity,
and only did so on condition that Nicholas would promise to give him
advice and counsel on all points, dissent from him freely and promptly
where his judgment did not coincide with his own, and at the wish of
his men be willing himself to take over the sole command. Meantime,
would he take in charge the outposts and messenger corps of the camp,
on which devolved the duty of watching the roads and of carrying news
from one camp to another?
Nicholas's company had been relieved at the watch on the beacon-station
when the two boys arrived, and the three went together to Petrobey. He
was busy with the unlading of the powder-carrying mules when they came
up, but as they drew near he saw them and ran towards them.
"Now the Blessed Virgin be praised," he cried, "that you have come! We
expected you earlier. How was it you did not come before? Ah, Yanni,
but your father has wearied for you! Is it a long bill we have with
Mehemet? Oh, admirable little Mitsos, the Holy Father reward you for
bringing him safe. We will breakfast together when I have finished this
job. Get you to my tent with Nicholas."
The unlading of the powder was an operation in which, so Petrobey
thought, no caution would be superfluous. It arrived in big mule
panniers, covered over with charcoal or some country produce, and the
panniers were taken off and carried singly by men barefoot into the
magazine. Here others were stationed, whose duty it was to take off
the stuff under which the powder was concealed and empty it into small
skin bottles, which could be carried by a man, and held more than the
ordinary powder-flasks. There were eight hundred of these, one for
each man in the camp, and when they were full the remainder were to be
stored in light wooden boxes of handier shapes than the panniers for
transport on the ammunition mules.
All day fresh bands of men in eights and tens from the Maina country
arrived in camp, and news was passed from the other stations along the
mountain-side that they, too, were filling rapidly. Among others fifty
men had joined the patriots from Nauplia and the plain of Argos, one
of whom was Father Andréa, an incarnated vengeance more than priest,
and another was Mitsos' father. Mitsos himself, however, was to remain
in the camp of the Mavromichales, acting as aide-de-camp to Nicholas,
but otherwise the disposition of the men was strictly geographical,
since Petrobey's experience told him that men who have known each other
fight best side by side. Each camp was organized on the pattern of the
Mavromichales, and the captains of each had voluntarily put themselves
under the supreme command of Petrobey, for the dissensions which
subsequently broke out in the army had not yet appeared. Moreover, the
Hetairist Club, since the flight of Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, had
given express orders that the direction of affairs in the south was to
be in the hands of some local chieftain, suggesting for that office
either Petrobey or Nicholas.
A week passed, and the camps were all nearly full, and Petrobey waited
impatiently for the completion of his preparations. Partly by extreme
caution, and partly by good luck, there had as yet been no collision
with the Turks, and apparently no uneasiness felt in Kalamata. A report
had come in a couple of days before that two Turkish ships of war
had been ordered there for the defence of the town, and to carry off
the Turkish inhabitants in case of an outbreak; but, though the bay
was carefully watched by those on the beacon-point, no sign of them
had been seen. But about mid-day on the 2d of April a scout from the
beacon came into the camp, saying that a small band of Turks, twelve
in number, under arms, and followed by a train of baggage-mules, were
coming up the pass from Kalamata. Petrobey's answer was short and
decisive: "Stop them!" and some twenty men were sent out to reinforce
the outpost at the beacon. From the camp nothing could be seen of
the road, but a dozen more men were told off to hold themselves in
readiness. Then after a long pause, in which each man's eyes sought the
eyes of his fellow in a fever of expectation, shots were heard, and in
half an hour's time the message came back to Petrobey and Nicholas, who
were at dinner, that they had been stopped.
Then Petrobey rose, and his gray eye was fire.
"At last, at last!" he cried. "Oh, Nicholas, the vintage is ripe!"
He waited no longer. Yanni, who was his aide-de-camp, was despatched
at top speed to the next station, with orders that an hour before
sunset the army was to start on its march to Kalamata, and all the
afternoon the stir of going was shrill. The clan were half wild with
excitement and eagerness; but all were absolutely in control, and went
about their duties methodically and in perfect order, and the work of
lading and marshalling the ammunition and baggage-mules was finished
by four o'clock. Meanwhile another party had carried up to the top of
the hill the fuel for the beacon, which Petrobey had arranged was to
be the signal, not only across to the hill above Bassae, but to the
patriots collected lower down in the villages of the Messenian plain.
Mitsos, who was charged with the lighting of it, was to let loose the
tongue of fire which should shout the word all over Greece as soon
as dark fell, and then follow straight down the hill-side after the
main body. The whole disposition of the force round Kalamata, and the
routes by which, converging as they went, they were to march there, had
been already arranged, and by five o'clock the clan set out, spreading
themselves in open order over the hill-side, the mules alone following
the road of the pass, so as to prevent any one leaving the town by
other mountain-paths over Taygetus.
As soon as the clan had started, Mitsos, left to himself, ate his
supper, and sat down to wait till the darkness of the birthnight of
Greece should fall. It had been a hot, sultry day, with a heavy air,
and he had packed up and sent on with the mules a heavy woollen cloak,
which Nicholas had given him to replace the one he had left behind
in his race to Tripoli, and was dressed only in his linen trousers,
shirt, and open Albanian jacket. The still air hung like a blanket on
the mountain-side, but he saw that clouds had gathered on the top of
Taygetus and were moving down westward in the direction of the camp.
But they remained as yet high, and though before sunset they had
stretched right over from the mountain-top behind to the peak of Ithome
in the west, a gray floor of mottled marble, flushed here and there,
where they were thinner, with the reflected fire of an angry sunset,
the northern heaven was still clear, and his beacon-point close above
him stood out black and sharp-cut. Long before dark fell he had already
been up to the beacon, in order to arrange the brushwood and firing
most handily; the lighter and drier wood he put on the windward side,
so that such breeze as there was might drive the flames inward against
the larger bushes, which would take the flame less easily. He also
tore a quantity of dry moss from the sides of a couple of plane-trees,
which grew to the leeward of the hill, and made a core of this within
the brushwood, adding a train, in the manner of a fuse, leading outward
to where he would apply the light. He had just finished this to his
satisfaction, and was about to return to the camp to fetch up the
burning lumps of charcoal which he had fed during the afternoon, and
which in this wind that had sprung up would soon kindle the moss into
flame, when a few large raindrops fell splashing on the ground, and he
hurriedly covered the dry, tinder-like furze with thick branches of
pine, in order to keep it protected; then for a few moments the rain
ceased again, but Mitsos, looking up, saw that the clouds had grown
black and swollen with an imminent downpour, and that the storm might
break any minute. His next thought was for the burning charcoal below,
and he ran quickly down the hill-side in order to carry it under cover
of the ammunition magazine; but before he had gone fifty yards the
storm broke in a sheet of hissing rain, driven a little aslant in the
wind--but for heaviness a shower of lead. However, in hopes of saving
the charcoal, he ran on, and raking about in the embers of his fire,
already turning to a black slush under the volleying rain, he found a
lump of charcoal not yet extinguished. Then sheltering it in his cap,
he nursed it tenderly, and carried it into the ammunition magazine.
There he sat for half an hour, and from it managed to kindle a few more
lumps, while the noise of the rain continued as of musketry on the
resounding roof. Then looking out he saw that night had come, heavy and
lowering.
The position was sufficiently critical. The beacon fuel would be
soaked, and the dry kindling in the centre, he thought, would be
insufficient to start a blaze. Then he remembered a flask of spirits
which Petrobey had told him to keep with him in case of emergency, and
he ran across to fetch it from his hut. The clouds had lifted a little,
though the downpour was still heavy; but, looking up, he still saw the
outline of the beacon-hill a shade blacker than the sky, showing that
it was clear, at any rate, of mists. He groped about the walls of the
hut for some little time before finding the flask, and just as he put
his hand on it the wind fell dead, the rain stopped as when a tap is
turned back, and in the stillness he heard the sound of the footstep of
some man unfamiliarly stumbling up the stony hill-side just below. At
that he stopped, and then creeping cautiously to the entrance of the
hut, peered out. He could see nothing; but the step still advanced,
drawing nearer.
Who could it be? It was hardly possible, though still just possible,
that this man was some Greek of the clan--yet such would surely have
shouted to him--coming from Petrobey with a message, or it might be
some benighted peasant; yet, again, for fear it might be a Turk he must
needs go carefully, and with redoubled caution he crept out of the
hut, still keeping in the shadow, and looked round the corner. Whether
it was the rustle of his moving in the dead silence, or the faint
shimmering of his white trousers in the darkness, that betrayed him,
was only a thing for conjecture, but the next moment, from some fifty
yards in front, he saw the flash of a gun, and a bullet sang viciously
by him, cracking in half one of the upright posts which bound the sides
of the hut together. Mitsos stood up, as he knew he was seen, and
called out, cocking his pistol, yet seeing no one, "Speak, or I fire,"
and in answer he heard the sound of another charge being rammed home.
At that he bolted back round the corner of the tent and waited. The
steps advanced closer; clearly the man, whoever he was, finding that he
did not fire, concluded that he had no arms--the truth, however, being
that Mitsos, having seen nothing but the flash of the gun, thought
it more prudent to wait until he had a more localized target. But
presently the steps paused, and after a moment he heard them retreating
with doubled quickness up the hill towards the pass. Then a solution
flashed upon him--this could be no patriot, nor would a wandering
peasant have fired at him; it could only be some Turk who had seen the
Greek army advancing, had somehow eluded them, and was going hotfoot to
Sparta with the news. He must be stopped at all costs, and next moment
Mitsos was stretched in pursuit up the hill after him, keeping as much
as possible in the cover of the trees. Clearly the man had missed his
way in the darkness, and had come unexpectedly upon the Greek camp, and
seeing some one there had fired.
In three minutes or so Mitsos' long legs had gained considerably on
him, and he now saw him, though duskily, with his gun on his shoulder
still making up the hill. Another minute saw them within about fifty
yards of each other; but Mitsos had the advantage of position, for
while he was running between scattered trees the other was in the
open. He apparently recognized this, and changed his course towards
the belt of wood; but then suddenly, seeing Mitsos so near, he halted
and fired, and Mitsos felt the bullet just graze his arm. On that he
ran forward, while the man still stayed reloading his piece, and sent
a pistol bullet at him. The shot went wide, and Mitsos with a grunt of
rage ran desperately on to close with him. But the other, while he was
still some yards distant, finished loading, and his gun was already on
the way to his shoulder, when Mitsos, partly in mere animal fury at
the imminence of death, but in part with reasonable aim, took hold of
his heavy pistol by the barrel and flung it with all his force in the
Turk's face. He reeled for a moment, and, the blood, like the red of
morning, streaming over his face in a torrent that blinded him, Mitsos
was on him and had closed with him. When it came to mere physical
strength the odds were vastly in his favor, and in a moment, in the
blind gust of the fury of fighting, he wrested the man's gun from him
and, without thinking of firing, had banged him over the head with the
butt end. He fell with a sound of breaking, and Mitsos, still drunk and
beside himself with the lust of slaughter, laughed loud and hit him
again with his full force as he lay on the ground. There was a crack,
and a spurt of something warm and thick came out in a jet against his
trousers and over his hand. He paused only one moment to make sure that
this was a Turk he had killed, and then without giving him another
thought, or waiting to brush the clotted mess off his clothes, he ran
down again to set about the beacon.
The wound on his arm was but slight, though it bled profusely and
smarted like a burn, and only stopping to tear off a piece from his
shirt-sleeve, which he bound tightly round it, tying the knot with his
teeth and his right hand, he again put the charcoal, which was burning
well, into his cap, and with the flask of brandy set off for the top
of the hill. The rain had come on again, hissing down in torrents, and
Mitsos, knowing that the fear of failure strode faster every moment,
tore the cover of boughs off from the core of moss and furze, but found
to his dismay it was quite damp and would not light. It was necessary
to get a flame somehow; the spirits and the moss would do the rest if
once he could get that; and to get a flame, he must have something dry,
though it were but a twig. There was no time to waste; already a big
raindrop had made an ominous black spot on the middle of the glowing
charcoal, and meantime everything was getting rapidly wetter. In a
moment of hopelessness he clutched at his hair despairingly; the thing
seemed an impossibility.
Then suddenly an idea struck him, and, tearing off his jacket, he
removed his shirt, which had been kept quite dry, and kneeling down
with his back bare to the cold, scourging rain put the two lumps of
charcoal in the folds of it and blew on them. For a couple of seconds
the linen smouldered only, but then--and no Angel Gabriel would have
been a gladder sight to him--a little tongue of flame shot up. Mitsos
took the brandy bottle, and with the utmost care shook out a few drops
onto the edge of the flame. These it licked up, burning brighter, and
soon the whole of the back of the shirt took the fire. He crammed
it under the thick core of moss and brushwood, and feeding them
plentifully with brandy coaxed the flame into the driest part of the
stuff. Now and then a little spark would go running like some fiery
insect through the fibres, leaving a gray path of ash behind, only
to perish when it reached the damper stuff, and once even the flame
seemed to die down altogether; but meantime it had penetrated into the
centre of the pile, and suddenly a yellow blade of smoky fire leaped
out and licked the dripping branches of fir outside. These only fumed
and cracked, and Mitsos pulled them off, for they were but choking the
flames; and, running down to the edge of the wood, he tore up great
handfuls of undergrowth, which had been partially protected from the
rain by the trees, and threw them on. Then the fire began to take hold
in earnest, and through the thick volumes of stinging smoke, which were
streaming away westward, shot lurid gleams of flame. Now and then with
a great crash and puff of vapor some thicker branch of timber would
split and break, throwing out a cloud of ignited fragments, or again
there would rise up a hissing and simmering of damp leaves, like the
sound of a great stewing over a hot fire. The place where he had first
lit the beacon was all consumed, and only a heap of white frothy ash,
every now and then flushing red again with half-consumed particles as
some breeze fanned it, remained, and from the fir branches which Mitsos
had taken off ten minutes ago, but now replaced, as every moment the
hold of the fire grew steadier, there were bursting little fan-shaped
bouquets of flame.
Meantime, with the skin of his chest down to the band of his trousers
reddened and scorched by the heat, his back cold and dripping, and
lashed with the heavy whisp of rain which had so belabored him in those
first few moments of struggle between fire and water, his hair tangled
and steaming with heat and shower, his eyes blackened and burned with
the firing, Mitsos worked like a man struggling for life; now pushing a
half-burned branch back into the fire; now lifting a new bundle of fuel
(as much as he could carry in both arms), which pricked and scratched
the scorched and bleeding skin of his chest; now glancing northward
to see whether Bassae had answered him. With the savage frenzy of his
haste, the excitement of the deed, and the fury and madness of the
blood he had shed dancing in his black eyes, he looked more like some
ancient Greek spirit of the mountains than the lover of Suleima and the
boy who was so tender for Yanni.
In ten minutes more the rain had stopped, but Mitsos still labored
on until the heat of the beacon was so great that he could scarcely
approach to throw on the fresh fuel. The flames leaped higher and
higher, and the wind dropping a shower of red-hot pieces of half-burned
leaves and bark was continually carried upward, peopling the night with
fiery sparks and falling round him in blackened particles, or floating
away a feathery white ash like motes in a sunbeam. And as he stood
there, grimy and panting, scorched and chilled, throwing new bundles of
fuel onto the furnace, and seeing them smoke and fizz and then break
out flaring, the glory and the splendor of the deeds he was helping in
burst in upon him with one blinding flash that banished other memories,
and for the moment even Suleima was but the shadow of a shadow. The
beacon he had kindled seemed to illuminate the depths of his soul, and
he saw by its light the cruelty and accursed lusts of the hated race
and the greatness of the freedom that was coming. Then, blackened and
burned and sodden and drenched, he sat down for a few moments to the
north of the beacon to get his breath and scoured the night. Was that a
star burning so low on the horizon? Surely it was too red for a star,
and on such a night what stars could pierce the clouds? Besides, was
not that a mountain which stood up dimly behind it? Then presently
after it grew and glowed; it was no star, but the fiery mouth of
message shouting north and south. Bessae had answered.
[Illustration: "MITSOS TORE UP GREAT HANDFULS OF UNDERGROWTH AND THREW
THEM ON"]
There was still a little spirits left, and between his wetting and his
scorching Mitsos felt that he would be none the worse for it, and he
left his jacket to dry by the beacon while he went back to where the
body of the Turkish soldier lay to look for his pistol, which he had
till then forgotten. He searched about for some little while without
finding it, for it had fallen in a tangle of undergrowth; and taking it
and the man's gun, which might come in useful, he turned to go. Then
for the first time a sudden feeling of compassion came over him, and he
broke off an armful of branches from the trees round, and threw them
over the body in order to cover it from the marauding feeders of the
mountain; and then crossing himself, as the Greeks do in the presence
of the dead, he turned away; and going once more up to the beacon to
fetch his jacket, which had grown dry and almost singed in that fierce
heat, he ran off down the hill to join the clan.
They had gone but slowly, for they did not wish to reach Kalamata
till an hour before daybreak, and had, when Mitsos came up, halted at
the bottom of the range where the foot-hills begin to rise towards
Taygetus. He was challenged by one of the sentries, and for reply
shouted his own name to them; and finding Demetri was his challenger,
stopped to tell him of the success of the beacon and the answer flared
back from Bassae, and then went on to seek for Nicholas or Petrobey to
report his return.
Petrobey was sitting by a camp-fire when he came up, talking earnestly
to Nicholas and Father Andréa, who had come in from the Nauplia
contingent, and only smiled at Mitsos as he entered.
"That is the order, father," he was saying; "we want to take the place
at all costs, but the less it costs us the better. I should prefer if
it capitulated, and not waste lives which we can ill spare over it. All
the Turks inside the walls will be our prisoners, and them--"
"Yes?"
"Perhaps the moon will devour them," said Petrobey. "I shall make no
conditions about surrender. Good-night, father. And now, little Mitsos;
the beacon, we know, got lit. How in the name of the Virgin did you
manage to do it?"
Mitsos unbuttoned his jacket and showed the sore and reddened skin
beneath.
"There is much in a shirt," he said, laughing, and told his story.
When he had finished Petrobey looked at Nicholas with wonder and
something like awe in his eye.
"Surely the blessing of the Holy Saints is on the lad," he said, in a
low voice.
Part III
THE TREADING OF THE GRAPES
CHAPTER I
TE DEUM LAUDAMUS
During the night the wind swept the floor of heaven clean of clouds,
and an hour of clear starlight and setting moon preceded dawn. Before
starting, after an hour's halt about midnight, Petrobey called together
the captains of the other three camps and gave them their final
instructions. Three companies, those from Maina, Argolis, and Laconia,
were to besiege the citadel, while the company from Arcadia was to join
the two from Messenia, which would meet them on the plain, and invest
the harbor, destroy all the shipping except three or four light-built
boats which were to be kept in readiness for other purposes, and
watch for the coming of the two Turkish ships-of-war. The Messenians,
with a loyal and patriotic spirit, had asked Petrobey to name them a
captain for the three companies which would be employed on this work,
instead of pressing a local candidate; and in order to prevent jealousy
or dissent among them, he nominated one Niketas, of Sparta, who was
well known to most of the men, popular, and had seen service on an
English ship, where he had worked for two years abroad, for a price
had been placed on his head by the Turks for supposed brigandage. He
had returned to his country a month ago from the Ionian Isles, and had
hastened to put himself in the service of the patriots.
The citadel of Kalamata stood on rising ground about a mile from the
harbor, but it was small, and a large, unfortified suburb, chiefly
employed in commerce and the silk industry, had spread out southward
from its base, making a continuous street between harbor and citadel.
The latter was defended by a complete circuit of wall, and on three
sides out of the four the rocks on the edge of which the walls stood
were precipitous for some thirty feet. Under the western of these, and
directly below the wall, ran a torrent-bed, bringing down the streams
from the mountains to the north--dry in summer, but now flowing full
and turbid with the melting of the winter snows on the heights. On
this side the town was impregnable to the Greeks, who at present had
no field-pieces or arms of any kind larger than the ordinary muskets
then in use, and similarly it would have been waste of time and lives
to attack it either on the north or east. On the north, however, was
a picket-gate in the wall, communicating with a steep flight of steps
cut in the rock. Petrobey's plan, therefore, was to take possession at
once of the lower undefended town and blockade the citadel from that
side, for thus with a body of men to guard the northern picket, the
east and west sides being impassable both from within and without, the
blockade would be complete. Meantime the three companies, consisting
of Messenians and Arcadians, would cut off the harbor from the town,
leaving the Mainats, Argives, and Laconians to deal with the citadel
itself.
When day broke the secrecy of their advance was favored by a thick
mist, which rose some ten feet high from the plain, and under cover of
this, manoeuvring in some fields about a mile eastward from the town,
the army split in two, and one half marched straight down to the shore
of the bay, and from there, turning along the coast, ranged itself
along the harbor shore and on the breakwater, made of large rough
blocks of stone, which sheltered the harbor from southerly winds, and
the other three, leaving the citadel on their right hand, went straight
for the lower town. Half an hour afterwards the heat of the sun began
to disperse the morning mists, and as they got to the outskirts of the
town the vast vapor was rolled away, and the sentries on the citadel
looking out southward saw three companies of soldiers not half a mile
off. The alarm was given at once and spread through the lower town like
fire. From all the houses rushed out men, women, and children, some
still half clad or just awakened from their morning sleep, mothers with
babies in their arms, and old men almost as helpless, who ran this way
and that in the first panic terror, but gradually settled down into
two steady streams--the one up to the citadel to find refuge there,
the other to the harbor to seek means of flight. But the army came
on in silence, making its way slowly up the narrow streets towards
the citadel, without being attacked by the terrified and unarmed
inhabitants, and in its turn neither striking a blow nor firing a shot.
Two companies only had entered the town, the third remaining on the
outskirts to the east, acting like a "stop" in cover-shooting, to drive
the inhabitants back again, lest any should convey the alarm to Tripoli.
From the west of the town a bridge led over the torrent, and here
Petrobey stationed some hundred men to prevent any one leaving the
town across the river; but before long, wishing to concentrate all his
forces in the town, Yanni was sent to the party picketed there with
orders to destroy the bridge. This was made of wood, but preparations
were in hand for replacing it with one of iron, and several girders
were lying about on the bank for the approaching work. With one of
these as a lever, and twenty men to work it, it was an affair of
ten minutes only to prize up some half-dozen planks of the wooden
structure, and after that to saw in half a couple of the timber poles
on which it rested. The bridge thus weakened drooped towards the water,
and soon was caught by the swift stream below. Then, as some monstrous
fish plucks at a swimmer's limbs, it twitched and fretted against the
remaining portion, and soon with a rush and swirl of timbers and planks
it tore away a gap of some twenty feet across, sufficient to stop any
would-be fugitives.
Here and there in their passage up the town a house was shut and barred
against them, but for the most part the inhabitants streamed out like
ants when their hill is disturbed. Once only was resistance offered,
when from the upper window of a house a Turk fired upon the soldiers,
killing one man; and Petrobey, heading a charge himself, burst in the
door, and a couple of shots were heard from inside. Then, without a
word, he and the three others who had gone in with him took their
places again, and the column moved forward up the street.
The square of the lower town stood just at the base of the rising
ground leading up to the citadel, and on its north side was built a row
of big silk-mills, all of which had been deserted by their owners on
the first alarm, and in these the Maina division took up its quarters.
As soon as they and the Argives had made their passage through the
town, driving the inhabitants up into the citadel, or down to the
harbor, where they were taken by the Messenian division, Petrobey sent
to the Laconian corps, who had been acting as a "stop" on the east to
prevent the people escaping into the country, and brought them up on
the right to complete the line which they had drawn along the south
front of the citadel. The Argive corps, meantime, had been divided
into two, one-half of which blockaded the picket-gate on the north,
while the other was drawn up on the left of the Mainats, between them
and the river. This done, the blockade of the citadel was complete; on
the west the besieged were hemmed in by their own impregnable rock,
below which ran the current; on the south and southeast by the Greek
army; on the east again by the precipitous crags; and on the north
their escape through the picket-gate was impracticable, owing to the
detachment of Argives guarding it.
Three courses were open to them: to make a sortie as soon as the
expected Turkish ships would appear and regain communication with the
sea; or, by engaging and defeating the Greeks, establish connection
with Tripoli; or to support the siege until help came. In the utter
confusion and panic caused by the sudden appearance of the Greeks
the inhabitants had simply fled like a quail-flock, and the citadel
was crammed with a crowd of unarmed civilians. Each thought only
for himself and his own personal protection. Mixed in this crowd of
fugitives had been hundreds of Greek residents--some of whom, possessed
merely by the wild force of panic and without waiting to think what
this army was, had rushed blindly with the others into the citadel; but
the larger number had joined their countrymen--men, women, and children
together--imploring protection with horrible tales of outrage and
cruelty on their lips. All those who were fit for active service and
willing Petrobey enlisted, and employed them in making a more careful
search through the town for any Turks who might remain in hiding. These
were not to be killed or ill-treated, but merely kept as prisoners.
But the wild vengeance of those who had so long been slaves burst all
bounds when they saw their masters in their power, and all who were
found were secretly put to death.
The weakness of the citadel lay in its bad water supply. There was
only one well in the place, and that was not nearly sufficient for the
wants of the crowds who had taken refuge within it. But about mid-day
Demetri, the mayor of Nauplia, who was in charge of the division on
the north, observed buckets being let down from the top of the citadel
wall into the river and drawn up again full. The rocks here overhung a
little, and, taking with him some ten men, they dashed right under the
walls and to the corner abutting on the river. At that moment two more
buckets appeared close in front of them, and he and another, taking
hold of them, quietly undid the knots which tied them to the rope. The
grim humor of this amused him, and in half an hour there was a row of
some twenty buckets, which they had untied or cut. The besieged then
attempted to get water farther down, but the rocks there being not so
precipitous and sloping outward, the buckets stuck on some projection
of rock before reaching the water.
Meantime a column of smoke, rising from the harbor, showed that the
Messenians were at their work. One corps had deployed along the
shore and took in hand the work of burning all the shipping, while
the other was employed in making prisoners of the fugitives from the
lower town, who hoped to escape by sea. A few of these, striking
eastward across the plain, tried to get into the mountains, and were
shot, but the majority, finding themselves between two divisions of
the army, cut off from the citadel by Petrobey's division and from
the sea by the Messenians, and also being unarmed, surrendered to
Niketas, who, knowing no Turkish, but being proud of his English,
merely said "All-a-right" to their entreaties and prayers, and had
them incontinently stowed away in batches in the harbor buildings. The
Arcadians, meantime, had ranged themselves along the breakwater, where
they kept watch for the Turkish ships, and, having no work to hand,
spent the morning in smoking and singing.
About two in the afternoon word was brought to the captain of the
troops within the citadel--one Ali Aga--that two Turkish ships had
been seen in the offing approaching Kalamata. A steady south breeze
was blowing, and a couple of hours would see their arrival. Ali had
watched, in white, contemptuous anger that morning, the destruction
of the shipping by the Greeks. The ammunition within the walls was
very scanty, and the water supply for this irruption of fugitives was
wholly inadequate. Indeed, unless news of their straits was already
on the road to Tripoli--and this he could scarce hope, so swift and
complete had been the beleaguer--unless a relief expedition was even
now imminently starting, he saw that the only chance of saving the town
lay in concerted action with the approaching ships, and thus making an
attack on the Greek lines from both sides--the citadel and the sea.
Thus he determined to wait until the ships came up and engaged the
detachment of Greeks on the shore.
The wind still holding, in half an hour the Arcadian contingent on the
breakwater could see even from the beach the hulls of the approaching
ships, beyond all doubt Turkish men-of-war. The breakwater along which
the Greeks were ranged was still only half completed, and masses of
rough masonry lay piled and tumbled on the seaward end. Niketas rubbed
his hands gleefully as he made the dispositions for their welcome, and
exclaimed many times "This is very all-a-right"; then, relapsing into
Greek, he gave his orders, and mingled with them a chuckling homily.
"The Turk made the breakwater," he said, "but God and the holy saints,
having the Greeks in mind, were the designers. Hide yourselves ever so
thickly among these beautiful great stones, like anchovies in a barrel,
and when the ship turns into the harbor we will all talk loud to it
together. The water is very deep here; they will sail close to our
anchovy barrel, and they will see none of us till they turn the corner,
for the breakwater which God planned hides us from the sea."
He called up one division of Messenians to join the Arcadian corps,
leaving the other to guard the beach, and the sixteen hundred men
ranged themselves among the blocks of masonry along the inside of the
breakwater, so that until the ships turned the corner not one could be
seen, but once round they would be exposed to a broadside of muskets at
close range from marksmen concealed by the stones. Niketas himself--for
the foremost ship was now not more than a few hundred yards
out--crawled with infinite precaution to the end of the breakwater, and
smilingly watched its unsuspicious approach. It carried, he saw, many
heavy guns; but that was a small matter.
The wind was now light, and the ship was nearly opposite the end of
the breakwater when she began to take in sail, and a moment afterwards
her helm was put hard aport, and she slowly swung round, crumpling the
smooth water beneath her bow, and came straight alongside the wall at a
distance of not more than fifty yards. Niketas had told the men to fire
exactly when the ship came opposite them. She would pass slowly down
the line, and would be raked fore and aft again and again as she went
along.
Sixteen hundred men were crowded like swarming bees among the lumps
of tumbled stone. As many muskets waited hungrily. Overhead, above
the shelter of the breakwater, hummed the breeze; the little wavelets
tapped on the edge of the masonry; the stage was ready.
Tall and beautiful she came slowly on till her whole length appeared
opposite the ambush. Her decks and rigging were alive with the sailors,
who were swarming over the masts and furling sail, or stood ready to
drop the anchor on the word of command. On the bridge stood the captain
with two other officers, and, marshalled in rows on the aft deck,
about two hundred soldiers, carrying arms. Simultaneously through the
ambushed Greeks the same thought ran, "The soldiers first," and as the
great ship glided steadily past the end of the breakwater the fire of a
hundred men broke out, and they went down like ninepins. The ship moved
on, and, like the echo of the first volley, a second swept the decks,
and close on the second a third. The captain fell and two officers
with him, and a panic seized the crew. They ran hither and thither,
some seeking refuge below, some jumping overboard, some standing where
they were, wide-eyed and terror-stricken. A few of the soldiers only
retained their presence of mind, and with perfect calmness, as if they
were practising at some sham-fight, brought a gun into position and
proceeded to load it. But again and again they were mowed down by the
deadly short-range fire of the Greeks, while others took up the ramrods
and charge from their clinched hands, only to deliver it up from their
death-grip to others. But still the great ship went on, running the
gauntlet of the whole ambush, while every moment its decks grew more
populous with a ghastly crew of death. The well-directed and low fire
of the Greeks had left the half-furled sails untouched, and the wind
still blew steadily. But in a few moments more there were none left to
take the helm, and, swinging round to the wind, she changed her course
and went straight for the low, sandy beach on the other side of the
harbor. There, fifty yards off the shore, she grounded heavily, with a
slight list to starboard, striking a sand-bank on the port side; and
there, all the afternoon, she stood, white and stately, with sails
bulging with the wind, but moving not, like some painted or phantom
ship with wings that feel not wind nor any gale.
Not till then did Niketas, nor indeed any of his ambushed party, give
a thought to the other ship, but when the first ship with its crew of
dead turned in the wind and sailed ashore he looked round the corner
for the other. It was still some quarter of a mile away, but there
seemed to be some commotion on deck, and he was uncertain for a moment
whether they were preparing to bring their big gun into play. But
he was not left long in doubt, for in a couple of minutes more the
ship swung round and beat out to sea again. This disgraceful piece of
cowardice raised from the Greeks a howl, partly of derision and partly
of rage at being balked of their prey, and a few discharged their
muskets at the fleeing enemy until Niketas stopped them, telling them
not to waste good powder on runaway dogs. On the first ship the body
of soldiers had literally been destroyed, and of two hundred not more
than thirty remained. But these, with a courageous despair, after the
first few minutes of wild confusion were over, had sheltered themselves
at different points behind the bulwarks and furniture of the ship, and
were returning the fire coolly, while others began preparing the big
gun for action. But these were an easy mark for the Greeks, for they
were unprotected, and after five or six more men had been shot down
they abandoned the attempt and confined themselves to their muskets.
They were, however, fighting with cruel odds against them, for the
men on whom they were firing were sheltered by the blocks of masonry
on the pier, and hardly more could be seen than a bristling row of
gun-barrels. Hardly any of those who had flung themselves into the sea
lived to reach the shore, for they also were shot down as they swam,
and all over the bay were stains of crimson blood and clothes which
they had flung off into the water. One man, indeed, landed two hundred
yards away, but even as he stood there wringing the water out of his
clothes, which would clog his running, he was shot dead, and fell back
into the water again.
Meantime, from the citadel Ali Aga had watched the destruction of one
ship and the flight of the other. At the moment when the first had
entered the harbor he had opened fire on the Mainat corps; but they,
obeying Petrobey's direction, merely sheltered behind the mills, and
did not even take the trouble to return it. Encouraged by this, and
seeing heavy fighting going on below, Ali was just preparing to make a
dash for the harbor with some half of the troops, in order to establish
communication, when the firing on the shore suddenly slackened, and he
saw one ship sail off without firing a shot, while the other drifted
with half-furled sails across the bay, and then grounded. At that he
resolved again to wait, for he had no intention of going to the rescue
of those who should have rescued him, and indeed, without co-operation
from the ship, the attempt would have been madness.
At dusk the firing below ceased altogether, for a boat had put off
from the ship bearing the white flag of surrender, and all those who
were left on board were removed, their arms taken from them, and they
were put into custody. Niketas, who boarded the ship, felt a sudden
unwilling admiration for the man who had gone on fighting against such
fearful odds. The deck presented a fearful sight--it was a shambles,
nothing less. The list of the ship as she struck had drained the
blood in oily, half-congealed streams through the scuppers, and it
was dripping sullenly into the sea. The small-arms and powder the
Greeks transferred in boats to the land, where they were added to the
stock, and they made several unsuccessful attempts to get out one or
two of the larger guns, which might prove useful if Kalamata refused
to capitulate. But all their efforts, in the absence of fit tackling
and lifting apparatus, were useless, and after emptying the ship of
all that could be of service to them, including a sum of five hundred
Turkish pounds, which was found in the captain's cabin, they set light
to it for fear it should be got off by its sister ship and so return
into the enemy's fleet. All night long the hull blazed, and about
midnight it was a pillar of fire, for the sails caught and the flames
went roaring upward, mast high. And thus ended the first day of the
siege.
All next day the blockade continued without incident, and no attempt
was made on the part of the Turks to deliver an attack, nor on that
of the besiegers to force their way into the citadel. The pass from
Arcadia and that over Taygetus, across either of which any relief
expedition from Tripoli must march, were carefully watched, and before
such appeared Petrobey declined to make an attack, which must be
expensive to the Greek army, when simply waiting would do their work
for them; while Ali on his side would sooner capitulate, if the worst
came to the worst, than with his fifteen hundred men, ill-supplied
with ammunition, engage these six regiments of wolves; for such an
engagement, as he knew, would only end in his utter defeat, and the
massacre in all probability of all the Turks in the town.
Early on the third morning it was clear that help was not coming from
Tripoli, or, at any rate, that it would come too late. The water supply
had entirely given out and famine as well was beginning to make itself
felt. For two days and nights the citadel had been packed like a crate
of figs with defenceless and civilian humanity, more than half of whom
had to lie out under the cold of the spring night exposed to the dews
and the sun, some of them barely half clad, just as they had been
awakened from their sleep when they had fled panic-stricken to the
citadel. Below in the Greek army the utmost content and harmony still
reigned. The men were well quartered and had all the supplies of the
town in their hands, and a considerable amount of booty had been taken,
half of which was divided between the men and half reserved by Petrobey
for a war fund.
The first bugle had sounded half an hour, and they were preparing
their breakfast when a white flag was hoisted on the corner tower,
the gate opened, and Ali Aga, alone and unattended, except for a page
who carried his chibouk, walked down into the camp. Some Greeks, who
had lived under him and had felt his cruel and outrageous rule, saw
him coming and surrounded him, spitting at him and reviling him; but
here the devilish coolness of the man came to the front, a matter for
admiration, and turning round on them he cursed at them so fiercely,
calling them dogs and sons of dogs, that they fell back. By the side
of the road was sitting a blind Greek, begging. Ali, with splendid
unconcern, paused, threw open his red cloak trimmed with the fur of
the yellow fox, which he had wrapped closely about him against the
chill of the morning, and taking his pistol and string of amber beads
out of his belt, felt in the corners of it for some small coins, which
he gave the man and passed deliberately on, adjusting his fez with one
hand. Once again before he reached Petrobey's quarters he paused, this
time to take off one of his red shoes and shake a pebble out of it. Had
he blanched or wavered for a moment his life would have been forfeit a
dozen times before he reached Petrobey's quarters, but he treated the
howling crowd as a man treats snarling curs, and he silently commanded
one of the loudest-mouthed to show him the way to their commander.
