They were pretty close to the shore, close enough for all to
distinguish that the officers from the steam launch had got into a
little boat and were being rowed to land. Chryseis was standing on the
top of a big stone, when she slipped on the pine needles which covered
it, and suddenly disappeared from view as entirely and completely as
though a trap door had opened and swallowed her up.
"Chryseis!" screamed Andromache, "Chryseis, where are you?" And the
boys and Pavlo rushed to the spot.
The stone had been on the edge of a sheep track, and as they looked
fearfully over, they saw Chryseis lying on her elbow on a little
ledge a few feet below.
"I am not hurt," she called up at once, "not at all; but do not any of
you climb down this way; there are a lot of prickly pears and I have
got some of the thorns in my hand. Come round by those arbutus there!"
When they got round to her she was picking the tiny thorns out of her
hand, and wetting it in a little stream which seemed to come out of
the gray rock.
"Look!" she said, "there is water here!" She put her finger to her
mouth, "and it is fresh water, too. How funny! It is coming round
this side of the rock. See!"
"Why!" said Iason, leaning both hands on the top of the rock, and
bending his whole body round the corner, "why it is...."
And it was. When they all clambered on the big rock and slipped down
to the other side, they found Iason lifting up with all his strength
a tangled mass of wild ivy and other creepers which fell over it like
a thick curtain. And there was a hole; big enough for anyone to pass
through if he stooped a little.
It looked dark inside, and there was a step going down.
"No one need come," said Iason, "if he feels afraid!"
And of course everyone said, "I am not afraid!" Pavlo first of
all. And he really and truly was not. He was far too excited to think
of being afraid.
The children went down two steps, bending their heads low, and then
stood upright.
They were in a high narrow cave; so long that it was impossible to
tell the depth. A cave like those of which they had often read, and
often dreamt of discovering, but in which they had very certainly
never before found themselves.
"It is quite a real cave!" said Nikias in an awestruck whisper. And
the others looked round in silence. It seemed a moment too great for
ordinary words. Their adventurous hearts were beating quickly.
Then Iason triumphantly produced a bit of candle and a box of matches
from his pocket, and when he lighted it the tiny flame cast rounds of
light and mysterious shadows over rough gray walls. This was for the
first moment after coming in from the blinding sunlight, but as soon as
their eyes got accustomed to the green darkness, Iason threw the candle
away and the flame sputtered as it fell into the little stream of water
which seemed to trickle down one end of the cave near the wall. The
whole place smelt rather nasty and musty, but as Chryseis said,--
"What do smells matter when we have found a real cave?"
And a real cave it was! There were curious niches in the walls; the
stone was fretted away into arches and hollows; in some parts natural
columns had formed themselves, and in others dimly seen stalactites
hung in the darkness above their heads.
Kerberos whined rather uncomfortably and kept very close to Chryseis,
but Philos sniffed round excitedly, bent on investigating every nook
and corner, till Andromache lifted him up struggling and barking and
insisted on carrying him, for fear he might fall into some "unseen
chasm." Iason told her that Philos could take care of himself "a
thousand times" better than she could; but Andromache was never easy
to convince.
They went along very cautiously in Indian file. Iason came first,
then the two girls, then Nikias, and Pavlo last of all.
After they had walked a little way in, they found a heap of charred
sticks and a broken necked pitcher.
"Perhaps," suggested Chryseis, "they may have remained here ever since
the times when the women and children were hiding from the Turks. They
may have had to cook and sleep in here, you know, while the men were
outside fighting. And perhaps," she added, stooping down to touch
the broken pitcher, "we may be the very first people to touch them
since then!"
"Well," put in Andromache, the practical, "I should not care to have
to eat or sleep in here. It smells just awful!"
"It is getting very dark too, and I cannot see where to step any more,"
suggested little Nikias; then he added hurriedly, "Perhaps it will
get lighter further in!"
"No, you little stupid, it will be darker further in," said Iason,
"because it winds away from the entrance!"
Chryseis stopped short.
"Let us turn back! perhaps it turns and turns like the Labyrinth and
we may never be able to get out again."
"And then," added Nikias cheerfully, "people will come after many
years and find only our bones!"
"Stop that kind of talk, you horrid little pig!" cried Andromache.
Iason hesitated.
"If only I had not thrown the candle away! Oh, well, never mind! I
suppose we had better turn back."
