The _Revenge_ and the _Sophia_ were ready for sea by early in February.
Even the clan, who were accustomed to the habitual fever of the
Capsina's energy, found themselves wondering whether she was a woman
or a whirlwind. No job was too big for her, no detail too small, and
she would be superintending the storage of the powder in the _Sophia_
one moment, and the next would be half-way across to the anchorage
of the _Revenge_, to see whether they had planed away the edge of
her cabin door, which would not shut properly, and had sent from the
wicker-makers the cages for the fowls. There seemed, indeed, to be only
one person on the island, for the population were just tools in the
hands of the Capsina--machines for lifting weights or stowing shot. She
reduced her foreman to a mere wreck, for the unfortunate man had to
stay up three consecutive nights doing the Capsina's business, and was
roundly abused when she found him asleep after dinner the fourth day.
Kanaris fared little better, and Mitsos alone seemed capable of dealing
with the girl. She would find him sitting at a café after dinner
smoking a pipe and playing draughts; and when she asked him whether he
had done this or seen to that, he would say:
"I have worked ten hours to-day, Capsina, and I have not smoked ten
minutes."
"Smoke, smoke!" cried the Capsina; "smoking and drinking is all that
men are fit for!"
And Mitsos, with a face conspicuously grave, raised his voice and
called for a pipe and a glass of wine for the Capsina, and an awed
silence fell for the moment on those round, for this seemed little
short of blasphemy; but the Capsina only glanced at Mitsos's demure
face, burst out laughing herself, and was off again.
Kanaris and Mitsos lodged in her house, but until the last evening,
when all was ready, and there was positively nothing left for her to
do, she was never there except occasionally for supper and for sleep.
Even on the last evening of all, as soon as supper was over, she
started up.
"We are ready," she said; "why not sail to-night? What is the use of
wasting time here?"
Mitsos, who had not finished, slowly laid down the mouthful he was
raising to his lips.
"Oh, Capsina!" he said; "be it known to you that for my part I will not
go till to-morrow. Yes, this is mutiny, is it not? Very well, put me in
irons; but for the sake of all the saints in heaven, let me finish my
supper!"
The Capsina looked at him a moment.
"Little Mitsos," she said, "you are a gross feeder."
And with that she sat down again, and filled both their glasses and her
own.
"To the little Mitsos's good digestion!" she cried, and clinked her
glass with his.
Mitsos smiled, but drank to his own digestion.
"And there is yet another toast," he said. "It is to the tranquil
Capsina. Hurrah!"
They were going south round the capes, then north again, up the west
coast of Greece, to cruise in the Corinthian Gulf, for there, as they
knew, were Turkish vessels, which sailed from village to village along
the coast, massacring and burning and destroying the Greek maritime
population. The events of the last summer and autumn had made it clear
even to that indolently minded enemy that if once Greece got command of
the sea the war would be over, for on land the cause of the Revolution
daily gained fresh recruits, and, if once the ports and harbors were
in the hands of the insurgents, it would no longer be possible to
send in fresh men and arms, except by the long and dangerous march
through the disaffected mountains of north Greece. There, as the Turks
had found to their cost, it was impossible to bring on a pitched
engagement, for true to the policy of Petrobey, the villagers pursued
a most harassing, baffling policy of guerilla warfare. The invaders
could burn a village, already empty before their approach, but next day
as they marched, suddenly the bare and rocky hill-sides would blaze,
large bowlders would stream down the ravines and upset the commissariat
mules, and during the livelong night dropping shots would be kept up,
and a sentry, firing back at the uncertain aim of the momentary flash
of a musket, would be bowled over from the other direction. But as
long as the sea remained in the hands of the Turks they had little to
fear; regiment after regiment could be poured into the country, and
the end would be sure. With this object, several Turkish vessels were
cruising among the clustering villages on the gulf, burning ships and
depopulating the men of the sea. But it was an ill day for them when
the news of their doings came to Hydra. It had been arranged that some
fifteen brigs should follow the Capsina in the spring, and part would
close the mouth of the gulf while the others joined her. Tombazes had
in vain urged her to wait, for no Turkish fleet would be sent out from
Constantinople till spring; the Greeks would have the start of them
leaving Hydra, and no sane man would think of cruising in the winter.
But all remonstrance was useless, for the Capsina only said:
"Then I suppose Kanaris, Mitsos, and I are mad. That is a sore
affliction, father. Besides, you would not have us stop; Turkish ships,
you know, are in the gulf."
For more than a week after they started they were the butt of violent
and contrary winds, but the Capsina was impatient of delay no longer.
Indeed, on the surface she was "the tranquil Capsina" to whom Mitsos
had drunk, and he at any rate had no cause to know of the unrest that
stormed below her tranquillity. They had set out from Hydra about
eleven of the morning, and almost immediately after leaving the harbor
they had taken a somewhat different course to the _Sophia_. She made
a wider tack to port, while the _Revenge_ sailed closer to the wind,
and after they had turned the southern end of the island, and there
was open sea, with the main-land lying like a cloud to the west,
Sophia and Mitsos left the bridge. Just as they went down she looked
round: Kanaris was far away to the offing, Hydra was sinking down to
the north, there was only sea and Mitsos. And with an uncontrollable
impulse she held out her hands to him.
"At last!" she cried, and before the pause was perceptible--"at last we
are off!"
She loved these fierce winds and heavy seas which kept them back; it
was a fierce and intimate joy to her to wake at night and know that
Mitsos was there, to wake in the morning for another day of that
comradeship, which was in itself already the main fibre of her life.
The huge gray seas from the south hissed and surged by them, with
dazzling, hungry heads of lashed foam, now and again falling solid
on the bows with a shower of spray, and streaming off through the
scuppers back into the sea. The wind shrilled and screamed through
the rigging; the buffeted ship staggered and stood straight again,
then plunged head-foremost with a liquid cluck and crunch into the
next water-valley; the bowsprit dipped in the sea, then raised itself
scornfully with a whiff of spray twenty feet above the crest of the
wave; and every wave that beat them, every squall that whistled aloft,
every flash of raking sunlight that fled frightened across the deck was
for the two of them; they stood side by side, wrapped in tarpaulins,
and watched the beautiful labor of the ship; they sat in the swaying,
rolling cabin, and it was like a game to pluck at the food as it bowed
and coquetted away from their hands; like a game, too, the scramble and
rush across the deck, laid precipitously towards the seas rushing by,
or the house-roof climb up it as it rose staggering to the next billow,
or the watching Michael as he toiled or slipped after them, sometimes
sliding gravely down on his haunches, sometimes doing tread-mill work
up the wet incline; but for one of them at least the game was one at
which the stake was serious. They would amuse themselves with the most
childish sports, watching themselves to see who could stand the longest
on one foot when the ship was pushing and shouldering its way along
through the cross sea, the one finding pleasure in such things because
he was just a boy with a double portion of animal spirits, the other
because anything that was shared with him was passionately well worth
doing. Often and often Mitsos wondered that this was the same girl who
had nigh driven the Hydriots to death, doing more than any of them, yet
indefatigable; and she that this was the Mitsos who had brought hot
death to that Turkish ship in the harbor at Nauplia.