Petrobey had seen Ali coming, and was sitting outside the house where
he had taken up his quarters, and when the Turk appeared he arose and
saluted him, telling a servant to bring a pipe for him; but Ali did
not return the salute, and merely indicated with one hand that he had
brought his own pipe with him, an insult of the most potent nature. To
him the Greeks were "all of one bake," and he looked at Petrobey and
spoke as if he were speaking to one of his own slaves.
"I find it necessary for me to capitulate," he said, in excellent
Greek, "and I am here to settle the conditions."
Petrobey flushed angrily. He was not a meek man, and had no stomach for
insults; so he sat down again, leaving Ali standing, and crossed one
leg over the other.
"I make no conditions," he said, "except this one: I will order no
general massacre; at the same time, it would be safer for all of you
not to assume insolent and overbearing airs."
Ali raised his eyebrows, and before speaking again sat down and
beckoned to the page who carried his pipe.
"You will not give us a safe conduct to Tripoli, for instance?"
"No."
"You will not allow us to retain our arms?"
Petrobey laughed.
"Such is not my intention. All I will do"--and his anger suddenly
flared up at the perfectly unassumed insolence of the man--"all I will
do is to forbid my men to shoot you down in cold blood. You will be
wise to consider that, for we may not care to grant such terms, no, nor
yet be able to enforce obedience to them if we did, on the day when
Tripoli is crushed like a beetle below our heel."
Ali shrugged his shoulders and took his chibouk from the hands of the
page who carried it.
"Oblige me with a piece of charcoal," he said to one of the Greeks who
stood by, and he lit his pipe slowly and deliberately before replying.
"Your terms are preposterous," he said; "I do not, however, say that I
will not accept them, but I wish for five hours more for consideration."
"Five hours more for relief from Tripoli, in my poor judgment,"
remarked Petrobey. "I am afraid that will not be convenient to me. I
require 'yes' or 'no'; neither more nor less."
Ali inhaled two long breaths of smoke.
"If I will give neither 'yes' nor 'no,' what then?"
"This. You shall go back in safety, and then when you are starved out,
or when we take the place, I will not grant any terms. And we have
a long score against you. Your rule has not been popular among my
countrymen; those who have lived here under you are full of very pretty
tales."
"I suppose the dogs are. I accept your terms."
Petrobey rose.
"Consider yourself my prisoner," he said, not even looking at him.
"Take charge of him, Christos, and Yorgi, and order all three corps
out, Yanni."
"Another piece of charcoal, one of you," said Ali. "This tobacco is a
little damp."
In half an hour's time all the Turkish soldiers and civilians were
defiled out of the citadel unarmed between the lines of the Greeks.
They were instantly divided up among the different corps, and from that
moment became the property of the soldiers as much as the Greek slaves
in the last years had been the property of their Turkish masters.
Many who had friends were ransomed, many became domestic slaves, and
many, in the Greek phrase, "the moon devoured." The flag of Greece was
hoisted on the towers, and the work which Mitsos had cried aloud in
fire from Taygetus to Bassae had begun.
[Illustration: "MIXED WITH THE NOISE OF THE SINGING, ROSE ONE GREAT SOB
OF A THANKFUL PEOPLE BORN AGAIN"]
And on that day which saw the dawning of the freedom of Greece it
seemed to these enthusiastic hearts, who for years had cherished and
fed the smouldering spark which now ran bursting into flame, that earth
and sea and sky joined in the glory and triumph. From its throne in the
infinite blue the sun shone to their eyes with a magnificence greater
than natural; to the south the sea sparkled and laughed innumerably,
and the meadows round the fallen town that day were suddenly smitten
scarlet with the blowing of the wind-flowers. And when the work of
distributing the prisoners was over, all the army went down to the
edge of the torrent-bed, and gave thanks, with singing mouths and
hearts that sang, to the Giver of Victory. There, half a mile above
the citadel, in a church of which the sun was the light, and the soft,
cool north wind the incense that wafted thanksgiving to heaven,
stood the first Greek army of free men that had known the unspeakable
thrill of victory since the Roman yoke had bound them a score of
hundred years ago. Some were old men, withered and gray, and ground
down in long slavery to a cruel and bestial master, and destined not
to see the full moon of their freedom; in some, like the seed on stony
ground, a steadfast heart had no deep root, and in the times of war and
desolation, which were still to come, they were to fall away, tiring
of the glorious quest; some were still young boys, to whom the event
was no more than a mere toy; but for the time, at any rate, all were
one heart, beating full in the morning of a long-delayed resurrection.
Standing on a mound in the centre were four-and-twenty priests, in the
front of whom was Father Andréa, tall, and eyed like a mountain hawk,
with a heart full of glory and red vengeance. And, when lifting up the
mightiest voice in Greece, he gave out the first words of that hymn
which has risen a thousand times to the clash of victorious arms, the
voice of a great multitude answered him, and the sound was as the sound
of many waters. All the ardor and hot blood of the Greeks leaped like
a blush to the surface, and on all sides, mixed with the noise of the
singing, rose one great sob of a thankful people born again. Petrobey,
with Nicholas on one side and Mitsos and Yanni on the other, hardly
knew that the tears were streaming down his tanned and weather-beaten
cheeks, and to the others, as to him, memory and expectation were
merged and sunk in the present ineffable moment. There was no before
or after; they were there, men of a free people, and conscious only of
the one thing--that the first blow had been struck, and struck home and
true, that they thanked God for the power He had given them to use.
And when it was over Petrobey turned to Nicholas, and smiling at him
through his tears:
"Old friend," he said.
And Nicholas echoed his words, echoed that which was too deep for
words, and--
"Old friend," he replied.
CHAPTER II
TWO SILVER CANDLESTICKS
For two days longer the army remained at Kalamata in an ecstasy of
success. Petrobey posted several companies of men on the lower hills
of Taygetus and at the top of the plain, from which a pass led into
Arcadia, in ambush for any relieving force from Tripoli, should such
be sent. Flushed with victory as they were, nothing seemed impossible,
and the spirit of the men was to march straight on that stronghold of
the Turkish power. But Petrobey was wiser; he knew that this affair at
Kalamata had been no real test of the army's capacity; they had stood
with folded arms, and the prey had dropped at their feet. To attack a
strongly fortified place, competently held, was to adventure far more
seriously. At present he had neither men nor arms enough, and the only
sane course was to wait, embarking, it might be, on enterprises of the
smaller sort, till with the news of their exploit the rising became
more general. In the mean time he remained at Kalamata in order to get
tidings from the north of the Morea as to the sequel of the beacon
there, and, if expedient, to unite his troops with the contingent from
Patras and Megaspelaion. As commander-in-chief of the first army in
the field, he issued a proclamation, declaring that the Greeks were
determined to throw off the yoke of the Turk, and asking for the aid
of Christians in giving liberty to those who were enslaved to the
worshippers of an alien god.
The primates and principal clergy of the Morea, it will be remembered,
had been summoned to Tripoli for the meeting at the end of March, and
the scheme that the wisdom of Mitsos had hatched, to give them an
excuse for their disobedience, had met with entire success. Germanos,
who both spoke and wrote Turkish, forged a letter, purporting to come
from a friendly Mussulman at Tripoli, warning him to beware, for
Mehemet Salik, thinking that a rising of the Greeks was imminent, had
determined to put one or two of the principal men to death in order to
terrorize the people, and with the same stone to deprive them of their
leaders. With this in his pocket, he set out and travelled quietly to
Kalavryta, where he found other of the principal clergy assembled at
the house of Zaimes, the primate of the place. Germanos arrived there
in the evening, and before going to bed gave the forged letter to
Lambros, his servant, telling him to start early next morning, ride in
the direction of Tripoli, then turn back and meet the party at their
mid-day halt. He was then to give the letter to his master, saying that
he had received it from a Turk on the road, who hearing that he was
Germanos's servant, told him, as he valued his life and the life of his
master, not to spare spur till he had given it him, and on no account
to hint a word of the matter to any one.
Lambros, who had the southern palate for anything smacking of drama
and mystery, obeyed in letter and spirit, and at mid-day, while the
primates were halting, he spurred a jaded, foam-streaked horse up the
road, flung himself quickly off, and gave the forged communication to
his master. Germanos glanced through it with well-feigned dismay and
exclamations of astonished horror, and at once read it aloud to the
assembled primates, who were struck with consternation. Some suggested
one thing and some another, but every one looked to Germanos for an
authoritative word.
"This will we do, my brothers," he said, "if it seems good to you:
I will send this letter to my admirable friend--or so I still
think--Mehemet Salik, and ask for a promise of safety, a matter of
form merely. Yet we may not disregard what my other admirable friend
has said, for if, as God forbid, it is true, where would our flock be
without their shepherds? But if it is false, Mehemet will at once send
us a promise of safety. Meantime, we must act as if the truth of this
letter were possible, and I suggest that we all disperse, and for our
greater safety each surround himself with some small guard. And before
the answer comes back, it may be"--he looked round and saw only the
faces of patriots--"it may be that there will be other business on
hand"--and his face was a beacon.
It is probable that more than one of the primates guessed that the
letter was a forgery, but they were only too glad to be supplied with
a specious excuse for delaying their journey, and followed Germanos's
advice.
Then followed those ten days of feverish inaction, while on Taygetus
Petrobey collected the forces which were to be the doom of Kalamata.
Evening by evening patient men climbed to the hills where the beacon
fuel was stacked, questioning the horizon for the signal, and morning
by morning returned to the expectant band of patriots in their
villages, saying "Not yet, not yet," until one night the signs of fire
shouted from south to north of the land, telling them that the Vintage
was ripe for harvest. At Kalavryta, where the first blow in the north
was struck, they found the Turks even less ready than at Kalamata,
and little expecting the soldiers of God in their companies from the
monastery; and on the 3d of April the town surrendered on receiving,
as at Kalamata, a promise that there should be no massacre. The place
was one of little importance among the Turkish towns, but of the first
importance to the revolutionists, lying as it did in the centre of the
richest valley in Greece, and in close proximity to Megaspelaion, and
it became the centre of operations in the north. Also, it was valuable
inasmuch as several very wealthy Turks lived there, and the money that
thus fell into the hands of the Greeks was food for the sinews of war.
As soon as this reached Kalamata, Petrobey determined to move. The
wholesale success of the patriots in the north showed that they were
in no need of immediate help, and to have two different armies in
the field, one driving the Turks southward, the other northward into
Tripoli, the central fortress of Ottoman supremacy, was ideal to his
wishes. But more than ever now soberness and strength were needed;
the men hearing of the taking of Kalavryta were wild to unite with
the northern army and march straight on Tripoli. But Petrobey, backed
by Nicholas, was as firm as Taygetus; such a course could only end in
disaster, for they were yet as ignorant as children of the elements
of war, and it would be an inconceivable rashness now to venture
on that which would be final disaster or the freedom of the Morea.
They must learn the alphabet of their new trade; what better school
could there be than their camp on the slopes of Taygetus, the lower
hill-sides of which were covered with Turkish villages, and where they
would not, from the nature of the ground, be exposed to the attacks of
cavalry? So, after making great breaches in the walls of the citadel
of Kalamata, and filling up the well, so that never again could it be
used as a stronghold, they marched back across the blossomed plain and
up to the hill camp below the beacon with the glory of success upon
them.
Three nights later Yanni and Mitsos were sitting after supper in the
open air by a camp-fire. Yanni, still rather soft from his month's
fattening at Tripoli--"And, oh, Yanni," said Mitsos, "but it is a
stinging affair to have fattened a little pig like you, and never have
the eating of it"--was suffering from a blister on his heel, and Mitsos
prescribed spirits on the raw or pure indifference.
"If you had been cooped and fattened as I, little Mitsos," said Yanni,
in an infernally superior manner, "how much running do you think you
could lay leg to? As it is, if you continue to eat as you eat, what a
belly-man will Mitsos be at thirty!"
Mitsos pinched Yanni over the ribs.
"Poor Mehemet!" he said, "all that for nothing. I have a fine cousin
who is only just twenty, and if you said he was fat, man, you wouldn't
give a person any proper notion of him."
"My blister is worse than it was yesterday," said Yanni, pulling off
his shoe.
"There was a show at Nauplia last year," continued Mitsos, lying
lengthily back and looking at the stars, "and a fat woman in it. When
she walked she wobbled like a jelly-fish. Just about as fat as a cousin
of mine."
"Oh!"
"She wasn't married, the man said, and was to be had for the asking. I
hate fat women almost as much as I hate fat men."
Nicholas had strolled out of his hut, and was standing behind the boys
as they talked.
"Now look at Uncle Nicholas, Yanni," said Mitsos, still unconscious of
his presence, "he will be some twelve good inches taller than you, and
forty years older; but I doubt if you could tie his trousers-strings."
Nicholas laughed.
"I can do it myself, little Mitsos," he said. "Come in, you two; there
is work forward."
Yanni sprang up and stepped into his shoe, forgetting the blister.
"A journey," he said, "for Mitsos and me? Oh, Mitsos, it is good."
"Yanni cannot walk," said Mitsos; "he has a blister, and must needs be
carried like a scented woman."
"A blister?" asked Nicholas. "Don't think about it."
"So said I," answered Mitsos, "but he has no thought for aught else in
God's world."
"Well, come in," answered Nicholas, "and hear what you will hear."
The business was soon explained. The ship which had been seen at
Kalamata had gone back to Nauplia, so it was reported, and was to
transport thence to Athens several wealthy Turkish families who were
fearful for their safety. From Athens it would come back, bringing arms
and ammunition, to Nauplia. The time for the fire-ship had come.
"And Nicholas says, little Mitsos," continued Petrobey, "that you know
the bay of Nauplia like your own hand, and can take your boat about it
as a man carries food to his mouth."
Mitsos flushed with pleasure.
"And in truth I am no stranger to it," he said. "When do I start?"
"To-morrow morning. The ship arrived there three days ago, but will
wait another five days. The business is to be done when she is well out
to sea, so that there is no time for her to get back. You will want
some one with you. Whom would you like?"
Mitsos looked at Yanni.
"Whom but the fat little cousin?" he said.
"The little cousin doesn't mind," said Yanni, with his eyes dancing,
and gave Mitsos a great poke in the ribs.
"Ugh, Turkish pig," quoth Mitsos, "we will settle that account
together."
"Be quiet, lads," said Petrobey, "and listen to me"; and he gave them
the details of their mission.
"Big butchers we shall be," said the blood-thirsty Mitsos when Petrobey
had finished. "Eh, but the fishes will give thanks for us."
Yanni and he tumbled out of the hut again, sparring at each other
for sheer delight at a new adventure, and sat talking over the fire,
smoking the best tobacco from Turkish shops at Kalamata, till Nicholas,
coming out late to go the round of the sentries, packed them off to bed.
All the apparatus they would require, and also the caique to serve
as the fire-ship, were at Nauplia; and they started off next morning
unencumbered with baggage, with only one horse, which the "scented
woman" was to ride if his blister should tease him. A detachment of
the clan who were not on duty, as well as Nicholas and Mitsos' father,
saw them to the top of the pass, which they were to follow till they
got onto the main road at Sparta, and then go across country, giving
Tripoli a very wide berth, and taking a boat across the bay of Nauplia
so as to avoid Argos. At Nauplia they were to put up at Mitsos' house,
but keep very quiet, and remain there as little time as might be. The
caique would be lying at anchor opposite; Lelas, the café-keeper, had
charge of it.
The journey was made without alarm or danger. On the evening of the
first day they found themselves at the bottom of the Langarda pass,
with the great fertile plain of Sparta spread out before them, now
green, now gray, as the wind ruffled the groves of olive-trees. A mile
beyond the bottom of the pass their way lay close under the walls of
the little Turkish town of Mistra, and this they passed by quickly,
in case the news of the taking of Kalamata had come and the soldiers
were on the lookout for wandering Greeks. But as they skirted along a
foot-path below the town Yanni looked back.
"It's very odd," he said, "but we have passed nobody going home; and
look, there are no lights in any of the houses."
"That is queer," said Mitsos; "no, there is not a single light. We'll
wait a bit, Yanni."
They sat down off the path in the growing dusk, but not a sign came
from the town; no lights appeared in the windows, it seemed perfectly
deserted, and by degrees their curiosity made a convert of their
caution.
"We will go very quietly and have a look at the gate," said Yanni. "It
will be pleasanter sleeping in a house than in the fields, for it will
be cold before morning up here."
"That comes of living in a fine house in Tripoli," remarked Mitsos.
"Come on, then."
The two went very cautiously back to the road which led up to the gate
and found it standing wide open.
"That ought to be shut at dark," says Mitsos; "we will go a little
farther."
Still there was no living thing to be seen, no glimmer shone from any
house, and soon Mitsos stopped.
"Oh, Yanni, I see," he said. "They must have had news of the Kalamata
thing, and all have fled. There's not a soul left in the place. Come
on, we'll just go to the top of the street."
They left the horse for the time in the outer court of a mosque which
stood near the gate, and advanced cautiously up the steep, cobbled
road. Everywhere the same silence and signs of panic-stricken flight
prevailed. Here a silk-covered sofa blocked the doorway of a house;
farther on they came upon a couple of embroidered Turkish dresses; a
big illuminated Koran lay with leaves flapping in the evening wind on
a door-step, and outside the old Byzantine church at the top of the
street, which had been turned into a mosque by the Turks, stood two
immense silver candlesticks, four feet high, and each holding some
twenty tapers. Yanni looked thoughtfully at these for a minute.
"It is in my mind," he said, "that I will eat my dinner by the light
of fine silver candlesticks. Pick up the other, cousin; I can't carry
both. Holy Virgin, how heavy they are!"
"Where are we to take them?" asked Mitsos.
"To a nice house, where we will have supper," says Yanni. "I saw such a
one as I came up. There was a barrel of wine outside it, and my stomach
cries for plenty of good wine. Oh, here's a woman's dress. Eh, what a
smart woman this must have been!"
The house which Yanni had noticed was a two-storied café, standing a
little back from the street. The upper rooms were reached by an outside
staircase from the garden, and as they went up to it a cat, the only
live thing they had seen, looked at them a moment with mournful eyes,
and then, deciding that they were to be trusted, put up an arched,
confiding back against Mitsos' leg, and made a poker of her tail.
Below, the house was of three rooms, the outer of which, looking over
the plain, was full of the signs of flight. A long Turkish narghilé,
with an amber mouth-piece, was overturned on the floor, and on one of
the little coffee tables stood another pipe half filled with unsmoked
tobacco, while the silk pouch from which it was supplied lay unrolled
beside it, and on a shelf were four or five long-stemmed chibouks. A
long divan, smothered in cushions, ran round three sides of the room,
and the cat, in the belief that her friends were coming back, jumped
lightly into her accustomed place and looked at the boys, blinking
and purring contentedly. The second room was full of cans of coffee
and tobacco, and on a table in the centre stood a dish with two
chickens, one wholly plucked, the other but half denuded, and by it
an earthenware bowl of water, in which were cool, green lettuces. The
third room was a stable for horses; a manger full of fresh hay ran
down one side, and in the opposite corner were an oven and a heap of
charcoal. The fire had gone out and was only a heap of white, feathery
ash, while on the extinguished embers still stood two little brass
coffee jugs, their contents half boiled away. Yanni smiled serenely
when they had finished their examination.
"You will sup with me to-night, cousin?" he asked, pompously. "Oh,
Mitsos, but this is a soft thing we have hit upon."
Mitsos walked back into the outer room, where he closed the wooden
shutters and lit all the candles.
"Nice little candlesticks," he said, approvingly. "How I wish the owner
of the house could see us. Wouldn't he howl!"
Up-stairs there were two rooms--one with two beds in it, the other
with one. The beds were still unmade, just as they had been slept in,
and Mitsos pulled off the sheets disdainfully, for he would not lie
where a Turk had been. Then, while Yanni kindled the fire to boil the
chickens, he rummaged in the store-room.
"A pot of little anchovies, Yanni," he remarked; "they will come first
to give us an appetite. Thus I shall have two appetites, for I have one
already. By the Virgin! there is tobacco too, all ready in the pipes.
We shall pass a very pleasant evening, I hope. Oh, there's the horse
still waiting at the gate. I will go and fetch him; and be quick with
the supper, pig."
Yanni laughed.
"Really the Turk is a very convenient man," he said. "I like wars. We
can take provisions from here which will last to Nauplia. There will
be no skulking about villages after dark to buy bread and wine without
being noticed."
Yanni put the chicken to boil, and while Mitsos fetched the horse,
having nothing more to do, he amused himself by trying on the dress of
the Turkish woman which they had found in the street. The big black
bernous concealed the deficiencies of the skirt, which only came to
his knees, and he had finished adjusting the veil, and had sat down
chastely on a corner of the settee, when he heard Mitsos come up the
street and call to him from the stable. So he got up and went on tiptoe
out of the house and round to the other door, and Mitsos looking up
saw a Turkish woman peeping in, who screamed in shrill falsetto when
she saw him. For one moment he thought that somehow or other this was
Suleima, but the next moment he had rushed after Yanni and hauled him
in.
"Is not my supper ready, woman?" he cried, "and why do you not attend
to your master?"
They ate their dinner in the best of spirits, for that the hated and
despised Turk, whose destruction was their mission, should board and
lodge them so handsomely seemed one of the best jokes. Mitsos every now
and then broke into a huge grin as he made fearful inroads upon the
food and wine, and Yanni kept ejaculating: "Very good chicken of the
Turk. The best wine of the Turk; give me some lettuce of the Turk. I
wish we could take the candlesticks, Mitsos; but perhaps two peasant
boys with heavy silver sticks four feet high slung on their mules might
attract attention."
The moon had risen soon after sunset, and after dinner they sat smoking
in the garden, which was planted with pomegranates and peach-trees, and
fringed by a row of cypresses, which looked black in the moonlight. All
was perfectly still but for the sleepy prattle of the stream below.
Now and then a nightingale gave out a throatful of song, or some spray
of asphodel, ripe to the core, cracked and scattered its seed round
it. The cat prowled about the garden, now creeping through the shadow
of the trees, or flattening herself out on the ground, and now making
springs at some imaginary prey in the moonlight, and when they went
up-stairs she preceded them, and, jumping onto Mitsos' bed, lay purring
like a tea-kettle.
CHAPTER III
THE ADVENTURE OF THE FIRE-SHIP
They started again early the next morning, having loaded the pony with
provisions, for Yanni preferred to suffer from his blister than from
hunger, and struck in a southeasterly direction across the plain,
leaving Sparta with its red roofs and olive-groves on the left, over
low hills of red earth, covered in this spring-time with cistus in full
flower, tall white heather, and myrtle in the freshness of its fragrant
leaf. About two hours' going brought them to the Eurotas, flowing clear
and bright over its shining pebble-bed, on which the sunlight drew a
diaper of light and shade, sliding on from pool to shallow, and shallow
to rapid, and ford to ford. Here Mitsos, who in his inland life pined
for the amphibious existence of Nauplia, came upon a deep pool, and
in a moment was stripped and swimming. From there another two hours
led them across the plain to the foot of the hills, where they halted
and ate their midday meal, looking across the green plain to where
Taygetus, rising in gray shoulder over shoulder, met the sky in a
spear-head of snow.
So for two more days they went on, sleeping sometimes during the middle
of the day under the shade of aromatic pines, or behind some bluff
of earth in a dry torrent-bed, and as they got nearer to Tripoli and
Argos, marching through the cool, still night over shoulders and
outstretched limbs of mountain range, or down through silent valleys
all aflush with spring, and spending the daylight hours in some
sheltered nook or cave, each keeping alternate watches while the other
slept. Thus came they down to Myloi, where they were to get the boat
which should take them across the bay, early one morning while it was
still dark. So once again in the sweetness of sunrise Mitsos saw the
blue mirror of the bay spread out smooth and clear at his feet, and the
first rays of morning sparkling on the town at the other side, turning
the damp roofs to sheets of gold, and on a white house at the head of
the bay, where his heart was.
They were home by nine o'clock, and from there they could see plainly
the great Turkish ship, as large as a church, lying close to the quay,
showing that they were in time. The attack, as Petrobey had told
Mitsos, must, of course, be at night, and through the café-keeper Lelas
they learned that she would sail the same evening at midnight, or
thereabouts. This was quite to their convenience, for had she sailed
during the day they would have had to follow her till the fall of night
gave cover to their approach, thus, perhaps, attracting suspicion, and
certainly finding themselves many miles from home out at sea when their
work was done. Lelas, the café-keeper, to whom they were referred,
showed them the caique which Nicholas had told him to keep for Mitsos,
and the boy, saying that he would go out a little way at once to see
how it sailed, got into it, leaving Yanni on the shore. The latter
winked at Mitsos as he got in, and remarking "I am sorry I cannot
go with you," for he knew precisely where Mitsos was going, though
his chance of seeing Suleima by day was absolutely nil, went back to
Constantine's house and waited patiently for his return.
Lelas, who was an arrant gossip-monger, had the news of the town:
the Turks were flying in all directions, some to Tripoli, some to
Constantinople, some to Athens, such was their consternation at the
taking of Kalamata. Many of those about Nauplia were going on board the
war-ship, which was bound for the Piræus, and to return with arms. "And
tell me," he said, "what is Mitsos going to do with the caique? I am
sure it is some plot against the Turk."
But Yanni, seeing Nicholas had not thought fit to tell him, denied any
knowledge of the purpose of the boat.
Meantime Mitsos had put out, and was sailing straight to the white
wall. The wind was blowing lightly from the east, and he ran straight
before it. The boat, slimly built and carrying more sail than his, was
certainly a faster goer than his own before the wind, and he suspected
would sail closer to it. Certainly it took the air like a bird, and,
though the breeze was but light, was a very sea-gull for moving. That,
no doubt, was why Nicholas, whose knowledge of boats was as of one
who had never set foot on dry land, had chosen it, and Mitsos glanced
towards the big ship moored off the quay at Nauplia, and mentally gave
it fifteen minutes' start in an hour's run. "And, oh, I love a blaze!"
thought he.
Twenty minutes' scudding brought him nearly up to the wall; there he
took in the sail and drifted. There was no one on the terrace; that was
unusual on a fine morning, when there were often two or three of the
servants about, or a woman from the harem. How quiet it looked! Yet,
though he did not see Suleima, it was something to know she was near,
sitting, it might be, at the back of the garden, or in-doors; perhaps
Zuleika had the toothache and she was unapproachable; perhaps the two
were talking together; perhaps they were talking of him, wondering when
he would come again....
In the farther of the two walls running back from the sea was a small
door, and Mitsos' boat had drifted till this appeared in view, and
looking up from his revery he saw that it was open. This was even more
unusual; never had he seen it open before, and he sat for a moment or
two frowning, wondering at it. Then suddenly the smile was struck dead
on his face; a possibility too horrible for thought, suggested by those
open doors at Mistra, had dawned on him, and regardless of imprudence
he took up an oar, put the boat to land, and tying it up went straight
to the open door. The garden was empty, the house-door was open, and,
more convincing than all, a hare ran across the path and hid itself in
the tangle of a flower-bed.
Then with a flash the horrible possibility became a certainty to his
mind. The house was empty and deserted; Abdul and the household had
fled; a ship was now at Nauplia to carry away the fugitives; that ship
he was going to destroy, consigning all on it to a death among flames
from which there was no escape. Abdul was surely there, and with Abdul
and his household....
Mitsos stood there a long minute with wide, unseeing eyes; for a moment
the horror of his position drowned his consciousness as a blow stuns
the brain. Then as his reason came back to him he realized that he
could not, that he was physically unable, to carry out his orders. The
fire-ship should not start--no, it must start, for there was Yanni with
him, who knew about it, and he cursed himself for having taken Yanni.
But so be it; it should start, but something should go wrong--he would
forget to take kindling for it, or, setting light to it, it should only
drift by the other and not harm her. For it was no question of choice;
he could not do this thing.
Thus thought poor Mitsos as he sailed home again. It seemed to him
that nothing in the world mattered except Suleima, and by the bitter
irony of fate the man in the world whom he most loved and respected had
told him to destroy with all on board the ship in which Suleima was.
On the one hand stood Nicholas, his father, Petrobey, Yanni, and the
whole clan of those dear, warm-hearted cousins who had treated him as a
brother, yet half divine; on the other, Suleima, and Suleima was more
to him than them all; Suleima was part of himself, dearer than his hand
or his eye, and besides--besides....
Yanni was having dinner when he entered the house, but there was that
in Mitsos' face which made him spring up.
"Mitsos," he said, "little Mitsos, what is the matter?"
Mitsos looked at him a moment in silence, but that craving of the human
spirit for sympathy in trouble, whether the sympathy is given by man or
beast, overpowered him. Though in his own mind he had settled that he
could not destroy this ship, the trouble of his struggle was sore upon
him.
"Yanni," he whispered, "there will be no fire-ship. Abdul has gone, has
fled with all the household, with Suleima among them. Where has he fled
but onto the ship we are to destroy? I cannot do it."
Yanni sank down again in his chair.
"Oh, Mitsos," he said, "poor Mitsos! God forgive us all."
Mitsos glanced at him, frowning.
"'Poor Mitsos!'" he cried; "why do you say 'poor Mitsos'? Do you think
I am going to do this?"
"You are not going to do it?"
"No!" shouted Mitsos. "It is not I who choose. There is no choice. I
cannot!"
"But the clan, the oath to obey--"
"There are bigger things than clans or oaths. To hell with my oath, to
hell with the clan," cried Mitsos.
Yanni sat silent, and Mitsos suddenly flared up again.
"How dare you sit there," he cried, "and let your silence blame me?
You, whom I rescued from the house of Mehemet; who but for me would
have been rotting in the ground, or worse than that; you, whom I saved
when a cross-legged Turk had you down on the ground--"
"Mitsos!" said Yanni, looking at him without fear or anger, but stung
intolerably.
For a moment or two Mitsos sat still, but then the blessed relief of
tears came.
"What have I said to you, Yanni?" he sobbed. "O God, forgive me, for
I know not what I said; yet--yet how can I do this? Oh, of course you
are right, and I--I--Yanni, is it not hard? What was it I said to
you? Something devilish, I know. Don't give me up, Yanni; there is
none--there will soon be none who loves me as you do."
Yanni's great black eyes grew soft with tears, and he put his arm round
Mitsos' neck as his head lay on the table.
"Oh, Mitsos! poor little Mitsos!" he said again. "What is to be done?
If only Nicholas or my father knew; and yet you could not and cannot
tell them. Perhaps she is not on the ship, you know."
"Perhaps, perhaps--oh, perhaps she is!" cried Mitsos.
The two sat there in silence for a time, stricken almost out of
consciousness by this appalling thing. At last Mitsos raised his head.
"There is nothing more to be said," he muttered. "I have no idea what
I shall do. Either to do the thing or not to do it is impossible, and
yet by to-morrow it will be done or left undone. But, Yanni, just tell
me you forgive me for what I said just now and make indulgence, for
this is a hard, weary day for me."
Yanni smiled.
"Forgiveness is no word from me to you, dear Mitsos," he said. "There
is nothing you could do or say to me for which you need ask that."
Mitsos looked up at him with dumb, dry eyes and a quivering mouth.
"Forget it, too, Yanni, and tell me it will make no change between us,
for, in truth, I do not know what I said."
"There, there," said Yanni, soothingly. "The thing is not, it never has
been."
The hours went on slowly and silently. Mitsos said nothing, but lay
in the veranda like some suffering animal that has crept away to die
alone of a mortal wound, and Yanni was wise enough to leave him quite
to himself, for his struggle was one that had to be wrestled out alone
without help or sympathy from others. But gradually and very slowly the
mist of irresolution passed away from Mitsos' brain, and he felt that
he would decide one way or the other. Meantime the sun had sunk to its
setting, and Yanni prepared food and took some with wine out to Mitsos.
"Eat, drink," he said. "You have not eaten since morning."
"I am not hungry," said Mitsos, listlessly.
For answer Yanni took up the glass of wine and held it to him.
"Drink it quickly, Mitsos; you are faint for something," he said, "and
then I will take it and fill it again."
Mitsos obeyed like a sick child, and Yanni took the glass and brought
it back full. This time he waited a moment, and then said:
"You must make up your mind, Mitsos. If you settle to do nothing, tell
me, and I must think for myself."
Mitsos nodded.
"I will come in in half an hour and tell you," he said. "That will be
time enough. Please leave me alone again, Yanni; it is better so."
Yanni went back into the house. His warm-hearted nature, and his
intense love for Mitsos, made him suffer to the complement of his
capacity of suffering. He would willingly have changed places with
Mitsos had it been possible, for he felt he could not suffer more, but
so the other would suffer less. Oh, poor Mitsos, whose strength and
habit of laughter availed him nothing!
It was less than half an hour later when Mitsos came in. His face was
drawn and white, and he felt deadly tired. He did not look at Yanni,
but merely stood in the doorway, his eyes cast down.
"Come, Yanni," he said, "it is time we should start. Where are the cans
of turpentine and the wood?"
"In the boat; I put them there."
Mitsos looked up at him sharply.
"So you meant to do it yourself if I did not?"
"I meant to try."
Men walk firmly to the scaffold when they are to die for a good cause,
and martyrs have seen their wives and children tortured or burned
before their eyes and wavered not, and it was this courage of absolute
conviction which nerved the poor lad now. With his whole heart he
believed in the right of this exterminating war against the Turk; he
had put himself unreservedly at the service of its leaders, and there
was an order laid on him. He had made of himself a part of a machine,
and should a jarring axle speak to the driver and say it would go no
farther, or bid him stop the whole gear? Thus it was that, with a firm
step and with no tenderness, but only despair and conviction clutching
at a cold heart, he walked down with Yanni to the beach, and, having
looked over all the apparatus and seen that nothing was wanting, pushed
off, and, helping him to set the sail, took his place at the helm.
The enterprise they were embarked upon was dangerous. The caique in
which they sat was piled with inflammable materials and a cargo of
brushwood, and carried four large cans of turpentine, with which they
would presently soak the sails. They were to run up to the Turkish
ship, tie their boat up to it, or entangle it in the rigging, set
fire to it, and jump into the small boat they towed behind them and
row off. The flames would spread like lightning over the boat, giving
them hardly a second to escape, and they might easily be seen and shot
at while they were lighting her before they could row off; and this
element of danger, perhaps, was a help to poor Mitsos.
The night at least was favorable to their adventure, being thickly
clouded and with a fine fresh breeze, thus enabling them to come up
quickly, and also under cover of darkness. Otherwise the moon, which
was nearly full, would have doubled their peril. The wind was from the
east of north, so that the ship would probably run straight before it
for a mile or so before turning south out of the gulf, and the time to
attack her would be just when she turned, for she would then be far
enough from the shore to render her destruction inevitable, and the
moment of slack speed as she put about would enable them to run into
her the more easily. At present they would approach within about a
quarter of a mile, and lie there waiting for her to put out.
There was still plenty of time, and when Mitsos let the boat run before
the wind instead of going straight to Nauplia, Yanni had no need to
ask him why, for he knew where he was going, and kept his eyes away,
for he could not bear to see Mitsos' agony. For a little while the
hardness and conviction had left him, and the hour of his agony was on
him again. And as they neared the white wall, which glimmered faintly
under the cloudy night, he thought his heart would break within him.
They passed it quickly under the ever-freshening breeze, and Mitsos
looked at it as a man looks on the dead form of his dearest, the house
which she had inhabited in life. To him Suleima was dead, a memory only
insufferably sweet, ineffably bitter, and when the wall faded again
into the blackness he felt as if he had buried her whom he had loved
and murdered. Then putting about, they ran past the island and saw the
lights of Nauplia grow nearer and larger.
In the foreground was the tall, black hull of the Turkish ship outlined
with lights. The deck was brilliantly lit, and they could hear sounds
of talking and laughing coming from it. The sailors were evidently
preparing to put to sea, for now and then little figures of men like
small insects would move up the lines of rigging, adjusting rope or
block with busy antennæ, and loud voices seemed to be shouting orders.
Then a bell rang on board, and a rope-end splashed into the water and
was pulled on deck.
They had drifted a little out to sea, and Mitsos tacked back again to
within three hundred yards of the ship, and finding shallow water, cast
anchor. Two long hours went by, but neither spoke; only the freshening
wind whistled in the rigging, the clouds promised a stormy night, and
on board the Turkish ship they made ready to go to sea. A row of open
port-holes showed a necklace of light, each light waking a column of
reflection from the waters of the bay. Then a lantern was hoisted up
onto the foremast, and another run out in the bows. Presently after
came the grating sound of the anchor being pulled home, and a small
sail was set, sufficient in this wind to take her slowly out of the
harbor. Now a light in the town was hidden behind her bows, and another
sprang up from behind the stern; she moved along the quay stately and
slow, and, clear of the buoy at the end, she put up another sail.