And they retraced their steps in the same order. Pavlo who came
last lagged behind for a moment. About half way, on the left side,
was something he had not noticed when they had been going in; a
bright spot, a speck of light, something white and shining in the
dim twilight. But as he wondered what it could be, he saw that he
was alone and hurried on to join the others; and as soon as he had
taken two steps forward, the speck of light disappeared suddenly,
as though someone had blown it out.
He caught up with the others at the entrance.
"Listen!" he said, catching hold of Nikias, who was just stepping
out into the daylight, "Down there I saw...."
But they never heard what he saw, for at that moment he heard a series
of loud thuds, a scream from Chryseis who had been the first to get out
of the entrance, and a muttered exclamation from Iason as he sprang
forward and pushed both his sisters so violently backward into the
cave, that they fell over the two smaller boys, dragging them down.
At the same moment Pavlo, lifting himself up, saw two large stones
fall from above, right in front of the opening of the cave.
"What is it?"
"What was that?"
"What fell?" He and Nikias and Andromache all cried together.
"Stones! A great many," Chryseis answered, lifting a pale face to
theirs as they pulled her up. "They nearly fell on our heads, but
Iason pushed us back. Iason! What is it? Iason!"
For Iason, flattened against the opening, was cautiously trying to
find out what had happened.
"I do not know," he said, without turning round. "I cannot
think. Something must have loosened the stones from the top of the
rock above, and they fell. But what? The first rains have not begun
yet. Well," he continued after a moment's pause, "let us get out! That
was all."
But that was not all! At the step forward which he took, a shower of
earth and stones came rattling down on the ledge outside.
He sprang back only just in time.
"But what is it then? What can it be?"
They soon found out. No sooner had the last stone rebounded and rolled
over the ledge to the rocks below them, than a loud discordant laugh
sounded from above the opening of the cave.
"Come out of your hole, my little cockerels! Come out! You would not
have my stones before. Get them on your heads now! Come out! Come out!"
The children looked at each other in horror.
"The shepherd! The red-bearded man!"
There was a fresh shower of stones and the laugh again, which sounded
closer. Chryseis caught hold of her brother's arm.
"Iason! He will get in! He will get in! Oh, what shall we do?"
"We will not let him!" cried little Nikias, running forward, "let us
push this big stone right in front of the opening! Here! This one;
if you push hard we can roll it down. Iason! Pavlo! Girls! Help me!"
"He is right, the little one," said Iason, and they all pulled,
and pushed and tugged as they could never have done if they had not
been terribly frightened, and little by little the big rounded piece
of rock was rolled in front of the entrance to the cave, and the
green darkness grew darker and darker. The opening was not entirely
blocked. Any of the children could have squeezed in or out, but they
felt almost certain no grown man could.
"Besides, if he only puts his hand in, we will chop it off so! Like
the Persians and the man with the ship," declared Andromache, becoming
vaguely historical.
"Where is your hatchet?" asked Iason. "No, I am sure he cannot get
in. Now we must sit and think what to do. It does no good to cry
like that!"
"I am not crying!" sobbed Nikias. "It comes by itself," and he sniffed
very hard for a few minutes.
"I expect this man is so drunk he does not know what he is doing,"
continued Iason. "At the very worst we shall have to stay in here
till he gets tired of waiting and goes away. We are safe in the cave."
"I tell you what," said Nikias rubbing his knuckles very hard into
his eyes, "it must be 'the mad shepherd.'"
All the others stared at him.
"The mad shepherd? What do you mean?"
"I heard Kyra Calliope the other day telling Yanni. She said there was
a mad shepherd on the hills, and that he had killed a lot of sheep of
the other shepherds, and she said the mayor and the doctor wanted to
tie him up and send him to Athens in the steamer, but they could not
catch him, because he was so cunning and hid in the hills for days."
"You little fool!" cried his brother, seizing him by the
shoulder. "You--You--Idiot--You--Why did you not tell us when we
first met him down there, so that we might have turned back. Do you
think it is a joke--a mad man?"
"Did I know?" whimpered Nikias. "Did I know when we met him? He looked
like all shepherds then."
"If you had only ..." began Iason, but he was interrupted by a shriek
of horror from Chryseis. She was pointed to the small opening left
above the rock that blocked the entrance.
There, clearly outlined against the sky, was a grinning, red-bearded
face. Part of a hairy hand could be seen pushing against the stone.
Iason lost no time. Stooping he seized hold of a big round pebble
and sent it crashing right on the fingers that were working round
the stone.