For three days the southwest wind blew half a gale, and the sky was
one driven rack of scudding rain-clouds. Sometimes a squall would
sweep across the sea, the torrent hissing audibly into the water, and
more loudly than the scream of the wind as it approached. The windward
sea would become a seething caldron; the broken wave-tops were scarce
distinguishable from the churning of the rain--all was furious foam.
Then the squall would charge slanting across the deck, pass, and
perhaps for half an hour the wind would seem to moderate, but again
the humming of the rigging would change to a moan, and the moan to a
shriek; and so another night they would sail, scarce making any way,
but, tacking wide out to sea, return again, having won but a dozen
miles in half a dozen hours. All the time the _Sophia_ kept a wider and
more seaward course, now and then getting close to them at the end of
her starboard tack, and then standing out again.
But on the fourth morning they woke to a sky washed clean by the rain,
and of an incredibly soft blue. The gray, angry waves became a merry
company of live beings which sparred in jovial play with the ship. The
wind was still fresh, but it had veered round to the north, and mid-day
saw the two ships close together, rattling along close-hauled in the
channel between Cerigo and Cape Malea. To the south the island lay
green and gray and fringed with white, and, to the north, promontory
after promontory, each grayer and bluer than the last, melted into
the bay of Gythium. It was a morning on which those in whose veins
the joy of life is flowing are conscious from toe to finger-tip, from
finger-tip to the end of the hair, of the indubitable goodness of life,
and the smallest thing was a jest to them, and the largest a jest
also. Michael, in particular, caused many mouthfuls of laughter; for
his dinner was thrown out of its bowl by a sudden lurch of the ship,
and he ran after the various bones as they rolled away, growling and
ill-pleased, till he too was laid on his back, and picked himself up
with the air of not being hungry and having fallen down on purpose.
And the perception of the shallowness of this seeming, combined with a
half-swallowed piece of orange, reduced Mitsos to a choking condition,
and the Capsina thumped him on the back.
"Thank you, yes, I am altogether recovered," says he; "but, oh,
Capsina, you have a very strong arm."
"Little Mitsos, it was for your good," said the Capsina, a thought
sententiously, setting her white teeth in the peel of her orange.
"I suppose so; things that are good for one, I have noticed, make one a
little sore."
"What do you know about things that are good for you?" asked she.
"That only; that they make one sore. For indeed I do not think that
things that are good for one _are_ good for one. You understand?" he
added, hopefully.
"Perfectly," said the Capsina, and they laughed again, causelessly.
The evening brought calmer weather, and to them somewhat calmer
spirits, and that night after supper they talked quite soberly.
"Oh, but it is a strange world," said the Capsina; "to think that a
week ago I had never set eyes on you, and now--well, there is no one in
the world I know better. I have taken you as I found you, and you me;
we have asked no questions of father or mother, and here we are. Oh, it
is a strange world!" she said again.
Now there was perhaps no subject in the world to which Mitsos had
dedicated less thought than the strangeness of the world. So he waited
in silence.
"Is it not so?" went on Sophia. "What could have been less likely than
the chance that put your boat in to Nauplia that night, and on the one
tack. For, indeed, if you had taken two tacks, and so I had lost my
pound to Kanaris, I should not have stopped there."
"Then should I at this hour have been catching the little fish in the
bay," said Mitsos, "and that is only worth the doing when there is
nothing forward. Yet I like the bay," he added, thinking of Suleima,
"for I have had many good hours there. See, there is Taygetus, all
snow! You would say she was a bride," he added, with an altogether
unusual employment of metaphor.
He got up and leaned over the bulwarks looking out to the north, where
the top of Taygetus appeared above a bank of low-lying cloud, itself
bright in the evening sunshine. The sea had gone down considerably in
the last hour, and they moved with a steady swing over the waves, no
longer torn and broken. In the lessening wind they had been able to
put on all sail, and the ship, with its towers of fresh snowy canvas,
seemed like some great white seabird, now skimming, now dipping in
the waves. From where she sat, Sophia could see the sky reddening to
sunset under the arched foot of the main-sail, and when the bows rose
to a wave Taygetus would appear as in a frame between the ship and
the sail. Mitsos was leaning on the side, in front of the main-mast,
bareheaded and blown by the wind, his face turned seaward, so that she
saw only the strong clear line of brow and cheek. And the sight of
him, listless, contented, and unconscious of her, filled the girl with
a sudden spasm of anger and envy. The last week, which had so welded
itself into the essentials of her life, seemed no more to him than the
sound of the wind which had buffeted them, or the hiss of some spent
wave which had struck them yesterday; she had been mad, so she thought,
to have so let herself go, abandoning herself like that to the childish
pleasure of the hour. It seemed the one moment incredible that he had
not guessed that this child's-play was something far different to her,
at the next impossible that it should have seemed to the boy to be
anything else. They had played, laughed, chattered together, and to him
the play had been play, the laughter and the chattering mirth only. Yet
she counted the cost and regretted nothing, and waited with an eager
patience for the fierce deeds in which their hands would be joined, and
therein surely draw closer to each other. The affection and delighted
comradeship of the boy was hers; hers too, so she promised herself,
should be the keener, inevitable need for her when they did a man's
work together.
That evening they passed round Cape Malea, keeping close in to the
land, and Mitsos, as they turned northward, watched with all the
pleasure of recognition the near passing of the coast where he and
Yanni had made their journey with the messages for the mills. Sophia
listened eagerly to the story, making Mitsos tell over again of the
fight in the mill, and she sat silent awhile after he had finished.
"That explains you," she said at length; "for these last days you have
been just a child, but I suspect that when there is work forward you
are made a man; and there will soon be work forward for you and me,
little Mitsos," she added to herself.
Two days after this they were nearing Patras and the entrance to the
Corinthian Gulf, and being no longer in the open and empty seas, it was
necessary to use some circumspection in their advance. They lay to some
eight miles outside Patras, and Kanaris came on board to consult. The
fortress of Patras was in the hands of the Turks; but they would give
this a very wide berth, so Kanaris suggested, and pass Lepanto, another
Turkish fortress in the narrows of the gulf, at night. It was there the
greater risk awaited them. Lepanto was a heavily armed place, the gulf
was less than three miles broad, shoal water lay broad on the side away
from the fortress, and the channel close below its walls. Further, it
was ludicrously improbable that either the _Sophia_ or the _Revenge_
would be allowed a passing unchallenged, for indeed the resemblance
of either to peaceful trading brigs was of the smallest. But Sophia,
with the support of Mitsos, demurred: it were better to seek a weed
in a growing cornfield than to go into the gulf without some guidance
as to the position the Turkish cruisers were in, but beyond doubt
Germanos or some other of the revolutionists at Patras could give them
information.