Mitsos watched her intently, and then, without a word, he pulled up
the anchor and ran up the sail, and silently they went in pursuit. But
their light boat went too fast with its sail full spread, and when they
had approached again to within two or three hundred yards he took in a
couple of reefs, which equalized their speed, or, if anything, allowed
the other to gain on them a little. And so they followed in the wake
of the great condemned ship out past the harbor lights, round the end
of the peninsula beyond the town, and into the black, foam-flecked
gulf outside. The lights grew small and far away, the land faded to
a dark shadow, which brooded on the horizon, and the two crafts, one
with its immense cargo of human creatures, the other with a couple of
beardless Greek lads--but with how strange a burden of anguish and
destruction!--were shut off from all sound and sight except the threats
of rising waves.
Then Mitsos rose, and pointing to the cans of turpentine:
"Empty one on the brushwood in the bows," he said to Yanni, "and give
me another."
He climbed up the mast, and, resting the tin on the yard, took out the
cork and let the contents dribble down over the sail. When the can
was empty he came quickly down again and flushed the whole deck with
another tinful, while Yanni poured the fourth onto the remainder of the
fuel.
Then, in a hard, dry voice:
"Let out the sail," he said, "and climb into the boat behind, but give
me the lantern first."
Yanni handed him the dark lantern first, which they had lit before
starting, and, pulling the boat in under the stern of the caique,
jumped on board. Under the full-spread sail they drew rapidly near
the doomed ship, and when they were within a hundred yards they heard
its rudder splash and stir like some great fish under water, and the
speed slackened as she turned south. Mitsos, who had never felt cooler
or more collected in his life, went straight on, so as to strike her
sideways below the huge, overhanging stern. He calculated to perfection
the speed they were going and the distance, and just as Yanni became
aware of a great black thing with a panel of light in it overhead, he
heard a crash, and broken glass fell over him. The mast of the caique
had gone right through one of the windows in the stern. Their boat gave
a great lurch, and Mitsos sprang off into the small boat astern, still
with the lantern in his hand.
"Quick, quick!" he said, "that I cannot do."
Yanni jumped up, and, crouching beneath the stern of the caique, thrust
the lantern open into a heap of brushwood impregnated with turpentine.
It caught and flared up in a moment, and while from the Turkish ship
came sudden confused sounds and runnings to and fro, the flame leaped
along the caique from stern to bow, ran like a flash of lightning up
the sail, and was driven by the wind with a roar right into the
broken panel. Next moment Mitsos, having cast loose their smaller boat,
pushed off backward into the darkness, and both the boys, seizing their
oars, rowed for life. But the blaze between them and the ship had made
it impossible for those on board to see them, and after five minutes or
so Yanni, blown and streaming with perspiration, saw Mitsos drop his
oar and sink down to the bottom of the boat and lie there as if dead.
[Illustration: "BOTH THE BOYS, SEIZING THEIR OARS, ROWED FOR LIFE"]
Round three-quarters of the horizon was dense darkness, inhabited only
by the rushing wind, but in front a column of fire rose up, crowned
with clouds of smoke. The flames leaped up over the stern of the ship,
the steersman fled for his life farther forward, and left to itself the
ship swung round into the wind, dragging its destroyer behind it, the
flames from which, driven straight before it, licked greedily round
the timbers of its victim. In a few moments the tar in the seams began
to melt and run, breaking into flame like burning sealing-wax, and the
planks of the upper decks were parted a fraction of an inch as it oozed
out. Then the timbers themselves began to fizzle and crack, giving
each moment new crevices and footholds for the fire, and the window
where the mast of the caique had penetrated showed red burning lips,
like a horrible square mouth. Volumes of smoke began to pour forward
between the decks, driving those who were throwing unavailing water
onto the flames to the upper deck, to make another hopeless attempt
from there. The women and children ran forward with shrill screams,
and could be seen standing like a flock of frightened sheep huddled
together. Then a boat was let down, but before it touched the water
a tongue of flame sprang out from one of the big, square port-holes
below it, driving upward so fiercely that those who were holding the
ropes let go and it fell splashing into the sea. Soon with a crash the
aft part of the deck, all charred and no longer able to support its
own weight, fell in a huge shower of embers and half-burned or blazing
pieces of timber, and again the flames leaped higher and moved forward
along the ship. The iron davits supporting the boat corresponding to
that which had fallen into the sea, still stood firm, and the boat
itself hung unburned for some ten minutes, till the fire reaching up
caught it, and set it blazing, hanging there, apart and separate from
the greater conflagration like a huge burning signal of distress. Soon,
however, the side of the ship which held the davits fell in, and the
boat dropped blazing into the water. The fire had now reached to the
main-mast, and in a moment caught the sail. Then after a few seconds,
in which the smoke redoubled itself, the great sheet of canvas caught
and flared up in a pillar of flame. Great burned pieces fell off and
strewed the deck; other lighter fragments were borne away like birds
in the wind and fled seaward, flapping and blazing. Then, with another
crash, a second portion of the deck fell in, and, mingled with the
noise the shrill chorus of despair from the women, rose higher and
higher. Some jumped overboard and found their death in what might have
been their safety; others ran up and down the deck, which grew ever
hotter and more blistered, and now scribbled over by lines of burning
pitch; some seized up water-cans and buckets, and tried even then to
stop the flames; and more than one man ran to where the flames were
fiercest, preferring to die at once. Then without warning came the end.
A frightful explosion tore the air; the ship parted in the middle, for
the flame had reached the powder-magazine, and in smoke and steam and
human cries she went down, and a minute afterwards there was silence
but for the wind and blackness.
The explosion roused Mitsos and he looked up.
"What was that?" he said to Yanni.
"It is all over," replied Yanni. "She exploded and went down."
"All over, thank God!" and he sank down again.
Yanni bent to the oars, for it was hard work against the wind, and in
an hour or so he saw the lights on the quay not more than a quarter
of a mile off. It was still crowded with people who had been watching
the fire, and he kept out in the darkness until he had passed it,
and then came in closer to the shore, so as to be shielded a little
from the wind by the land, and rowed steadily on till he came to the
landing-place opposite Mitsos' house. Then he touched the other on the
shoulder.
"Get up, dear Mitsos," he said, "we are here."
Mitsos raised himself and followed Yanni across the road to the house.
They went in, locking the door behind them, and Mitsos, still silent,
lay down on the window-seat, staring out dry-eyed into the darkness.
But in a few moments a knock came, and Yanni went to the door to see
who it was.
"It is I, Lelas," said a voice.
Yanni unwillingly undid the door, and the fat, urbane café-keeper came
in, smiling.
"Eh, but you two have lost a fine sight," he said. "A Turkish ship
blazing down to the water's-edge, and then bang she went; and there'll
not be a soul to tell the tale."
Mitsos, in his window-seat, shuddered and half sat up.
"I wish there had been more on board," continued Lelas. "Why, I'd have
given a week's wage if that old Abdul and his poultry-yard of women had
been there."
Next moment he was aware of two great hands half throttling him.
"Abdul who? Which Abdul?" said Mitsos, his face close to Lelas, and
hissing out the words. "Speak, you damned pig of the pit."
"Abdul--this Abdul here--let go--Abdul Achmet, of course. He and his
went to Tripoli yesterday. May you burn in hell for throttling me, you
young devil."
But Mitsos heard nothing after "Abdul Achmet." He dropped his hold on
Lelas and stood looking across at Yanni a minute, while new life ran in
spate through his veins. Then he flung his arm round the neck of the
astonished Lelas and kissed him on the cheek.
"Oh, fat man, but I love you for what you have said," he cried. "Yanni,
Yanni, we will make the fat man drunk with wine, for he has made me
drunk with joy. Oh, oh--"
And he flung out of the room with a great shout.
Lelas felt his neck tenderly.
"Is Mitsos quite mad, or only a little mad?" he asked, severely.
"Quite mad, I think," said Yanni. "Oh, little Mitsos--wait a minute."
He found him outside, but the dry-eyed anguish was turned to a joy
which brimmed his eyes. Yanni thrust his arm through his and they stood
there a moment in silence, and had no need of speech; nor indeed were
there words in which they could frame their joy of heart.
CHAPTER IV
THE TRAINING OF THE TROOPS
Into the Greek camp on Taygetus there came flocking day by day fresh
bands of recruits from all the country-side, and in the mouths of all
were fresh tales of the rise of the Greeks. The taking of Kalamata had
been spark to tinder, and in a hundred villages the patriots had risen,
attacking and slaughtering those of the hated race who lived among
them, burning their dwellings, and capturing women and children. In
other cases, though rarely, the Turks had been prepared, and the tale
was of slaughter and pillage among the Greeks; but for the most part
the oppressors had slumbered on in their soft, indolent life till the
red hand of vengeance had gripped them. Inglorious though these deeds
were, they were inevitable, for slaves who break their bonds are not
apt to deal judicially, and vengeance--that rough justice--was in this
case very just. Then when the slaughter was done the bands would march
to join one of the two centres at Kalavryta or on Taygetus; but for the
most part the latter, for Petrobey was still commander-in-chief, and to
his army belonged the prestige of the siege and capture of Kalamata.
But soon the numbers became unmanageable, and he and Nicholas at
length resolved to strike a second blow. Messenia, in which the
only stronghold of the Sultan had been Kalamata, no longer gave
opportunity for anything but guerilla warfare, but in Arcadia there
were several fortified places which would have to be reduced, or
at any rate rendered powerless to send help to Tripoli before the
latter place was attacked. Chief among these was Karitaena, standing
on a precipitous hill above the gorge of the Alpheus, a fortified
town, almost exclusively Turkish, and it was against this place that
Petrobey suggested the second attack should be made. It was, indeed,
high time that the unorganized rabble who were pouring in should have
something to do and also learn the elements of war. So his proposal
to Nicholas was that he should organize some kind of regiment out of
these, taking with him as leaven some of the better-drilled men who
had been at Kalamata, besiege and take the place, if possible, and if
not, give the men a notion of what a forced march meant, and some idea
of military discipline. Meantime Petrobey would move his quarters into
the hills between the upper Arcadian plain and Tripoli, so that in case
of disaster Nicholas could get quickly back into connection with the
rest of the army, and, at the same time, from there the southern troops
could watch that fortress. He would, however, quarter a small body of
men in the pass between Arcadia and Messenia, and have another depot
in the present camp, so that if the Turks attempted to land troops at
Kalamata they would find the passes from Messenia both blocked.
Nicholas fell in with the scheme, and two days afterwards set out with
perhaps the least efficient army that has ever taken the field. But
he had deliberately chosen his troops from the most ill-prepared and
untrimmed of the recruits, for somehow or other all this raw material
had to be put into shape before it was possible that it should render a
creditable or useful account of itself in any serious operations. But
they were all hardy, out-of-door folk, accustomed to sleep on the hills
and eat the roughest food with health and cheerfulness, and it was just
these who would most speedily prove a drag and a demoralization if left
idle in camp.
So on the third morning they set out, at an open and scattered double,
where the mountain-side was steep, among the budding bushes and tilted
rocks, taking the short-cut down to the plain, where it might be
possible to give them some semblance of formation. The baggage and
commissariat mules had preceded them by a few hours, and were to wait
for them when they got down to marching ground.
Two days' march, or rather tramp, brought them to Megalopolis, a
sparkle in the centre of the green Arcadian plain. They found the town
in the hands of the insurgent Greeks, a body of whom, consisting of
about two hundred men, enrolled themselves under Nicholas. Here, too,
they heard the same tale of slaughter and pillage of the Turk; but
already the selfish evil which was to do such harm to the Greek cause
generally--namely, the personal greed for plunder--had crept in, and
the insurgents were wrangling over the distribution of the booty. But
Nicholas, with a fine indignation which shamed them into obedience,
though amid murmurs of suppressed grumbling, was hot with reproach.
Was it for a few piastres, he said, that they were up in arms? Was the
liberty of the nation to be weighed against a cask of wine or a Turkish
slave? And taking the whole matter into his own hands, he reserved half
the booty captured for the expenses of the war, and half he divided as
fairly as might be among the claimants.
From Megalopolis Karitaena was only a four hours' march, and he was
anxious to force the pace so as to reach it early next morning, before
rumor of their approach should have gone abroad. The Megalopolis men
were as untrained as his own, but they knew the country better, and he
organized out of them a corps of skirmishers, who should go in advance
and intercept any fugitives who might carry the news of the march
into Karitaena. The only chance of taking it was if he could find it
unprepared, like Kalamata, creep up to it at night, and either make a
night assault or draw beleaguering lines round it before he could be
attacked.
Like Kalamata, the town was pregnable only from one side, but on this
the road ran steeply up to the gate parallel with the citadel wall,
thus exposing the attacking party to a broadside fire if the besieged
were prepared. They were, in fact, more than prepared; they were
wishfully expectant, and Nicholas fell into a very neatly baited trap.
The skirmishing party had started a little before sunset, while the
others were to set out soon after, so as to reach the town by midnight
or before, if possible make a night attack, or if not, take up their
places, so that when morning dawned the citadel might find itself
beleaguered. But the skirmishers, exceeding Nicholas's instructions,
had gone too far and were seen from Karitaena, and all that night the
Turks made preparations for a long-headed manoeuvre on the morrow.
However, Nicholas arrived about midnight, and finding everything quiet,
and hearing nothing from the skirmishing party which could lead him to
think that Karitaena was prepared, reconnoitred the ground, and decided
not to attack it by night, for the gate was strong and well fortified,
and without artillery of some kind would not quickly be forced; and he
returned to the men and gave orders for the disposition of the troops.
Those who were most trustworthy, consisting of the greater part of the
Argive corps, were posted along the road and to guard the bridge over
the Alpheus, which led to Megalopolis and Tripoli; the less trained
soldiers he posted on the north and south, where there was little
likelihood of attack. He himself remained with the rawer troops, where
his presence was more likely to be needed than with the Argives, on
whom he thought he could rely.
Morning came chilly and clear, and Nicholas, on foot, early went
forward a little to see if there was yet any sign of movement in the
citadel, and, advancing to where he could see the gate, he observed
that it was open and that a couple of Turks driving mules were coming
leisurely down the path. This was an unexpected opportunity; surely
they could storm the place out of hand and have done with it; and going
back to the men, he ordered an immediate advance. The Argive troops
were to form the vanguard, then the skirmishers from Megalopolis, and
in the rear the mixed and untried men, which he led himself; in a
quarter of an hour all was ready, and, the Argive corps leading the
way, they advanced at a double up the steep path.
Then, when they were streaming up under the walls, the Turks showed
that they, too, had a word to say to these summary arrangements. A
storm of musketry fire opened on the besiegers from the length of the
wall, and, like troops unaccustomed to fire, they did the very worst
thing possible, and stopped to return it, instead of advancing. This
was hopeless, for their assailants were completely sheltered behind
the fortifications and the Greek fire did no more than innocuously
chip off pieces of mortar and stone from the walls; and, after losing
several minutes and many lives, they pressed on again gallantly enough
towards the gate, which still stood open. This brought the second part
of the army with Nicholas under fire, but they were now moving rapidly
forward, and he still hoped that they would be able to get in. But the
fire had a demoralizing effect on these raw recruits, who had seen
nothing of warfare but the pillaging of defenceless farm-houses, and
as they were shot down one after another they, too, wavered. Once the
first three ranks stopped and would have turned to run, but Nicholas,
with a voice of cheerful encouragement--"This way, boys, this way!" he
shouted. "We shall soon be past this little shower, and then comes our
turn."
His voice, the sight of him running on as a man runs to a wine-shop
under a pelting of rain, and the words which in the Greek contained
a somewhat coarse but popular joke, had the right effect, and they
doubled on again to close up the gap between them and the vanguard.
Those few minutes had been deadly expensive, yet it was a marvel to see
how these men, untried and raw as they were, but fed with hate, faced
all the horror of a well-directed fire, the grunt and gasp of death,
the involuntary cry of overwhelming physical pain, the writhing body
under foot, or, hardly less horrible, the sudden and complete striking
out of life; and Nicholas, looking back on the thinned ranks, the
terror-struck faces, but the determined advance, thought gleefully,
"These are brave men--and this is what they need."
By this time the Argives had very nearly reached the gate, but then
the defenders played their second card. Quite suddenly from inside
dashed out a band of cavalry, some five hundred in number, who rode
full speed down on them. The Argives stopped, and, attempting to make
the best of a hopeless job, the front ranks opened fire and a few
Turks fell. But the charge came on, the two met with a crash, and the
inevitable happened. The ranks of foot broke, and the men poured down
off the road onto the steep slope below like water spilled. Resistance
was not possible, and the cavalry came on hewing their way through the
congested mass of men, and in the mean time the firing from the walls
went on steadily. Nicholas seeing what had happened knew that to face
this spelled annihilation, and with a fine wisdom, though the words
were bitter in his mouth, did the best he could.
"Save yourselves," he cried; "run."
And they turned and fled down the road again, the Turkish cavalry in
their rear, hewing, hacking, and discharging their pistols. The rout
was complete, each man ran as fast as he could go, while the cavalry,
like a swarm of stinging wasps, flew hither and thither, opening out as
they reached the plain, and chasing the men as they fled single or in
batches of five or six.
Luckily for them wooded hills came down close to the plain here, and
they struck for them desperately across the narrow strip of level land,
for there the cavalry could not easily follow them, or only man to man.
Nicholas, running down the slope from the road, tripped in a bush--as
it turned out luckily for him, for a sabre at that moment swung over
the place where his head should have been; and the Turk, not waiting
to attack him singly when there were many little knots of men among
whom he could pick and choose, rode on leaving him; and Nicholas, who
had sprained his ankle slightly as he fell, plunged into the brushwood
where it was thickest, to find refuge and concealment. His rifle he
had thrown away, for it impeded his flight, and he found himself some
distance behind the others, who were going in the right direction
towards Valtetzi, where Petrobey had told them the camp would be. But
though the rout had been complete and utter, and Nicholas was far from
disguising the fact from himself, his heart was filled with a secret
exultation at the way the troops had behaved for those two or three
moments which try the courage of any man when he is being fired at and
cannot return the fire. To be shot at when a man may shoot in return,
and aim is matched with aim, is known to be strangely exhilarating, but
to be shot at and not to shoot is cold stuff for the courage. They had
been through the baptism of fire under the most trying circumstances,
and with the exception of that one moment of wavering had stood their
ground till they were told to stand no longer.
He crept painfully up the hill-side all alone, but the pursuit had
passed, and the cavalry, he could see, were returning across the plain
to the town, knowing it was useless to follow farther. That fatal road
up to the gate was strewn with corpses, almost all Greek, with only
a handful of Turks and horses. Other horses, however, were careering
riderless about the plain; and Nicholas, limping from his sprain,
thought how much more convenient it would be to go riding to Valtetzi
than to drag along his swollen foot. A quarter of a mile away he could
see two or three of the men trying to capture one of these, but they
only succeeded in frightening it, and it bolted up towards the hill
where Nicholas was, and a couple of minutes later he saw it burst
through the first belt of trees and halt on a piece of open ground
below him. There it stopped, and in a minute or so began cropping at
the short-growing grass. Its bridle, he could see, was over its head,
trailing on the ground.
Now Nicholas was an Odysseus of resource, and having lived in the open
air all his days not witlessly, he knew the manners of many beasts,
and could imitate certain of their calls to each other so that even
they were deceived; and, furthermore, his foot was one burning ache;
and, not wishing to walk more than he could help, he preferred that
this horse should come to him rather than that he should go to the
horse. It was about a hundred yards from him, but a long way below,
and it was grazing quietly. So Nicholas, to make it a little alert,
and also to assist in bringing it nearer him, took up a pebble, and
with extreme precision lobbed it over the horse, so that it fell on the
far side of him. The animal, startled by the noise, stopped grazing,
and started off at a trot in the direction away from where the pebble
had seemed to come and directly towards Nicholas. After a few yards,
however, it stopped again, and Nicholas whinnied gently. At that it
looked up again and sniffed the air, but before it had continued its
grazing he whinnied once more, and then lay flat down on his back. In a
moment the horse answered and Nicholas called to it a third time, and
heard from below that it had left the open and was pushing towards him
through the trees. Once again he called, and the answer came nearer,
and in a few moments the horse appeared ambling quickly up the steep
incline. For a moment it did not see Nicholas, for he lay flat on the
ground, half covered by the bush; but when it did, seeing he lay quite
still, it came close up to him and sniffed round him. Then quietly
reaching out a hand, he caught the bridle as it trailed on the ground.
This was satisfactory, for, besides getting a mount, he had acquired a
pistol which was stuck into its case on the holster, and getting up, he
pushed the horse forward through the trees. Half an hour's ride brought
him into a bridle-path, running loftily along the mountain-side, and
he halted here to take his bearings. Straight in front of him, and not
an hour's ride distant, stood the huddled roofs of a village, which
he took to be Serrica, but at present he could only see a few of the
outlying houses. But at the thought that this was Serrica his heart
thrilled within him, for it was the village from which his wife had
come. A wonderful return was this for him; already the work of avenging
her death had begun, and soon, please God! should a Turk be slain for
every hair of her head. Ah, the cursed race who had brought dishonor to
her, and to him a wound that could never be healed! Helen, too--little
Helen--who ran towards him, crying "Father, father!" Yes, by God, her
father heard her voice still, and her cry should not be lifted up in
vain!
In half an hour more he stopped to reconnoitre, turning off the path
among the heather. His heart pulled him thither, yet for that very
reason he would be cautious, and not risk the ultimate completeness of
his vengeance. From the slope above he watched for ten minutes more,
and, seeing no movement or sign of life in the village, concluded that
here, too, the Greeks had risen, and, after driving out the Turks, had
gone either to Petrobey or to Kalavryta. And as he looked he saw that a
dozen houses at one spot were roofless, showing by their charred beams
pointing up to the sky that they had been burned. At the end stood the
church dedicated to the Mother of God; and, oh, the bitterness of that!
It was there he had been married; from that door he had walked away
with the dearest and fairest of women, the happiest man in Greece.
Nicholas hesitated no longer; it was still an hour before noon, and he
did not care to travel during the day. He would go down once more to
the place, he would see it all again, and let its memories scourge him
into an even keener anguish, a keener lust for vengeance, and, putting
his horse to an amble down the crumbling hill-side, in ten minutes more
he stood in the straggling village street. There was the house--her
house--just in front of him, and he went there first. The door was
standing open, and inside he found, as Mitsos had found at Mistra,
the signs of a sudden departure. His brother-in-law then, to whom the
house belonged, must have gone to Petrobey, or Kalavryta, probably the
latter, and the thought was wine to him. Husband and brother, a double
vengeance, and his should be the work of three men!
He had not eaten that day, but he soon found bread, meat, and wine,
and, after stabling his horse and eating, he went out again to the
church. Every step seemed a tearing open of the wound, yet with every
step his heart was fed with fierce joy. Ah, no, Helen should not call
in vain!
The church door was open and he entered. It had not altered at all in
those twenty years since he had seen it last. Over the altar hung a
rude early painting, showing the Mother of God, and nestling in her
arms the wondrous Child. In front the remote kings did obeisance,
behind stood the ox and the ass in the stall. And casting himself down
there, in an agony bitter sweet, he prayed with fervor and faith to
the Mother of the Divine Child. All the hopes and the desires of years
were concentrated into that moment, and he offered them up humbly,
yet at his best, to the Lord and the Handmaid of the Lord. Then, in
the excitement of his ecstasy, as he gazed on that rude picture with
streaming eyes, it seemed to him that a sign of acceptance, visible
and immediate, was given him. A light as steadfast, but milder than
the sun, grew and glowed round the two figures, the rough craft of the
artist was glorified, and on the face, so human yet divine, there came
the soft and sudden graciousness of life; it was touched with a pitiful
sympathy for him, and the eyes smiled acceptance of his offering. Bowed
down by so wonderful a pity, he hid his face in his hands, faith struck
fear from his heart, and in that moment he felt that he had not prayed
alone, that his wife had knelt by him, and that it was her prayers
mingled with his that had brought for him that signal favor of the
Thrice Holy Maid on his work.
That night, as soon as the sun went down and the ways grew dark, he
went on his journey with a soul refreshed and strengthened; he felt
that the vow he had made over the dead body of his wife had been
attested and approved by Christ and the Mother of Christ, and from
that hour to the end of his life never for a day did that gracious
vision, like bread from heaven, fail to sustain and strengthen him. And
all through the clear spring night the hosts of heaven that rose and
wheeled above him were ministering spirits, and the wind that passed
cool and bracing over the hill-sides the incense which carried his
prayer upward. He, to whom vengeance belonged, had chosen him as His
humble but willing agent. His sword was the sword of the Lord.
He crossed the first range of hills by midnight, and then struck the
road which led by the khan where Mitsos and Yanni had stopped on their
way from Tripoli. It was now within two hours of daybreak, but seeing
a light in the windows, he drew rein to inquire whether Anastasis
had seen aught of the other fugitives. Looking in cautiously through
the windows, he saw that the floor was covered with Greeks, who lay
sleeping, while Anastasis, good fellow, was serving others with hot
coffee and bread.
[ILLUSTRATION: "CASTING HIMSELF DOWN THERE, IN AN AGONY BITTER SWEET,
HE PRAYED"]
Nicholas tied up his horse and went in. As he entered several of the
men in a group round the fire turned and looked to see who it was,
instinctively clutching at their knives. Then one got hastily up, and
his head was among the roof-beams.
"Uncle Nicholas!" he cried, "is it you?"
"Who else should it be, little Mitsos? And what do you here?"
"Petrobey sent me down this morning to see if anything could be seen or
heard of you, and when you did not come, and we heard from the others
what had happened, we were afraid, or almost afraid--"
"I am not so easily got rid of," said Nicholas. "Anastasis, I shall
not forget that you were good to the fugitives. Yes, I will have some
coffee."
Most of the men sleeping on the floor had awoke at the noise and were
sitting up. Nicholas took a chair and began sipping his coffee.
"Little Mitsos," he said, aloud, "I do not know what the others may
have told you has happened, but I will tell you what I saw. I saw a
body of men, who knew nothing of war, stand steady under a heavy fire
because they were told to stand. I saw them go on under it when there
was room to move, but not one did I see do aught else until I had to
set the example, and told them to run."
Mitsos grew rather red in the face.
"The cavalry charged on them, and from behind the fortifications came
a hail of bullets. And I never desire," he said, striking the table a
great thump, "nor would it be possible, to command braver men."
Mitsos held out his hand to the man nearest him.
"Christos, shake hands or knock me down," he said. "I eat my words as
one eats figs in autumn--one gulp."
"What have you been saying, little Mitsos?" asked Nicholas.
"I said they were cowards to run away. Oh, but I am very sorry! They
are bad words I am eating."
"Well, let there be no mistake, Mitsos," said Nicholas; "down they go!"
Christos, a huge, broad-shouldered country Greek, looked up at Mitsos,
grinning.
"There is no malice," he said. "I called you a liar."
"So you did, and there were nearly hard blows. Oh, we should have made
a fine fight of it, for we are neither little people. But there will
be no fighting now, unless you are wishful, for I will deny no one
anything, now Uncle Nicholas has come. Why, are you lame, uncle? How
did you get here?"
"I rode a fine Turkish horse," remarked Nicholas; "may I never ride a
finer!"
Mitsos' frank and unreserved apologies had quite restored the
amiability of those present, who, when Nicholas had entered, were
growling and indignant, for Mitsos had made himself quite peculiarly
offensive. But, though he could not clearly see how bravery was
compatible with running away, Nicholas must be taken on trust.
Nicholas had fallen in with the last batch of fugitives. Since noon
they had been streaming up the hills. Only a few apparently were
wounded, and these had been sent on on mules to the camp. Those who had
been wounded severely, it was feared, must all have fallen into the
hands of the Turks, for there had been no possibility of escape, except
by flight. Altogether Nicholas reckoned they had lost three hundred
men, and but for his own promptness in seeing the utter hopelessness
of trying to stop the cavalry charge, they would have lost five times
that number. Having satisfied himself on these points, he turned to
Mitsos again.
"How about the ship?" he said; "and when did you get back?"
"Two days after you left Taygetus," said Mitsos; and then, with a great
grin, "the ship is not."
"Tell me about it, and I, too, afterwards have something to tell."
Mitsos' story, which was, of course, news to all present, was received
with shouts of approval, though he left out that part of it which
raised the exploit to a heroism, and Nicholas smiled at him when he had
finished.
"It was well done," he said, "and I think, little Mitsos, that I, too,
have friends who will, perhaps, aid me, as they have aided you"; and he
told them the story of his strange vision.
"And by this I know," he concluded, "that our work is a work which God
has blessed, and, come what may, not for an hour will I shrink from it
or flinch till it is finished, or till my time comes. Look, the east is
already lightening! Get up, my lads, for we must push on to the camp."
In a quarter of an hour they were off, the men marching in good order
as long as they kept the road, but falling out when they had to climb
the rough hill-side. An hour's walking brought them to the top of the
hills, and on a detached spur standing alone and commanding the valley
they could see the lines of the fortifications which Petrobey was
erecting. He himself, seeing them coming while still far off, rode out
to meet them, and Nicholas spurred his horse forward.
"Praise the Virgin that you have come, Nicholas," he said, "for by
this I know that there was no disgrace."
"You are right. Had there been disgrace I should not be here. But there
was nothing but bravery among the men, and the disgrace, if so you
think it is, is on my head." And he told him what had happened.
"They are brave men," said Petrobey, "and yet I think you are the
braver for giving that order."
"I should have been a foolish loon if I had not," said Nicholas,
laughing.
CHAPTER V
THE HORNETS' NEST AT VALTETZI
Since his arrival at Valtetzi three days before, Petrobey had hardly
rested night or day. The ground he had occupied and was fortifying
with feverish haste was the top of a large spur of hill, going steeply
down into the valley, and commanding a good view of it. Its advantages
were obvious, for the cavalry, which at present they were particularly
incompetent to meet, could not possibly attack them on such a perch,
and also it would be difficult for the Turks to get up any of their
big guns, of which there were several in Tripoli, to make an assault.
They knew that in that town there were at least ten six-pounders, and
certainly fifteen more nine-pounders, though since they had occupied
the place, and found that the Turk had made no efforts whatever to
bring artillery to bear on them, Petrobey suspected, and as it turned
out rightly, that they were not all serviceable. Furthermore, occupying
Valtetzi, they cut off Tripoli from Kalamata, whither before long,
in all probability, the Turks would send a relief expedition by sea.
However, by this occupation of Valtetzi there would be two passes to
capture before they could send help to Tripoli, and, as he said, "they
will be strong men if they take this."
Tripoli itself lay about eight miles to the northeast, and at present
the whole body of Greeks was occupied in fortifying the post they had
taken. A village, largely Turkish, had stood on the spot, and the
demolition of the houses went on from daybreak to nightfall to make
material for building up a defensive wall. The soldiers, meantime, as
their barracks were converted into fortifications, substituted for
them huts made of poles woven in with osiers and brushwood, similar to
those they used on Taygetus. The walls, it must be confessed, presented
a curiously unworkmanlike aspect--here and there a course of regular
square stones would be interrupted by a couple of Byzantine columns
from the mosque, or the capital of a Venetian pillar in which a strange
human-faced lion looked out from a nest of conventional acanthus
leaves. Farther on in the same row would come a packet of roof tiles
plastered together with mud, and a plane-tree standing in the line of
the wall was pressed into the service, and supplied the place of a big
stone for eight upright courses. Above that it had been sawn off, and
the next section of the trunk being straight made a wooden coping for
five yards of wall. Here a chimney-pot filled with earth and stones
took its place among solider materials; here a hearthstone placed on
end, with two inches of iron support for the stewing-pot, staring
foolishly out into vacancy. Then came a section where the builders had
drawn from a richer quarry, and a fine slab of porphyry and two _rosso
antico_ pillars formed an exclusive coterie in the midst of rough
blocks of limestone. But though heterogeneous and uncouth, the walls
were stout and high, and, as Petrobey said, their business was not to
build a pretty harem to please the women.
Inside, a hardy sufficiency was the note. The soldiers' huts, though
small, would stand a good deal of rough weather; they were built
squarely in rows, camp-wise, and the floors were shingled with gravel
from a quarry close by. Two houses only had been kept, in one of
which were stored the arms, in the other the ammunition, Petrobey and
Nicholas, as before, occupying huts exactly like those tenanted by the
common soldiers. The mules and herds of sheep and goats were driven
out every morning under an armed escort to pasture on the hills near,
and penned to the south of the camp for the night. Food was plentiful,
and the men seemed well content, for the booty already taken was very
considerable.
In ten days more, before the end of April, the walls were complete, and
Petrobey, following out the plan he had formed from the first, sent out
daily and nightly skirmishing expeditions, who made unlooked-for raids
on the villages scattered on the plain about Tripoli, the inhabitants
of which, feeling secure in their neighborhood to the fortress, had
not yet sought refuge within its walls. Men, women, and children alike
were slain, the valuables seized, the flocks and herds driven up to
the camp, and the villages burned. In such operations, inglorious and
bloody it is to be feared, but a necessary part of the programme of
extermination, which the Greeks believed, not without cause, to be
their only chance of freedom, their losses were almost to be numbered
on the fingers; once or twice some house defended by a few men inside
resisted the attack and fired upon them, in which case the assailants
did not scruple to set light to the place; and in ten days more only
heaps of smoking ruins remained of the little white villages, which had
been dotted among the vineyards like flocks of feeding sheep.
Petrobey also established another small camp on the hills to the east
of Tripoli, to guard the road between it and the plain of Argos and
Nauplia. They had already intercepted and had a small skirmish with
troops coming to that place from Nauplia. The loss on the Greek side
was about one hundred; on that of the Turks nearly double, for when
it came to hand-to-hand fighting the slow and short-legged Turk was
no match for the fresh vigor of the mountain-folk. On this occasion
they had lain in ambush on both sides of the road, and opened fire
simultaneously at the regiment as it passed. The Turks had with them
a contingent of cavalry, but on the rocky and wooded ground they were
perfectly useless; and their infantry, leaving the road, had driven
the Greeks from their ground, though in the first attack they had lost
severely. But this readiness to retreat when necessary, and not waste
either powder or lives profitlessly, was in accordance with the policy
which Nicholas had indicated, and had been the first to put in practice
at Karitaena; and it was exactly this harassing, guerilla warfare,
in which cavalry could not be brought into play, in which attack
was unexpected and flight was immediate upon any sign of a regular
engagement, which made the Turks feel they were fighting with shadows.
Though their number at the beginning of the war exceeded those of the
Greeks, yet each engagement of the kind lessened them in a far greater
proportion than their enemies, who seemed, on the other hand, to be
mustering fresh troops every day. Had Petrobey at this period consented
to give battle in the plains it is probable that his army would have
been wiped out if they had fought to a close, and it says much for his
wisdom that he persisted in a policy which was tedious and distasteful
to him personally. But the Greeks were acquiring every day fresh
experience and knowledge, while the strength of the Turks, which lay in
their admirable cavalry and their guns, was lying useless.
In the north, however, affairs had not sped so prosperously. Germanos,
who was practically commander-in-chief of the army at Kalavryta--less
wise than his colleague at Valtetzi--had risked an attack on the
citadel at Patras and suffered a severe defeat. As at Karitaena, a
cavalry charge ought to have made him follow Nicholas's example, but
he stuck with misplaced bravery to his attempt, until a second body of
cavalry took him in the rear and cut off his retreat. With desperate
courage his men cut their way through the latter, but a remnant only
came through; his loss was enormous compared to that sustained by the
Turks, and nothing was gained by it, for the citadel of Patras still
remained in the hands of the enemy.
News of this disaster was brought to Valtetzi about the 5th of May,
with the information that Turkish soldiers, consisting of eight hundred
cavalry and fifteen hundred infantry, had set out eastward along the
Gulf of Corinth, under the command of an able Turkish officer, Achmet
Bey. Five days afterwards it was reported that they had reached Argos,
and next day, while a skirmishing party engaged the Greeks on the
hills opposite, the rest of the force passed quietly down the road and
reached Tripoli the same evening. It was a splendid achievement boldly
and successfully carried out, and Petrobey from that hour held himself
in readiness to repel any attack that might be made.
Achmet Bey found Tripoli in a poorer state than the Greeks knew, for
their incessant ravages on the plain, their destruction of crops and
capture of flocks and herds, as well as the great influx of population,
had even now begun to make themselves felt within the walls, for the
town and the plain in which it stood were cut off from all assistance,
and the plain lay barren and desolate. He saw at once that it was
necessary to establish connection with Messenia, for the plain of
Argos was occupied by bands of insurgent Greeks, and he had himself
scarcely won his way through. Though its port, Nauplia, was still in
the hands of the Turks, it also was isolated from connection with the
main-land by the insurgents of the plain; and the newly created Greek
fleet from the islands of Hydra and Spetzas kept it in a state of
semi-blockade by sea, and all provisions were got in with difficulty
and consumed in the town. But Achmet Bey, not knowing that Petrobey had
established posts on the passes over Taygetus from Kalamata and into
Arcadia, thought that a successful attack on Valtetzi would enable them
to open regular communication with Messenia, and so with the sea.