There was a howl of pain and the face disappeared, then after a
moment came a sound of retreating footsteps and of broken bushes,
and stones rolling down the rock overhead.
The children huddled together, listened, pale and terrified, till
all was silence again. Then Iason pushed them aside and advanced to
the opening.
"Listen!" he said, "I have just thought of it. Perhaps the officers
we saw are still on the shore. Now that the man is not there I shall
get outside and call to them."
"No! No, Iason! Stop! Iason!..."
But before any of them could stop him, Iason was squeezing himself
round the side of the rock. He was out all but one leg, when a stone
bigger than any of those that had been thrown before, bounded against
the rock, and struck him on the side of the head. He fell forward
with a smothered "Ah!" and the others with a scream of fear rushed
to the blocked entrance.
Iason was lying half in and half out, and the short fair hair was
dabbled with blood.
Nikias and Pavlo were for trying to push out the rock, but Andromache
stopped them.
"No! No!" she cried, "we can drag him in without that." And by combined
pulling and pushing they succeeded in getting Iason safely inside. He
opened his eyes and said, "It is nothing," but he closed them again.
Chryseis lifted his head to her knees and looked round desperately.
"We must wash the place in the water from the stream," she said,
"but I have no handkerchief."
Andromache, the practical, lifted up her frock and tore a big strip
from the white petticoat underneath.
"Here, this is better, and there is plenty more," and she dipped the
rag in the running water and washed off the blood that was trickling
down over Iason's ear and neck, while Chryseis raised his head higher.
Nikias was at the entrance trying to push his thin little body round
the rock.
"I will get out now," he said, "and shout for the officers."
"Nikias!" cried Chryseis, her voice shrill with terror,
"come back at once! You must not get out! I tell you, you must
not! Pavlo! Pavlo! Stop him!"
But she looked around in vain; Pavlo was not there. He seemed to have
completely disappeared.
"The coward!" exclaimed Andromache, in furious indignation. "The
coward! He has managed to slip out somehow, and left us here all
alone!"
But she was quite wrong.
The moment poor Iason had been pulled back into the cave, Pavlo
suddenly remembered the speck of light in the wall that he had
noticed as they were coming out, and without saying a word to anyone,
he ran back into the depths of the cave to see if he could find the
spot. Almost at once he came upon it, like a little white star in
the dark wall of the cave.
Now Pavlo's mind was of the kind that grown-up people call "logical,"
which means that he knew that something could not exist without a
reason for it; therefore he argued that if there was a light, there
must be an opening; and even if the opening were only large enough
for a head or even a hand to be passed through, it might be useful.
So he began feeling all over the rough damp wall with both hands.
He felt and he felt for some time in vain, then suddenly when he had
nearly given up, he came upon a hole.
Kneeling, he felt that a little barrier of stone divided the hole
from the floor of the cave, and that it was more than wide enough to
admit him. He scarcely hesitated a second before he climbed over the
barrier and found himself in a narrow tunnel at the end of which the
speck of light was shining.
Pavlo advanced a few steps very slowly. It was a dark, damp, up-hill
passage, and so narrow that he could feel the walls on either side
without stretching his arms.
Suddenly he gave a violent shudder.
Something alive, something that felt heavy and cold, a rat perhaps,
or a toad or a lizard, ran over his foot. Still he kept on. If the
light, which was growing larger, should prove to be a side opening
to the cave, he would run back for the others, and they would all
get out that way, managing somehow to carry Iason between them if he
could not walk, while the man went on throwing stones and waiting for
them at the big entrance. The idea of the man waiting there perhaps
all day, appealed to Pavlo, and he laughed a little to himself as he
got nearer to the light.
He found, as he had expected, that it came from a small hole in the
rock which led out to the hillside, and was almost quite hidden by
hanging creepers.
The opening was not large, but they could easily crawl out. In fact
it would have been safer had it been a smaller hole.
Pavlo could see the purple flowers of an osier bush waving in the open
air before he quite reached the opening. He was just on the point of
crawling out to make quite sure of his discovery before returning by
the same way, when his eye caught sight of some sort of a white rag,
fluttering above the osier bush. He drew back and, lying flat on the
ground of the passage so as to see better, peered cautiously out.
What he saw made him nearly scream out aloud with terror, in fact it
was really the horrible nightmare-ish sort of fear which came over him,
that prevented a sound escaping from his lips.
The fluttering white rag was a fold of the red-bearded man's
foustanella!