"For, indeed," said the Capsina, with asperity, "I have not come a
pleasure sail in a little rowboat with a concertina to sing to."
"But do you mean to put in to Patras," asked Kanaris, "and say to the
Turks who hold the fort, 'Tell me where is Germanos, for I wish to know
where the Turkish cruisers are'? Will they not guess your business when
they see the ship?"
"No, I shall not do that," said the Capsina, "nor shall I put out a
great notice in Greek and Turkish that all may read, saying I am the
Capsina and carry four-and-twenty guns. Oh, speak," she said, turning
to Mitsos, "and do not sit as round-eyed as an owl at noonday!"
Mitsos grinned.
"Never mind the compliments," he said, "and give me time, Capsina, for
it is my way to think slow."
"If they know that you are at Patras," continued Kanaris, "word will go
to the Lepanto, and we shall see nought of the gulf but the bottom of
it."
"And so will the little Mitsos be among his little fish again," said
the Capsina.
"The devil take the little fishes!" said Mitsos. "Why will you not let
me be, to think slow, and tell you some very wise thing in the end? I
shall go think by myself." And he went forward.
"How can you be so imprudent, Capsina?" said Kanaris. "Yes, I am at
your orders completely: I need not remind you of that, and where you go
I go. But you have ever told me to say my mind."
"You are quite right," said the Capsina, "but we will wait to hear what
this slow thinker says."
In ten minutes or so Mitsos returned, still owl-like, but, so said the
Capsina, with a blush of intelligence on his face.
"I am thinking I shall have to be a peasant lad again, with a mule and
a basket of oranges. For I take it that both you and Kanaris are in the
right, Capsina."
"The oranges will help us very much," remarked the Capsina, but the owl
still sat in Mitsos's eyes.
"For thus," he continued, "even as in the days of the mill fight, I
will go into Patras and find Germanos and speak with him."
"But how are you to get to Patras?" asked Kanaris.
"I have in my mind that there is a place called Limnaki, three miles
this side Patras, and the foulest spot God ever made, being one
pestilent marsh. Now my thought is that our brig could sail close in
there, while the other waited about on the alert. That shall be this
afternoon, and before it is dark I can be with Germanos. Then he will
tell me where these Turks are in the gulf, and before morning I shall
be at Limnaki again. So far I am with the Capsina, but then let us do
as Kanaris says, and pass the guns of Lepanto at night."
"Hoot, hoot! so the owl speaks!" said Sophia; "and I think the owl is
right. You know Germanos, do you not, little Mitsos?"
"Surely. I was at Tripoli."
It was so arranged, and Kanaris returned to his ship, while the
_Revenge_ put about, and in an hour's time had got close in to the
shore opposite Limnaki. It was a starved little village, feverish and
unhealthy, and the chance of Turks being there was too small to reckon
with. Mitsos got into peasant's dress, and as time was short, omitted
the oranges and the mule, and after being landed quietly, set off an
hour before sunset over the hill towards Patras. Barefooted, and with
a colored handkerchief for a cap, he passed without remark through the
gate of the town, and mingled with the loiterers in the market-place.
The citadel of Patras was still in the hands of the Turks, and the
Turkish garrison there, and the Greek revolutionists who held the
monastery hill both lived in a state of semi-siege, while meantime the
rest of the Greeks and Turks in the town continued to pursue the usual
trade, finishing up six days out of the seven with a little mutual
massacring in the streets; and Mitsos's object was to get to the Greek
camp without involving himself in any street row. The monastery was
but a quarter of an hour's walk from the square, and he reached the
outposts of the Greek lines in safety, and demanded to be taken at once
to Germanos. He gave his name, and stated that he was on the business
of the Capsina.
Germanos received him immediately with kindness and courtesy, though
the little Mitsos, remembering the affairs at Tripoli, was as stiff as
the soul of a ramrod. But, to Germanos's credit be it said, his manner
suffered no abatement of geniality, and when he had heard Mitsos out,
he spoke:
"There are nine Turkish vessels in the gulf," he said. "Three are
coming along the north coast, and left Lepanto only two days ago. They
attacked a village called Sergule yesterday, and, I should think, would
move on again to-day or to-morrow. Three more were at Corinth two days
ago, and, I have just heard, were going northward; the other three are
somewhere along the south coast, but I do not know where. But how are
you going to get in, little Mitsos?"
"We are going to sail in," said Mitsos, curtly.
Germanos looked at him a moment in silence. Then, "That is not very
courteously said, little Mitsos," he answered. "Yes, I know you think
that has passed which passes forgiveness. Yet Nikolas forgave me, did
he not, and do you not know that I was sorry and ashamed, and did I
not say so publicly? That was not very easy to do. But I do not wish
to interfere; if you desire to know more that I can tell you, you are
welcome to my knowledge, and, if you will, my counsel; if not, I can
only regret that I can be of no more service to you, and wish you
God-speed--that with all my heart."
Mitsos stood a moment with eyes downcast. Then with a wonderful sweet
frankness of manner he spoke:
"You are right, father," he said, "and I am no better than a sulky
child. I ask your forgiveness."
"You have it very freely, nephew of Nikolas, for indeed Nikolas forgave
even me," said the proud man.
Mitsos's face dimpled with a smile, both genial and sorry.
"So, that is good," he said. "Well, father, here we are, still outside
the gulf, and we want, if we can, to pass in to-night, so that they in
Lepanto shall not see us."
Germanos thought a moment.
"I can help you," he said, "and it is pleasure to my soul to do so.
You do not see all your difficulties. You can depend on getting past
Lepanto with the land-breeze in the evening, which blows off the hills
out of Lepanto, and a little up the gulf. Now the land-breeze drops
by an hour after sunset, and so by then, therefore, must you be past
Lepanto. That is to say, you must pass Patras in broad day. You will
be seen from the citadel, a man on horse will reach the straits before
you are there, and word will go across to the fortress. It is now after
sunset, and it is hopeless to attempt it to-night. But to-morrow I
can help you, and this promise I give you, that to-morrow afternoon
we make a sortie, and hold the two city gates on the east, so that no
man passes out. Thus word cannot be sent to Lepanto. For, believe me,
if you are seen, as you must be seen passing here, the straits will be
guarded, and you will never get in. But, little Mitsos, what a scheme!
Is it the Capsina's? For how will you pass out again; for when once
they know you are there, the straits will be guarded. They have ships
at Lepanto."
"In a month the fleet leaves Hydra," said Mitsos; "till then we have
plenty of work in the gulf. But that is a wise thought and a kind one
of yours, father."
Germanos got up and walked about; he was much moved.
"If this is the spirit of the people," he said, "it will be no long
time before not a Turk is left in Greece."
"The people are not all as the Capsina, father," said Mitsos.
"It is splendid! splendid!" cried Germanos. "Whenever did a man hear of
so noble a risk? To shut herself up in a trap for six weeks, fighting
like a wild beast at bay. And, indeed, there is cause; five villages
already have been exterminated--they are no more. We on land cannot
touch the ships. None know where they will come next, and it is out of
possibility to garrison all the villages of the gulf. God be praised
for giving us such a girl!"