It was early on the morning of the 24th of May that the attack was
made. At dawn the sentries on the walls of Valtetzi saw a troop of
cavalry issue from the southern gate of Tripoli, followed by long
columns of infantry, and in a quarter of an hour the camp was humming
like swarming bees. Petrobey had established a system of signals with
the post on the other side of the valley, but he made no sign to them,
for it seemed possible that Achmet, hoping to draw them into the plain,
would try to seize the pass they held, which communicated with Argos.
It was a clear blue morning after a cold night, and the troops,
defiling from the gate, looked at that distance like lines of
bright-mailed insects. First, came the infantry marching in eight
separate columns, each containing some five hundred men; next, a long
line of baggage-mules, followed by horses pulling two guns; and last,
the cavalry on black Syrian horses very gayly caparisoned. Nicholas had
an excellent telescope, which he had been given by the captain of an
English ship in return for some service, and he and Petrobey watched
them until the gates closed again behind.
Petrobey shut up the glass with a happy little sigh.
"That will do very nicely," he said to Nicholas. "They will want to
entice us and our post on the other side into the plain; but I think
we will both of us just stay at home. I don't want to meet those
gay cavalry just now, nor yet those two bright guns. We will have
breakfast, dear cousin."
The bugle sounded for rations, and Petrobey told the men to eat well,
"for," said he, "there will be no dinner to-day, I am thinking,
but"--and his eye sparkled as he pointed to the enemy--"there will,
perhaps, be a little supper."
The men grinned, and soon the light-blue smoke went up from a hundred
fires where they were making their coffee. Two or three sentries only
remained on the walls, who were told to report to Petrobey when the
column left the road on which it was marching and turned off either
westward towards Valtetzi or eastward towards the post on the opposite
hills. He and Nicholas had hardly sat down to breakfast, however, when
an orderly ran in saying that the post on the other side of the valley
was signalling. Petrobey finished an egg beaten up with sugar and milk
before replying.
"I am not of the signalling corps, my friend," he said; "let the
message be read and brought to me. Some more coffee, Nicholas; it
strikes me as particularly good this morning."
The message from the signalling body came back in a minute or two. They
were merely asking for orders.
"Stop where you are," dictated Petrobey, "and watch to see if Turkish
reinforcements are coming from Argos. If so, signal here at once. If
the troops which have come out of Tripoli turn and attack you, run
away, drawing them after you if possible. There will be fighting for
us. Pray for your comrades."
"And now, dear cousin," he said to Nicholas, when they had finished
breakfast, "we will talk, if you please."
An hour afterwards an orderly came in to say that the troops had left
the road and were making straight towards Valtetzi, and Petrobey got up.
"Every one to his post on the walls," he said, "but let no one fire
till the word is given. Yanni, take the order to all the captains of
the companies."
The wall was pierced in all its length with narrow slits for firing,
and in half an hour each of these was occupied by four men, two of whom
could fire at the same time, while the two behind were employed in
reloading their muskets. Outside, the walls were some nine feet high,
built on ground which sloped rapidly away in some places at roof angle
for two hundred feet, while inside it rose to within five feet of the
top of the wall. There a man standing up could see over, and Petrobey
took up his place over the gate, where he could watch the troops.
He observed that the infantry had separated into two parties, one of
which had left the road and was marching away from them towards the
post on the other side of the valley, while the other and larger half
was advancing towards them. The cavalry followed the latter, but halted
when the hills began to rise more steeply out of the plain. The smaller
portion of the infantry was evidently going to try to draw the Greeks
from the far post down into the plain, while the cavalry who stayed at
the bottom of the pass below Valtetzi would hinder help being sent from
there. This Petrobey noticed with a pleasant smile. The others knew
exactly what to do, and meantime the force which would assault Valtetzi
would be weakened by more than a quarter of its men. Most of it,
however, consisted of Albanian mercenaries who were largely in Turkish
pay, and who, as he well knew, earned their pay, for they were men of
the hills and the open air, who could use a sword and were masters of
their limbs.
Each hundred men in the Greek camp--that is to say, twenty-five of
these groups of four--were under the orders of a captain, who in turn
was under the direction of Petrobey, and in all about two thousand men
lined the walls. Of the remainder, fifty were employed in distributing
ammunition, and were in readiness to bring fresh supplies to the
defenders; a hundred more were ready to take the place of any who might
be killed at their posts; and the rest, some eight hundred men, were
standing under arms on the small parade-ground in the centre of the
camp, under command of Nicholas. They would not, however, according to
the scheme he and Petrobey had devised, be required just yet, and he
told them to pile arms and fall out, but not to leave the ground so
that they could not be recalled in a moment if wanted. Mitsos was in
attendance on Nicholas, and Yanni stood by Petrobey ready to take his
orders to any part of the camp.
An hour elapsed before the Albanian infantry appeared above the
ridge some five hundred yards off, and still in the Greek camp there
was perfect silence. Then, opening out, they advanced at a double,
intending evidently to try to storm the place. But they had clearly
not known how completely it had been fortified, and while they were
still about four hundred yards off they halted at a word of command and
sheltered among the big bowlders that strewed the hill-side. Still, in
the Greek camp there was no sound or movement, only Yanni ran across
to Nicholas with the order "Be ready," and he called his men up and
they stood in line with their arms. Then a word was shouted by the
commander of the advancing troop, and Petrobey saw the Albanians all
massing behind a small spur of hill about a quarter of a mile away,
where they were hidden from sight.
There was a long pause; each individual man in the camp knew that the
enemy was close, that in a few minutes the shot would be singing, but
in the mean time they could not see any one. Two miles away on the
plain stood the glittering mailed insects, the Turkish cavalry; and six
miles off, a mere black speck, was the troop which had gone across to
the east. The suspense was almost unbearable; every nerve was stretched
to its highest tension, and every man exhibited his nervous discomfort
in his own peculiar way. Christos, who was stationed at one of the
loop-holes straight towards the enemy, merely turned cold and damp and
wiped the sweat off his forehead with a flabby hand, expectorating
rapidly; Yanni, on the other hand, at his post by Petrobey, had a mouth
as dry as sirocco, got very red in the face, and swore gently and
atrociously to himself; a young recruit from Megalopolis suddenly threw
back his head and laughed, and the sergeant of his company vented his
own tension by cuffing him over the ears, and yet the boy laughed on;
Mitsos, standing by Nicholas, whistled the "Song of the Vine-diggers"
between his teeth; Father Andréa, who had begged to be allowed to serve
in some way, and was a loader for the two men next Petrobey, chanted
over and over again gently below his breath the first verse of the
"Te Deum," last sung at Kalamata; Nicholas stood still, his hawk eyes
blazing; but most were quite silent, shifting uneasily at their posts,
standing now on one leg, now on the other. Petrobey, perhaps alone,
for he had to think for them all, was quite calm, and his mind fully
occupied. The spur behind which the Albanians were massed was almost
opposite the gate over which he stood. The chances were that they would
try to storm it, perhaps try to storm both the gates together, the
other of which was diagonally opposite to him.
At last round the shoulder of the hill poured the troops in two
divisions, still four hundred yards distant. When the rear had come
into the open, the first were about two hundred and seventy yards off,
and Petrobey, glancing hastily at their numbers and disposition, spoke
to Yanni without turning his head.
"They will make a double attack here and on the other gate," he said.
"Run like hell there, and direct the fire yourself; you know the order."
Yanni rushed across the camp, and just as he got up to the other gate
he heard a volley of musketry from Petrobey's side. The Albanians had
separated into two columns, one of which, skirting round the camp out
of musket-range, soon appeared opposite the second gate, at a distance
of about two hundred and fifty yards. He waited till he saw the whites
of their eyes, and then "Fire!" he cried.
They were moving in open file at first, but they closed as they got
nearer, and a solid column of men advanced at a rapid double up the
hundred yards incline. The first volley took them when the foremost
were about sixty yards off, but it was rather wild, and the men for
the most part shot over their heads. Two more volleys were delivered
with greater precision before they got up to the gate, but they still
pressed on. A party of men had halted on the hill behind, about a
hundred and twenty yards off, and were returning the fire, but without
effect, for the defenders were protected by the wall, and the bullets
either struck that or whistled over the top.
Meantime the Greeks in the centre of the walls between the two gates
were still unemployed, but before ten seconds were passed Petrobey saw
that they would be wanted, and he sent a sergeant flying across to
marshal them, the first rows kneeling, the others standing, opposite
the gate on which he stood, which he saw was on the point of yielding
to the assault. Nicholas, meantime, had drawn up his men by the gate
opposite, and was prepared, in case it was forced, to receive them in
the same manner.
Before five minutes had elapsed since the first appearance of the
Albanians round the hill, Petrobey's gate burst in with a crash, but
the assailants were met by a torrent of bullets from those in reserve
inside, which fairly drove them off their feet, and next moment the
gate was clear again. Then Nicholas knew his time had come. He divided
his men into two parts, and, charging out at the wrecked gate, led
them at a double's double, half to the right, half to the left, round
the camp, and close under the walls, so that the Greeks' fire went
over their heads, and they fell on both flanks of the Albanians who
were attacking the opposite gate. At that moment, Yanni, seeing what
was happening, stopped the fire from inside the walls, and at an order
from Petrobey caused the gate to be opened, and a company of those who
had been manning the walls hurled themselves onto the assailants. This
triple attack was irresistible, and in a couple of minutes more the
phalanx of Albanians was in full rout, and the hill-sides were covered
with groups of men in individual combat. The party they had left on the
hill, being no longer able to fire into the mêlée, rushed down to join
in the scrimmage, and Petrobey, leaving only a small number of men
inside, sufficient to defend both gates, called out all the rest and
headed in person the charge on the first attacking party.
Up and down the stony hill-sides chased, and were chased, the Greeks.
Now and then a party of Albanians would try to form in some sort of
order to make a combined assault on the broken-down gate, and as often
they were scattered again by knots of men who rushed wildly upon
them from all sides. In point of numbers, the Albanians had had the
advantage at the first attack, but that short-range fire from the walls
had been of a decimating nature, and now the Greeks had the superiority.
Mitsos, who had gone out with Nicholas, found himself almost swept off
his feet by the rush of his own countrymen from the gate, and for a few
moments he was carried along helpless, neither striking nor being able
to strike, but with a curious red happiness in his heart, singing the
"Song of the Vine-diggers," though he knew not he was singing it. Then
suddenly at his elbow appeared a glaring, fierce face, as crimson as
sunset, and he found himself jammed shoulder to shoulder with Yanni,
who was swearing as hard as he could lay tongue to it, not that he was
angry, but because the madness of fighting was on him, and it happened
to take him that way.
"Don't shout, you big pig," called he to Mitsos; "why, in the name of
all the devils in the pit, don't you get out of my way?"
"Fat old Yanni!" shouted Mitsos. "Come on, little cousin.
"'Dig we deep among the vines.'
Eh, but there are fine grapes for the gathering!"
"Go to hell!" screamed Yanni. "Hullo, Mitsos, this is better."
They had squeezed themselves out into a backwater of the congested
stream of men, and in full front stood a great hairy Albanian with his
sword just raised to strike. But Mitsos, flying at him like a wild-cat,
threw in the man's face the hand which grasped his short, dagger-like
sword as you would throw a stone; the uplifted sword swung over his
back harmlessly, while the blade of his own dagger made a great red
rent in the man's face, and he fell back.
"Your mother won't know you now," sang out Mitsos, burying his knife in
his throat. "'Dig we deep'--that's deep enough, Yanni--'the summer's
here.'"
There was little work for muskets, for no man had time or room to load,
and Yanni went on his blasphemous way swinging his by the barrel, and
dealing blows right and left with the butt, and in a few minutes he and
Mitsos found themselves out of the crowd alone but for a dead Greek
lying there, on a little hillock some fifty yards from the gate, while
the fight flickered up and down on each side of them.
"Eh, but there's little breath left in this carcass," panted Yanni.
"Why, Mitsos, your head's all covered with blood; there's a slice out
of your forehead."
[Illustration: "MITSOS, FLYING AT HIM LIKE A WILD-CAT"]
Mitsos' black curls, in fact, were dripping from a cut on his head,
and what with the blood and the dust and the sweat, he was in a fine
mess; but he himself had not known he was touched. Yanni bound it up
for him with a strip of his shirt, and the two ran down again into the
fight. There the tide was strongly setting in favor of the Greeks;
but the Albanians were beginning to form again on a spur of rock,
and stragglers from below kept joining them. Petrobey, thinking that
this was preparatory to another attack on the gate, as an additional
defence drew off some hundred men from the Mainats--who had stuck
together, and were the only company who preserved even the semblance
of order--when he saw that there was no such intention on the enemy's
part, for the body suddenly wheeled and disappeared over the brow of
the hill in the direction of the plain, followed by those who were
fighting in other parts of the field. For the time they had had enough
of this nest of hornets.
They retreated in good order, pursued by skirmishing parties from the
Greeks, who followed them with derision, and bullets; but Petrobey's
orders had been that they should not advance beyond the broken ground
and expose themselves to an attack by the cavalry, and in half an hour
more they had all come back to camp.
The skirmish had lasted about three hours; but Petrobey knew that
the fighting was not over yet. The cavalry had been moved from the
plain onto one of the lower foothills to which the routed Albanians
retreated, while the detachment which had started as if to attack the
Greek post on the hills to the east had evidently been recalled, for
it had passed the road along which the troops had first come, and was
now marching straight across the narrow strip of plain which separated
it from the range on which Valtetzi stood; an hour afterwards it had
joined the cavalry below, and half an eye could see that another
assault was being planned. The long train of baggage mules was left
on the plain, but between them and the Greeks was the whole body
of Albanian and Turkish troops, which, so it had seemed, and not
incautiously, to Achmet Bey, was protection enough. Soon it was seen
that the troops were in motion again, and the whole body of infantry
and cavalry together moved up the slope towards the camp. They were
marching up one side of a long ravine which was cut in the mountain
from top to bottom, and they had posted scouts along the two ridges to
guard against any attack which might be contemplated from their flank.
Half a mile farther up, however, the cavalry halted, for the ground was
getting too steep and bowlder-sown to permit a farther advance; but in
case of sudden retreat they could prevent pursuit being carried farther.
Petrobey saw what was coming, but he hesitated. His mouth watered after
the baggage train below, but he feared to weaken the defence of the
camp by sending men for that purpose. Nicholas, however, was clear.
Guns and ammunition and baggage were fine things in their way, but not
worth measurable risk; every hand was needed at Valtetzi, and, besides,
any movement from the Greek camp, even if they sent the men round by a
circuitous route down the next ravine, would be observed by the scouts;
an opportunity, however, might come later.
For three hours more desultory and skirmishing attacks were made by
the Albanians on the camp; four times they advanced a column right up
to one or other gate, and as many times it was driven back--twice by
a sortie from the inside, twice by the heavy firing from the walls;
and at last, as the sun began to decline towards the west, they were
called back, and retreated hurriedly towards the cavalry. Then Nicholas
saw the opportunity; the scouts had been withdrawn from the ridges,
for they no longer expected an attack from the flank, and he with a
hundred Mainats set off down a parallel ravine hotfoot to the plain,
while the rest of the men, under Petrobey's orders, followed the enemy
at a distance, keeping their attention fixed on them in expectation of
another attack. Achmet Bey at last thought that the Greeks had fallen
into the trap he had baited so many times, and hoped to draw them down
into the plain, where he would turn and crush them with his cavalry.
They were already approaching the last hill which bordered on the level
ground when Petrobey, who kept his eye on the plain, saw Nicholas and
his band wheel round the baggage animals, shooting down their drivers,
and force them up the ravine down which they had come. On the moment
he gave the order to fire, and the Greeks poured a volley into the
rear of the infantry. The Turks were fairly caught. If Achmet sent the
cavalry on to rescue the baggage, the Greeks, whose numbers were now
far superior to the infantry, would in all probability annihilate them;
if, on the other hand, he kept the cavalry to support the infantry, the
baggage would be lost. He chose the lesser evil, and as the ground was
now becoming smoother and more level, he directed the cavalry to charge
on the Greeks, and Petrobey fairly laughed aloud.
"Run away, run away," he cried; "let not two men remain together."
The cavalry charged, but there was simply nothing to charge. Up the
hill-sides in all directions fled the Greeks, choosing the stoniest and
steepest places, and dispersing as they ran as a ball of quicksilver
breaks and is spread to all parts of the compass.
Again the retreat of the Turks began, and once more the Greeks gathered
and engaged their attention. In the growing dusk no attack could be
made, for the horses were already beginning to stumble and pick their
way carefully to avoid falling, while the Greeks still hung on their
rear and flanks like a swarm of stinging insects. When the hills began
to sink into the plain Petrobey, too, sounded the retreat, and the men,
though tired and hungry, went singing up the hill-side. At first some
sang the "Song of the Vine-diggers," others the "Fountain Mavromati,"
others the "Swallow Song," but by degrees the "Song of the Klepht"
gained volume, and by the time they entered the camp again the men were
all singing it, and it rang true to the deed they had wrought. And thus
they sang:
"Mother, to the Turk
I will not be a slave,
That will I not endure.
Let me take my gun,
Let me be a Klepht,
Dwelling with the beasts
On the hills and rocks;
Snow shall be my coverlet,
Stones shall be my bed.
Weep not, mother; mother, mine,
Pray that many Turks
Bite the dust through me."
CHAPTER VI
THE ENTRY OF GERMANOS
Petrobey was not slow to follow up his advantage. By them in their
mountain nests the Ottoman force now in Tripoli was evidently not to
be feared in the offensive, nor could it dislodge the Greeks from the
positions they had taken up upon the high and hilly ground. On the
other hand, the Greeks were not capable of meeting cavalry, and they
must at present keep to the hills, and not attempt to blockade the town
closely, for in so doing they would have to leave their heights for
the plain in which the fortress stood, and expose themselves to the
horse. But with the ever-increasing numbers that were e flocking to the
Greek standard, the camp at Valtetzi was rapidly getting insufficient
in accommodation, and at the same time any additional position on the
hills would be another link in the iron chain which was being forged
round the town; and now, when it was unlikely that the Turks would risk
a further engagement at once, was the moment for advancing another step.
Exactly to the west of Tripoli, and within rifle-shot of its walls,
stood three steep spurs of hill, known as Trikorpha. The same stir
of primeval forces which threw up the crag on which Valtetzi stood,
must have cast them up bubbling and basaltic through some volcanic
vent-hole, long after the great range behind was fixed. They were like
the ragged peaks of slag cast out by a gaseous coal consuming in the
fire, and, standing some four hundred feet above the plain, were yet
most conveniently near the town. Nearly at the top gushed out a riotous
cold stream from the dark lips of the rocks, fringed with shivering
maidenhair and dripping moss, and behind on the mountain was good
pasturage for flocks. Lower down, where the stream-bed widened, burst
a luxuriant patch of oleanders and stiff cushions of cistus and _spina
sacra_; but the heights themselves, save for the water-course, were
barren. The three peaks were joined to each other by a sharp rocky
ridge, but all were isolated from the mountains on one side and the
plain on the other.
Petrobey set about securing this position without delay, though, in
truth, the Turks were in no temper to prevent him, and the work sped
apace. The place was nigh impregnable, and the walls, of rough blocks
of stone gathered from the peaks, were made as much with a view to
clearing the ground for the soldiers' huts as to providing the place
with a defensible wall. From here, too, by night they could push their
devastating raids right under the walls of Tripoli itself, for it was
but a stone-cast to the foot of their eyry; and early in June the
larger part of the men encamped at Valtetzi took up their quarters in
this new nest, swarming there as in spring the overfull hive sends out
its colonists. The Argive corps remained in the old nest, under the
command of Demetri, who the year before had been mayor of Nauplia,
while in the new position the Mainats, under Petrobey, occupied the
northernmost of the three peaks; Nicholas, with a regiment chiefly of
Arcadian troops, the southernmost; and in the centre a smaller body
from the parts about Sparta, under the command of a local chieftain,
whom they had followed, one Poniropoulos, a man as crooked in mind and
morality as a warped vine-stem, but who, as he was chosen leader by his
contingent, was of necessity in command.
Meantime from every part of the country was coming in news no longer
of butchery of unarmed Turks in defenceless farm-houses, but of
regular sieges of Turkish towns, sometimes successful, sometimes still
protracted and of uncertain issue. Several of the Greek islands,
notably Psara, Spetzas, and Hydra, had risen, and had already sent
out that which was so sorely needed--a fleet to watch the coasts
and destroy Turkish ships--thus preventing them from bringing men,
provisions, or ammunition into the Peloponnesus. Already during May had
this fleet performed some notable exploits, chief among which was the
destruction of a Turkish frigate bringing arms and men from a port in
Asia Minor. She was caught just outside Nauplia, and, after a desperate
resistance, boarded and taken. Only two days later two Hydriot brigs
overtook a vessel sailing from Constantinople to Egypt with rich
presents on board from the Sultan Mahmud to Mehemet Ali, a cargo which
caused shame and dishonor to the captors. All on board were ruthlessly
murdered, the persons of women were searched for treasure, which they
might have concealed about them, and the sailors, disregarding the
convention under which they sailed, whereby one-half of the prize
taken was appropriated to the conduct of the war, seized on the whole
and divided it up, and, fired by the lust of wealth so easily gotten,
became privateers rather than fellow-workers in a war for liberty.
Returning to Hydra, they found embroilments of all sorts going on
between the primates and the captains of their fleet, and throwing in
their lot with the former, they cemented the alliance with a sufficient
share of their booty and prepared for sea again, each man thinking
for naught but his own coffers. Yet there were tales of exploits and
great heroisms also, and notable among them the deeds of the Capsina,
a girl of Hydra, and head of the clan of Capsas, who sailed her own
ship, working havoc among the Turks. There was something strangely
inspiriting in the tale, for it seemed she took nothing for herself,
but gave all her prizes to the war fund; also, she was more beautiful
than morning, and dazzled the eyes of men.
On the second cruise three ships from Spetzas crossed straight over to
the Peloponnesus to assist in the blockade of Monemvasia, which was
besieged on the land side by a freshly enrolled body of men from the
southern peninsula, chiefly from Sparta and the outlying portions of
Argos. The town was known to be very wealthy, and the commander of the
Greeks, finding that until communication by sea was intercepted it was
impossible to starve the town out, while his own force was inadequate
to storm it, had invited the co-operation of the fleet, stipulating
that a third of the spoil taken should go to the soldiers, one-third
to the fleet, and one-third to the national treasury. But scarcely had
the ships arrived when quarrels began to break out between the fleet
and the army; a spirit of mutual mistrust and suspicion was abroad;
and the soldiers, on one hand, accused the fleet of making a private
contract with the besieged, to the effect that their lives would be
spared and themselves conveyed to Asia Minor in ships on the surrender
of their property; while the sailors brought a counter-accusation that
there was a plot on foot among the infantry to attempt to storm the
town and carry off the booty before they could claim their share. Every
one looked after his own interest, and the only matter that was quite
disregarded was the interest of the nation. But to the soldiers more
intolerable than all was the conduct of three primates from Spetzas,
who took upon themselves the airs and dignities which the Greeks had
been accustomed to see worn by Turkish officials; and though to a great
extent this war was a religious war, yet the peasants had no mind to
see the places their masters had occupied tenanted anew by any one.
This example of the island primates was to a certain extent followed
by their brethren on the main-land. There had sprung into existence,
in the last month or so, two great powers in Greece, the army and
the church, still in that time the mistress of men's souls; and the
primates, who before the Turkish supremacy had been temporal as well
as spiritual princes, wished to see themselves reinstated in the
positions they had held. Many of them too, such as Germanos, at Patras,
had worked with a true and simple purpose for the liberation of their
country; and now that the people were beginning to reap the fruits of
their labors, they looked to receive their due, and their demands, on
the whole, were just. But never were demands made at so unseasonable an
opportunity, for while the military leaders shrugged their shoulders,
saying "This is our work as yet," they obtained but a divided
allegiance, for the people were devoted to their church. The result
was a most unhappy distrust and suspicion between the two parties. The
primates openly said that the object of the military leaders was their
own aggrandizement to the detriment of other interests, the military
leaders that their reverend friends were interfering in concerns
outside of their province. Even greater complications ensued when the
primates themselves, as in the case of Germanos, were men who fought
with earthly weapons, and he, taking strongly the side of the church as
against the army, was the cause of much seditious feeling.
The personal ascendency of Petrobey and Nicholas was a large mitigation
of these evils in the army at Tripoli, but both felt that their
position was unsettled, depending only on popular favor, and matters
came to a crisis when Germanos himself came to the camp from Patras
with an armed following. To do the man justice, it was jealousy for
the church, not the personal greed of power, which inspired him; as
a prince of that body and a vicar of Christ, he had invested himself
with the insignia of his position. But it was the royalty of his Master
and not His humility which he would fain represent, and if he had
remembered the entry of One into His chosen city, meek and sitting upon
an ass and a colt, the foal of an ass, his heart would have been better
turned to the spirit of the King of kings.
Not as such entered Germanos into the camp. Before him went a body
of armed men, followed by six acolytes swinging censers, then the
cross-bearer, holding high his glittering silver symbol wrought
but lately, on which Germanos had lavished the greater part of the
booty which had been his at the taking of Kalavryta, and then borne
in a chair on the shoulders of four monks the archbishop himself.
His head was bare, for in his hands he carried the gold vessels of
the sacrament, those which the Emperor Palæologus had given to the
monastery at Megaspelaion, and over his shoulders flowed his thick,
black hair, just touched with gray. His cope, another priceless
treasure from his own sacristy, was fastened round in front of his
neck with a gold clasp, set with one huge, ancient emerald. It covered
him from shoulder almost to foot, all shimmering white of woven silk,
with a border wrought with crimson and gold pomegranates, and thinly
below showed the white line of the alb and the ends of his embroidered
stole. Of his other vestments, seven in all, the girdle was a rope of
gold thread, the knee-piece hanging below it was embroidered with the
three Levitical colors, the cuffs were of lace from Kalabaka, and the
chasuble was of cambric, close fitting and sleeved according to the use
of Metropolitans. Behind came another priest carrying the office of the
church, bound in crimson leather with gold clasps, and the remainder of
his armed guard followed--in all, three hundred men.
[Illustration: "BORNE IN A CHAIR ON THE SHOULDERS OF FOUR MONKS"]
It was an act of inconceivable folly, but a folly of a certain
magnificent sort, for in Germanos's mind the only thought had been the
glory of the church. He had travelled five days from Kalavryta, and so
far he had been received by the posts of the Greek army with reverence
and respect. But his reception here, he knew, was the touchstone of
the success of his party, for the scornful Mainats looked askance on
clergy, and left them to do their praying alone. But he had come, so he
believed, to demand the vassalage of the people to the King of kings,
and that duty, so he thought, admitted neither delay nor compromise.
Yanni, who was lounging on the wall with Mitsos in the afternoon sun,
preparatory to starting on a night raid down in the plains, saw him
coming and whistled ominously.
"There will be mischief," he said, softly, to Mitsos. "Germanos is a
good man and true, but these little primates are not all like him."
"I wish they would leave us alone," grumbled Mitsos; "that little
monkey-faced Charalambes is doing a peck of harm. He tells the men that
all the fighting is for the glory of God. I dare say it is, but there
are blows to be struck, and a paper man would strike as well as he. Oh,
Yanni, but Germanos has got all his fine clothes on. Would I had been
born an archbishop!"
The procession was now passing close under them, and, looking closer,
Yanni saw what Germanos carried, and got down and stood uncovered,
crossing himself. Mitsos saw too and followed his example, but frowning
the while. It struck him somehow that this was not fair play.
Petrobey received the archbishop with the greatest respect, and had
erected for him another hut next his own. An order went round the
camp that every man was to attend mass, which would be celebrated at
daybreak the following day; but after supper that night Petrobey,
Nicholas, and the archbishop talked long together. Mitsos, to his great
delight, was put in command of some twenty young Mainats, who were to
prowl about and do damage, along with other parties, and Germanos, who
looked on the boy with peculiar favor, gave him his blessing before he
set out.
"You were ever a man who could deal with men," he said to Nicholas, as
the boy went out, "and you have trained the finest lad in Greece. But
we have other things to talk of, and let us shake hands first, for I
know not whether what I have to say will find favor with you. For we
are friends, are we not?"
Nicholas smiled.
"Old friends, surely," he said. "May we long be so!"
"That is well," said Germanos, seating himself; "but first I have to
tell you news which I hope may bind us even closer together, though
with a tie of horror and amazement. Our patriarch, Gregorios, whom I
think you knew, Nicholas, was executed at Constantinople on Easter Day,
by order of the Sultan!"
Nicholas and Petrobey sprang from their seats.
"Gregorios!" they exclaimed in whispered horror.
"Executed, dying the most shameful death, hanged at the gate of the
Patriarchate. Ah, but the vengeance of God is swift and sure, and the
blood of another martyr cries from the ground. Oh, let this bind us
together; hanged, the death of a dog; he, the holiest of men."
Germanos bowed his head and there was silence for a moment.
"That was not enough," he continued, his voice trembling with a
passionate emotion. "For three days he hung there, and the street dogs
leaped up to bite at the body. Then it was given to the Jews, and I
would sooner have seen it devoured by the dogs than cast into the hands
of those beasts; and they dragged it through the streets and threw it
into the sea. But pious men watched it and took it to Odessa, where it
was given burial such as befits the body of one of the saints of God.
And though dead, he works, for on the ship that took it there was a
woman stricken with paralysis, and they brought her to touch the body,
and she went away whole."
Nicholas was sitting with his face in his hands, but at this he looked
up.
"Glory to God!" he cried, "for in heaven His martyr now pleads for us."
Petrobey crossed himself.
"Glory to God!" he repeated. "But tell us more, father; what was the
cause of this?"
"He died for us," said Germanos; "for the liberty of the Greeks. As
you know, he was in the secrets of the patriots, and one of the agents
of the club which supplied funds for the war was found to have letters
from the patriarch, which showed his complicity. Immediately after the
execution the election for a new patriarch took place, and Eugenios, of
Pisidia, was chosen, and his election ratified by Gregorios's murderer."
Nicholas struck the table with his fist.
"I give no allegiance there," said he. "Is the church a toy in that
devil's hands, and shall we bow to his puppets?"
Germanos looked up quickly.
"I wanted to know your opinion on that," he said, "and you, Petrobey,
go with your cousin? But in the mean time we have no head."
"But at the death of a patriarch," asked Nicholas, "what is the usual
course?"
Germanos hesitated.
"You will see," he said, "why I paused, for it is in the canon of the
church that till the next patriarch is appointed the supremacy of the
church is in the hands of the senior archbishop."
Nicholas rose.
"There is none so fit as yourself," he said, "and here and now I give
you my allegiance, and I promise to obey you in all matters within your
jurisdiction, and for the glory of God."
Germanos gave them his blessing, and both kissed his hand; and when
they had seated themselves again he bent forward, and began to speak
with greater earnestness.
"And that, in part, is why I am here," he said, "to accept in the name
of the church the allegiance of the Greek army. We must not forget
among these night attacks and skirmishes and sieges that for which
we work--the liberty of Greece, it is true, but the purpose of her
liberty--to let a free people serve the God of their fathers, and
pull under no infidel yoke to the lash of unbelievers. Believe me,
my friends, how deeply unworthy I feel of the high office which has
thus come upon my shoulders, but help me to bear it, though in that
the flesh is weak I would in weakness shrink from it. But much lies
in your power and active help, for I know what deep influence both of
you, and deservedly, have with these men. Yet since to every man is his
part appointed by God Himself, I would not recoil from the task and
heavy responsibility which are on me as head of this people, who are
fighting for their liberty; and though I am not jealous for myself, as
some would maliciously count me, I am very jealous for Him with whose
authority I, all unworthy, have been invested."
Germanos paused for a moment, his eyes fixed on the ground, and
Nicholas, looking across at Petrobey, half began to speak, but the
other by an almost imperceptible gesture silenced him. But Germanos
paused only for a moment and went on, speaking a little quicker, but
weighing his words.
"For who is the general we all fight under, but One? Who is the giver
of victory, but He alone? And I--I speak in a sort of proud humility--I
am the head of His bride, the church, and the shepherd of His flock,
this people. Do not misunderstand me, for I speak not for myself, but
for Him. Already dangers, not those from our enemies the Turks, but
from friends more deadly than they, compass us about on all sides, and
are with us when we sit down to eat and take our rest, and if we are
not careful they will poison all we do. Already at Kalavryta, whence
I am come--already, as I hear, at Monemvasia; but not, as I hope and
trust, here--are there greedy and wicked men, who, raised to power for
which they have no fitness, having no self-control, and being therefore
incapable of controlling others, save in the way of inflaming their
lusts by example like beasts of the fields, already have many such,
finding themselves in command of some small local following, led their
men on by hopes of gain and promises of reward. They are becoming
no better than brigands, despoiling the defenceless, and each man
pocketing his gains."
Petrobey here looked up.
"Pardon me," he said, "though such conduct has taken place on certain
ships, I think that there has been none among the soldiers. Half the
booty taken is put aside for the purpose of the war; half, as is right,
is shared among those who acquire it."
Germanos looked at him keenly, and went on with growing eloquence.
"You have hit the very point," he said, "towards which I have been
making. Half, as you say, is put away for the purposes of the war, and
though I think that is too large a proportion, still the question is
only one of degree, and we will pass it over. Half again, as you say,
is shared among those who acquire it. There is the blot, the defect of
the whole system. What are we fighting for? For wealth or for liberty?
Surely for liberty and the glory of God! To fight in such a cause,
and to fall in such a cause, is surely an exceeding reward. But what
of the glory of God? Is it not to Him that this, no niggardly tithe,
but half the goods we possess, should be given? Is it not He who has
given us the strength to fight, and the will before which even now the
Turk is crumpling as a ship crumples the waves? And for this shall we
give Him nothing? Shall every peasant possess his hoard taken from the
Turk, and the church of God go begging? Have we not given our lives
to His service, without hope of reward indeed, but very jealous for
His honor? And how shall we serve Him as we ought, when our churches
stand half ruined to the winds of heaven, and our monks, to support
themselves, must needs hoe in the fields and vineyards, and bring but a
tired frame to the blessed service of the church? Is it not there this
should be bestowed--on the church, on the priests and the primates, on
the heads and princes of the church, to be used by them for the glory
of their Master? Some of us, I know, would wish to endow a king to
rule over a free people, in royal obedience, for so they phrase it, to
a people's will. Is it not enough to have for our king, our Master,
our tender Friend, the King of kings? This only is the kingdom whose
citizenship I covet, for it is beyond price, and it is but a dubious
love for Him that is ours, if we give Him, as we fondly tell ourselves,
our hearts, and withhold from Him our gold and silver. Not in such
manner worshipped the kings of the East. Long was their journey, and
yet we who fight are not more footsore than they; but did they come
empty-handed to worship? Gold and frankincense and myrrh they gave,
their costliest and their best. Heart worship let us give, and lip
worship too, and let our hands be open in giving; it is in giving that
we show, poorly indeed, but in the best and only way, the sincerity of
our hearts. Ah, it is no pale spiritual kingdom only that God requires,
but the pledge of it in a glorious liberality, the fruits of His bounty
given to Him again. Let there be a splendor in our service to Him,
riches, wealth, all that is beautiful, poured out freely; it is our
duty to give--yes, and our privilege."
Petrobey and Nicholas both listened in dead silence, for they respected
the man, and they revered his office. Of the honesty and integrity of
his words, too, neither felt any question; but when in the history of
warfare had ears ever heard so impracticable a piece of rhetoric? Did
Germanos really suppose that these soldiers of theirs were risking
life, possessions, all that they had, for the sake of the heads of
the church? Already the primates had done infinite harm by their
pretentious meddling, giving themselves the airs of deposed monarchs,
for whom it was a privilege to fight, and encouraging seditious talk
among the men by hinting openly that the military leaders were in
league with the Turks, making conventions with them by which their
lives should be spared on the sacrifice of their property. Germanos
himself, as they knew, was a man of far different nature; this scheme
of his, by which half the booty should be placed unreservedly in the
hands of the heads of the church, to be used for the glory of God,
was as sunshine is to midnight compared to the vile slanderings of
his inferiors. But how would the army receive it? Was Petrobey, as
commander-in-chief, or Germanos, as head of this people of God, to go
to them, saying, "You have risked your lives, and it is your privilege
to have done so for the glory of God; risk them to-morrow and the next
day and the next day, and when the war is over, and unless you lie on
the battlefield, you creep back to your dismantled homes, account it
a privilege that you have been permitted to give to the primates and
priests the fruits of your toil"?
Yet, though Germanos was accounted a man of integrity both by Petrobey
and Nicholas, how could there but be a background to the picture he had
drawn? He was a man to whom power and the exercise of power had become
a habit, and the habit almost a passion. Though this scheme, by which
the church would be restored to its old splendor and magnificence,
the glory of those days when from Constantinople came the emperor
humbly and suppliantly with great gifts, had for its object the glory
of God, yet inasmuch as he was a man of dominant nature he could not
be unaware nor disregardful of what it would mean to him personally.