His back was turned towards the narrow opening, and he looked gigantic
as he stood there in the light, a big stone poised in his hands
ready to fling over the rocks down on the ledge before the entrance
of the cave.
Pavlo lay in the dark passage, shaking all over and not daring to
move hand or foot lest he should be heard. What should he do? Oh,
what should he do? Suppose he were simply to wriggle back the way he
had come and tell the others what he had seen; what was the good? They
could never crawl all five out of this side tunnel while the shepherd
was standing so close to it. Poor Iason's mishap had proved that it was
not possible to get through the blocked entrance without being struck
by the falling stones. What then? Must they stay in the cave till the
man was wearied out? All night perhaps? But what more probable than
that when the shepherd found that his stones were falling harmlessly,
he should discover this opening so close to his feet, and creep slowly
through it till he got to them? Pavlo shivered coldly all over.
Then a horrible thought came to him.
It might be possible for one alone to creep out very softly the first
moment that the shepherd moved a little off. It would not be difficult
to creep silently on all fours, till one was at a safe distance!
The next moment the thought turned him really sick. What! Leave them
alone? Leave them with Iason wounded and useless? Leave them and
let this horrible man creep on them unawares? On Chryseis who had
been so good to him? On all the brave bright little comrades? Oh,
no! No! No! No! The good old Zamana blood, weakened though it might
be, turned in revolt at the cowardly thought.
Just then the man outside in the light stooped to pick up another
stone, and as he did so, Pavlo saw the gleam of a long curved knife
in his belt. The Turks, thought the poor boy, the terrible Turks
of the times of the Revolution must have looked just like that. Oh,
if it only were in those days! If the dreadful man were a real Turk
and Pavlo's great-grandfather or one of his brave companions were
in hiding as he was now! How they would spring out on him and seize
him. But no! If they were unarmed they would not "spring" out. They
were wise as well as brave, those old Greeks.
What would they do?
Palvo's mind worked quickly.
They would creep slowly, slowly on all fours out of the hole, and
while the Turk's back was turned they would seize hold of his ankles
and pull back, ... pull hard.
The attack would be unexpected, and the "Turk" would fall forward on
his face. He would have to fall so; he could not fall in any other
way. And once he was on his face, it would be easy, before he could
see who had attacked him, to wrench back his arms and tie them. It
would be the best way! The only way!
Suppose he tried it!
No! No! Oh, no! It was brave men who feared nothing who did such
things, not little terrified boys.
Then a very curious thing happened.
Pavlo did not feel as though he were making up his mind to anything,
but quite suddenly he unwound a thin knitted belt which he wore round
his waist, and held it between his teeth, then he crawled noiselessly
out of the hole and looked around him with a look in his eyes which
no one had ever seen in them before.
Had he been in a street in Athens, the man who stood there would have
been simply a villainous looking peasant, and he, Pavlo, a small boy
half dead with fright. But now, on this calm Poros hillside, the man
became a Turk, a Turk of 1821 armed to the teeth with yatagan[25] and
scimitar, and he, the little terrified boy, was a brave patriot of
the times of the Revolution, ready to do or die.
"Let us pretend," had its uses; and Pavlo had not lived a week in
vain with the Four of the Red House.
He crept closer, closer still. His body was not brave at all; in
fact it was shaking and trembling in every limb, and the cold sweat
trickled down his face; but at that moment his heart was very brave,
and because the heart is greater than the body, there was a sudden
lightning spring forward, and two desperate little hands clutched
the shepherd's bare ankles and pulled backwards, pulled strongly,
and swiftly.
There was a helpless grasp at the empty air, a howl of dismay, and
a loud thud as the tall man's body fell flat, face down, on the ground.
Pavlo with an excited, triumphant little shout rushed forward, and
caught hold of one outstretched arm which he pulled back with a jerk,
but already the shepherd was groaning, swearing, and moving, and how
could Pavlo hold the hand he had already seized, and manage to reach
the other one also?
"Children!" he screamed aloud, not knowing whether they could hear
him or not, below in the cave. "Children! Come quick! I have got him!"
And help came, though not from the children.
There were running footsteps behind him and many cries.
"Hold well! Hold fast! We are here!"
And in a moment Pavlo was surrounded by linen-clad, white-capped
officers, and someone's arms had lifted him off the prostrate shepherd,
and stronger, though not braver hands than his had securely tied the
arms of the struggling man behind his back.