"Indeed there is none like her," said Mitsos. "But it is borne in upon
me that she is waiting off Limnaki, and she does not like waiting."
"I will have you seen safely out of the town," said Germanos, "for,
indeed, we cannot spare you either, little one. How is the wife and the
baby?"
"The one is as dear as the other," said Mitsos, "and they are both very
dear."
Mitsos was escorted out of the town and set on his way by a dozen men,
to defend him from the street brawls, and before midnight he was down
again on the shore at Limnaki, where he found the boat waiting to take
him off. The Capsina had come ashore, and was pacing up and down like a
hungry animal. Mitsos told her how he had sped; she entirely approved
the primate's scheme, the ship was got under way, and they went north
again, with a fitful and varying breeze, to join Kanaris.
All next morning they lay some eight miles out to sea, waiting until
the time came for them to move up the gulf. A west wind was blowing,
and now one and now the other beat a little out to sea, in order to
keep their distance from the land. On the Capsina's ship an atmosphere
of nerves was about, for all the men knew what they were to attempt,
and the waiting was cold matter for the heart. Mitsos alone possessed
himself in content and serenity, and smoked a vast deal of tobacco.
Michael had caught the prevailing epidemic, and followed the Capsina
about on her swift and aimless excursions fore and aft with trouble in
his eye.
At length the Capsina came and sat down by Mitsos, who had chosen a
snug berth under the lee of the forecastle, where he was sheltered from
the wind and warmed by the winter sun.
"Have you ever bathed on a cold day?" she asked.
"On many," said Mitsos. "But why?"
"Is there not a moment before one jumps in?" asked the girl, and she
set off again to look to the ammunition for the thirtieth time that
morning. Mitsos smoked on and soon she returned, having forgotten that
for which she had gone.
"It is all this arranging that is a trouble to me," she said. "Had you
not gone to see Germanos and take precautions, I should have been as
calm--as calm as you, for, indeed, I know nothing calmer. The devil
take that silly scheme of yours, Mitsos. But to know that he is taking
measures for our safety, and we have to wait till his measures are
taken--oh, it beats me!" she cried. "And there are other things."
Mitsos's eye roamed over the sky for inspiration and noticed the sun.
"It is time for dinner," he said; "in fact, it is already late, and my
stomach howls to me."
A singing west wind had been blowing all day, and promised to usurp
the air of the land-breeze; but, not to run risk, about four o'clock
the Capsina signalled to Kanaris, and they both hoisted sail and went
eastward. The wind was still holding; they made good sailing, and half
an hour before sunset they were off Patras. They were not more than
a mile out to sea, and it was possible in that clear air to make out
that something unusual was going on. The fort seemed deserted, but they
could see lines of men, moving slow and busy like ants, lining the
western wall. Now and then a spit of smoke would come from the citadel,
followed after an interval by the drowsy sound of the report, and once
or twice a long line of white vapor curled along the city wall, and the
rattle of musket-fire confirmed it. It was clear that Germanos was as
good as his word.
The sun had already set half an hour when they neared Lepanto, but
a reflected brightness still lingered on the water, and as they
approached they had the lights of the town to guide them, and the
Capsina put on all sail. The strength of the wind had risen almost to
violence, and Mitsos, standing with the Capsina on the poop, more than
once feared for the masts, or to hear the crack of the mainsail. Once
he suggested taking a reef in, but the Capsina paid no attention. All
afternoon the girl had been strange and silent, as if struggling with
some secret anxiety, and Mitsos, seeing she gave no account of it,
refrained from asking. Kanaris's orders were simply to follow, but when
they had passed the fort, and still the Capsina neither spoke nor moved
from her place, Mitsos again addressed her, but with some timidity, for
her face was iron and flint.
"We are safe past," he said. "Where do--"
But she interrupted him vehemently.
"Get you below," she said; "this night I sail the ship."
Mitsos wondered but obeyed, and sat up awhile in the cabin; but the
ship still holding her course, as he could tell from the rapid swishing
of the water, about nine he went to bed. Later the sound of the
anchor-chain woke him for a moment, and he waited awake, though laden
with sleep, for a minute or two, in case he was wanted. Then there came
the unmistakable splash of a boat lowered into the water and the sound
of oars. At that he got up, threw on a coat, and went on deck.
It was starlight and very cold; several sailors were standing about,
and he asked one of them, who took the duty of first mate, where they
were. Dimitri pointed to a faint glow along the shore.
"That is--that was Elatina," he said.
"And what was Elatina?"
"A village the Turks have burned. The Capsina is being rowed there," he
said, "and as she got into the boat I saw she was crying."
"Crying? The Capsina?"
"Yes; it was the village her mother comes from," said Dimitri, who was
a Hydriot.
Mitsos hesitated a moment, but reasoning that as the Capsina had said
nothing of this to him it was a thing outside his own affairs, he went
back to bed again.
He woke again in the aqueous, uncertain light of dawn, and in the
dimness made his way on deck. The water was a mirror, the sky hard and
clear as some precious stone. The Capsina was not returned to the ship;
she had been gone ashore all night, and none on board knew anything
of her. The boat she had disembarked in had been back once during the
night to take more men: they supposed she was trying to save some whom
the Turks had left for dead.
Kanaris's ship was lying close, and after taking some coffee, Mitsos
rowed across to consult with him. He advised going ashore, and though
Mitsos hesitated at first, for if the Capsina had wanted him she would
have sent for him, they went together.
The long line of houses along the harbor was still smouldering--though
for the most part they had been skeletons of dwelling-places, built
only of wood--a heap of charred and blackened beams. Sometimes a
breath of moving air came down from the mountain behind, and fanned
the burned heaps into a sullen glare of glowing charcoal, or blowing
off a layer of white ash, showed that the fire still lived beneath. A
row of mimosa-trees fronted the houses, their leaves all singed and
wilted with the heat, and as the two landed on the quay the dawn breeze
awoke and blew straight down to them across the burned town, hot and
stifling, and, what gave to Mitsos a sudden pang of intimate horror,
with the smell of burning wood was mingled a smell as of roasting meat.
Here and there from a heap of charred ruins protruded a blackened
leg or arm, or the figure of a man or woman lay free from the fallen
timbers, but with hair consumed to its roots, and holes burned in the
clothes, a crying horror and offence to the purity and sweetness of
morning. Once, on their way up that street of death, Mitsos turned to
Kanaris with ashen lips. "I think I cannot go on," he whispered, but
after a moment or two he mastered himself and followed the other. The
ghastly hideousness of the sight, now that his blood danced with no
fever of war nor was his heart shadowed by an anxiety fiercer than this
indiscriminate death, touched some nerve which the shambles at Tripoli
had left unthrilled. Here and there from the waters of the harbor the
masts of some sunken vessel pricked the surface, and the slope of the
beach was strewn with the wreckage, not of ships alone. And by degrees
Mitsos's cold horror grew hot with the fiery lust for vengeance; and
steeling himself to look and feed on the sight, before long he looked
and needed no steeling. The color returned to his lips and inflamed
his face, his eye was lit from within with the thought of what should
swiftly follow. For beyond a doubt this was the work of the three ships
that had sailed from Lepanto only a few days before, and, indeed, they
must have been gone not yet a full day.