What a position! The chances were ten to one that he would be chosen
to fill the places of the martyred patriarch, instead of the Bishop
Eugenios, well known to the Greeks as a middle-minded man, who strove
to keep well with both Ottoman and Greek. For, in truth, this was no
time for diplomatic attitudes; each man must take one side or the
other, and now to consent to take from the hands of the Sultan the
insignia of his victim was to declare one's self no patriot. Greece
would certainly repudiate the appointment and choose a supreme head
for itself, and among all the primates and bishops there was none who
was so powerful with his own class, and so popular among the people,
as Germanos. As every one knew, he had thrown himself heart and soul
into the revolution; he had raised the northern army, he had headed the
attempt on the citadel of Patras in person. The chosen head of a new
and splendid church, rising glorious in the dawn of liberty, sanctified
by suffering, proved by its steadfastness to endure, a church for which
blood had been shed, and, as he had said, no pale spiritual kingdom
only, but a power on earth as in heaven! It was not in the nature of
the man to be able to shut his eyes to that; it could not but be that
so splendid a possibility should be without weight to him. His next
words showed it.
"Is it not a thing to make the heart beat fast?" he went on. "I would
not take the pontiff's chair in Rome in exchange for such a position.
A new church, or rather, the old grown gloriously young again, a
spiritual kingdom throned in the hearts of men, yet with the allegiance
not only of their souls, but of their bodies and their earthly
blessings. And I," he said, rising, "I, the unworthy, the erring, yet
called by a call that I may not disobey."
But Nicholas, frowning deeply, interrupted him.
"I ask your pardon, father," he said, "but is it well to talk of that?
Surely in this great idea which you have put before us there is
nothing personal. It is the kingdom of God of which we speak."
Germanos paused a moment.
"You are right," he said; "you have but reminded me of my own words; it
is in His name and none other that I speak."
"There is another point of view, father," continued Nicholas, "which,
with your permission, I will put before you. I speak, I hope, as it is
fitting I should speak to you; and yet, in mere justice to the position
my cousin and I hold, we must tell you that there are other interests
to be considered. For days past there has been division among us, here
not so widely as at other places, but division there is--and that,
too, at a time when anything of the kind is most disastrous. There are
in the camp priests and primates who have been saying to the men, but
not with your nobleness of aim, that which you have indicated to us.
This war, they tell them, is a war of religion; they are the champions
and ordained ministers of religion, and it is to them the soldiers'
obedience is due. What did they get for their pains? A shrug of the
shoulders, insolence, perhaps the question, 'Are we fighting or are
you?' And they answer, 'For whom are you fighting? For your captains
and leaders, let us tell you; it is they who will reap the fruits of
your toil; it is they who will get the booty for which you have spent
your blood and left your homes.' Now, before God, father, that is a
satanic slander; but if this talk continues, who can tell but that it
may become in part true? For as the army increases we have to appoint
fresh captains, and often it happens that some band of men come in
with their appointed leader, whom we have to accept. These are not
all such men as my cousin and I should naturally appoint; and what
we fear is this; and our fears, I am sorry to say, are justified by
what is taking place at Monemvasia. These captains talk to each other,
saying, 'The primates are trying to get the whole spoils of the war
for themselves. Two can play at that game. If this war is for the
enrichment of the leaders, let it be for the enrichment of the leaders
who have done the work.' And some of this talk, too, has reached the
men, with this result: some believe what the primates say, and already
distrust their captains; some distrust the primates, and say that it is
not they who are doing the work, and why should they look for wages?
But the most part of those who have heard this seditious talk distrust
both, and are each man for himself. And all this is the fault of the
primates. This is no place for them; for those of them, at least, who
have taken no part in the war. It is the work of soldiers we are doing,
not the work of priests. The danger is a real one; as you say, it is
a danger from those who sit at meat with us, and more deadly and more
intimate than that we experience from our enemies. There was none of it
before the primates came among us. I have said."
Nicholas spoke with rising anger; the thought of these mean, petty
squabbles poisoned the hopes which had ruled his life for so long. Were
they all to be wrecked in port on the very eve of their fulfilment?
Strong as the Greek position now was, inevitable though the fall of
Tripoli appeared, yet he knew that an army demoralized is no army at
all. Was the honey to turn to bitterness? Was that fair day that seemed
now dawning to come in cloud and trouble?
Germanos had listened with growing resentment, and he burst out in
answer:
"You are wrong, Nicholas; believe me, you are wrong! It is the
primates who have to put up with insult. This army of yours is a band
of wanton children, long chid and beaten, breaking out from school. It
knows neither reverence nor respect, where respect is due."
"Ah, pardon me again," said Nicholas; "the first duty of the soldier is
obedience to those who are put over him as captains and commanders. To
them he has never yet failed in respect nor in obedience."
"These soldiers are men, I take it," said Germanos, "and the first duty
of man is to obey those who are over him in the Lord."
"But, father, father!" cried Nicholas, pained himself, but unwilling
to give pain, "is this a time, now when we are in the middle of the
operations of the war, to talk of that? Of course you are right; that
every Christian man believes. But our hands are full, we have this
siege before us, and it is injudicious of these primates to stir up
such talk now. Oh, I am no hand at speaking; but you see, do you not,
what I mean? It is the Lord's work, surely, but the means by which it
is accomplished is swords in unity, men bound together by one aim."
"And that aim the glory of God," said Germanos.
Nicholas made a hopeless gesture of dissent and shook his head, and
Petrobey, who had hitherto taken no part in the discussion, broke in:
"Surely we can do better than wrangle together like boys," he said.
"It is no light matter we have in hand. But let us talk practically.
What Nicholas says is true. Father, there is mischievous talk going on,
and there was none till the primates came. What do you propose to do?
Will you help us to stop it? Will you speak to the men? Will you tell
them that, though you are a primate yourself, yet you believe in the
integrity of the military commanders, and that though our soldiers'
duty as men exacts obedience to the rulers of the church, yet their
duty as soldiers exacts obedience to their commanders, and trust in
them?"
The question was cleverly chosen. To refuse to do as Petrobey asked
would, without an explanation, be wholly unreasonable; to comply would
be tantamount to telling the soldiers to disregard the primates.
Germanos hesitated a moment.
"I do not wish to put myself outside my province," said Germanos, "and
I am here only as the head of the church, and not as a military leader.
To interfere with the ordering of the army is not my business."
"Then how much less," said Nicholas, eagerly, "is it the business of
your inferiors to do so? Will you, then, tell them to follow your own
most wise example?"
Germanos was silent, but his brain was busy, and yet he had no reply
ready.
"See," said Nicholas, "a little while ago you asked us to help you, but
now we ask you to help us, for the danger is no less to your party than
to ours. Speak to the primates if you will, or speak to the captains;
they will perhaps listen to you."
"At any rate, I asked not your help against my own subordinates," said
Germanos, in a sudden flash of anger; "if you want help against your
own men, I can only say--" and with that he stopped short, for an
insult was on his lips.
Petrobey sat down again with a little sigh, but Nicholas answered
Germanos according to his own manner.
"Then if you are so good as to think that our own affairs are out
of hand," he said, with angry sarcasm, "it will be time to think of
helping you when we have put them in order. Let me quote your own
words: 'I am not jealous for myself, but I am very jealous for the
honor of the army, and I have myself a pledge of the favor of God on my
undertaking.'"
Germanos held up his hand pacifically.
"We shall gain nothing by quarrelling," he said, "and I am in the
wrong, for I was the first to speak in anger. What is this pledge of
which you speak?"
Nicholas told him of the vision at Serrica, and when he had finished it
was gently that he answered.
"Surely the Mother of God looks with favor on you, Nicholas!" said the
archbishop; "and for her sake, if not for our own, let us see if we
cannot put an end to these unhappy divisions of which you tell me. You
lay the whole blame on my order; are you sure that you are not hasty?"
"There was at least no seditious talk before the primates came," said
Nicholas.
"I, then, have a proposal to make," said Petrobey, "and it is this:
The men are divided; some side with the primates, some with us. The
two parties are bitterly opposed. If a supreme council was appointed,
consisting of primates and commanders, might not the division be
healed?"
Nicholas shook his head.
"I do not wish to make difficulties," he said, "but the case is this:
The siege of Tripoli is the work of the army. What have the primates to
do with it? I might as well demand a seat in the synod of the church."
Germanos's eyes brightened. He realized the impossibility of pushing
his first demand just now, and this, at any rate, would be a step
gained. For the rest, he trusted in his own ability to soon get in
his hands the chief share of the work of the supreme council, which
Petrobey had suggested, and with the most diplomatic change of front,
he proceeded to conciliate Nicholas.
"My dear Nicholas," he said, "I wish with all my heart you had a place
in the synod of the church. As a priest you would have soon earned one;
but you selected another vocation, in which I need give no testimony to
your merits. But consider, dear Nicholas, this is a national movement,
and the church is a great national institution, and has always had a
voice, often the supreme voice, in the direction of national affairs.
You must not think we want to interfere in military matters; you will
not find Charalambes, for instance, or, for that matter, me, wishing to
lead a sortie or direct the fire. In England, as you know, there are
two great legislative houses--one composed of the lords of the land,
without initiative, but with the power of check; the other, the elected
body--the voice of the people. You generals are the elected body, on
you the initiative depends; but we primates correspond to the titular
power. And where can you find so splendid and august a government as
that? See, I come to meet you half-way; it is not the time now to
talk of the supremacy of the church, meet me half-way, and allow that
in national concerns we should not be without a voice. There are two
powers in this new Greece; if they are in accord, the danger we have
spoken of melts like a summer mist."
Nicholas looked across at Petrobey.
"You would have me follow?" he asked. "Well, I consent."
Germanos was careful not to betray too much elation at the success
of this scheme, and he soon spoke of other things. Prince Demetrius
Ypsilanti, whom the Hetairia, or Club of Patriots in north Greece, had
chosen to take the place of his treacherous and inefficient brother,
was shortly to come to the Peloponnesus. Hitherto the proceedings
of the club had been very secret and their funds intrusted to a few
agents, such as Nicholas and Germanos; but the rapid success of the
war, and its still more brilliant promise--for in north Greece as
well it had spread like fire--had rendered all further concealment
unnecessary, and they came forward now as the authors of the liberty
of Greece, a credit which was, through their admirable agents, due
them, and they were exercising their undoubted right in giving the
command to whomever they would. Germanos also assured Petrobey and
Nicholas that they were both in the highest favor with the club, and
that Prince Demetrius was most amicably and warmly inclined to them. He
might also tell them that the prince had no intention of interfering
in the conduct of the war, which he was content to leave in more
experienced hands; but he was coming as the head of the Hetairia, which
had organized and financed the outbreak of the war, and he was sure,
so thought Germanos, to approve of the step they had decided on, to
appoint a national senate, and no doubt he would take his place at the
head of the assembly.
CHAPTER VII
THE RULE OF THE SENATE
From this conversation among the three sprang into being the
Peloponnesian Senate, than which no more futile apparatus has ever been
devised to guide the affairs of a nation. From the first harmony was
impossible between the two parties, and the only result it achieved
worth mentioning was that it diverted the time and energies of the
military leaders from the work to which every muscle should have been
strained--the fall of Tripoli. So far from reconciling the divisions
among the soldiers, it merely encouraged partisanship, for it was known
that the senate could not agree on any point worth the deliberation.
Petrobey was more than once tempted to resign his seat, but to do that
was only to throw the wavering balance of power firmly into the hands
of the primates, while between Nicholas and Germanos there ripened,
as bitter as a Dead-Sea apple, an enmity only to be reconciled at a
death-bed, for Germanos, so Nicholas considered, and did not scruple
to say, had deceived both him and his colleague. He had professed the
highest, most altruistic aims; what guided his conduct was the most
selfish and personal policy. This, it is to be feared, was partly true,
though not entirely, for Germanos had been sincere when he opened to
the two his scheme for the glory of the church; but finding supremacy,
like the fruit of Tantalus, still dangling beyond, but seemingly only
just beyond, his reach, and stung intolerably at his failure, the
personal motive crept in, and before long usurped the place of the
other.
Nicholas had hoped great things from the arrival of the prince;
but they, too, were doomed to be disappointed. He was given an
enthusiastic welcome by the army, the majority of whom were sickened
with this atmosphere of intrigue, and Petrobey instantly took his
place as his subordinate; but the prince gave him to understand that
it was his wish that the conduct of the siege should continue in
the same hands. Germanos, too, welcomed him cordially, with a due
recognition of his position, for he hoped to win him over to the side
of the church. For the time it seemed that some solution of their
difficulties was imminent, and in the hands of a stronger man, no
doubt, such universally recognized authority would have found a means
of reconciliation.
But Prince Demetrius was terribly unfitted for the responsibility.
His principles were honorable, but by nature he was weak and
undecided. He inclined first to one party, then to another, with no
diplomatic yielding, which will give an inch to gain a yard, but
with the pitiful futility of one who has no knowledge of men, no
habit of command, and no certainty of himself. To the soldiers this
weakness manifested itself openly, and unhappily not erroneously,
in his personal appearance. He was under middle height; his manner,
always stiff and awkward, was sometimes insolent, sometimes timid--an
unfortunate demeanor, for he was neither the one nor the other, but
only excessively self-conscious and shy. His face was thin and pinched,
and his hair, although he was only thirty-two, was already gray and
scanty, giving him a look of premature old age. Being short-sighted,
he blinked and peered, as Mitsos said, like a noonday owl, and his
voice was querulous and high-pitched. Yet he was of an upright mind,
indifferent to danger, and free from the besetting sin of his race,
avarice. All these outward defects corresponded but too well with the
inadequacy of his nature; a strong man with not so honorable a heart as
he had might easily have filled his post better, and the uprightness of
his character, at a crisis where uprightness was the quality wanted,
could not make itself felt, but which to the army and the council was
but the bubbling that came from a man half drowned, when what was
wanted was a firm voice and a loud and no drowning cry. Moreover, he
was morbidly sensitive about his own dignity and position, and there
was something comically tragical to see that puny frame with bent
shoulders presiding over a company of strong men, and hear that little
screechy voice prating of "My wish" and "My command." On one side of
him sat Germanos, courtier-like and full of deference, plying him
with his titles, as the nurse gives suck to a baby, while the prince,
drinking like a child, would be well pleased, and pipe, "What you say
is very true. It is my wish that the church should be fully recognized.
Yes, quite so, my dear archbishop; but I think our friend, the gallant
commander of this army, of which I, as the commander-in-chief, as the
viceroy by the wish of the Hetairia--yes, exactly--has something to say
on the subject."
Then Petrobey would lay before the prince the urgent need of doing one
thing before all others. Tripoli must be taken; surely the claims of
the two parties could be settled afterwards. That was the work most
important to them. For three weeks now since the beginning of June had
they waited at Trikorpha, and the provisions of the array were already
beginning to be exhausted. The herds were being thinned, the lower
pasture was drying up in the summer heat. Must not steps be taken here
at once? And Prince Demetrius would answer something in this manner:
"What you say is very true, my dear Petrobey, and I quite agree with
you that there is no time to be lost. Would you not form a committee
and deliberate what is to be done, and then submit your results to me
to receive my sanction? You spoke, I remember, about the formation of
some cavalry corps; a very wise plan I thought it, and I meant to have
some talk with you about it. But really the days have slipped by so.
Yes, we must, indeed, be up and doing, and my orderly has just informed
me, gentlemen, that dinner is ready; and I shall be pleased to see you,
my dear archbishop, and you, commander, at my table. Dinner will be
served immediately, and our deliberations, gentlemen, in which I think
we may say we have made some solid progress, will be adjourned till
to-morrow at the usual hour."
Nicholas saw that there was no help here, and he set himself to
thwart Germanos with all his power. He considered that the presence
of the primates in the camp rendered the army powerless, for it was
eaten up with intrigue, slander, and incessant accusation, provoking
counter-accusation. At the meetings of the senate he opposed Germanos
on every point, whether or no his suggestions were honorable or
expedient, and allying himself with any one who would join him in
upholding the army against the church, ranged himself side by side
with crooked and unscrupulous men like Poniropoulos and Anagnostes,
mere brigands and adventurers, who, without any motive but their own
greed, had got together a band of peasants, and were in command of a
mere disorderly rabble; men who in his soberer moments he knew were
as detestable as, in his furious anger against Germanos, he thought
the primate to be. Every day the meetings of the senate grew more
and more disorderly, and gradually Prince Demetrius saw that he was
no more than a cypher in the eyes of these men. Of personal ambition
Nicholas had none; honestly and with his whole heart he cared for
nothing but the success of the revolution and the extermination of the
Turk, and he used his great power and influence for the defeat of the
intriguing primates, being convinced that till the question between
the two parties was settled nothing could be done. At any rate, he was
free from all stings of conscience; his conduct might be unwise, but
he acted from impeccable motives, and there was enough truth in his
allegations against Germanos to give them a sting that was wellnigh
unforgivable.
It was already more than half-way through June, and still the army
remained inactive. Petrobey had so far succeeded in rousing the prince
as to permit him to make arrangements for regular supplies being sent
to the camp; but there was still no talk of an assault on Tripoli, or
indeed any preparations for ensuring its success. The senate had met
as usual that morning, and the meeting had degenerated into a fierce
brawl between Anagnostes and Nicholas on the one side, and Germanos
and Charalambes on the other. It was in vain that the prince tried to
restore order; they listened to him no more than to a buzzing fly, when
at length Germanos, bitten to the quick by some intolerable taunt of
Nicholas's, rose from the table, saying he would take no further part
in the deliberations of the senate.
"There must be an end," he said, "to this. How long ago is it,
Nicholas, since you swore allegiance to me?"
"Allegiance in all things in your jurisdiction," replied Nicholas, "and
to the glory of God, not to the glory of Germanos."
The heat of his anger did not excuse the words, and the moment
afterwards every better feeling within him would have had them unsaid,
but Anagnostes, sitting at his elbow, applauded vehemently.
"Silence, you there," said Germanos, in a white anger. "You will hear
my voice no more here; but let me tell you, you are not rid of me. We
will see what the people say to such treatment as that I have been
subjected to."
"Go to the people," shouted Nicholas; "see how the Mainats receive you!"
"The Mainats?" said Germanos; "the Mainats, whom I hold a degree only
above the Turks?"
"My dear archbishop--my dear archbishop," piped the prince.
"But there are true and loyal men in Greece besides those hounds,"
continued Germanos, not even hearing the prince speak.
"Archbishop," said the prince again, with a certain dignity, "I command
you, I order you, to be silent."
Germanos turned round on him, still mad with rage.
"You order, you command?" he said, with infinite scorn, and broke into
a sudden, unnatural laugh.
Prince Demetrius flushed, and on all the senate fell a dead hush. For
once the man showed the dignity of birth and breeding, and standing up,
he faced the angry prelate. His nervous, weak manner had left him; he
rose to the occasion.
"You will please to take your seat, archbishop," he said. "I have a few
words to say."
Germanos looked round and saw on all sides eager, attentive faces bent,
not on him, but on the prince. His anger still burned like fire within
him, and he paused not to consider.
"I prefer to leave the room," he said. "I take no further part in these
proceedings."
"You choose to disregard my request," said the prince, and with that
his voice rose sudden and screaming and fierce; "I will therefore
order--Sit down!" he cried.
Germanos's anger went out as suddenly as lightning at night is followed
by darkness, and he realized what he had done. The prince's favor
he had forfeited hopelessly, and though the prince was nothing, he
had forgotten in the man's insignificance the power he represented.
Henceforth he would have to fight without the expectancy of help from
there; and feeling his schemes already threatening to totter and fall
about his head, in sheer blank bewilderment he sat down.
The prince stood silent a moment and then spoke.
"I feel," he said, "that all the good I hoped to do, and all the
efforts I wished to make for the great cause, are not to be fulfilled.
With the exception of the commander of this army, the senate generally
have chosen to disregard my presence here. From Petrobey, however,
I have always had courtesy and respect. The party of the church, in
particular, has chosen to adopt an insolent demeanor towards me, the
like of which I accept from no man. You have seen, gentlemen, the
example their head has given them. I regret the decision which I
have long thought was possible, but which has been forced upon me.
Gentlemen, I leave the camp to-day. The meeting is adjourned."
Then turning to Petrobey, and bowing to the rest:
"Come with me," he said; "we will leave this assembly together," and
taking his arm, he left the room.
Half an hour later he quitted the camp with a small guard, leaving the
rest of his retinue to follow as quickly as they could get ready. But
the news of his departure and the reason for it spread like wildfire
through Trikorpha, and the men, who still regarded him, partly because
of the marked favor he showed to Petrobey, partly from the prestige of
the revolutionary Hetairia which he represented, as their champion,
were wildly indignant with the primates. A riot nearly ensued, and had
not Petrobey and other commanders, notably Nicholas himself, had them
guarded in a place of safety, it is not improbable that some would
have been murdered. Germanos, however, who, whatever his faults were,
was perfectly fearless, refused all protection, and when one of the
Mainats passing near him, spit at him, the archbishop dealt the man
a blow which knocked him off his feet, and passed on without hurry
or discomposure, though he was in the middle of the clan. But the
Mainats, who were without a particle of reverence for him, but had a
deep respect for personal pluck, appreciated the act fully and made
no attempt to stop him, though a minute before it was very doubtful
whether he would have reached his quarters alive.
All day the feeling in the camp against the primates rose higher and
higher, for, from the soldiers' point of view, the prince was their
protector not only against them, but their own commanders, who, as the
primates had told them, rousing suspicion if not belief in their minds,
were employed in making private arrangements with the Turks, promising
them their lives in exchange for their property. No one, it is true,
had breathed a suspicion about either Petrobey or Nicholas, for they
stood beyond any shadow of scandal, and for the time the ugly thoughts
the primates had suggested were cast aside in the fierce indignation
excited by the immediate cause of the withdrawal of the prince, for
which the primates alone were to be thanked. A knot of angry men
assembled outside the building where primates and muskets were stored,
demanding that they should be given up to be dealt with as they
deserved; and, indeed, such a fate was not unmerited, and it would have
saved a world of trouble to Petrobey. For they were responsible for all
this doubt and division; they were traitors in the camp, and in time of
war a traitor is worse than a regiment of foes. Next day there was no
abatement of popular feeling, and in the afternoon the whole body of
commanders and captains went to Petrobey, after exacting a promise from
their men of quietude in their absence, asking that the prince might be
petitioned to return, for his absence could but end in one thing, the
death of all the primates, either with the authority of the commanders,
or, in default of that, by mutiny.
Petrobey readily consented to go in person, for things were at an
absolute _impasse_, and without the prince's co-operation and presence
he was really afraid that the worst might happen, and in the name of
the entire army, and with the earnest appeals of the primates, he
waited upon him at Leondari, a revolted town not far from Megalopolis.
The prince at first hesitated, or seemed to hesitate, but privately
he was very much gratified at what seemed so universal a mark of
confidence; for on thinking his action over, it had appeared to him
that he must cut but a sorry figure if he returned to the Hetairia,
saying that the army disregarded his authority and met his commands
with insolence, while if he came back, his withdrawal assumed the
aspect of a most successful piece of diplomacy. Accordingly, at the end
of the week he returned amid the welcoming acclamations of the army,
and was pleased to accept--having insisted on the same--the apology of
Germanos, which was bitter herbs to that proud man, but to Nicholas as
sweet as honey in the mouth.
Throughout July, but waning with the moon, continued the reign of that
incompetent, but honest man, Prince Demetrius. His indecision amounted
to a disease of the mind; he seemed morally incapable of acting, or,
through his pretentious viceregal claims, of letting others act for
him; a creature afflicted with acute paralysis of will. Inside Tripoli
there was still no famine of food or water, and though Achmet Bey saw
that escape was impossible, for the weakness of the troops inside would
have rendered an attempt to cut through the occupations on the hills
quite hopeless, yet he was in no mind to surrender when no attempts
were made to induce him to do so. There were provisions in the camp
which would last three months more, for the harvest had been got in
before the occupation of Valtetzi; the ravages of the Greeks had
destroyed only the villages and the winter crops, and Mehemet Salik
remarked one morning that one seemed safer in Tripoli than anywhere
else.
And the hot month throbbed by, while to the Greeks every day's close
saw another day lost.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SONG FROM TRIPOLI
Early in August news came to the camp that the Turks in Monemvasia had
made a proposal for a capitulation, for it will be remembered that
a small fleet of vessels from Spetzas was blockading it by sea, in
addition to a regiment from south Greece by land, and these tidings
gave Prince Demetrius a most ill-conceived idea. The terms of the
capitulation were discussed at a meeting of the senate, and caused a
very considerable difference of opinion, Nicholas and Petrobey advising
that the Turks should be given a passage over to Smyrna, or some Asia
Minor port, on condition that they surrendered their arms, refunded
the expenses of the siege--for the soldiers had been serving without
pay--and further, gave an indemnity of ten thousand Turkish pounds,
which should be divided among the fleet, the army, and the national
treasury. Germanos and his party opposed this. Monemvasia was notably
one of the wealthiest towns in the Peloponnesus, and he proposed that
the besieged should only be given their lives on the surrender of
all their property. Prince Demetrius went to the other extreme. The
Hetairia would charge itself with the arrears of the soldiers' pay,
since it was for that very purpose its funds had been raised; to the
soldiers was due their pay and nothing more, and if easy terms were
granted to Monemvasia, the Turks in Tripoli would be more disposed
to capitulate. The discussion degenerated into wrangling, but in the
middle of it Prince Demetrius suddenly commanded silence. Since the
affair with Germanos, he had secured the formalities of obedience, and
he was listened to in silence.
"I shall go to Monemvasia in person," he said, "to receive and to
accept the capitulation of the town as commander-in-chief of the
army, and viceroy, appointed by the supreme council of the Hetairia.
The troops there, so I hear, are out of hand, and the Mainat corps
under their commander, Petrobey, will accompany me. We will continue
to discuss the terms of the capitulation, and observe a little more
decorum."
But the senate had experienced his deficiency in power of command
too long, and his words were like the words coming from the mouth of
a mask, when every one knew how insignificant a figure stood behind
it. The autocratic tone was ludicrous, and in this particular case
peculiarly out of place. Petrobey, who, when it was possible, supported
the prince, now found himself obliged to oppose him, and, with a
courtesy he found it hard to assume, spoke in answer:
"Your highness will remember," he said, "that the siege has been going
on for three months, and has been entirely the work of the people. The
Hetairia has not helped them in any way. It is surely, then, their
right to demand their own terms, and the surrender must be made to the
captains of the blockading forces, or to whomever they appoint, and to
no other."
The prince flushed angrily.
"Do I understand, then, that I am not the commander-in-chief of the
whole army?"
"Your highness is commander-in-chief over all the army which has been
organized or supplied by the Hetairists or their agents. The force
that blockades Monemvasia was raised by private enterprise before your
appointment by the Hetairia, and during your stay in the Morea you
have not either taken the command there or assisted that force. The
commander of the land force there is a member of this senate, and no
doubt he will obey its resolves."
"Sooner than that of the viceroy?"
"The viceroy also is a member of this senate," said Petrobey, with some
adroitness.
The prince was silent a moment.
"The senate will, therefore, vote as to whether Monemvasia is to be
occupied in the name of the senate or in my name," he said, shortly.
For once there was unanimity between the two parties, and it was
decided that Monemvasia was to be occupied in the name of the senate.
The discussions about the terms of the capitulation were then renewed,
but as it was felt that the commander of the blockading force had more
voice in the matter than any one else, Germanos, with the amiable
desire of perhaps thwarting Nicholas, whose proposal had been more
moderate than his own, suggested that this point should be settled
between the commander and the prince upon the arrival there of the
latter, for it was absurd that commanders of a force which was
besieging Tripoli should have a voice in the matter. Nicholas, knowing
that Petrobey would be there too, and that he had more influence
with the prince than any one, acquiesced with a smile, saying that
Germanos's sage reflection applied equally to primates who were not in
command of anything.
So for a time the centre of the war, like some slow-moving stream,
shifted to Monemvasia, and during the whole of August half the army lay
idle on the hills round Tripoli; and with the departure of the prince
the tales of scandalous slander were again taken up by the primates,
the result of which was to appear later. Germanos, though he must have
known what was going on, held aloof, and did not mix up in the affairs
of the camp; though, to his shame be it said, he appeared to make no
effort to check the outrageous intrigues.
To Nicholas, however, the month was full of work, and he at once put
in hand arrangements for the regular supplies of the camp, and was
occupied with drilling the men; under his wise yet severe rule the
unorganized troops began slowly to take shape, and his example shamed
many of the other idle and irresponsible captains into following his
lead, though, having little knowledge of military matters themselves,
it must be concluded that their men were not able to advance to a high
degree of efficiency. Meantime, among the men themselves the utter
inability of the prince either to check abuses or to enforce discipline
had become apparent, and from the time of his departure for Monemvasia
his power may be said to have ceased altogether. And when the news of
what had taken place at that town came to hand, from being nothing he
became ridiculous.
The nightly raids ceased, for all the cultivated land round Tripoli was
already devastated, and neither in the town nor in the camp was any
particular vigilance observed. The Turks knew it was hopeless to attack
Trikorpha; till the return of Petrobey the Greeks had no thought of
attempting to storm the town; and Mitsos, brooding inwardly one night
on the rough wall where he and Yanni used often to sit, had an idea
which arose from this inaction.
For several weeks after the adventure of the fire-ship his anxieties
about Suleima had been stilled, for that escape seemed to him so
heaven-sent that with childlike faith he had no manner of doubt but
that the saints watched over her, and though at times his heart went
a-mourning for her absence, yet he trusted an unreasoning conviction
that at the time appointed he would see her again. The strong
probability that she was in this beleaguered town did not at first
weigh on him at all. Some day, when provisions ran short, it would
capitulate, and there would be a repetition of the scene at Kalamata;
or they would storm it, and there would be fighting inside. But the
women would all be in the houses, and even if the houses were attacked
she would remember what he had told her, and cry out to them in Greek,
saying she was of their blood, and all would be well. But when the
excitement of the skirmish at Valtetzi, now nearly two months ago, and
the move to Trikorpha, with all the delightful night-raiding, was over,
and was succeeded by an inaction sickened by the odious intrigues of
the primates, he began to weary sore for her, and then to be filled
with panic fears as unfounded as his first security. Safety in a
siege, there was no such thing! A chance bullet, an angry Greek, and a
repetition of that infernal butchery of women and children on board the
ship bound for Egypt. What was more horribly possible? A burning house,
a falling wall, and then a mass of pulped bodies.
On this particular night his fears grew like the monstrous visions of
some hag-ridden nightmare. A hundred terrible scenes loomed enormous
before him, and in each Suleima, with white, imploring face, was struck
out of life, now by a bullet, now by a sword. Below, in the part of the
town nearest him, where five or six big houses were built on the wall,
there gleamed rows of lights from narrow-barred windows, and from each
Suleima's face looked out from a room burning within, while she shook
the iron bars with impotent hands as the flames flickered and rose
behind her.
The thing became intolerable; he rose and walked about, but found no
rest. Thirty yards away the soldiers' huts began, and he could hear
sounds of singing from the big shanty-built café a little farther on.
The sentry had just been on his rounds, and Mitsos exchanged a word or
two with him as he passed, and he would be back again in half an hour.
The wall inside was only six feet high, outside perhaps ten or twelve,
but with plenty of handhold for an agile lad, and the next moment,
without thinking where or why he went, he had clambered up and dropped
down on the other side.
Did he not know where he was going? Ah, but his heart told him.
Somewhere in that fiery-eyed town, into which entrance was impossible,
was she for whom he was made, she with the eyes of night and the
history of his soul written on the curves of her lips. And inasmuch
as she was there, the rekindled fever of his love drew him thither,
neither willing nor unwilling, but steel to the magnet, a moth to the
star. He had taken off his shoes in order to get a better grip in the
crevices of the wall, and went down barefooted over the basalt rocks
all ashine with dew. The moon had strayed westward beyond the zenith,
casting his shadow a little in front of him, and round his head as he
walked moved an opaline halo. Then he crossed the mountain stream and
stood in it for a moment, for the coldness of the moon and the eternal
youth of night had entered into its waters, making them vigorous and
bracing. A little wind drawing down its course was full of the scent of
water and green things, and streamed out to renovate the hot air of the
plain. Then on again through a little belt of vineyard, still close
to the camp and not destroyed, where the stream talked less noisily in
the soft earth, with a whiff of summer from the ripening bunches, and
the scuttle of some disturbed hare come down to feed on the leaves.
Then he crossed the stream again, which lay in an elbow southward, and,
pushing through a clump of oleanders which rose above his head, came
out into the plain. The earth was warm under foot after the cold rocks,
and he ran plunging across it, till, getting within a stone's-throw of
the wall, he crept more slowly, and finally lay down in the shadow of a
felled olive-tree, and looked to see if there was aught stirring.
[Illustration: "HE HAD CLAMBERED UP AND DROPPED DOWN ON THE OTHER SIDE"]
The battlemented line of the wall opposite to him stood up clear-cut
between the moon and the lights of the town, twenty feet above him,
and ran on southward into vague shadow, untenanted. Fifty yards to the
left it was interrupted, or rather crowned, by half a dozen big houses,
built flush with the wall, pierced by several rows of rather narrow
windows, the lower of which were barred, the upper, from their height,
needing no such defence. As he crept up alongside of these he heard
the subdued murmur of women's voices from within the first house--the
home, perhaps, of some Turkish captain and his harem; and the sound of
women's voices made mirth to him, and he listened for a while, smiling
to himself. From the next house came more such music, and once a woman
walked to the window and stood looking out for a minute, or perhaps
two, unveiled and playing with the tassel of the blind-cord, till from
within some one called her by a purring Turkish name, and she turned
into the house again.
He crept slowly on to the end of the line of houses, where the
battlemented wall began again, and feeling closer to Suleima in the
sound of women's voices, came back and lay down again in the shadow
of a tall toothed rock. It was something to be alone, away from the
jarring camp, and to be nearer to her. His portentous nightmare beset
him no longer, and his anxieties again were charmed to sleep. One by
one the lights went out in the windows opposite, and the houses became
blackness; the shadow of the rock moved a little forward in the setting
moon, and he shifted to be in the shade again. Another half-hour went
by, and the mountain ridge hid the moon.
Presently afterwards a man appeared on the top of the wall to the
right. Mitsos, perhaps, would not have noticed him but that he waved
some white linen thing up and down once or twice, and then waited
again, and after a time uttered some impatient exclamation. Mitsos
watched him, puzzled to know what this should mean, when suddenly
a possible solution dawned upon him, and he crept up, still in the
shadow, to below where the Turk was standing, and whistled softly.
Then a voice from above said:
"You are late. Here is the paper signed," and a white thing fluttered
down. This done, the Turk turned, and, without waiting for a reply,
went southward down the wall.
The paper, whatever it was, was in Mitsos' possession, and putting it
in his pocket, for it was too dark to read it, he crept back to his old
place to wait a few minutes more there before going back to the camp.
Lights showed only in one house now, and before long they, too, were
quenched, and the black mass of flat roofs rose against the sky silent
and asleep. Then suddenly and softly from out that blackness, like a
bird flying in the desert, came the sound of a voice singing, and at
those notes Mitsos thought his heart would have burst. For it sang:
"Dig we deep among the vines,
Give the sweet spring showers a home,
Else the fairest sun that shines"--
It stopped as suddenly, dying like a sigh, and looking up he saw framed
in one of the dark windows the upper part of a girl's figure dressed in
white. And without a pause the boy's voice answered:
"Lends no lustre to our wines,
Sends no sparkle to the foam."
The prattle of the stream above alone whispered in the stillness. Then
a voice softly asked:
"Mitsos?"
"I am here; and oh, dearest one, is it you?"
A little tinkle of laughter rippled from above, ending in a sudden,
quick-drawn breath.
"At last I see you again," she said, softly, "but I don't see you at
all. Mitsos, little Mitsos, is it well with you?"
Mitsos crept silently out of the shadow and stretched out his arms to
her. "It is well in all but the great thing--that we are not together.
But that will be soon, dearest; oh, please God! it will be soon."
Suleima leaned forward from the window.
"You must not wait here, nor must I; I am at a passage window, and
though the house is dark, one never knows. So go, beloved, beloved,
beloved, and I shall not be waiting long, shall I? And, Mitsos, there
will soon be ... soon, maybe, I shall come to you with a gift."
"A gift?" said Mitsos; he then understood, and "Ah! dearest of all," he
whispered.
"Yes, even so," said Suleima; "but, oh, Mitsos, I pray that you may
soon be able to take me away, that soon this horrible town will fall."
"Before long it must be," said he; "and when the end comes run to meet
the enemy as your deliverer, crying 'I am of your blood.' Oh, my heart,
forget not that!"
Suleima turned quickly, hearing some sound within, and whispering
"Good-night," was gone again, leaving Mitsos alone.
Heaven had opened; and walking on air, he went back to the camp, and
waiting below the wall till the sentry had gone by, he climbed in
again where he had got out. For the most part the men were gone to
bed, but he passed a few on his way back to the little hut he shared
with Yanni and two Mainats, all of whom had gone with Petrobey, and,
undressing quickly, lay down on his bed to feast alone on this great
happiness. With the irrepressible hopefulness of youth his fears had
vanished before the sight of the one--they had never been, and he set
himself to tell over, like a rosary of hallowed beads, the moments of
the night. Not till then did he recollect the mysterious paper which he
had received, and then, getting hastily up, he struck a light on his
tinder-box, and lit a small, oil-fed wick. The illumination was dim and
flickering, but the handwriting was large and clear, and by holding
it close to the light he could easily read it. It was very short, and
written in Greek:
"Abdul Achmet promises to pay to Constantinos
Poniropoulos the sum of two hundred Turkish pounds, on
condition that he and his harem are, on the termination
of the siege of Tripoli, insured security from outrage
or massacre. For the transport and expenses of
travelling to a place of safety for each person ten
pounds in addition will be paid.
"(Signed) Abdul Achmet,
"_Ex-Governor of the City of Argos._"
Mitsos read it through once without taking in the meaning, far less the
whole bearing, of it, and then putting it back in his pocket blew out
his light, and lay with wide-open eyes staring at the darkness, while
the full meaning of the words slowly dawned on him.
First came hot indignation. A Greek captain at the head of five hundred
men was privately trafficking with the besieged for his private
gains. But close on the heels of his anger came fierce, overwhelming
temptation. Abdul Achmet was the owner of Suleima, and to Mitsos this
paper meant not only safe conduct to Abdul, but to her. Had it been
in his power he would have doubled the bribe to the further side of
possibility to secure that, and thrown his own soul into the bargain.
Suleima safe, no more fear for her, nor any chance blow upsetting a
too sanguine security! And because he loved her with a true and honest
heart all thought of himself was absent; he would have paid the demand
of angels, men, and devils to secure her from hurt or death, even
though--and he ground his teeth at the thought--security meant only
to go on living in the harem of Abdul. All the nightmares of the day
before the expedition of the fire-ship he lived through again, feeling
at first that there was no question of choice before him, that somehow
or other he must let this note go to Poniropoulos. For this was the
more insidious temptation, as it could be managed so that no one, or
at the worst the man for whom it was intended, should know his share
in it. Yet here again was the choice between two impossibilities; but
slowly as before, aching and bruised in spirit, he struggled back to
choose the honorable.
But thus a new difficulty stood in his way. It was his clear duty to
let Nicholas know of this clandestine traffic, and in so doing Mitsos
would have to tell him of his own absence by night from the camp
without leave. Nicholas would ask the reason, and probably be very
angry with him, though as he had not been detected, but confessed it
himself, the offence would find mitigation. But how came he to be
waiting under the walls of Tripoli?
Mitsos thought this over for some little time before he arrived at the
best and most obvious solution, namely, to tell Nicholas everything.
The taking of Tripoli could not be far off, and he knew that when that
came near he would, for her greater safety, let others know the prize
the town held for him, and a week or two sooner or later did not make
much difference. So, not wishing to delay and risk a hot resolution,
he put on his clothes again to go to Nicholas's quarters. He had just
got outside his hut when he heard the voice of the sentry challenging
some one without the camp, and "but for the grace of God," thought he,
"there goes Mitsos."
"Who goes?" called the sentry again. "Speak, or I fire."
Mitsos did not hear the reply, but the sentry stood still, while a man
clambered over the wall and spoke a few words to him. Standing in the
shadow of his doorway not thirty yards off, Mitsos could see who both
of them were, and recognized Poniropoulos and the burly Christos.
"Fifty pounds to say nothing of this," he heard Poniropoulos say.
There was a short silence, and Mitsos longed to hear the offer refused.
But the greed of the country Greek was too strong.
"Fifty pounds?" answered Christos; "when do you pay me?"
"On the day Tripoli falls."
Again there was a pause, and Mitsos suddenly made up his mind to
interfere, and he strode out of the shadow to where the two were
standing. They stood asunder a few paces as he came up and took
Christos by the arm.
"For the love of God say 'No,' Christos," he said. "Ask him first what
his business was outside."
Poniropoulos came a step nearer.
"You young cub," he said, below his breath, "what business is it of
yours?"
Christos looked from one to the other.
"He has promised me fifty pounds," he said.
"O fool!" said Mitsos, "there will be a fight between you and me that
will cost you the best part of a hundred in blood and bruises, if you
don't listen to me. Besides, I don't want to get you into trouble."
Poniropoulos looked thunder at the boy, but inwardly he was disquieted.
"Go to your kennel, you cub," he said, "or I report you to-morrow
morning for insubordination."
Mitsos gave a short laugh.
"Very good," he said, "that shall be to-morrow, and it is yet to-night.
Look you, Christos, there will be trouble if you do not listen to me.
That is all."
He turned back to his hut in order to give Poniropoulos time to be off
and leave the coast clear, for he wished to get to Nicholas without
making a disturbance in the camp, and, shutting the door, waited
for five minutes till he heard Poniropoulos walk off one way and
Christos continue his rounds. Then going out again he went straight to
Nicholas's quarters and knocked at the door.
Nicholas was asleep, but awakened at once at the sound, and called out
to know who was there.
"It is I, Mitsos," said the boy, "and I want to see you at once, Uncle
Nicholas."
"Wait a minute, then," and from within came the sounds of the striking
of a flint.
"I can't light this," said Nicholas; "come in, though."
Mitsos entered, feeling glad there was no light, for it made his story
easier to tell.
"There is a powder-box where you can sit, little Mitsos," said
Nicholas, "or sit on the end of the bed. Now, what brings you here?"
Mitsos felt in his pocket and found the paper.
"This, which I am holding out to you," he said. "On it is written that
Poniropoulos, for the sum of two hundred pounds, will insure safety to
Abdul Achmet and his house when Tripoli falls."
There was a moment's silence.
"The black devil!" said Nicholas. Then suddenly, "How came you by this,
Mitsos?"
"That is what I am going to tell you."
Mitsos found it rather hard to begin, and after a moment Nicholas spoke
again--kindly, but gravely.
"I am listening, Mitsos," he said. "Hush! there is some one coming.
Keep quite quiet."
Immediately after a knock came to the door, and Nicholas let it be
repeated before he answered.
"Who is it?" he asked.
"Christos Choremis," said the voice, "the sentry for the last two
hours."
"Well?"
"Half an hour ago, sir, the Captain Poniropoulos climbed in over the
camp wall. I thought best to tell you at once."
"Did he explain where he had been?"
"No, sir."
"Open the door, Christos," said Nicholas. "There is one question more.
Did he offer you money not to say anything about it?"
Christos shifted from one foot to the other.
"No, sir," he said, at length.
"You did quite right to tell me," said Nicholas. "You can go."
"Now, Mitsos," said Nicholas, when the footsteps died away, "you can
begin and tell me how you got this."
Then Mitsos, with many pauses, told him all that had taken place
between him and Suleima from the time he had first heard the voice out
of the darkness down to this night, when again it had come to him,
lying outside the walls of Tripoli, and Nicholas heard him in absolute
silence.
"And, oh, uncle, if it be possible," cried Mitsos, "let her be safe
when the end of the time comes. For there is no one like her, and it
has been hard for me."
Nicholas heard it in wonder and amazement, but he had one more question
to ask.
"But when you blew up the Turkish ship, Mitsos," he said, "did it not
occur to you that she might be on board?"
"I thought she certainly was there," said Mitsos, "and it was not till
it was all over I heard she was not."
Nicholas reached out in the darkness and took Mitsos' smooth hand in
his. "God forgive us all!" he said; "and can you forgive us, little
Mitsos?"
The pain and relief of telling all the story to a man whom he trusted
and loved had been too much for the boy, and he choked in trying to
find his voice.
"There, there!" said Nicholas, soothingly; "but what is the matter with
the young wolf? He has had good news to-night, has he not? and has he
not seen the one he loves? There is no cause for this, little Mitsos.
But this will I do: by the oath of the clan I swear to you that
nothing shall stay me--not fever, nor wounds, nor booty, nor glory,
only honor alone--from doing what in me lies to save her from all
peril. Will that do, little one?"
Mitsos pressed his hand, but could not speak.
"But this you must promise," went on Nicholas, "that never again will
you go out of the camp by night without leave. It leads with other men
to ugly things, and to-morrow there will be one man the less in the
army. The treacherous villain! But to-morrow he leaves the camp with
disgrace and hissing, for he has made true the false slander of the
primates, and brought shame on us all. And now go to bed, Mitsos. The
service you have done in discovering this atones for your fault. Poor
little cub, but it has been a hard time for you."
Next day Poniropoulos was publicly expelled from the camp, and
afterwards Mitsos sought out Christos and in private told him that he
was a better fellow than he had supposed, and that the lie he had told
Nicholas to screen the captain found favor in his eyes. Christos was
reasonably surprised that Mitsos knew of the falsehood, and relieved to
find he was not disposed to quarrel with it, and the two went off and
put away a quart or two of resined wine, for which Mitsos paid.
The news that Monemvasia had surrendered, and the details of its
surrender, were bitter and sweet and tragic and absurd. Prince
Demetrius, it appeared, defying the senate, in a fit of impotent rage
against their perfectly proper opposition to his wishes, had insisted
on signing the treaty of capitulation with his own name as viceroy of
the country, effendi or lord of the country, and what not, and the
Turks, opening the gates in order to go down to the ships and take
their promised departure, found themselves met by a crowd of angry
Mainats, who considered that the treaty as signed by the prince and
not by the senate was null and void. A riot took place, and several
Turks were killed on the point of embarking; but the better part of
the Greek officers, seeing that the capitulation had been signed, and
that whoever was to blame the Turks were not, soon stopped it, and
let the embarkation proceed, but not before five men had been killed
and several houses sacked. Monemvasia had surrendered--so much was
good; but all the rest was bad. The fleet and the army distrusted each
other, and the soldiers distrusted their commanders, who, thanks to the
primates, were represented to them as having made private treaties with
the wealthier Turks, and there was a fine quarrel as to who should set
up the Greek standard on the fallen town. In one thing only was there
unanimity, and that was in the feeling towards the prince. He had shown
himself weak and indecisive before, and that had been forgiven him; he
had shown himself dilatory and incapable, and the commander under him
bore the blame; but now he showed himself, though with characteristic
futility, evading and tampering with the recorded vote of the senate,
in which he had acquiesced at the last meeting in Tripoli. The futility
of his act was comic; his motive was warped and crooked. In a word,
in that moment all the rags of authority which he had brought from
the Hetairia were torn from him, and for all practical purposes his
connection with the revolution may be said to have been over.
Without doubt the capitulation was hopelessly mismanaged, and the Turks
got off without paying a penny towards the expenses of the siege. If
the same terms were given to every fortified place in the Morea, the
national treasury and the funds of the Hetairia would be certainly
drained dry before half the country was evacuated; and though morally
nothing can excuse the scenes of horror which were about to take place,
yet palliation may be found in those two things--that without plunder
gained from the Turk the war was impossible, and that the nation was
a nation of slaves, long ground down by cruelty of all kinds, now in
the first hour of its freedom. The despised but long dominant race was
underfoot, and they stamped it down.
The Mainat corps was still at Monemvasia, where Petrobey was raising
fresh recruits for the siege of Tripoli, and the prince occupying his
leisure time, of which he had twenty-four hours every day, in trying
to festoon the walls of the town with red tape, when news came of the
fall of Navarin, a port on the west coast. Ypsilanti had sent there
a civilian from his suite to represent the shadow of nothingness and
the senate, one of the worst type of men, who, under the guise of
patriotism, had got together a large band of freebooters, to plunder
and seize all that he could lay hands on. Before the capitulation,
which granted the besieged their lives and safe transport to Egypt
or Tunis, had been concluded, many of the Turks had, under stress of
hunger, escaped from the town, and thrown themselves on the mercy
of the Greeks, with whom they had lived on friendly terms. But the
town itself refused to capitulate till starvation compelled. Already
for four days nothing could be bought, for a couple of sparrows or
a half-starved cat represented a few hours' life, whereas a bushel
of gold represented--a bushel of gold. One man the day before the
surrender was found with a secret supply of food, on which he had
subsisted for some days, the remains of which were seized from him by
two starving savages and devoured before his eyes, after which they
pelted him with all the money they had about them, telling him he was
well paid. Perhaps some strange premonition of their fate induced the
gaunt garrison to hold out; perhaps tales had reached them of what had
been the fate of those who had thrown themselves on the mercy of the
besieging army; and it was not till August 19th, just a fortnight after
Monemvasia was taken, that the capitulation was signed.
For that day an eternal blot of infamy is black against the Greeks.
Hardly had the garrison evacuated, giving up their arms, when the
representative of the Peloponnesian senate thrust into the fire the
treaty of capitulation, so that all evidence against him might be
destroyed, and himself gave the signal for the massacre to begin. A
pretext was easily found, and a blow given to a Greek by a Turk for
insisting on searching the person of one of his wives for treasure
concealed about her was enough, and in an hour no Mussulman was left
alive. Women were stripped of their clothing, and rushing into the sea
to hide their shame were shot from the shore; babies were snatched out
of their mothers' arms and flung in their faces; others, remembering
the fate of the patriarch, hanged men and women from the lintels of
their own doors; others, it is said, were tortured before some one of
their persecutors, more humane than his fellows, despatched them. Here,
in mockery of the Turkish atrocities, a man was offered the choice
between Christianity and death, and when he chose the former, was
"baptized with steel" or crucified; a dozen or more were burned alive
in a house where they had run for refuge. In an hour the infamous work
was finished, and then arose quarrelling over the booty. Knives and
rifles were brought in to settle the disputes, while in the mean time
two Spetziot ships quietly went off with the greater part of the spoils.
Thus ended a day, the disgrace of which will only be forgotten when
the glory of men like Nicholas has faded too. Dark and horrible in part
as were the deeds which were to follow, no cruelty so cold-blooded and
preconcerted stains the other pages of the war. Cruelties there were,
and many black and shameful deeds, but deeds wrought in hot blood and
in the drunkenness of revenge; and happily the massacre of Navarin is
unapproached and unparalleled.
CHAPTER IX
PRIVATE NICHOLAS VIDALIS
Before September was a week old the Mainat corps, with Petrobey and
the prince, were back at Tripoli. The course events had taken at
Monemvasia had inclined the latter again to the side of the primates,
for he interpreted the attitude and action of the army with regard to
the capitulation of the place as an insult levelled at him. Germanos
was not long in perceiving this; but being acute enough to see that the
prince's authority was just now naught but a paper sceptre, he reasoned
that his friendship was equally valueless, unless he could manage to
rescue for him a few rags of the authority of which he had, by his own
folly, denuded himself. In any case the support of the primates was a
prop to the prince, and as the power of the primates varied in inverse
ratio to that of the military commanders, Germanos set to work again
to discredit them with the troops. There it was that the strength of
the revolution was beginning to lie--not in the prince, who could not
command others, nor in the senate, which was unable to command itself,
but in the people and the soldiers, who now for more than four months
had waited for the fall of the city, still obedient to many utterly
incompetent captains, and still steadfast in their watchings on the
hills. And Germanos's subtle brain, spinning threads out of itself like
a spider, was busy to catch the army, while in the end the army, like
some great blundering bee, burst unheeding through his palace of silk,
and left him angrily hungry and in ruins.
The tales of slander went on, and another captain was detected in his
infamous traffic with the besieged. It was certain also that provisions
were being sold to the men within the walls, for one night a Turk was
captured outside, and to save his life, confessed that the besieged
were supplied at starvation rates with bread and fresh meat. Upon this
second detection Petrobey gave notice that if another case occurred
the offender would be shot, and the night sentries were doubled. But
whether the treason was more wide-spread than they feared and the
sentries were bribed, or whether the traitors were cunning enough to
elude them, never came to light; but more evidence was found that
the traffic still went on, and one day, at a meeting of the senate,
Germanos rose and denounced the whole body of officers.
"The siege still drags on," he said, "and where are the preparations
to bring it to a conclusion? In the name of patriotism, I ask, Where?
To whose advantage is it that all these men are kept here from their
homes and their work, when the grapes are already growing ripe for the
gathering, and there is none to gather them, but only the birds? Is it
the men who prefer to stop here in these kennels, roasted under the
mid-day sun, and doing tedious hours of drill? Is it to the advantage
of the primates that we remain here, while our churches stand empty
and the tithes are remitted? Is it the most noble Prince Demetrius who
detains the army on this inhospitable mountain? The reason is not far
to seek. Who was it who was found trafficking with Abdul Achmet for
the safety of the Turk and his harem, if not one of these captains?
Who was it but another of his class who, last week only, was detected
in the same treasonable business? Who is it now who is selling, as
you all very well know, provisions to the besieged at rates which make
a man soon rich? To whose advantage is it that we linger here, while
within the town the Turk lives at ease and knows no lack, being sure
no attack will be made, and only waiting till these infamous men are
satisfied? The siege of Tripoli is this called? There has never been
any such thing. This is the market-place of Tripoli--a busy, profitable
market; and the men who bring their country produce for sale are none
other than the captains of the army. In particular, there is one among
them who might have brought the siege to an end six weeks before, had
he wished. While the most noble prince--whose eyes I feel it my duty to
open on this point--was, and is, with us, the captains have the excuse
that his authority is over them, that without his consent they can
do nothing. Very sedulous, no doubt, are their efforts to obtain his
consent. Yet there is a speciousness about such an excuse, and we will
leave it. But during the whole month of August Prince Demetrius was not
with us, and Nicholas Vidalis was supreme here. I ask him, therefore,
before you all, why, if he is an honest man, he did not attempt to take
the town?"
Several times during this speech an angry murmur went up from the
military section of the senate, but Nicholas more than once rose to
his feet and quieted them with an uplifted hand. He himself listened
attentively with a smile on his face, and when Germanos alluded to
his honesty he laughed aloud. For ever since Mitsos had told him the
story of his own part in the war, unsuspected by all, and only divulged
when necessity drove--of his silent, boyish heroism, his uncalculating
elimination of self--Nicholas had been privy to a secret shame at his
own deeds, or rather his own words. To withstand the primates in so
far as they injured the cause was well; but was it seemly to brawl,
to throw ineffectual words about, to waste, as he called it, "good
anger on an unprofitable thing"? What fruit had his angry gibes and
sneers borne? Were the primates wagging their unamiable tongues less
zealously? Were they not even speaking bitter truth when they said
that nefarious traffic was going on between the captains of the army
and the besieged? If the evil was to be checked, it must be checked
another way, and not by sprinkling the scandal-mongers with insults.
For a long time he had contemplated taking a certain step, and now that
opportunity offered itself so fitly he took it with as light a heart as
that which a tired man bears homeward. At the same time the openness of
the accusation prompted an equal openness. Germanos should be answered
once for all with his own frankness, and then for the highest trump
card to take the honor-laden trick.
So Nicholas, still smiling courteously, asked permission from the
prince, and in dead silence made his reply, speaking very quietly.
"We have open dealings at length from the archbishop," he said, "and
though I have dealt very openly with him from the first, yet never
before has he favored me thus. He has told us that no preparations
are being made for bringing the siege to a conclusion. That, with the
permission of all present, I declare to be a deliberate lie. Ah, I
must ask you to sit down," he said to Germanos, as the latter rose
angrily to his feet. "You have had a fair hearing, and I claim and
shall receive the same. A lie," he continued, "because I can tell
him it is untrue; a deliberate lie, because there is no need for me
to tell him. He was here throughout the month of August--a month to
which he again alluded later--and he knows that during that month I
was a tired and busy man, for I was drilling successive companies of
men all day, and if he knew anything of military matters he would be
well aware that it was my pleasure to see them improve considerably,
so that now the greater part of them are efficient soldiers. He has
told us that it is not to the advantage of the soldiers to remain here,
and that was in a sense true, though not wholly; for if it is to the
advantage of these men that Greece becomes a free country--and it is
their duty to help in securing its freedom--it is to their advantage
that they remain here, for here they can acquire that knowledge which
will enable them to fight successfully. He went on to tell us that it
was not to the advantage of the primates to remain here. Then why, in
the name of God, do they do so? for it is not to the advantage of the
soldiers that they cause divisions and dissensions among us. Let them
go home and gather in the tithes their hearts desire. No one, not even
I, will try to stop them. Yet they do not go, and we must suppose it is
for some one's advantage that they stop. Can it be that some of them
have an idea of getting possession of even a considerable part of the
booty we shall take? Can it be that one of them--yes, no other than
the archbishop--came here in the name of his Master and asked certain
men--no other than Petrobey and myself--for half the spoils which would
be taken, giving half to the national treasury, and to the men--the
soldiers who had fought and bled for it--the rest? Those spoils were to
be devoted to the glory of God, and who but His priests, the primates
and bishops, were to be trustees? And on that chance of getting, not
half the spoils, but still enough to make it worth while to wait, we
shall find the reason of their stopping here."
Nicholas looked across at Germanos, who sat white and shaking with
anger, and for a moment his passion flamed up.
"Sit there and hate me!" he cried, "for that will not harm me! If your
motives were honest, why should I not tell them? and, if not, there is
more cause for them to be known."
Germanos suddenly started up.
"It is an infamous slander!" he exclaimed; but Petrobey, without moving
from his seat, turned to the prince, speaking loud enough to be heard
by all.
"What my cousin has said is perfectly true," he remarked. "I was
present myself."
"Please to sit down, archbishop," said the prince. "Nicholas Vidalis is
speaking to us."
"This man has told us," continued Nicholas, "that an infamous traffic
is going on between the Turks and the captains of this army. We all
know, unhappily, that there is some truth in that. Two months ago, when
this assertion was as yet false, he was saying the same thing, and
he and others busied themselves in spreading reports that it was so.
Was that the part of an honorable man--to spread those infamous lies
about us, to slander and defame us to our troops? Is not the motive as
clear as the noonday? By sowing discord and dissension and mistrust in
our ranks he hoped to see his grand scheme realized, to have the army
flocking to him, pouring in gold and treasure for the glory of God
into the hands of his trustees. No great success has attended these
efforts, and when Prince Demetrius left the camp I do not know that
the primates found themselves very popular men. Finally, an attack has
been made on me personally. You have been told that at any time during
the month of August I might have stormed the town if I had wished.
That is a black falsehood, though perhaps not deliberate, since the
archbishop knows nothing of military affairs. For, in the first place,
my hands were full--it was necessary to bring a mere disorderly rabble
to military efficiency, and that, to the best of my power, I did; and,
in the second place, though I was in command of these troops, I had
agreed with my superior in command not to make any attempt while the
army was weakened by the withdrawal of the Mainat division, who were at
Monemvasia. I appeal to him to know whether this is or is not true."
"It is true," said Petrobey.
"As to my having profited by these delays," continued Nicholas, "you
have only my word against the word of another; but if the archbishop
has any evidence to bring on that point, I should be glad to hear it. I
wait for his reply."
There was a dead silence. Germanos sat voiceless, with his eyes on the
floor.
"If he is thinking over the evidence in his mind," said Nicholas,
"fitting it together as a witness and an accuser should, let him say
so, and I will wait."
Still there was silence, and Germanos, still proud and full of hate,
sat there without speech.
"So it is even as I told you," said Nicholas; "and these are malicious
and lying words he has spoken against me. I am a man easily provoked,
and, to my shame I speak it, one to whom forgiveness is a hard matter;
but that, or so I think it, is a thing for which I ask pardon, not of
man, but of God. Here, in this assembly, I have been accused of the
blackest offences; but the accusation was blacker still, for it was the
fruit of malice and falsehood. This is no matter for words of regret
from one or of pardon from the other, for there is in my heart no
pardon, and in his, I am very sure, no regret. Yet can I rid myself
of the need of either? My heart is sick of intrigue and dissension,
accusation and slander answering accusation, and I will have no more of
them. As I stand in the presence of God I have only one thought, and
that is the freedom of my country, and I do not serve it by spending
my time throwing words at men whose salt I would not eat. It is not so
very long since another said his voice would be heard no more here, yet
since then it has not been silent. To-day those words are mine; but,
before I go, one word. For the love of God, if any who sit here suspect
me of treachery, treason, or any of those things of which I have been
accused, as he hopes to be forgiven at the last day, let him stand out
and say so."
Once again there was a dead silence, and Nicholas's face brightened,
for the silence was sweet to him.
"So be it," he said, at length. "I go hence untouched by slander."
Then unbuckling his sword, he laid it on the table in front of the
prince.
"My seat in the senate, sir, I resign," he said; "my commission as an
officer I resign also. By birth I am a Mainat, and with your highness's
permission I wish to be enrolled among the private soldiers of the
corps."
Then turning to Petrobey:
"Old friend," he said, "once more we are together in the clan."
And with a step as light as a boy's, and a heart springing upward like
a lark, rid at last of the burden of personal ambition, he left the
room and went straight to where the corps were quartered.
[Illustration: "UNBUCKLING HIS SWORD, HE LAID IT ON THE TABLE"]
Nicholas found Mitsos and Yanni sitting on the wall of the camp near
the Mainat quarters, lecturing a small audience on the use and abuse
of fire-ships, for another attempt had been made on a vessel of the
cruising Turkish squadron, with the result of first half-roasting its
navigator and then completely drowning him; but the men seeing an
officer approach got up and saluted.
Nicholas, still with a singing heart, told them to be seated, and,
lighting a pipe, drew in the smoke in long, contented breaths.
"This is the first tobacco I have enjoyed since we came here," he said,
"for tobacco is tasted by the heart. Never again, lads, need you jump
up when I come, for I am no longer an officer, but just a private like
yourselves."
Mitsos stared aghast.
"Uncle Nicholas, what do you mean?" he gasped, wrinkling his eyebrows.
"Is this Germanos's doing?"
"Not so, little Mitsos, for neither Germanos nor another could do
that, but only myself. I have resigned my place in the senate, I have
resigned my commission, and all that is left of me is plain Nicholas;
but a man as happy as a king, instead of a bundle of malice and a bag
of bad words which squirted out like new must. Eh, but I am happy, and
it is God's own morning."
And he puffed out a great cloud of smoke and laughed out a great
mouthful of laughter.
"But what has happened?" cried Mitsos, still feeling that the world was
upsidedown.
"This has happened, little one," said Nicholas; "that a foul-tempered
man has made up his mind to be foul tempered no more, and as the thing
was an impossibility when he had to sit cocked up on a chair opposite
the proud primates, why he has been sensible enough to refuse to sit
there any longer. And as he was tired of tripping up on his fine tin
sword, he has given it back to the fine tin prince. And may that man
never do anything which he regrets less. Ah! here come my superior
officers. There will be talking to do, but little of it will I lay my
tongue to."
And he sprang up and saluted Petrobey.
Petrobey came up, quickly followed by two or three of the other
officers, among whom was the prince, smiling at Nicholas through his
annoyance, as the man stood at attention comely and erect.
"Drop that nonsense, dear cousin," he said, "and come to my tent for a
talk. Look, we have all come to fetch you."
Nicholas looked at him radiantly.
"I have had a set of good minutes since I left you," he said. "Say your
say, cousin, but little talking will I do."
The prince came forward with a fine, courteous air.
"We have come," he said, "to beg you to reconsider this step. I fancy
you will find no more insults awaiting you in the senate."
"Your highness," he said, "I can look back on my life and say I have
done one wise thing in it, and that this morning. And if, as you say,
there are no insults awaiting me in the senate, that confirms my belief
in its wisdom."
"But this is absurd, Nicholas," remonstrated Petrobey, "and all the
primates, even Germanos himself, regret what you have done."
Nicholas laughed.
"That is a sweet word to me," he said, "and you know it. But I am no
child to be coaxed with sugar."
"But think of us--we want your help. You have more weight with the men
than any of us!"
"I shall not fail you," said Nicholas, "and if I do my duty in the
ranks as well as I hope, I think I shall be more useful there than
anywhere else."
"But your career, now on the point of being crowned," said Petrobey,
eagerly. "The prince has promised--"
But Nicholas waved his hand impatiently.
"I have just got rid of my career," he said, "and I feel like a tired
horse when a stout rider dismounts and loosens the girth. Do not
attempt to saddle me again. Ah, dear cousin," he went on, suddenly
with affection and more gravity, "even you know me not at all if you
speak like that. Believe me, I care only for one thing in this world,
and that is the object for which we have labored together so long.
That cause I serve best here, and for these months I have been puffing
myself up to think that fine, angry words were of no avail. But I will
try them no longer; I am sick of anger, and my belly moves, whether I
will or not, when I sit there and have to listen--you know to what.
Leave me in peace. It is better so."
He glanced across at Mitsos a moment, who was standing by.
"I wish to speak to you alone, cousin," he said to Petrobey, "but that
will wait. Meantime, I thank you for all your friendliness to me, and I
decline entirely to listen to you. The thing is finished."
Petrobey saw that, for the present at least, it was no manner of
use trying to persuade him, and left him for a time; and Nicholas,
remarking that it was time for rations, and that these officers were
horribly unpunctual, took Mitsos by the arm and led him off to the
canteen, telling him on the way what had happened.
Mitsos was furiously indignant with Germanos, and vowed that the camp
should ring with the hissing of his name, but Nicholas stopped him.
"I neither forgive nor forget," he said, "but it is mere waste of time
and temper to curse. The harm is done, leave the vermin alone; oh,
they have bitten me sorely, I don't deny that, but if we are going
scavenging, as I pray God we may, let us begin in our own house. There
are purging and washing to be done among the men, I fear, little
Mitsos. And from this day, if there is any traffic or dishonorable
barter among the corps of the clan, have me out and shoot me, for I
make it my business that there shall be none. Now we will go and get
our rations. I ordered supplies of fresh beef for the men yesterday;
that was a good act to finish up with, and see already I reap the
fruits of it."
Nicholas remained perfectly firm, and Petrobey eventually desisted
from his attempt to persuade him to take up his commission again, for
he might as well have tried to lever the sun out of its orbit. But
he still continued to ask Nicholas's advice about the affairs of the
army, which the latter could not very well withhold. Among the men,
and especially among the Mainats, he underwent a sort of upsidedown
apotheosis. Germanos had made villanous accusations; here was a fine
answer. As for that proud man himself, he found his position was no
longer tenable. So far from being able to profit by Nicholas's action,
he discovered, though too late, that he had overreached himself in
making so preposterous a statement about his enemy, and the army
buzzed away through his fine woven web, leaving it dangling in the
wind. He saw that his chance of power was over, and, accepting the
inevitable, took his departure for Kalavryta, where he hoped his
authority remained intact. But, alas! for the triumphal reception by
the united army--alas! too, for his chance of the Patriarchate. His
name, which he had prospectively throned in the hearts of myriads,
was flotsam on the tide of their righteous anger against him, thrown
up on the beach, tossed to and fro once or twice, and then left. His
followers, the primates and bishops, less wise than he, still stayed
on, hoping against hope that the popular favor would set their way. But
the evil he and his had done lived after them; nothing now could undo
the distrust and suspicion they had caused, for their first malignant
slander had found fulfilment, and the army distrusted its officers,
while the officers were not certain of their men. Nicholas had cleared
himself, leaping with a shout of triumph free from the web spun round
him; others had not the manliness to do the same, to challenge the
evidence, for they knew there was evidence.
Nicholas found opportunity to tell Petrobey about Mitsos' love affairs,
but a few days afterwards news came to the camp that a landing of
the Turks from their western squadron was expected on the Gulf of
Corinth, near Vostitza, and the prince, with some acuteness, found in
this rumor sufficient reason to make his presence there desirable.
Petrobey, wishing to have a speedy and reliable messenger who could
communicate with the camp in the event taking place, sent Mitsos
off with him, and before the end of the third week in September the
prince took his departure in some haste, hoping to regain in fresh
fields the loss of prestige he had suffered here and at Monemvasia.
The news, if confirmed, was serious, for it meant that the Turkish
squadron had evaded the Greek fleet and threatened the Morea from the
north, while, if once a landing was effected, the Turks would, without
doubt, march straight to the relief of Tripoli just when its need was
sorest. The prince left the camp with much state and dignity, but
with nothing else, and Mitsos, to whom he had given a place on his
staff as aide-de-camp extraordinary to the Viceroy of Greece, with
the rank of lieutenant in the Hellenic army, pranced gayly along on
a fine-stepping horse, and for the first time fully sympathized with
Nicholas's resignation. They travelled by short marches, "like women,"
as Mitsos described it afterwards, and one night the aide-de-camp
extraordinary, having occasion to bring a message to his master, woke
him out of his sleep, and saw the commander-in-chief in a night-cap,
which left a deep, bilious impression on his barbarian mind wholly out
of proportion to so innocuous a discovery.
For a time, at least, in Tripoli there was no more intriguing between
the besiegers and the besieged, for Petrobey redoubled his vigilance,
and every night sent down a corps of trustworthy men to lie in wait
round the town. Meantime he knew a strong band of cavalry and a large
force of Albanian mercenaries were within the town, and in the citadel
was enough artillery to be formidable; so that while there was a chance
of capitulation, provided the rumor of the expected landing of troops
on the Gulf of Corinth continued unconfirmed, he was unwilling to
make an assault on the town. But it began to be known that the fall
of Tripoli was inevitable, and from all over the country the peasants
flocked together on the hills waiting for the end and a share in the
booty. It was in vain that Petrobey tried to drive them back; as soon
as he had cleared one range of hills they swarmed upon another like
sparrows in the vines, springing as it seemed from the ground, or as
vultures grow in the air before a battle. Some came armed with guns,
requesting to be enrolled in the various corps; others with sickles or
reaping-hooks, or just with a knife or a stick. Every evening on the
hills round shone out the fires of this unorganized rabble, gathering
thicker and thicker as the days went on.
Then, on the 24th of September, a refugee from the town was captured
and brought to the camp, and being promised his life if he gave
intelligence of what was going on inside, told them that famine had
begun; that many of the horses of the cavalry corps had been killed for
meat, and that unless help came the end was but a matter of hours. Once
again Petrobey consulted Nicholas, who advised an assault at once; but
the other argued that as long as no news came of the reinforcements
from the north the case of the town was hopeless, and as it was for the
Greeks to demand terms, they might as well wait for a proposal to come.
Nicholas disagreed; there had been treachery before in the camp; there
might be treachery now. Let them, at any rate, minimize the disgrace to
the nation. Petrobey in part yielded, and consented to do as Nicholas
advised if no proposals were made in three days. In the mean time,
since there was no longer any fear of the cavalry, they would move down
closer onto the plain and directly below the walls. Then, if fire was
opened on them from the citadel, they would storm it out of hand; but
if not--and he had suspected for a long time that the guns were not all
serviceable--they would wait for three days, unless Mitsos came back
saying that reinforcements were on the way from the north.
CHAPTER X
THE FALL OF TRIPOLI
The order to break up camp was received with shouts of acclamation, and
all day long on the 25th the processions of mules passed, like ants
on a home run, up and down the steep, narrow path from the plain. The
Mainat corps were the first to move, and took up their place opposite
the southern wall, and worked there under the sun for a couple of hours
or more throwing up some sort of earth embankment; while in the space
behind marked out for their lines went up the rows of their barracks,
pole by pole, and gradually roofed in with osier and oleander boughs.
On the walls of the town lounged Turkish men, and now and then a woman
passed, closely veiled, but casting curious glances at the advancing
troops not four hundred yards from the gate. The men worked like horses
to get their intrenchments and defences up, and by the time each corps
had done its work, the huts behind were finished; and, streaming with
perspiration, the men were glad to throw themselves down in the shade.
As there was no regular corps of sappers and engineers, each regiment
had to do its intrenching and defence work for itself, and they worked
on late into the night before the transfer of the entire camp was
effected. Meantime Petrobey had ordered the posts on the hills to the
east to close in, and by noon on the 27th he saw his long-delayed dream
realized, for on all sides of the town ran the Greek lines. Still,
from inside the beleaguered place came no sign of resistance, attack,
or capitulation; but towards sunset a white flag was hoisted on the
tower above the south gate, and a few moments afterwards Mehemet Salik,
attended by his staff, came out, and were met by Petrobey. Yanni, as
aide-de-camp, was in attendance on his father, and he had the pleasure
of meeting his old host again.
Mehemet followed Petrobey to his quarters, Yanni looking at him as a
cat in the act to spring looks at a bird. He was a short-legged, stout
man, appearing tall when he was sitting, but when he stood, heavy
and badly proportioned. He had grown a little thinner, or so thought
Yanni, and the skin hung bagging below his eyes, though he was still
hardly more than thirty. He looked Yanni over from head to foot without
speaking, adjusted his green turban, and then, shrugging his shoulders
slightly, took a seat and turned to Petrobey.
"I have been sent to ask the terms on which you will grant a
capitulation," he said; "please consider and name them."