Curious and pitiful was it to see the dogs still guarding a pile
of burned beams which their instinct told them was home; they had
returned, no doubt, when the fierceness of the fire was over, and now
lay in front of the consumed houses, growling at Kanaris and Mitsos
as they passed, or, if they came close, springing up with bared teeth
ready to attack. At one house a great gaunt dog rose as they approached
and stood with hackles up, snarling; the poor brute stood on three
legs, for the fourth was broken and hung down limply. And, seeing that,
a sudden poignancy of compassion at this faithfulness in suffering
stung Mitsos to the quick, and, drawing his pistol, he put the beast
out of his pain.
As yet there had been seen no sign of the Capsina or her party, but the
noise of the shot reached them, and next moment two of the sailors came
at a run round a corner some small distance up the street. They waited
on seeing who the new-comers were, and Kanaris and Mitsos came up with
them.
"Where is she?" asked Mitsos.
"At the house of her mother, clearing what is fallen to see if there
are any left alive."
Mitsos and Kanaris followed, and, passing through two short streets of
ghastly wreckage, found themselves at the house. It was larger than
most, and built of stone, so that while the walls still stood the
inside was one piled mass of burned beams and fittings of the floors
and staircase. As they came near four sailors emerged out of the door
with the charred burden of what had been a man. This, covered with a
cloth where the face had been, they laid with others like it a little
distance off.
The Capsina had kept with her some half-dozen of the men, with whom
she was clearing the beams and débris, having sent the remainder off
to other houses. She was hacking furiously at a beam too heavy to drag
away except in pieces when Mitsos entered. Her dress, hands, and face
were all blackened with the work; one hand was bleeding, and round the
wrist was wrapped a bandage of linen. Seeing Mitsos, she stopped for a
moment and wiped the sweat from her forehead. No tears or sign that she
had been weeping was in her eye, only a savage and relentless fury.
"So you have come," and she looked up. "Ah, it is day already," and she
quenched an oil-lamp that was burning by her. "I was going to send for
you and more men when day broke, for it was no good coming at night.
I only stayed because I could not go away. Send for more men from our
ship, little Mitsos, and you, Kanaris, from yours, for we must make
speed, leaving only a few there and a few on the shore, who will send
word if the Turks are seen. And let those on board be in readiness
to sail at a moment. Ah!" she went on, with a sudden lifting of her
hands indescribably piteous, "we should have come straight through
Lepanto and chanced everything. Then, perhaps, we might have saved the
place. This," and she clasped her hands together and then threw them
apart--"this was the house from which my father took his bride. Ah,
ah!"--and she took up her axe and fell to hewing at the beam again,
like a thing possessed.
It was no time to waste words, and as soon as the fresh contingents
came, some with axes, others with ship's cutlasses and capstan-bars,
or anything that would help clear the wreckage, Mitsos and Kanaris
went off and began searching the houses for those who might still be
alive. They found that the massacre had taken place and been done
with thoroughness before the burning began, and the devil's work had
been carried out coolly and systematically. At the end of the street
leading up out of the village towards the mountain there had evidently
been some sort of combined stand made by the villagers, for there the
corpses lay thick; and higher up on the path lay others who had run
for their lives, only to be shot down by those infernal marksmen as
they climbed the steep hill-side. But an hour's search was rewarded
by Mitsos finding one man who still breathed, but who died not half an
hour after; and farther on, in the front room of a house, he discovered
a woman lying dead, while on her breast lay a baby, alive and seemingly
unhurt, who pulled at its mother's dress crying for food.
Then he turned and searched the houses opposite on the other side
of the street, but found nothing that lived, and so came back to
the church, which stood with doors open, and being built of stone
throughout, the Turks had not attempted to fire.
To make the search thorough, though not expecting to find any one
there, he entered, and then stopped with a quick-drawn gasp.
No pillage had been done there, the place was orderly and quiet; a row
of little silver lamps untouched and lighted hung across the church
above the low altar-screen; a big brass candlestick stood on the left,
filled with the great festa tapers, still burning. Only from the great
wooden crucifix which stood above the altar the carved Christ had been
removed, and in its place, fastened hand and foot by nails and bound
there by a rope, was the figure of a young man, naked.
Mitsos paused only for a moment, crossed himself, and without speech
beckoned to the others. The door of the altar-screen was locked, but
putting his weight to it, he burst it open. Then, with three others, he
mounted onto the altar, and lifting the cross from its place, laid it
on the floor. The figure on it lay quite still, but there was no other
mark of violence on it than the rents in the hands and feet made by the
nails, and even as Mitsos wrapped a piece torn from his shirt round one
of them to get a firmer hold, the lad stirred his head and opened his
eyes.
"Fetch Kanaris," said Mitsos, to one of the men; "he has skill in these
things."
One by one the nails were loosened and the limbs freed, and Mitsos
carried the lad down the church out into the fresh air, where he
propped him up against the door. The blood had clotted thickly round
the wounds, and though the withdrawal of the nails had caused it to
break out afresh, Mitsos managed to stay the flow by bandaging the arms
and legs tightly where they joined the body, as Nikolas had taught
him to do. The lad had fainted again, but one of the sailors, a rough
Hydriot fellow down whose cheeks the tears were running, though he knew
it not, had spirits with him, and poured a draught down the young man's
throat, and in a little while he moved one arm feebly. Another had
found his clothes laid by the altar, and Mitsos tenderly, like a woman,
wrapped these round him as well as he could without jarring him, and
then, lifting him gently off the stones where they had set him down,
laid him across his knees, supporting his head on his shoulder.
Before long Kanaris came, washed and bound up the wounds, and, as the
life began to run more freely and the hopes of saving him increased,
arranged a litter with leaves and branches strewn on an unhinged door,
and had him carried down to the ship.
When he was gone Mitsos went back into the church, and putting the
carved image back onto the cross, set it again in its place above the
altar. Then for that he had committed sacrilege in standing there, he
knelt down before he left the church.
"Oh, most pitiful!" he said, "if I have sinned Thou wilt forgive."
When he got outside again the rest of the men had gone back to the
work, but he paused on the church steps a moment, blind with pity and
hate and the lust for vengeance, and with a heart swelling with a
horror unspeakable. The wounds of that living image of the crucified
should not cry to deaf ears. The very sacrilege that had been done
seemed to consecrate his passion for revenge, to lift his human hate
and pity into a motive of crusade for the wrong done to Christ.
Blasphemously and in hideous mockery those incarnate devils had turned
their inhuman cruelty into a two-edged thing, cutting at God and man
alike. And with the Capsina feeding hate in the ruins of her mother's
home, and Mitsos feeding hate at the house of God, it was likely that
their ship had not been named amiss.