"I will do so," replied Petrobey, "and let you have them by midnight."
Mehemet glanced at his watch.
"Thank you; we shall expect them then."
He rose from his seat and again looked at Yanni, who was standing by
the door. The two presented a very striking contrast--the one pale,
flabby, clay-colored, slow-moving; the other, though there were not ten
years between them, fresh, brown, and alert. Mehemet continued looking
at him for a moment below his drooping eyelids without speaking, and
then the corners of his sensual mouth straightened themselves into a
smile. He held out his hand to the boy.
"So we meet again, my guest," he said; "your leave-taking was somewhat
abrupt. Will you shake hands?"
Yanni bristled like a collie dog, and looked sideways at him without
speaking, but kept his hands stiff to his side.
"You vanished unexpectedly, just when I hoped to begin to know you
better," continued Mehemet.
But Petrobey interfered sternly.
"You are not here, sir, to confer insults," he said.
Mehemet turned round slowly towards him with a face of sallow death.
"Surely my teeth are drawn, as far as the boy is concerned," he said;
"but let me know one thing," he continued, "for I have a heavy wager
about it. Did you bribe the porter, or did you get through the roof?"
"Through the roof," said Yanni, as stiff as a poker.
"I have lost. I said you bribed the porter. He shall come out of prison
to-night and have poultices, for he was much beaten. Good-evening,
gentlemen."
Yanni turned to Petrobey with blazing eyes.
"Cannot I kick him now?" he whispered.
"How can I give you permission?" said Petrobey.
Yanni looked at him a moment and then his lips parted in a smile, and
he went out of the tent.
Mehemet was a few yards down the path, going towards the gate of the
camp where his staff was waiting, and in three strides Yanni caught up
with him.
"Oh, man!" he said, and no more; but next moment Yanni's foot was deep
in the folds of his excellency's baggy trousers. His excellency was
lifted slightly forward from behind, and picked himself up with a cry
of lamentation, for the pain had been exquisite. Yanni was by him with
a brilliant smile on his face.
"You insulted me under the flag of truce," he said, kindly, "and
under the flag of truce I have answered you. There is quits." And he
turned and went back to his father.
[Illustration: "YANNI WAS BY HIM WITH A BRILLIANT SMILE ON HIS FACE"]
Petrobey appeared to be absorbed in writing, and he did not look up,
but handed Yanni a paper.
"Go at once to the captains whose names I have written here, Yanni," he
said, "and tell them to come immediately to consult about the terms of
capitulation. I thought," he added, "that I heard a slight disturbance
outside. Can you account for it?"
"It seemed to be the settlement of some private difference, sir," said
Yanni. "It is all over."
"Is the difference settled?"
"There is a very sore man," said Yanni.
The conference among the captains lasted only a short time, and in a
couple of hours the terms were despatched to Mehemet. The Turks were
to give up their arms and were to be allowed, or rather compelled,
to leave the Morea. They were further to pay the indemnity of forty
million piastres, that being approximately the cost of the war,
including the provisions and pay of all the men, from the time of its
outbreak. In less than an hour the answer came back. The demand was
preposterous, for it was impossible to collect the money, but in return
they made a counter-proposition. They would give up the whole of their
property within the town, renounce all rights of land, retaining only
sufficient means to enable them to reach some port on the Asia Minor
coast, but demanding leave to retain their arms in order to secure
themselves from massacre on the way to Nauplia. They also insisted on
occupying the pass over Mount Parthenius, between the Argive plain and
Tripoli, until the women and children had been embarked in safety.
This precaution, they added, was due to themselves, for they had no
guarantee that without their arms the Greeks would not violate the
terms of the capitulation as they had violated them at Navarin.
The Greek chiefs refused to consider the proposal, for if the Turks
distrusted them, they at least had no reason to trust the Turks; and
if the regiments in the town occupied Parthenius, what was to hinder
them from marching on to Nauplia and remaining there? Nauplia still
held communication with the sea, and they had not spent six months in
reducing Tripoli only at the end to let the besieged go out in peace to
another and better-equipped fortress.
Once more affairs were at a deadlock, and at this point Petrobey made
an inexcusable mistake. He ought, without doubt, to have stormed the
place and have done with it; but when, in a moment of weakness, he put
the proposal to the captains, the majority of them were for waiting.
The reason was unhappily but too plain. They knew that famine prevailed
in the town, they knew, too, that its capitulation was inevitable,
but they saw for themselves a rich harvest gained in a few days by
secretly supplying the besieged with provisions, and for the next
week Germanos's bitter words were terribly true. This was no siege of
Tripoli; it was the market of Tripoli.
On the 28th came another proposal from the town, this time not from
the Turks, but from the Albanian mercenaries who had formed the attack
on the post at Valtetzi in May. They were fifteen hundred strong, and
good soldiers, but as mercenaries they had no feelings of obligation
or honor to their employers, and did not in the least desire a fierce
engagement with the Greeks; and now that all idea of capitulation was
over, for neither side would accept the ultimatum of the other, it was
clearly to their advantage to get away, if they could, with their lives
and their pay. The town would, without doubt, fall by storm, their
employers would be massacred, and their best chance was to stand well
with the besiegers. They, therefore, offered to go back to Albania,
and never again to enlist in the Turkish service, provided they might
retire with their arms. The Greeks, on their side, had no quarrel
with them; many were related to them by ties of friendship and blood;
they had no desire to gain a bloody and hard-won victory if there was
a chance of detaching the mainstay of their foes, and they agreed to
their terms.
The weather was hot and stifling beyond description, and the Mainats
who were on the south felt all day the reflected glare and heat from
the walls as from a furnace. In that week of waiting Petrobey lost
all the confidence of the clan, for they alone were blameless of this
outrageous traffic, that had sprung up again, and they were waiting
while Petrobey let it go on. He had asked the advice of men who were
without principle or honor, who were filling their pockets at the
expense of the honor of others, and though he himself was without
stain, yet his weakness at this point was criminal. It seemed that he
refused to believe what the army knew, and persisted in judging the
whole by the behavior of the clan themselves. Nicholas appealed to him
in vain, but Petrobey always asked whether he had himself seen evidence
of the scandal, and being in the Mainat corps, he had not. In vain
Nicholas pointed out that a week ago they knew that famine was preying
on the besieged, yet a week had gone and the famine seemed to have made
no impression. How was it possible that the town could hold out unless
it was being supplied? And how could a commander know what was going
on among the hordes of peasants who flocked to the camp? Now that
the evil was so wide-spread and universal, a whole regiment perhaps
profited by the traffic; and where was the use of any man informing his
captain?--for the captains were the worst of all.
Meantime, inside, Suleima watched at her latticed window and looked
for Mitsos. A week ago she had watched the men streaming down from
Trikorpha to the plain, and had hardly been able to conceal her joy,
while round her the other women wailed and lamented, saying that they
would all fall into the hands of the barbarous folk. On the other side,
away from the wall, the windows of the harem looked out onto a narrow,
top-heavy street, the eaves of the houses nearly meeting across it,
and on the top again was a large, flat roof, where they often went to
sit in the evening and chatter across the street to the women on the
house opposite. By day a ribbon of scorching sunlight moved slowly
from one side to the other, and often Suleima would sit at the window
which overhung the foot-path, watching and watching, but seeing,
perhaps, hardly a couple of passengers in as many hours, for this was
only a side street where few came. By leaning out she could just catch
a glimpse of a main thoroughfare which led into the square, but only
Turks passed up and down. The others looked at her with wonder and
pity, thinking her hardly in her right mind to be smiling and happy
at such a time, for close before her lay the trial and triumph of her
sex, and the Greeks were at the door. The harem generally, and also the
chief wife, whose slave she was, knew her condition, but from a feeling
partly of pity and affection--for she was a favorite with all--partly
from indifference, had not accused her to Abdul. Abdul himself, in the
excitement and preoccupation of the siege, had not been in the harem
more than twice in as many months, and thus her state had escaped
detection.
So she went about with her day-dream and snatches of song, painting in
her mind a hundred pictures as to how Mitsos would come. Should she
see him stalking up the narrow street, then looking up and smiling at
her, bringing the news that the town had capitulated and he had come
to claim her? There would be a step on the stair and he would come in,
bending to get through the door; and then, oh, the blessedness of talk
and tears that would be hers! Or would there come a shout and the sound
of riot and confusion, and streaming up the street a fighting crowd?
He would be there in the middle of it all, slashing and hewing his way
to her. He would look up--that he would always do--and see her at the
window, and then get to work again, dealing death to all within reach.
Perhaps he would be hurt, not much hurt, but enough to make her lean
over him with anxious face and nimble, bandaging hands, and the joy of
ministering to him leaping in her heart. It was towards this vision
that she most inclined, to Mitsos, fighting and splendid as fresh from
the dust and the ecstasy of struggle, coming to her--the mistress and
lady of his arm--lover to lover. Or would he come by night silently
beneath the stars, as he had come before, or with a whispered song
which her heart had taught her ears to know, and take her away while
the house slept, out of this horrible town, and to some place like in
spirit to the lonely sea-scented beach near Nauplia, into remoteness
from all things else? In these half-formulated dreams there was never
any hitch or disturbance--doors yielded, men slept, or men fell, and
through all like a ray of light came Mitsos, unhindered, irresistible.
But after three or four days her mood changed, and from her eyes
looked out the soul of some timid, frightened animal. Why did he not
come--by night or in peace or in the shout of war? What meant this
sudden increase in their food, for now for more than a week they had
lived but on sparing rations? Yet the fresh meat and new bread revolted
her; she was hungry, yet she could not eat. The women were kind to her,
and Zuleika used to make her soup and force her with firm kindness to
drink it; they were always plaguing her, so she thought, not to prowl
about so much, to rest more and to eat more, and when she understood
why, she obeyed them. For a few nights before she had slept but
lightly, and her sleep was peopled with vivid things--now she would be
moving in a crowd of flying fiery globes, she one of them; now the dark
was full of gray shapes that glided by her windily with a roar of the
remote sea, but at the end they would disperse and leave her alone, and
out of the darkness came Mitsos, and with that she would dream no more.
But waking and the hours of the day changed place with the night, and
it seemed that she moved in a nightmare until she slept again.
But when she understood the reason for which they pressed her to rest
and eat, she quickly regained the serenity of her health, and during
the last two days of waiting, though her fears and anxieties crouched
in the shade ready to spring on her again, they lay still, and the
claws and teeth spared her.
But one morning--it was the 3d of October--there was suddenly a tumult
in the streets, and cries that the Greeks had come in, and Suleima
went up to the house-top to see if she could find out where they were
entering, prepared to run out into the street to meet them, crying to
them as her deliverers, as Mitsos had told her. In the brightness
of that sudden hope that the end had come, she felt no longer weary
or ill, and she looked out over the town with expectant eyes. But by
degrees the tumult died down again, and, bitterly disappointed, she
crept back to the room of the harem where the women were sitting to ask
what this meant. None knew, but in a little time they heard a renewed
noise from the street, and running to look out, they saw a small body
of Turkish soldiers advancing, and in the middle a very stout lady
riding a horse. Behind her came two servants driving horses with big
panniers slung on each side, and the stout lady talked in an animated
manner to the soldiers, pointing now to one house and then to another.
Then looking up at the window of Abdul Achmet's house, out of which
Suleima was leaning, she shouted some shrill question in Turkish,
which Suleima did not catch, and the procession turned up into the
main street, seeming to halt opposite the door leading into the front
court-yard.
In a little while Abdul Achmet, with a eunuch, came in, at whose
entrance Suleima drew back behind the other women and wrapped her
bernouse round her. He wore a face of woe, and behind they could hear
the voice of the stout lady, who found the stairs a little trying. She
entered the room with a shining, smiling face, and sat down puffing on
a sofa.
"And when I've got my breath again," she said, volubly, as if still in
the middle of a sentence, "I'll tell you who I am, and what I am going
to do, and what you are going to do. A hot morning it is, and there's
no denying it, and though I've seen many pretty faces in my day, sir, I
can't remember that I ever set eyes on anything so nice as your little
lot. And what may your name be, my dear?" she said, turning to Suleima,
who shrank from her without knowing why; "but whatever your name is,
it was a fine day for your kind master when he first set eyes on you."
She looked at Suleima more closely, and waiting till Achmet and the
eunuch had left the room: "Poor lamb! and so young, too," she said,
kindly enough; "and now I've got my breath a bit, I'll tell you my
business. I'm a Greek by birth, though you can hear I talk Turkish like
the Sultan himself, and as for my name, why, it's Penelope."
Suleima suddenly burst into a helpless fit of laughter at this funny
old woman, though she was not funny at all, she thought, but simply
a fat, disgusting old hag. Penelope stopped short at this unseemly
interruption, and for a moment seemed disposed to resent it; but some
womanly feeling came to her aid, and she pulled a great bottle of some
strong-smelling stuff out of her pocket and applied it to Suleima's
nose as she sat rocking herself backward and forward with peals of
laughter.
"She'll faint if she laughs like that," she explained, "and this will
pull her together a bit. Get some brandy, one of you, quickly. There,
there, my dear," she went on to Suleima, "be quiet now, be quiet, it's
all right, and take a spoonful of this, it'll do you good."
Suleima gradually recovered herself through a spasm of coughing and
choking, and the brandy brought her round.
"I am sorry for laughing," she said, no longer shrinking from the
woman; and speaking low to her, in Greek, "but I am not very well. And,
oh, tell me, you look kind; have you seen Mitsos? Where is he? Why does
he not come?"
Penelope started in surprise.
"My poor little one," she answered, in Greek, "what does this mean? But
wait a minute."
Then, speaking in Turkish again:
"I thought I'd seen her before," she explained aloud, "and she says
she comes from Spetzas, which is my home. And what I've come for is
this, and I'm here to help all you women. You will give up to me all
your money and jewels, my pretties, for the Greek commander, who is a
relation of mine"--this was not the case--"wishes neither to hurt nor
harm you; but if you are found, any of you, with jewels or money about
you, why, it may be the siege of Navarin over again. So now I shall
wait here, and each of you will fetch all you have; and to make things
sure and certain, I'll just search you as well. This girl," and she
pointed to Suleima, "shall come to me first; so get you all gone, and
I'll call you in one at a time."
They all dispersed to their rooms to get their trinkets and money,
and in a few moments Suleima came back, and the other closed the door
quickly behind her.
"You are a Greek, child," she said. "Yes, put your bits of finery in my
basket; we have not much time."
She heard Suleima's story with many raisings of the hand and
exclamations of wonder, and when she had finished she kissed her, like
a true woman, with pity and affection.
"Poor child, poor child!" she soothed her, "I will do the best I can.
God knows what will happen when the end comes, for the camp is like a
pack of wolves. This Mitsos of yours has some glimmerings of sense,
but look at the risk you run if you do as he tells you. Fancy running
to meet a lot of wolves, you in your Turkish dress, crying you are a
wolf too. Ah, dear me, dear me, and the child and all! But this is my
idea: separate yourself at all costs from the other women. If they
stay in the house, run; if they run, stay here. Do not be seen with
them; unveil your face, as the Greek women do, and if possible avoid a
mob of Greeks. If you have to go into the street keep in a side street,
where perhaps stragglers only will come. And the Lord be with you, poor
child!"
Suleima clung to this woman--usually coarse and greedy, but one who
had the springs of true womanliness in her--as to a rock of refuge,
and without searching her, but kissing her again affectionately, she
waited till the girl's tears had subsided before opening the door and
calling in the next woman. In turn they all passed before her and gave
up their valuables. There was but little money, for the women spent
it for the most part on finery, and poured into Penelope's basket
turquoise collars, fine filagree work from the bazaars, bracelets set
with pearls or moonstones, and ear-rings of all sorts. The search was
hastily done, for she had many houses to visit, and with a curious
mixture of humanity and greed she wished to make as rich a harvest as
possible--since she received a share of what she got--and at the same
time do all she could for these poor caged women. And so for two days,
as there were many houses to go to and much to be got, sometimes with
difficulty--for some of the women would have preferred to run the risk
of having valuables concealed about them--she went on her rounds of
greedy mercy, and it was not till the morning of the 5th of October
that she went out again to the camp.
During those two days matters outside had gone from bad to worse.
Anagnostes had been detected trafficking with the besieged, and when
Nicholas laid the proof of his guilt before Petrobey, he buried his
face in his hands and said he could do nothing. That hour of weakness,
when he had consulted men who he knew would only give him selfish
and dishonorable counsel, had broken his authority like a reed.
Anagnostes's corps shared his guilt, probably down to the youngest man
in his service, and if he punished one he would have to punish hundreds.
"And, oh, Nicholas," said Petrobey, in piteous appeal, "if ever you
have loved me, or can still remember that we are of one blood, help me
now, by what way you will. I was ever honorable, but I have been as
weak as water; your strength and your honor are both unshaken."
This was on the morning of the 5th; and before Nicholas could reply, a
shrill, rather breathless, voice bawled to Petrobey from outside, and
Penelope demanded admittance. It was not her way to ask twice, and she
followed her demand up by putting her red face through the tent-flap,
and, entering herself, bade her servants, laden with jewels, also to
enter.
Petrobey turned one last look at Nicholas.
"You will help me?" he said.
"I was always ready," said Nicholas, smiling, and he went lightly out
of the tent.
Some fine wrangling was going on in the Mainats' quarters when he
appeared, and two men appealed to him.
"Is it true that the woman has taken all the spoils to Petrobey's
tent?" asked one.
Nicholas dived at the meaning of the question.
"His honor is untouched," he said; "they are there only for safe
keeping; I swear it, and will go bail for my life on it."
Then to himself: "The time has come," he thought, "when even he is not
spared."
"Look you, lads," he said, aloud, "to-day Tripoli falls. When it
has come to this, that you can suspect him, it is time. We make the
attempt--we Mainats, who were ever the first at great deeds. Come,
summon the men. Yes, I have the authority--more than that, I have
promised to help, and there is only one way."
In five minutes the word had gone about, and the corps, some five
hundred strong, flocked eagerly to hear Nicholas. He went with the
captains into the officers' tent, and, forgetful of his rank among men
who had always treated him as the king of men, bade them sit down.
"In ten minutes," he said, "the corps must stand under arms, and a
moment's delay after that may spoil everything. I lead the way, and we
go at a double's double straight to the Argos tower. At that corner a
man can climb the wall, for there are rough, projecting stones. How do
I know that? Because I climbed it last night when I was on sentry duty.
So much for the vigilance of those moles and bats who are stationed
there. With me I shall have a rope, which I shall fasten to the
battlements, and then, in God's name, follow like the bridegroom to the
bride-chamber. The man behind me carries the Greek flag, which he hands
me as soon as I am up. Ah, my friends, grant me that one sweet moment.
Yet--no, we will vote for the man who shall do that."
A deep murmur--"You, you, Nicholas, Nicholas"--ran round, and so
another moment of happiness, so great that it was content, was given
him.
"And now up with you," said Nicholas. "Ah, let us shake hands first. O
merciful God, but Thou art very good to me!"
The attempt was so daring, so utterly unexpected, that the Arcadian
corps stationed opposite the Argos tower merely stood in amazement,
as with a clatter and a rush the Mainats streamed by them and up the
wall in front. Agile as a cat, for all his sixty years, Nicholas laid
hand and foot on the rough masonry, and the next moment he had dashed
down the single sentry on the tower, who was smoking and talking to a
woman on the wall. Then fastening the rope to one of the battlements he
turned again to perform the crowning act of his adventurous life, and,
before two men had swarmed up, the Greek flag waved from the tower.
CHAPTER XI
FATHER AND DAUGHTER
Nicholas waited there for perhaps a minute, while the Mainats swarmed
up and formed in lines on the broad-terraced wall. He had mounted to
the zenith of his life, the glorious visionary noon of his hopes was
his, the work of years crowned, and the foul disgrace of the week of
waiting over. When forty men or so had joined him he bade them follow,
and, falling on the guards at the gate, forced his way through, and
with his own hand drew back the bolts and flung it open. The Arcadian
corps opposite had seen the flag wave on the tower and poured in,
sweeping the Mainats along with them up the main street of the lower
town.
A pack of wolves Penelope had called them--aye, and the wolves were
hungry. Six months' waiting in inaction, all trust in their captains
gone, and the treacherous marketing of the captains gone likewise! The
soldiers knew that for days past promises of protection had flowed in
on the besieged, and signed papers promising to pay king's ransoms had
come out; but there was little chance now of these ransoms going where
they were promised. The soldiers would have a hand in that promised
gold, it was their hour now; the captains might flourish their infamous
paper bargains; let them, if they could, protect their pashas, and let
them collect their rewards from those who spoiled the palaces.
There was such order in the ranks as the water of a river in flood
observes when it has broken its banks; among the besieged such
resistance as sticks and straws show when the torrent catches them.
Close on the heels of the regular troops fighting to gain an entrance
came the mob of peasants, the scavengers of the siege, who had come
for the pickings. The troops thrust them back till they had themselves
got in; some were ground against the walls, some thrown under foot in
the narrow gateways and trodden by the heels of the advancing columns.
Once inside, each man went where he willed or where the stream of
men bore him, most of them making for the large houses stood round
the square, where the richest booty was expected. Close above stood
the citadel, with empty-mouthed guns pointing this way and that, but
silent, and if those months had been roaring with an iron death none
would have regarded. Petrobey, who had joined the Mainats, wondered at
this; the Turks, he thought, might at least sell their lives as dear as
they could, but the reason was not known till three days later, when
the citadel fell. All thoughts of discipline or order were out of the
question; he was jostled along with the others; he was one among many,
and all were equal, and each was a wild animal.
The attack had been utterly unexpected by the besieged, and on the
north side of the town provisions were being conveyed over the walls
even while at the Argos gate the flag of Greece was flying. The hoarse
roar of crowds came to the servants of Mehemet Salik as they were
returning to the house with meat and bread. There was no mistaking that
sound, and they dropped whatever they had and fled home for refuge,
only to find the women of the harem and the other servants streaming
out to seek escape. The long-delayed day had come, the stronghold and
centre of the Turkish power was in the hands of those who had been
slaves so long, and each link of the chains that had held them was
broken by another and another Turk stabbed, shot, or trampled to death.
The Mainat corps gained the square first and cut into the mob escaping
from Mehemet's house, and a lane of blood and bodies marked their
march. Mehemet and a few soldiers had barricaded themselves in an upper
story and fired a few shots at the men at the rear of the column, who
pressed forward unable to get in; but in ten seconds the foremost men
had passed up the stairs, broken through the barricaded doors, and were
on them. As was their wont, they fought in silence, and for the most
part with knives only, and inside the room only the trampling of feet,
short gasps, and a sharp cry or two were heard against that long hoarse
roar outside. Yanni, who was among the first, forced his way to where
Mehemet was standing, still pale and unconcerned, defending himself
desperately, and as if introducing himself:
"He who was to serve in your harem!" he cried, and stabbed him to the
heart.
Here and there in the streets a group of Turks collected, but the wave
of men passed over them, leaving naught but wreckage behind, and others
ran up to the citadel gates, where they beat on the door demanding
admittance. But before the gates could be opened the Mainats, who had
finished their work at Mehemet's, were on them, as they stood close
pressed, men and women together, in a living wall. For an hour that
piece of shambles-work lasted; they met resistance, for the Turks were
not lacking in courage, and when it was over, and the living wall
was only a tumbled pile of death, they went back, still silent and
stern-featured, but leaving some thirty or forty of their clan behind
them, whose death they were going to avenge.
Meantime the Albanian mercenaries, who had concluded a truce with the
Greeks, hearing the tumult begin, formed under arms in the immense
court-yard of the palace of Elmar Bey, their commander, prepared, if
the Greeks attempted to violate their conditions, to charge--and with
a fair chance of success--this disorganized rabble, and cut their way
through. The mob was swarming outside the iron-barred gate, and some
were even attempting to break it in, when Anagnostes, who was among
them and saw the danger, struggled up to the gate, and by his immense
personal strength pushed away the Greeks who were trying to force
it. One man, thinking that there was some vast treasure within, and
that Anagnostes had made an agreement by which it should be guarded
for him, ran at him with a drawn sword, crying "Treachery!" and the
other lifting his pistol calmly shot him dead. For a few moments his
life hung on a thread, but he succeeded in making the men nearest
him understand that inside were the Albanians, who had made a truce
and only desired to leave the town; and forming a certain number of
men across the street to stop the mob, secured a clear space for the
Albanians to march out. Thence they went straight down the road to the
Argos gate, round which lay the poorer quarter of the town, by this
time almost entirely deserted by the Greek troops, though the hordes
of peasants were swarming into the houses to secure all they could lay
hands on, and then out of the town, where they took up their quarters
in the deserted camp at Trikorpha, whence they watched the destruction
of the city, and from there on the seventh day marched north to the
Gulf of Corinth, took ship across the Gulf, and at length reached their
mountain homes in safety.
The house of Abdul Achmet, where Suleima lived, was near the western
gate of the city, opposite to which were stationed the Argive corps.
Though the Greek troops there could not see across the houses to the
gate where the flag was flying, they heard the tumult of shouts and
firing begin, they saw the sentries on the gate turn and fly, and
without waiting for news or instructions they assaulted the gate and
tried to force it. But it held firm against their attack, and they had
to blow out the staples of the bolts before they could get in. The main
street up towards the square lay straight before them, and they poured
up it to where they could see the crowds battering at the houses,
killing all the Turks, men, women, and children, whom they met flying
away. Among the foremost was Father Andréa, a priest of the Prince of
Peace no more, but a fury of hatred. In ten minutes his long, two-edged
knife was red from point to hilt, and as he dealt death to the masses
of refugees one sentence came from his mouth, "The sword of the Lord!"
But just at the corner, where the side street ran down to the little
door opening from Abdul Achmet's house below the harem window, a Turk
whom he had charged attacked him, evading his upraised knife, and
knocked him over, only to find death two yards off. Andréa hit his head
against the curbstone of the pavement, lay there for a few moments
stunned, and came to himself with the world spinning round him. He rose
and staggered out of the blinding sunshine into a cool, dark doorway,
some yards down the street, to recover himself a little and to stanch
the blood which was flowing from his head; but his knife, which had
been struck from his hand, he picked up and carried with him.
Meantime Suleima, from the latticed window, had seen the charge of the
Argives, and the terrified women, calling on Allah and the Prophet,
ran trembling and sobbing about like frightened birds caught in a net.
Abdul did not appear; he had probably run from the house, and the
servants seemed to have fled too. Some of the women were for following
their example and trying to escape to the western gate, which was only
two hundred yards off, as soon as the road was more clear; others
were for climbing up to the roof, and hiding themselves there; others
for shutting themselves into some small chamber in the house, hoping
they would not be discovered. At length, amid an infinity of wailing
clatter, they agreed on this, and Suleima, obedient to Penelope's
instructions, waited among the hindermost, and then turned to slip
down-stairs and out. Zuleika saw her and cried to her to come back,
then seemed disposed to follow herself, but Suleima heard her not, and
glided down the stairs like a ghost. On the first landing she stopped
for a moment and took the veil off her face; her black hair streamed
down over, her shoulders reaching to her waist, and she tied it up in
a great knot behind her head. Then she wrapped her bernouse round her,
and waited a moment till she was certain that none were following her.
A strange new courage made steel of her muscles; never in her life had
she known so warm a bravery, for when she was out in the boat with
Mitsos, or returning to the house after one of those excursions, she
had trembled with fright lest she should be discovered, and all this
last week she had had sudden qualms and shiverings of terror at the
thought of the innumerable dangers that lay before her. But now that
the time had come she slipped down the stairs as calmly as she went
to her bed or her bath; she thought of herself no longer, but of the
unborn babe she carried. A moment's faltering, a babbling word where
a firm one was wanted, would be death to that which was dearer to her
than herself, and she hastened to the doorway, and seeing that the side
street seemed deserted, slipped out, strong in the strength that is the
offspring of the protective instinct for that which is as intimately
dear as self, and dearer in that it is not self, which only women can
know. That day saw many bloody and cruel acts, and many cowardly and
craven things, and perhaps only one deed of instinctive, unconscious
heroism, and that was Suleima's sublime attempt to save the child of
him she loved.
As she opened the door, the roar of death and murder rose like the roar
of the sea, and yet the dread of loneliness to one bred in a chattering
harem was hardly less terrible. Whither should she go on her desperate
attempt? Looking up the street to the main road leading to the square,
there suddenly came into sight a woman running distractedly with shrill
cries towards the western gate, and, even as she passed, a Greek coming
up from the opposite direction ran her through the body, and wiping
his sword on her dress, passed on. Cold fear rushed like a river round
her heart, yet she would not give it admittance. She must be brave;
she would be brave. There was no safety within, that was sure; among
the rest of the Turkish women how should she be spared? To the south
a column of black smoke rose from a quarter already burning; flame
and sword were around her. Then for fear she should lose her courage
altogether if she delayed, she drew one deep breath and stepped out
into the street, terrible to her in its emptiness, more terrible still
in the thought that at any moment it might sing and roar with death.
Now it was so that the moment after Suleima stepped out of the doorway
Father Andréa, only thirty yards off, got up with a heart that was one
red flame of anger. He had wrapped a rough bandage round his bleeding
temple, and that blow had stung him to madness, while in his hand,
so thought the wild, revengeful man, he held the sword of the Lord,
dripping with the blood of the ungodly. Man, woman, and child, they
were all one accursèd brood. With this thought whirling in his brain
like some mad, dervis thing he looked down the street and saw a Turkish
woman walking towards him, and "The sword of the Lord!" he cried again.
The woman fled not, but ran towards him, crying out "Save me; I am of
your blood!" And seeing by the long, black robe and hair that streamed
over his shoulders that he was a priest, "Save me, father!" she cried
again, "I am of your blood!"
"Mother of devils! mother of devils!" muttered Andréa; but then stopped
suddenly, with arm uplifted, not ten yards off, for over his wild brain
there came the astonished thought that she had spoken Greek. At the
sight of that red knife, and at those fierce words, Suleima uttered a
little low cry of despair; but in a moment her strength came back to
her redoubled, and she flung aside her bernouse, showing the lines of
her figure.
"Would you slay me, father?" she cried again, "I who am of your blood?
and see, I am with child!"
Father Andréa paused, stricken out of thought for a moment, and wiped
his blade against his cassock. "Greek, she is Greek," he said to
himself, "yet from the house of the Turk."
Suleima stood as still as a marble statue and as white. The black
bernouse had fallen to the ground, and her silk robe flowed loosely
round her figure. He moved a step nearer.
"You are Greek," he said to her. "How came you here?"
"I know not," said Suleima. "I was taken by the Turks ten years ago, or
it may be twelve. Take me away, father, out of this horrible town."
The two were standing close together in the deserted street. From above
came the wails of women, for the Greeks had forced their way through
the door in the main street into Abdul Achmet's house, and from the
square roared the mob. Andréa looked at her in silence for a moment,
his brows knitted into a frown, his brain one mill-race of thought,
suggesting a possibility beyond the bounds of possibility. At length he
spoke to her again, wondering at himself.
"I will save you, my daughter," he said; and as the words passed his
lips his heart throbbed almost to bursting. "Quick! come with me! Ah,
wait a moment!"
And he thrust her back gently into the doorway out of which she had
come, while a mob of his countrymen poured by the opening into the main
street.
When they had passed he turned to her again.
"Come with me now," he said, making her take his arm, "and come as
quickly as you can. Pray to God without ceasing that we get out safe. I
am too bloody to pray."
Once more before they reached the main street they had to hide in the
doorway where Father Andréa had sat, and, waiting there, he suddenly
turned and took her hands, and with his soul in his eyes looked at her
in dumb, agonized appeal. Suleima met his gaze directly and returned
the pressure of his hands.
[Illustration: "WOULD YOU SLAY ME, FATHER' SHE CRIED AGAIN"]
"You will save me, father?" she said again.
"I will save you," he replied; "in the name of God, I will save you!
Come again on; the mob has gone by."
They hurried on towards the western gate, he half carrying her, in
time to get out before another band of men streamed down from the
mountains round. Father Andréa took her to his hut and bade her wait
there for him while he went and got a pony, for she was in no state to
walk. All thought was drowned in one possibility, and without speaking
to her again he placed her very gently on the beast, and, taking the
rope-rein in his hand, led it along onto the road to Argos and Nauplia.
The camp was absolutely empty, and there were none to stop or question
this strange pair, and they plodded across the plain and stopped not,
neither spoke, till Tripoli had sunk behind the first range of the low
hills which lay spread round Mount Parthenius. There he led the pony
off the path and left her in a shady hollow, while he went on to the
village of Doliana, half a mile away, to get food and drink for her.
Her time, he knew, must be very near at hand, and his one thought was
to get her safe to Nauplia.
Only once on that ride had Suleima spoken, and that when they struck
the road.
"We are going to Nauplia?" she asked, with a sudden upspringing of hope
in her heart.
"To Nauplia, my daughter," said Andréa. "Speak no more till we talk
together."
"But father, father," she cried, "tell me one thing. Where is Mitsos?
Oh, take me to Mitsos."
"Mitsos, Mitsos?" said Andréa.
"Yes, the tall Mitsos, who lives in that house near the bay."
Father Andréa stopped.
"What do you know of Mitsos?" he said, almost fiercely, and as the
girl's tears answered him, he bowed his head in amazed wonder.
As soon as he had left her there and was out of sight he knelt down on
the hill-side.
"O God, O merciful and loving One," he cried, in an agony of
supplication; "if this be possible, if this be possible, for to Thee
all things are possible! Did she not speak to me and call me 'father'?
Oh, in Thy infinite compassion let her word be true! Did I not call her
daughter while my heart burned within me? O merciful and loving One!"
He found Suleima where he had left her, and the food and wine made her
strength revive. When she had finished he came and sat by her.
His voice trembled so that at first he could not form the words, but at
last, getting it more in control:
"My daughter," he said, "we will rest here a little until the noon heat
is past. And--and, for the love of God, answer me a few questions. When
was it you were taken to the house of the Turk?"
His anxiety made his voice harsh and fierce, and the girl shrank from
him. He saw it, and it cut him to the heart.
"Ah, my poor lamb!" he said, "have pity on me and answer me."
"It was ten years ago," said Suleima, "or perhaps twelve. I do not very
well know."
"Can you remember anything about it?"
Suleima shook her head wearily.
"I do not know; I was so young. And I am so tired, father. Let me sleep
a little, and when I wake up I will think and tell you all I know. You
have been very kind to me."
And she dozed off and slept without moving for near an hour, with
Andréa sitting by her. Then she stirred in her sleep, and without
opening her eyes shifted her head so that it rested on his knee, and so
slept again.
At last she woke, and seeing him above her, sat up.
"Has Mitsos come?" she asked. "Will he come soon? I have slept so
well," and she smiled at him like a child for no reason except that she
smiled.
"You were asking me--" she said, at length.
"Yes, yes," said Andréa.
"It is so little I remember," she said; "I was so young. But it was
near Athens somewhere, and on a journey with my father, that I was
carried off to the house of Abdul Achmet."
"Abdul Achmet?" whispered Andréa.
"Yes, Abdul Achmet. He lived in Athens then; he moved to Nauplia
afterwards. It was in the summer, too, I remember that, and that I was
with my father."
She had sunk down again with her head on his knee, but here she raised
herself on her elbow and looked at him.
"He was a priest--yes, he must have been a priest, for he had long
black robes and long hair; only his hair was black, not gray, like
yours. Ah--"
Then to Andréa the blessed relief of tears came--the great sobs that
come from a man's heart--a pain and an exquisite happiness; and lifting
her closer to him, he kissed her.
"Theodora," he cried, "little lost one. Ah, ah, merciful and
compassionate God. Do you not remember, my little one? Do you not know?
Your father--am I not he whom you called 'father' as soon as you saw
me? God put that word in your mouth, my darling. God sent me to fetch
you; and I who would have murdered you--O blessed Mother of compassion
and sorrows--I--Theodora, Theodora--the gift of God."
Thus spoke they together, with many questions and answerings, till
Andréa was certain and content.
CHAPTER XII
THE SEARCH FOR SULEIMA
Half an hour after they had gone Nicholas had made his way down to
where he was told Abdul Achmet's house stood, mindful of his promise to
Mitsos. Two or three of the Argives, who had taken possession of it,
and were ransacking the rooms for booty, stood at the door, and told
him that the prize was theirs.
"Oh, man," said Nicholas, "I come not for booty; the gold is yours. But
there is a Greek woman in the house; it is she whom I seek."
The men still seemed disposed to resent his entry, but they knew him,
and, even in the face of all the disgrace the captains had charged,
believed him clean-handed.
"Come," said he again, "I take nothing from the house, and when I go
out you shall search me if you will. Only take me to where the women
are."
The women of the harem had been locked into the room overlooking the
narrow street by which Suleima had fled, while the men searched the
rest of the house; and Nicholas, hearing that the mayor, Demetri, was
of the party, told him what he wanted.
"Of course you can go in; friend," he said. "Here, one of you, take him
to the room."