The work was over an hour or two before the sunset. The Capsina had
found in her mother's house nothing but the dead, but, elsewhere, two
women who were still alive, but died before the noon; Kanaris had
found none, so that from what had been a flourishing village two days
ago there were left only the young man with whom they had preferred
to commit outrageous blasphemy, leaving the body to a lingering
death rather than to kill, and the baby untouched by some unwitting
oversight. Only a few bodies of Turks had been found--the thing had
been massacre, not fight. As the Capsina and Mitsos were going down
to the ship again in silence, he saw her turn aside to where a dead
Turk was lying under a tree. She stamped on the face of the dead thing
without a word, and followed by Mitsos, stepped into the boat that was
waiting for them.
No sooner had all got on board than the Capsina gave the order to
start. But before they had gone half a dozen miles the breeze failed,
and, for the night was close upon them, they lay to waiting for the
day, fearing that if a breeze sprang up in the night they might, by
taking advantage of it, overshoot those for whom they were looking.
The lad the Turks had crucified was on Kanaris's ship, where he would
receive better doctoring than either Mitsos or the Capsina had the
skill to give him, but the baby was on the _Revenge_.
They had not tasted food since morning, the Capsina not since the night
before, and they ate ravenously and in silence. Once only during their
meal did the Capsina speak.
"When I have hung those who did this thing," she said, "I may be able
to weep for my own dead."
But when they had eaten, and were still sitting speechless opposite
each other, a little wailing cry came from the cabin next them, and the
Capsina rose and left the room. Presently after she brought the baby
in, rocking it in her arms, and before long the child ceased crying and
slept, and Mitsos, looking up, saw the girl weeping silently, with
great sobs that seemed to tear her. And at that he got up and went on
deck, thinking that it would be the better to leave her alone with the
baby.
He awoke before dawn next morning to a haunting sense of horror and
excitement, to which by degrees awakening memory gave form, and only
throwing on his coat, went up. A thick white mist hung over the bay
higher than where he stood on the deck, but it seemed to be not
very thick, and strangely luminous. So he climbed up the rigging of
the mainmast as far as the cross-trees and looked out. The sky was
cloudless--a house of stars--in the west the moon was pale and large.
They were not more than a mile from a rocky headland, which peered out
darkly into the white mist farther down; perhaps a mile away another
pointed a black finger into the water, and between the two the line of
coast was lost, and Mitsos rightly supposed that they were opposite
some bay. Then suddenly, with a catch of his heart, his eye fell on
a couple of masts which rose pricking the mist scarcely half a mile
distant, and looking more closely he saw the masts of two other ships,
one to the right, the other to the left, a little farther off. And with
fierce excitement he climbed down and went to the Capsina's cabin. In
a moment, so quickly that she could not have been asleep or undressed,
she came out to him with a finger on her lip.
"Hush!" she whispered, "the baby is asleep. What is it, Mitsos?"
"Three ships are lying not far from us," he said. "I make no doubt they
are the Turks. You can see their masts from the cross-trees; on deck
there is white mist."
"Where are they?"
"Between us and land, which is a mile off, on the entrance of a bay."
"Is there wind?"
"Not a breath; but when day wakes the wind will wake with it, and the
mist will lift. The sun will be up, I should think, in an hour. There
is the smell of morning already in the air."
The Capsina paused a moment, thinking intently, and went out on deck.
"Praise be to the God of vengeance!" she said. "Oh, Mitsos, pray that
our revenge may be complete. See, this is what we will do. As soon as
the wind comes we sail round them into the bay, Kanaris attacks them on
this side. Send across to Kanaris at once. Saints in heaven, but how
are we to find him in the mist? Go aloft again, lad; see if you can spy
his masts: he cannot be far, for when we lay to last night he was close
by us, and look out to see if there is a sign of wind coming."
Mitsos returned speedily. "He is not a quarter of a mile from us to
seaward," he said, "and it is already lighter, and I see where we are:
the farther cape is just this side Galaxidi. And oh, Capsina, there
is a great black cloud coming up from the west; the wind may be here
before the sun."
In a few minutes the _Revenge_ was all alive, though silent and
soft-footed, making ready, as a cat makes ready for its spring. A boat
had put off for Kanaris's ship with Mitsos in it, who was to explain
what their tactics were to be. All that they could be certain of was to
take the _Revenge_ in between the land and the Turks, for they would
get the breeze first, while Kanaris waited outside to stop them if they
would not engage but tried to escape across the gulf. If they stood
their ground he was to close in on them.
Mitsos was back again in less than twenty minutes, but already the jib,
halyards, and upper and lower yards had been set, in case the wind came
down on them, as so often happened in that narrow sea, in a squall;
the men were all at their posts, the cutlasses and muskets were laid
out in depots on the deck, if it came to a hand-to-hand fight, and
the Capsina was on the bridge. Dimitri, who was a kind of first mate,
being directly under Mitsos and the Capsina, was standing with her,
and even as Mitsos joined them there came through the still thick mist
the shiver of a sigh, and the jib flapped once and again. Then from
down the gulf, without further warning, the squall was upon them; in
a moment the mist was rent and torn to a thousand eddying fragments,
the _Revenge_ heeled slowly over to the wind and began to make way. For
a short minute sea and land were as clear as in a picture; they saw
Turkish ships lying half a mile off, to the northeast, at the mouth of
the bay, and next moment the rain fell like a sheet. But that glimpse
had been enough; there was room and to spare to pass between the nearer
headland and the ships, and the Capsina pointed without speaking,
and Dimitri roared his order to the men at the tiller. The _Revenge_
trembled and struggled like a thing alive; once the tiller broke from
the two men who held it, and she sheered off straight into the wind
again; but next moment they had it fastened down and they tacked off
northeast, and for a minute the rain ceased as suddenly as it had
begun, and the ship threshed on through the ruffled water, gathering
speed.
The men were ready at the guns, but the order had been not to fire
till they were broadside. Already they could see a stir and bustle on
the nearest Turk, and sailors were putting up the jib, as if to run
out to sea. Then it seemed they sighted the _Revenge_ bearing down
on them, and they hesitated a moment, and presently after Mitsos saw
two or three ports being opened. But they were too late; by this time
the _Revenge_ was broadside, and all three batteries poured a deluge
of shot into her, slipped past her like a swan, and fired again as
she crossed their bows, leaving the three Turks, as the Capsina had
intended, between her and Kanaris.
Once in the bay, the face of the squall reached them not so violently,
for they were under shelter of the promontory close to which they had
passed; but the Capsina ran on some half-mile before putting about. Of
the Turkish ships they could see that the middle one, lying too close
to the one on the leeward of it, had, in trying to put out to sea,
fouled the other, and Kanaris observing this, hauled up his halyards,
beat up a little way against the wind, and then, turning, fired a
broadside into them. Meantime, the ship first attacked, whose foremast
had been shot in two by the Capsina's broadside, had cut away the wreck
and was making for the open sea, and seeing this the _Revenge_ was put
about, and making a wide tack to eastward, passed near the two which
had fouled each other, and got in two rounds, with only the reply of
one. Kanaris, whose business it was to stop any of them getting away,
instantly put about to head the escaping ship, but the other slipped by
him, and the two beat out to sea together.
The Capsina saw this.
"He will overhaul her in two miles," she said to Mitsos; "and now to
our work again," and her face was grimmer than death and hell.
The other two ships were now free; but they saw at once that the one
which had received the fire both of the _Revenge_ and Kanaris was
already doomed, and from minute to minute as they overhauled them she
was visibly settling down with a cant to leeward. There was no doubt
that she had been struck by one or the other below the water-line, and,
indeed, as they neared her they could see the pumps vomiting water down
her sides. She still carried sail, for they seemed to hope to get near
the land before she foundered, but her sails dragged her farther over,
until from the deck of the _Revenge_, now some three hundred yards
distant, they could see both lines of bulwarks, with a strip of deck in
between. Then they saw them begin to lower the boats, and at that the
Capsina gave the word to fire, and Mitsos, thinking on the deeds of the
day before, felt his heart laugh within him. At that range the heavy
guns of the brig were the sentence of destruction, and their whole
broadside went home, sweeping the decks and tearing fresh holes in her
side. Already the list was so great that she could no longer reply, and
as they neared her the Capsina again gave the command to fire.
Then was seen a disgraceful thing; for the second ship, still
untouched, put about, leaving her companion a wreck at the mercy of the
_Revenge_. But indeed there was little to be saved, and the Capsina,
seeing the tactics of the other and not wishing to waste shot now
the work was done, put down her helm and, passing by the bows of the
disabled ship, went in pursuit. The other carried two stern guns, and
she opened fire, but both balls hummed by harmlessly--the one missing
altogether, the other just carrying off a few splinters from the
starboard bulwarks; and in answer the _Revenge_ sheered off a moment
into the wind, which was still shifting to the north, and replied with
the three starboard guns of the upper deck. One shot went wide, but
of the two others the bow gun made a raking gash in the stern of the
chase, and that amidships, which fired a little after, took the rudder,
smashing the rudder-post below the juncture with the tiller, leaving
her simply in the hand of the wind. In a moment she swung round from
her course and pointed straight across the bows of the _Revenge_.
On the instant the Capsina saw her chance, for in a second or two she
would cross close.
"Let go the helm!" she shrieked; "get ready to fire starboard guns."
The tiller banged against the side, and the _Revenge_ swung round into
the wind, while every moment the two ships got closer to each other,
and at a distance of not more than a hundred yards they were broadside
to broadside. Then:
"Fire!" she cried.
For a moment they neither saw nor heard anything through the wreaths
of their own smoke. Then, as the wind dispersed it, they saw the great
ship a wreck on the water. She heeled over till the yard-arms dipped
and the sails trailed in the water. The deck, they could see, was
covered with men holding on, as if to prolong the bitterness of death,
to whatever they could catch. Some climbed up the mast, others clung
to the bulwarks, some jumped overboard. But the Capsina scanned it all
with hungry eyes, and, as if unwilling to leave the feast, gave an
order to shorten sail, and in the slackening speed ran to the stern of
the _Revenge_ to look her last on the drowning men.
Then she turned to Mitsos.
"We may leave them, I think," she said; "they are more than a mile from
land."
Kanaris and his charge were out of sight, and the _Revenge_ put about
to the ship she had left before. She was sinking fast, but they saw
that the crew had manned some half-dozen boats, which were rowing to
land, and the Capsina called Dimitri.
"Sink all," she said.
The hindermost boat was not more than two hundred yards ahead, but the
Capsina delayed her fire. Then, as they got within fifty yards of it,
she walked slowly and calmly to the side of the ship, and spoke in
Turkish.
"We are more merciful than those who crucify," she cried. And then,
"Fire!"
The other boats seeing what had happened, and resolving, if possible,
to sell their lives more dearly, got ready their muskets. But the
Capsina saw this, and while they were out of musket range:
"The bow guns for the rest," she said. "It is good target practice."
Five out of the six boats had been sunk, and they were already
preparing to fire on the sixth when a sudden pity came over Mitsos.
"Look," he said, "there are women in that boat!"
The Capsina shaded her eyes for a moment against the glare of the water.
"Turkish women only," she said.
"But women!" cried Mitsos, with who knows what memories of one who had
lived in a Turkish house.
"There were women in Elatina," said the Capsina. "Fire!" Then turning
to Mitsos: "Are you a woman, too?" she said--and suddenly her voice
failed as she looked at him. "Mitsos, little Mitsos!"
And he looked at her, biting his lip to check the trembling of his
mouth.
"Even so," he said, and turned away.
The first squall had blown over, and an hour of checkered sunshine
succeeded; but in the west again the clouds were coming up in
wind-tormented ribbons, and they had only just cleared the bay when a
second hurricane was on them. For some three-quarters of an hour the
wind had been slowly shifting into the north, and the wreckage of the
ship they had sunk at the mouth of the bay had drifted a little out
to sea, and they cut between drift-wood and masts and here and there
a man still afloat. Where Kanaris and the third ship were they had no
certain idea, but it was impossible for the clumsy Turkish ships to
tack against a violent wind without having the masts crack above their
heads, and this one, as they knew, was without its foremast, and must
have sailed nearly down wind. The second squall was even more violent
than the first, and the _Revenge_ scudded out to sea with only jib and
halyards flying. As they got farther from the funnel of land down which
the wind came, the force of it decreased a little, and they hoisted the
upper yards on the mainmast. But for an hour or more they raced across
a choppy and following sea, obscured by driving squalls of rain, before
they sighted either. All this time the Capsina had hardly spoken, and
Mitsos, standing by her, was as silent. But as they came in sight of
the two ships, both running before the wind, she stamped on the bridge.
"Hoist this foresail!" she cried.
Mitsos looked up: the ship, he knew, was carrying as much sail as she
could.
"You will lose your mast," he said.
The Capsina turned on him furiously.
"Let us lose it, then!" she cried.
"And you will go none the faster," he said. "More sail will only stop
the ship."
"That is what they say," she remarked. "They say it pulls a ship over,
and makes the bows dip. What do you advise, little Mitsos?"
"By no means hoist the foresail. Even if the ship can carry it you will
go the slower," he said. "Is it an order?"
"Yes."
Then suddenly she turned to him.
"Do not judge me," she said, "for indeed I am not myself. When this is
over, if God wills, I shall be myself again. Oh, lad!" she cried, "have
you water or milk in your veins? Do you forget what we saw yesterday?"
Mitsos looked at her a moment, and caught something of the burning hate
in her eye.
"I do not forget," he said. "But the women--oh, think of it!"
"I too am a woman," said Sophia.
Then, after a pause: "Ah, but look; is not the ship worthy of its name?