The women were sobbing and wailing together, and one cried out in
Turkish as Nicholas entered:
"Kill us if you will, but be quick."
"I touch you not," said Nicholas. "Tell me, is there not a Greek woman
among you?"
Zuleika, for it was she who had spoken, stopped crying for amazement.
"She has gone," she said. "Oh, that I had gone with her. She would not
stop within, but went down-stairs and out, I suppose. And in a few
days, perhaps sooner, will her baby be born. Oh, what are you going to
do with us?"
And she caught hold of him by the arm.
Nicholas disengaged her fingers, but gently.
"You are sure she has gone?" he said. Then to the soldiers who were
with him: "Will you allow me to search the other rooms; it is only she
whom I want?"
"And what should you want with her?" said one of them, gruffly. "All
that is in the house is ours."
"Oh, man, do not be a fool," said Nicholas. "The woman is a free Greek,
and free she shall be. She was carried off by this Turk years ago.
Come, let me go into the other rooms to be sure she is not here, for if
she is not I must seek her outside. It is a promise, and a promise to
little Mitsos."
The other consented, still reluctantly, and Nicholas looked through the
house from roof to cellar, but found her not. And "Ah, poor lad," he
thought, "but this will be bitter news, for if she has gone into the
streets, God save her!"
It was now one hour past noon, and in the hot, breathless air already
the thick sour smell of blood hung about the street. The square was a
shambles, neither more nor less, and the dead lay about in heaps. With
the peasants from the country had come in hungry, half-wild dogs, and
as Nicholas passed the square again, now deserted by the besiegers for
the great mass of the town which lay higher up the slope towards the
citadel, two or three of these slunk away with red dripping mouths
from their horrible banqueting; but one, hungrier or bolder than the
others, stood there over the body of a child snarling at him. The sight
sickened him, and he shot the animal through the head. Black patches of
flies swarmed in hundreds over the congealed pools of blood, and rose
with an unclean whir and buzz as he approached. The heat was stifling,
and from the tower where he had planted it but four hours ago the flag
hung in folds round its staff. The deadly taint of death was in the
air, with the foul odors of flesh already putrefying. Nicholas felt
suddenly faint and weary, but seeing a stream of water running down one
of the gutters in the square all red and turbid, he followed it up and
found where it sprang from--a leaden pipe out of a lion's mouth in one
of the side streets. He drank deeply of it, and bathed his face and
hands there, and feeling refreshed followed on towards where he knew
the Mainats would be. Mixed with the dead were not a few Greeks, and as
he passed up the street he saw with a sudden pang of horror three or
four bodies, apparently lifeless, stir, and from below there came out
the hand of a living man, striving to get hold of something by which he
could pull himself up. Nicholas turned the bodies off and found a Greek
soldier below, whom he carried into the shade, and fetched him water.
The man was but slightly wounded in the arm, the gash was already
beginning to clot over, and Nicholas, having bound up the place with a
strip of his fustanella, left him, for there was much work to be done.
Right and left from the houses in the street came cries and screams,
and now and then a woman, with her clothes perhaps half torn off her,
would steal out like a cat, and seeing Nicholas, either steal back
again or run from him. After each of these, he shouted some sentence in
Greek, but got no response. Once a child ran up to him, howling with
tears and pain, and showed him a horrible gash in its arm, wantonly
inflicted by one of his countrymen, babbling to him in Turkish that
it could not find its mother. Then Nicholas, despite his fierce vows
to have no pity on man, woman, or child for the wrong that had been
done to him and his by that pitiless race, waited ten minutes to bind
up the wound, and--for what else could he do--bade the child get out
of the town, for its mother was outside. On his way he passed several
Greek soldiers, one dragging a woman after him, another with his
hands full of a pile of gold and silver, the smaller pieces of which
dropped through his fingers as he walked. Nicholas inquired where the
Mainats were, and was told he would find a number of them at a big
square house on the slope up to the citadel gate, which they had just
entered. Fighting seemed to be going on in an upper story, and even
as he approached a group of men, Turks and Greeks mixed, appeared on
the house-top. Next moment two who were struggling together toppled
and fell against the thin railing which lined the roof; it broke under
their weight, and both men, still clutching at each other's throats,
fell toppling over into the street with a horrid crash and sound of
breaking. The Turk was living and moved feebly, but the head of the
Mainat was smashed like an egg.
At that moment Yanni appeared at the door of the house, his face
flushed, and the fire of fighting hot upon him.
"You here?" he cried to Nicholas. "We thought you must be dead. Oh,
how wild Mitsos will be when he finds that he has been out of it!"
"It is of Mitsos, too, I am thinking," said Nicholas. "Oh, Yanni, come
and help me; there are butchers enough. Help me to find her."
Yanni stared at him a moment before he understood.
"Suleima," he cried, "God forgive us all! She in this town, and I had
forgotten, and the Mavromichales are gone mad! If she is there--oh,"
and he threw down his knife, and looked stupid-like at his hands which
were red and caked with blood and dust.
"Come and search for her, Yanni," said Nicholas again; "she is not in
the house of Abdul, and every moment that she is in the streets may be
her last."
"She left the house! Are you sure?" asked Yanni. "Where is it? Let us
run there."
"I have been already," said Nicholas. "See, Yanni, you go one way and
I another, and we will meet here again in an hour. Speak in Greek to
every woman you see."
"Yes, yes," said Yanni; "which way shall I go? Oh, Mitsos, poor little
Mitsos, and I killed two women myself, for they had knives and tried to
stab me."
"Here, go steady, and be sensible," said Nicholas, for the boy seemed
half beside himself. "Pick up your knife again; you were going unarmed.
Do not stop, even to kill. Walk about, go where you hear a woman
cry--God forgive us, but that is a task for a hundred--and speak to all
in Greek. And be back here in an hour. Where is Petrobey?"
"In the house," said Yanni, and went off in the direction Nicholas had
told him.
On that mad and ghastly day Petrobey was one of the few who had
kept his head, and getting together a few sensible men, he had
systematically worked his way up the street, stopping only to kill
where there were signs of resistance. Open doors and men flying
unarmed he left alone; there were plenty to do work like that; but he
forced door after door where barricades had been put up, and attacked
bodies of soldiers, who still from time to time charged out of some
house or other, trying to force their way out to one of the gates.
Without him and a few resolute bands of men it is possible that
great slaughter would have taken place among the unarmed rabble who
had followed the Greeks, and that a considerable body of men would
have collected and won their way out of the city, and over the now
undefended hills to Argos or Nauplia. He had also ordered up, under an
armed escort, a train of provision-laden mules for the Mainats who were
with him, and these supplies had just arrived before Nicholas came up.
"Stay with us and eat, dear cousin," he said to Nicholas, "for men
cannot fight fasting. And, oh, Nicholas, but my life and all I have are
yours, for you did not fail me when God and man forsook me!"
"Give me something, then, to take with me," said Nicholas, "for I have
work before me. That girl of Mitsos' had left the house before I got
there, and God knows where she is, alive or dead. I love the lad, and
indeed we owe him a debt we can never repay for all he has done, and I
should never forgive myself, nor hope for forgiveness, if I did not do
what I could to find her."
Petrobey shook his head. "She may have taken refuge in some other
house," he said. "If not--"
"Why should she fly from one house to another? If she is alive she
is either somewhere in the streets, or it is just possible she has
escaped."
Petrobey shook his head again.
"One woman fly in the face of that mob? God be with your kind heart,
Nicholas. Poor little Mitsos, poor lad!"
Nicholas tore off a crust of bread, and staying only to swallow a
draught of wine, went out again into the blinding glare of the streets.
Everywhere it was the same ghastly scene over again: heaps of bodies;
gutters with slow, oily streams of blood flowing and congealing; here a
Turk wounded and in the last agony of death; there some young country
lad shot through the heart, lying with open mouth and glazed eyes,
which stared unblinkingly at the sun. Sometimes a woman lay across the
path, while a little baby, still living and unhurt, lay beside where
she had fallen, and groped with feeble, automatic hands for her breast.
By them all without stopping went Nicholas, peering about for any sign
of a living woman, but finding none. Very few apparently had been so
desperate as to run into the street like Suleima, and though he felt
the search wellnigh hopeless he went on. Once he came across a woman
lying in the path, not yet dead, and as he bent over her she opened her
eyes and spoke to him in Turkish. Nicholas questioned her in Greek, but
she did not understand, and he went on again. In a little more than an
hour he was back and found Yanni waiting for him, but he too had seen
no sign of her they had never seen but sought.
All that afternoon the work went on, and at sunset Petrobey set a
strong watch at all the gates, and he with most of the men went to
sleep in the camp outside, where the air was less stifling and the
poisonous breath from the murdered town came not. But Nicholas, who
still hoped against hope, would not leave the place; by night, he
thought, if Suleima was in hiding somewhere in the town she might try
to steal back to the house, or attempt to escape by one of the gates;
and he sat waiting in the doorway of Abdul Achmet's house till he fell
asleep from sheer weariness, having seen naught but the dogs paddling
about on their horrible errands. He woke early, before it was dawn,
shivering and feeling ill; and thinking that his chill came only from
exposure to the night air, got up and walked about, waiting for day. As
soon as it was light he went out of the south gate to the Mainat camp,
and had breakfast with Petrobey, who shook his head sadly over the
absence of news.
Some sort of order was restored in the camp that day, and a third
part of each of the four regular corps was stationed to blockade the
citadel, while the others, in a more orderly manner and under the
command of officers, went on with the sack of the town. The rabble
who had passed in the day before were driven out of the place, and
a watch set at each of the gates; but these measures were only half
successful, for many took to hiding in the deserted houses, or, having
been ejected, climbed back again at the Argive tower, or at other
points of the walls where they could find entrance. Already many of the
Greeks were ill with an ill-defined fever, which Petrobey put down to
the effects of the foul, pestilence-laden atmosphere, and he employed
a number of men to cart the dead out of the city and burn them. But
they were not able to keep pace with the massacring which went on all
day, and that evening the fever took a more pronounced and violent form
in many of the eases, and before the morning of the 7th fifty or more
Greeks, chiefly countrymen, who had slept two nights in the streets,
were dead.
Just before dawn on the 7th a party of Turks made a sortie from the
citadel and broke through the Greek lines. The alarm was given at once
by the sentries, but the Turks were already among them before they
were able to make any resistance, and after not more than ten minutes'
fighting, they had broken their way through, and were doubling down
the street towards the Argive gate. The guard there had sprung to arms
at the sound of the disturbance above, and they engaged the Turks with
somewhat better success, but more than half the original number got
through and made straight for the unguarded hills between the plain and
Argos.
Nicholas, who had passed a feverish, tossing night, feeling weak and
weary, yet unable to sleep, had sprung up at once on the alarm, and was
among the first to meet the charge. In the darkness the fighting was
wild and random; they fought with shadows, and parrying a sword thrust
aimed at his head, though he turned the blow aside, he felt the weapon
wound him just below the shoulder, and the edge grate on the bone. Such
rough aid as could be given him was at once administered. His arm was
tightly bound above the wound to stop the bleeding from the severed
artery, and, after the rough but often effective surgery of the day,
the severed ends of the artery were cauterized and bound up, and the
edges of the wound were brought together. No serious consequences were
expected, for the flow of blood was soon checked, but for the present
any further search for Suleima was out of the question. But a couple
of hours later he grew more feverish and restless, and by ten o'clock
on the morning of the 8th he was delirious, down with that swift and
terrible fever which during the past night had already claimed many
victims.
At mid-day the remainder of the garrison in the citadel surrendered
unconditionally from want of water, for the whole supply had come from
the lower town, and ten minutes later the Greek flag was flying from
the tower. The shouts with which it was hailed roused Nicholas, who
had sunk into a heavy sort of stupor, and he found Yanni sitting by his
side.
"What is it?" he asked. "Have they found Suleima?"
"It is the citadel which has surrendered," said Yanni; "they have
hoisted the flag on the tower."
Nicholas half raised himself. "Then the Morea is free from Corinth to
Maina," he said. "O merciful and gracious Virgin! It only remains to
find Suleima."
Presently after, he sank back into a stupor again, though every now and
then he would stir and mutter something to himself.
"Why does not little Mitsos come?" he said, once; "tell him I want him.
I did all I could to find her, but it was no use. Little Mitsos, there
will be no more fire-ships ... it was a devilish task to set you ...
don't you see the flag is flying; Tripoli has fallen; the Turks and
their lusts are over forever; we are free!"
Then suddenly, in the loud strong voice which Yanni knew so well: "The
Lord is a man of war!" he cried.
The news had run about the camp that Nicholas was down with the fever,
and for the moment all paused when they heard. As every man in the
place knew, his was the glory of the deed, and he the chief among those
few to whose name honor, and nothing disgraceful, no weak deed or
infirm purpose, were written. They had moved him out of the town unto
the higher ground of the citadel, and into the top room of the tower on
which the flag was flying. A great north wind sprang up that afternoon,
and from the room where he lay could be heard the flapping of the flag.
Those of the men who had any knowledge of medicine came flocking up to
the citadel, begging to be allowed to see him, and suggesting a hundred
remedies; and of these Petrobey chose one, who seemed to be sensible,
and who it appeared had pulled a man through the worst of the fever,
and he gave Nicholas such remedies as they could get.
That afternoon there was a division of the spoils taken, and in the
evening, but not before a terrible and bloody deed had been done,
three corps went back to their homes, the Mainats alone remaining. The
Argives and Mainats, at any rate, had no hand in that devilish work,
which must be passed over quickly. All the Turks--men, women, and
children--who were found still alive were driven to the ravine behind
Trikorpha, and some two thousand in number were all murdered.
It was, indeed, time to leave that pestilence-stricken town. During the
day the fever had broken out with redoubled virulence among all those
who had quartered themselves in the lower parts of the town, and the
angel of death followed the victorious battalions into Arcadia, Argos,
and Laconia, striking them right and left, and strewing the road with
dying men. The judgment of God for those three ruthless days had come
quickly. Mitsos' father, who had escaped unhurt, doing his quiet duty
in the ranks of the Argives from the first, saw Petrobey before he left.
"Tell Mitsos to come quickly," he said. "And did you know Father Andréa
has not been seen since the first morning?"
Meantime, in the north, it was found that the rumor of the Turkish
landing was groundless, and Prince Demetrius was hurrying back to
Tripoli. Germanos had joined him; but two days' march off the town,
news of its capture was brought to them, on which Mitsos obtained
permission to go on ahead to report the prince's coming, and announce
that no landing of Turks had taken place. He travelled night and day,
for his heart gave him wings, and late on the night of the 8th he
reached Tripoli.
The unutterable stench in the streets struck him like death, and turned
consciousness to a horrible dread. Shutting his eyes to the ghastly
wreckage that strewed the ways, more horrible under the dim, filtering
light from the clear-swept sky than even in daylight, he went quickly
up to the citadel, where he supposed the troops would be. He was
challenged by the sentry at the gate, who, seeing who he was, admitted
him at once. He was taken straight to Petrobey's quarters, in the room
just below where Nicholas lay.
The boy's voice was raised in eager question, but Petrobey hushed him.
"My poor lad," he said, "you must be brave, for we know you can be
brave. We have not found her, and in the room above Nicholas lies
dying. He has been asking for you; go to him at once, little Mitsos. I
will send your food there."
Mitsos gave one gasping sigh.
"She may yet be here," he said; "where are the women and the prisoners?"
"There are no women and there are no prisoners," said Petrobey.
Mitsos stood silent a moment, looking at the other with bright, dry
eyes, and swaying a little as he stood.
"And Uncle Nicholas is dying and has asked for me," he said. "Let me go
to him."
CHAPTER XIII
NICHOLAS GOES HOME
The room was lighted by an oil-lamp, turned low and shaded from the
sick man. Yanni, who had been watching all night, was lying on the
floor, dozing from sheer weariness; but he woke at the sound of Mitsos'
entering, and got up.
"Oh, Mitsos, you have come," he whispered, "he has asked for you so
often."
"Leave me alone here," said Mitsos, and the two were left together.
Nicholas was lying with eyes only half closed, and Mitsos knelt by the
bed.
"Uncle, dear uncle," he said, "I have come."
Nicholas only frowned, and passed his hand wearily over his eyes. The
other bandaged arm was lying outside the thin bed-covering under which
he lay.
"I looked everywhere," he muttered, "and I could not find her. Will
little Mitsos ever forgive me, I wonder--yet I did all I could. Why
does not the dear lad come? Has he forsaken me?... No, it will never
do; this traffic brings disgrace on us all. Stop it, Petrobey, stop it,
in God's name.... Ah, that is better, up, up, hand over hand, quick,
give me the flag. Where is the flag, O devils of the pit? but give it
me. Ah, you are no better than the Turks.... Yes, I will pay you well
to give it me, if that is what you want. A million piastres? I will
give you two millions.... Ah, up with it."
The muttering sank down again into silence, and the eyelids drooped
wearily. Mitsos, kneeling there, felt that the life was leaving him.
Suleima dead, Nicholas dying, there was but little left of the Mitsos
he knew. Dry-eyed he knelt there in the blank, black despair of a
hopeless anguish. If only it was he who was lying there! There was
nothing to live for; everything was gone in this moment of victory,
when his heart should have been larklike, soaring with song.
Petrobey brought him in food and wine.
"Drink, little Mitsos," he said; "it is very good wine."
But Mitsos would not even look at it.
"Leave me alone," was all he said; "I will call you if he wants you.
Oh, go, man," he repeated, in a shrill whisper, and with a sudden burst
of childish, impotent anger, which gave Petrobey a more pitiful moment
than he had ever known; "may not my heart break in peace?"
It had been past midnight when Mitsos came in, and already the stars
were beginning to pale in the east when Nicholas stirred and woke. He
saw Mitsos by him, and knew him and smiled to him. He spoke slowly and
faintly.
"Ah, little Mitsos," he said, "so you have come at last, but not much
too soon. My poor lad, you know I did all I could; Yanni and I looked
for her everywhere, but found her not. Oh, little Mitsos, my heart is
bleeding for you. Tell me you know I did all I could."
At the sound of that dear voice, obeying again the will and the brain
of the man he loved, no longer wandering idly as a thing apart, Mitsos
broke down utterly, forgetting all but the dear, dying uncle.
"Oh, you will break my heart if you speak like that," he sobbed. "I
know--how can I but know?--that you did all the best and noblest of men
could do. Oh, uncle, I cannot do without you. Oh, come back, come back."
Nicholas's hand gently stroked the boy's head as he knelt with his face
buried in the bed-covering.
"Why, Mitsos, Mitsos," he said, "what is this? We are behaving as but
poor weak folk--I, whom the merciful God is taking, and you, who He
wills shall live and go on with the work we have begun. A man's life is
but short, but, God knows, mine has been partly very sweet; and out of
what was bitter He has given us a wonderful victory. From Corinth to
Maina, little one, a free people thanks Him. But that is not all. From
Thermopylæ to Corinth must those thanks go up, and it is you, first
among all the first, for whom that work is waiting. Promise me, little
one, you will not fail. For this was the oath you swore, and already,
oh, my dearest lad, you have kept it well."
"I promise, oh, I promise," sobbed Mitsos; "but what am I without you?"
"God is with you, little Mitsos," said Nicholas, "and He will be with
you, as He has been with you till now. Tell me, is Ypsilanti coming
back here?"
"He is on his way, and Germanos with him."
Nicholas frowned and raised his voice a little.
"I will not die with a lie on my lips," he said. "He is a bad man; I
forgive him not, and see that you do not trust him."
"Oh, uncle," said Mitsos; "what does it matter now? Think of him not at
all, then. This is no time for little things."
Nicholas lay silent a moment, still stroking Mitsos' hair.
"After all, what does it matter?" he said. "The man has failed; that is
enough. He shall not poison these few minutes. Oh yes, I forgive him,
little one. I do really; tell him so when he comes. If he were here I
would take his hand. But"--and a faint smile came round his mouth--"do
not trust him too far, all the same."
His face was growing very white and tired in the pale gray morning
before the dawn, and Mitsos, at his request, gave him water and put out
the lamp.
"There is but little more to say," he whispered, "and it is a selfish
thing; yet, as you love me, I think you will hear it gladly. Little
Mitsos, I am happier than the kings of the earth. I am dying, but dying
in the shout of victory. Oh, I am happy on this morning. But, poor lad,
whom I love so, it is hard--"
His face flushed suddenly.
"Victory! freedom!" he said, raising his voice again with tremulous
excitement; "that is the singing bird in my heart, that and you and the
clan, and Catharine and the little one. Ah! merciful God, but I am a
happy man. Where is Petrobey? Call him in, him and the dear clan. Kiss
me first and for the last time, and then bring them all in, as many as
can stand in the room."
Mitsos hurried out to fetch them, and found Petrobey's room full of men
waiting for news from the sick bed, watching faithfully through the
night, and he beckoned them silently up. The sun had just risen, and
the first ray clean and bright fell full on the bed where the dying man
lay. By an effort he raised himself on his elbow, and looked at them
with bright, shining eyes as they trooped in. At that sudden movement
his wound broke out afresh, and a great gush of blood poured down.
[Illustration: "BY AN EFFORT HE RAISED HIMSELF ON HIS ELBOW"]
Then suddenly he sprang to his feet.
"Shout, shout," he cried, "for the freedom of Greece! Ah, Catharine, I
am coming; I am coming very quickly."
On the word a great shout arose from the men crowded into the room, and
in the glory of that triumphant cry, standing there in the dawn of the
newly-risen day, he fell forward, and his strong soul went forth free
from the death that had no terror for him.
They took his body up to the Turkish mosque which crowned the citadel,
and at the east erected a tall, rough, wooden cross, and there he
lay all day, and the clan came and looked their last on the man they
had loved. The hawklike, eager eyes were closed, the eager nostrils
were still, and the dignity of death gave the face a wonderful sweet
seriousness, and a tranquillity which it had seldom worn in life. The
prince and Germanos arrived before noon, knowing only that Tripoli was
taken, and Petrobey, to whom Mitsos had told what Nicholas had said,
found words which were a humbling and an awe to that proud man, and
together the two went to where he lay. Then said Germanos:
"I never did him honor, God forgive me, in life; but you will let me do
him honor, now?"
The funeral was fixed for sunset, and he was to be buried just outside
the mosque on the highest ground of the citadel. The first part of the
service would be in the mosque, the remainder at the grave, and Mitsos,
returning just before sunset from his finished and hopeless quest, went
straight there. All day, first in the town and then in that valley of
death behind Trikorpha, he had sought among the heaps of the dead,
longing rather to know and see the worst, to look once more on her
face, than to carry about with him this load of torturing uncertainty.
He prayed that he might find her undisfigured, that her face might be
quiet and calm like Nicholas's, for he felt that it would be a thing of
consolation to know she had died quickly. One thought only sustained
him through those terrible hours, and that the remembrance of the words
Nicholas had spoken. He had bargained to sacrifice himself and all that
he held dear for that which was already won, and in the very flush and
presence of victory he would not give way to the desolation and despair
which beset him. All day beneath a burning and malignant sun he moved
among the heaps of the slain, turning over body after body, only to
find more beneath. The kites and preying hawks chid shrilly over his
head, but he heeded not and worked on, and a little before sunset only
had he finished, and sat down on the hill-side for a moment to eat,
for he remembered that he had not eaten that day, and he felt suddenly
faint with hunger. Then rising he went back to the town and up to the
mosque.
The sun was just setting, and before they left the mosque it was
already twilight; but the men had a number of pitch torches, and the
procession went out to the grave, headed by thirty Mainats, who carried
these, and stood round the newly dug grave, while the body, with its
face uncovered, according to the Greek use, and dressed in soldier's
clothes, was placed in the coffin and lowered. At the head of the grave
stood Germanos, and at the foot Petrobey with Mitsos. Many of the clan
who stood round were weeping unrestrainedly and without shame; but
Mitsos was perfectly quiet and calm. Only once when the first spadefuls
of earth rattled on the rough coffin lid did he move, and ran forward a
step to the edge of the grave with one sob so piteous and broken that
Petrobey clinched his teeth to prevent himself, too, sobbing aloud. But
after that he was quite quiet again, and Germanos, who had read the
service, stepped forward and gave the address at the grave.
"This day," he said, "is the birthday of a new-born people, and it is
so that Nicholas would have you think of it. To all of us has come a
great and wonderful victory, and to all has come a terrible loss; but I
pray God, clan of the Mavromichales, to none of you such an unavailing
regret as is mine. Of myself I would not speak to you, but for this,
that before Nicholas died he forgave the cruel wrong I had done him,
and it is that forgiveness of his alone which gives me any right to be
here. You knew him, he was of the same blood as you, and it is for you
all to lament not nor wail, but think only that God in His infinite
kindness has let him see the dawn of this day, and then, while the
flood of joy burst his heart, has taken him to Himself. To work for
a great cause, as Nicholas worked, and as none but he, was a great
reward; to see the fruit of his labors and so die, in the very flush
of victory, is what comes to but few. By his rank and his work his was
among the highest places in all Greece; but how did he die? As a common
soldier, serving in the ranks, and by his own choice. And to me that
appears--though the cause for it is a bitterness and regret of which
I cannot speak--a wonderful and an appropriate thing. Nicholas--the
victory of the people."
The darkness had completely fallen while he spoke, and overhead,
through the sombre smoke of the torches, the stars peered out of
an infinite depth of blue. In front of Germanos rose the mould of
freshly raised earth, for they had filled up the grave before he began
speaking, and the wooden cross from the mosque had been fetched out and
planted on the top of it. Round in dense ranks stood the Mainats, the
flickering glare of the torches striking strong light and shadows on
their brown faces. But by degrees the torches planted on long stakes
round the grave began to burn low; now and then one would shoot up
with a sudden flare and die out again, and in a few minutes more they
had all burned down, and only smouldering red cores of glowing ash
remained. From the darkness Germanos's voice came slow and solemn at
first, but as he went on he gained force and vigor.
"The birthday of the people--think of this day thus, and then of
him whom you loved--the victory of the people. This is no time for
lamentations nor weeping, for how did he take leave of you? Not with
a wail, nor with any regret, but with a shout. Think of him, then, as
he took farewell; happier, as he said to one of you, than the kings
of the earth; mourn if you will for those who mourn, but rejoice with
those who rejoice. And he went from us strong and with but one thought,
which overmastered all. Thus it is no night nor valley of death he has
gone into--or so it appeared not to him--but the dawning of the fresh
day. Then, turning his brave eyes forward from dawn to dawn, what
eyes should meet his, or what name should be on his lips? You heard
it yourselves. And is there any cause for sorrow there? Do we weep
and wail when the bridegroom meets the bride, or when after some long
journey a faithful man goes home to her he loves? Ours is but a selfish
grief if we look at it rightly. Let, then, this thought make you
strong, and because you loved him turn from yourselves, who, God knows,
have cause enough for grief, and think of him and the shout and rapture
of his passing. Out of the day he has passed to the day, out of life
into life, a faithful man made perfect. Call to him, then, once more,
let him hear the shout which he led; let him hear again, for so we
believe, the voices he knew, the shout of the men he loved and loves.
The freedom of Greece, and Nicholas--the victory of the people!"
From the darkness the shout was taken up and repeated till it seemed to
shake and split the darkness. As from one throat, it burst up thrice
repeated, and then together they called Nicholas's name aloud, and
went in silence back to their quarters. Mitsos returned with Petrobey,
feeling somehow strangely strengthened. All he had been trying to feel
all day had been said for him, and all that was brave within him--and
of that there was much--rose and caught at it triumphantly, and he
clung to it with conviction and courage in his heart.
The Mainats were to leave next morning, but Mitsos dreaded any hour
spent in inaction, and he decided to go himself at once and again
travel through the night. To stop here was only to talk of Nicholas,
or to grow feverish again with the hopeless, impossible hope that
Suleima was still somewhere in the town. With a good horse he could
reach Nauplia next day soon after dawn, and he longed with the longing
of a child in some distant land for the familiar places. Here all that
spoke to him of Suleima spoke in words of blood and cruelty, which
stabbed and stung him into a sense of maddened rage and regret. There,
perhaps, with the thrill of home about him, his anguish would change
to something less terrible, and not so discordant to the image his
heart held of her. Even now, when so few hours had passed, he seemed
to have lived with the sorrow for a lifetime, and realized that it
was for a lifetime it would abide with him. The place where he had
lost all he loved had a brooding horror over it; he could not think of
her as he wished to think; but by the cool bay, the dark headlands,
and that beach, with its whispering reeds, surely he would find an
aspect of sorrow different to this, instinct with the bitterness of
something which had once been infinitely sweet, instead of with the
bitterness of horror and hatred. Above all, he dreaded the moment of
waking next morning, and though many morrows stretched away before him,
each with its cup of remembrance coming with the light at the end of
sleep, yet it would be something over to get rid of this one, to have
another four-and-twenty hours with his sorrow, which perhaps might
help to prepare him for the pangs of that first moment of the waking
to consciousness again, and the dead weight of grief which would have
to be taken up anew. Then his father was there, and oh, how Mitsos
longed for that quiet, protective presence. Here, it is true, were the
dear clan; but the clan, though the best of companions, gave not the
fellowship he wanted now. He wanted to be alone, and yet to have some
one who loved him present with silent sympathy that needed no words.
Even the companionship of Yanni, who followed him with the eyes of some
dumb creature that knows its master is suffering, yet cannot console
him, was irksome. None understood this better than poor Yanni himself;
and though he tried to keep away he could not, and followed Mitsos,
unable to say a word to him, and yet unable to leave him.
Mitsos rose from where he had been sitting in Petrobey's room and
walked across to him.
"I think I shall go home at once," he said. "It will be better that I
should be there."
"But not to-night, dear lad," said Petrobey, "and not alone. We are all
coming to set you on your way to-morrow."
Poor Mitsos nearly broke down again at this. Somehow, a kindness
reached the seat of tears, while his sorrow passed it by.
"No, I will go alone and now," he cried. "Oh, I cannot say what I
think. You are all so good to me; but I want to be alone. Say good-bye
to them all for me; I should not be able to tell them myself--and
good-bye. Before long, I doubt not, we shall meet again; for I promised
him always to be ready, and I shall always be ready."
Petrobey kissed the boy.
"Little Mitsos," he said, "we are not men of many words; but you know,
you know. God keep you."
Yanni was watching Mitsos with hungry eyes, and he turned from Petrobey
and went to him.
"Come out with me, Yanni," said Mitsos, "while I get my horse. Come as
far as the gate, if you will."
Mitsos' horse was stabled below, and in silence the two went out
together. Then, as they turned to walk down the deserted street to the
gate, Mitsos passed one arm through the bridle and put the other round
Yanni's neck.
"Yanni," he said, "you do not think me unkind? But it is this way
with me: that somehow or other I must get used to these awful things,
and I am best alone. We have had merry times together, have we not?
and, please God! we shall be together many times yet; and, though I
see not how, perhaps merry times will come again. I want to be alone
with myself to-night and then alone with my father, for with him it is
different. But of all others in the world--why need I tell you?--it is
you I would choose to be with. You understand, do you not?"
"Yes, dear Mitsos," said Yanni, rather chokedly, "and if ever you want
me, either come, or I will come to you. For, oh, Mitsos, I'm so sorry
for you that I don't know what to do or say; and I owe all to you, and
yet I can do nothing."
And with that he fairly burst out crying.
They walked on in silence to the Argive gate, and then Mitsos stopped.
"So let us do as Nicholas would have us do," said he, smiling at the
other, "and think only of this wonderful birthday of the people, as
Germanos said. And now I am going. So good-bye, Yanni, dear Yanni!"
"Oh, Mitsos, let me come!" cried Yanni. "No, no; I did not mean that.
Good-bye and God speed!"
And he turned quickly and walked back into the town without another
word or look.
CHAPTER XIV
THE HOUSE ON THE ROAD TO NAUPLIA
The horse Mitsos rode had been stabled all day, and coming out fresh
into the cool night air kept him busy for a time snuffing uneasily
at the wafts of foul air that blew from the town, and shying right
and left at shapes that lay on the road-side. Once a dead body was
stretched straight across the path, and the brute wheeled round,
nearly unseating Mitsos, and tried to bolt back to Tripoli again. But
by-and-by, as it got used to the night, and the steadiness of the lad's
hand gave it confidence, it went more soberly, and settled down into a
gentle trot up the road leading from the plain over the mountain. As
they left the town behind the air grew fresher, and soon came pure and
cool from the north. The night was clear, but for a few wisps of cloud
that drifted southward in wavering lines of delicate pearly gray, so
thin that the starlight suffused them and turned them into a luminous
haze. The path lay low between bold rocks that climbed up on each side,
and to the right, among oleanders, a stream talked idly, as in sleep.
Above, the stars burned bright and close, set in the blue velvet of the
sky; and to the east the blue was tinged with dove color, showing that
the moon was nigh to its rising. From some shepherd's hut on the hills
came the sharp bark of a dog, sounding faint yet curiously distinct in
the alert air, as in the north sounds come sharp-cut and ringing on a
frosty night. As he went higher the dry smell of the summer-scorched
vegetation was changed for something fresher, coming from the upland
pastures, and while his horse, now requiring no attention, went with
straining shoulders and drooped head up from slope to slope, Mitsos
knew that he had been right to come alone. Since those nights he had
spent with Suleima between sea and sky, the loneliness and quietude of
night, and the setting of the secret hours he had spent with her, had
always woke in him an undefined, incommunicable thrill, a calling up
of those dear ghosts of the past. To be alone at night was nearest to
being with her, and often in these last weeks he had stolen out of his
hut when the camp was still and night at its midmost to conjure up that
same feeling, which the sight of objects associated with some one loved
brings with it. Infinitely dear as she had been to him, there lingered
round the remembrance of her a something dim, something in common with
starlight, and great vague stretches of silent sea, and the pearliness
of the sky before the imminent moonrise. It was that complexion of his
sorrow he wished to recapture. Tripoli was like dreaming of her through
the horrible distortion of a nightmare; this the serener bitterness
of a quieter vision. Round his thoughts of Nicholas there hovered a
splendid halo; the glory of his life and the triumph of his death made
the heart bow down in a kind of thankful wonder, drowning regret. For
if he, as Germanos had said, had gone like the bridegroom to the bride,
should those who loved him mourn? Strangely mixed had come the boon for
which Nicholas, for which Suleima, had died, and at present he was too
stunned to be able to picture it, or the price paid, with clearness of
focus, for this limited mind within us is soon drowned by shocks like
these coming in spate together, and we do not realize them till the
first turbid flood has passed.
[Illustration: "'SULEIMA!' CRIED MITSOS"]
The moon had risen before he reached the top of the pass, and,
following a strange but overwhelming desire, he pushed on quickly,
for he longed to look on the bay again by night. Another hour's quick
riding brought him to the head of a ravine which ran straight down to
the sea, and at the bottom, lying like the clipping from a silver nail,
was the farther edge of the bay, ashine with the risen moon; and when
Mitsos saw it his heart was all athirst for home. Gradually, as he went
down, the lower hills marched like shadows to the right and left, and
between moonsetting and sunrise he stood on the edge of the shelving
cove again, where he had brought the fish to land one night, and once
again all was still but for a whisper in the dry-tongued reeds and
the lisp of sand-quenched ripples. But never again would he and one
beside him sit there filled through and through with love, and never
again would the man he had loved pass by like the shadow of a hawk on
one of those swift, secret errands. Yet, as he had hoped, there still
lingered round the place a sweetness of sorrow. Horror had come not
here, nor any bloodshed, nor crash of war, and none knew the message
the spot held for him, its garnered store on which his heart had fed.
Then leaving it, still rounded by the infinite night, he passed on by
the white house at the head of the bay, whose sea-wall had been to him
the gates of love flung open, and just after sunrise he struck the
road on the other side of the water, and three hundred yards off were
the whistling poplars by the fountain, and his father's house and the
garden-gate, and the grave and memory of his boyhood. The risen sun
spun mists out of the night dews and webs of sweet smell from the damp
earth. It struck a galaxy of stars from the burnished surface of the
bay, and from the heart of some bush-bowered bird it drew forth an
inimitable song.
So he was come to the gate, where he tied up his horse while he should
go inside, yearning to see his father; but as he walked up the path,
raising his eyes he saw him already out and working in the vineyard
beyond, and he would have passed by and gone to him there when, of a
sudden, he stopped, and his heart stopped too.
For the house door was open, and from inside--it seemed at first only
his own thoughts made audible--came a voice singing, and it sang:
"Dig we deep among the vines,
Give the sweet spring showers a home."
Then came a little feeble cry as from some young thing, and the singing
stopped, and a mother's voice, so it seemed, cooed soothing to her
baby; and with that Mitsos passed not on to the vineyard, but went in.
Suleima, busied with the child--the "littlest Mitsos," so she told
herself--heard not his step till he was in the doorway, but then looked
up, thinking it was her father, though earlier than his wont. And with
a choking cry, hands outstretched, and a voice from a bursting heart:
"Suleima!" cried Mitsos.
THE END
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