See how she gains on them! Oh, Mitsos, go below if you will, and take
no part in this. But I must do what I must do. Surely God is with us.
Do you forget what you saw in the church? You do not. Neither do I
forget the house of my mother."
Again the rain came on, a cold scourge of water, and in the lashing
fury of the downpour both ships were again lost for a while.
Then there followed a raking gleam of sunshine, which struck the gray
of the sea, turning it to one superb blue, and already they could see
the figures of men on the ships. Kanaris was on the port side, trying
evidently to head the Turk, and if she came on to give her a broadside,
or if she declined to drive her back. The sea was rising every minute,
and the three ships rolled scuppers under, and it was evidently out
of the question for him, in such a sea and at the distance they were
apart, to fire at her.
The Turk had made a good start against Kanaris, and though the _Sophia_
was overhauling her, it was clear that she was no tub, and as they were
both running before the wind, it was more a question of which ship
could carry most sail than of seacraft; and for another mile or more
they ran on, the two pursuing ships gradually gaining on the enemy, but
not very rapidly. It was evident that she was making for some port on
the southern side of the gulf, perhaps where she expected the second
trio of Turkish ships, and it was this the Capsina wished to prevent.
But the Turk saw that both were gaining on her, and knowing that the
opposite coast must be at least nine miles off, hoisted the mainsail.
The Capsina started in amazement as she saw the great canvas go up;
the mast bent like a whip for a moment, but stood the strain, and she
scudded off.
"It is desperate," she said to Mitsos; "she cannot stand it. In ten
minutes she will be ours."
The Capsina was right; only a temporary lull could have let them get
the sail up, and before many minutes the squall came down on them
again; the mainmast bent, and then, with a crash they could hear from
their ship, broke, and a great heap of canvas encumbered the deck.
"Two points to starboard!" said the Capsina. "Get ready to fire port
guns!"
More rapidly than ever the distance diminished; the _Revenge_ creeping
up on the starboard side, the _Sophia_ holding her course to port,
until at length the doomed ship was nearly between them, and on the
moment the Capsina gave the word to fire, and the broadside crashed
into the Turk. A moment after Kanaris fired, and the Turk replied with
a broadside to each. The Capsina did not wait to reply again, but
sailed past her, and then put the helm hard to port, risking masts and
sails, so that the ship swung round with her broadside to the Turk's
bows some five hundred yards off. Kanaris, who kept his distance, fired
again, and section by section, slowly and with deliberate aim, the
Capsina volleyed at her bows. Steady shooting was impossible on such a
sea, but some of the shot they saw went home, one hitting the bowsprit,
and several others crashing through the bulwarks and raking the ship
lengthways. No fire answered them, but her broadside replied twice or
thrice to Kanaris, doing some damage.
The Turk was now practically a log on the water, and the Capsina,
knowing there was time and to spare, made a wide tack off into the
northeast, and returning on the opposite tack again closed up with the
Turk from behind, putting a broadside into her stern.
At that there was only silence from the Turk, and the Capsina closed
in again on the starboard quarter, signalling Kanaris to do the same
on the port side, and as they approached they saw that the decks
were strewn with dead. A company of men were marshalled forward with
muskets, who separated into two companies, and manned the bulwarks on
each side, waiting for the ships to come to a closer range.
But the Capsina laughed scornfully.
"I would not waste the life of a man on my ship over those dogs," she
said. "Train the bow guns on them and do not sink the ship. Kill the
men only."
The wind was abating and the sea falling, and in a quarter of an hour
of the eighty or a hundred men who had been left they could only see
sixteen or twenty. But these continued firing their muskets coolly and
without hurry at the approaching ships, and a couple of men on the
_Revenge_ were wounded and one killed.
"I should not have thought Turks were so brave," said the Capsina. "Be
ready with the grappling-irons! Port the helm! And be quick when we get
in. Fifty men with muskets man the port side. Keep up the fire! Keep
under shelter of the bulwarks all of you!"
The _Revenge_ slid up to the Turk's starboard quarter, and as they got
within a hundred yards the Capsina gave orders to furl all sail; as the
distance lessened, the irons were thrown, the ropes were pulled home,
and the two ships brought up side by side.
A dozen Turks or so were still gathered in the bows, but as the crew of
the _Revenge_ swarmed the deck, they laid down their muskets and stood
with arms folded. One of them, in an officer's uniform, was sitting in
a chair smoking.
He got up with an air of indolent fatigue, still holding the
mouth-piece of his pipe.
"I surrender," he said, in Greek. "Where is your captain?"
The men made way for the Capsina, and she walked up the deck between
their lines.
"I am the captain," she said.
The man raised his eyebrows.
"Indeed!" and he laughed softly to himself. "You are too handsome for
the trade," he said. "You are better looking than any of my harem, and
there are several Greeks among them. Well, I surrender."
"For that word," said the Capsina, "you hang. Otherwise perhaps I
should have done you the honor to shoot you."
The man blanched a little, and his teeth showed in a sort of snarl.
"You do not understand," he said. "I surrender."
"You do not understand," she replied. "I hang you. For my mother was of
Elatina."
She came a step nearer him.
"If it were not that I hold the cross a sacred thing," she said, "I
would crucify you, very tenderly, that you might live long. Oh, man,"
and she burst out with a great gust of fury, "it is you and what you
did in Elatina that has made a demon of me! I curse you for it. There,
take him, two of you, and hang him from the mizzen yards. Do not speak
to me," she cried to the captain, "or I will smite you on the mouth! It
is a woman you are dealing with, not a thing from the harem."
In a moment two men had bound his legs and pinioned his arms, and, with
the help of two more, they carried him like a sack up the rigging and
set him on the yard. Then they made fast one end of the rope to the
mast and noosed the other round his neck, while the Capsina stood on
the deck, unflinching, an image of vengeance. And at a sign from her
they pushed him off into the empty air.
Mitsos gave one short gasp, for though he would have killed a man,
laughing and singing as he drove the knife home, in fight, his blood
revolted at the coldness of this, and he turned to the Capsina.
"You say you are a woman!" he cried. "Is that a woman's deed?" and he
pointed to the dangling burden.
"He insulted me," said the Capsina, "and I repay insults. As for the
rest, shoot them," and she turned on her heel, with her back to Mitsos,
and he could not see that her lip was trembling.
But it was not at the hanging or the shooting that she trembled. She
had sworn she would avenge the death of those in Elatina--for to her
these were not prisoners of war, but murderers of women--and that she
did without flinching. But Mitsos's words recalled her to herself,
and thinking inwardly of the child's-play on the ship with him, she
wondered if it were possible that this stone which seemed to be her
heart could ever be moved again to tears or laughter, or that Mitsos
could smile again or jest with so cold and cruel a girl. And at that
thought she turned to him piteously.
"Oh, Mitsos, it is not me, indeed it is not!" she cried, passionately.
"Take me as I am now out of your remembrance, for pity's sake, and
think of me only as I was before. I will be the same again; I will be
the same. Ah, you don't understand!"