From the moment of entering the Gulf of Corinth one precaution was of
primary necessity to the success of the Capsina's expedition, and that
was that no word of the coming of her ships should go about between the
various Turkish ships in the gulf. Their good fortune had determined
that the nine ships which they knew were there were separated into
groups of three, and she felt confident that her two could tackle
three. But supposing word went about, and the remaining six mobilized,
the position would be serious enough to steady even those two brigs
full of tigers.
It was practically certain that the Turkish garrison of Lepanto had
before this received news from Patras of their entrance into the gulf,
and if so only the most dire stress of circumstance would drive the
Capsina to attempt to pass again, except at night, for the channel
was altogether commanded by the heavy guns of the fortress, and
she preferred the windy waters of the gulf, with room to turn and
manoeuvre, to that tight-rope of a way. Hitherto all had gone well, for
of the three ships they had encountered neither man, woman, or child
would do aught else than toss with the ooze and tangle of the gulf,
and tell their tale to the fishes; and a further point in their favor
was that only a very few villages on the shore had Turkish garrisons,
so that any combined movement to drive them into a corner would be
difficult of execution. Their safety chiefly lay in expeditious action,
and their danger in the escape of any Turkish ships which might manage,
after being attacked by them, to join the others.
Now the Capsina's recklessness was of the more judicious kind, or,
rather, it may be said that she was prudent, except when the occasion
demanded a free disregard of possible consequences; it was clearly
a poor economy to save a little time and go to sea with ships not
thoroughly up to the mark, and she waited with a rebellious patience
until the _Sophia_ was altogether fit for action again. The folk of
Galaxidi regarded her more in the light of some splendid incarnation
of the spirit of insurrection than a woman, and to them, as to Mitsos,
Christos was almost a sacred thing. Men and women came in shoals on to
the _Revenge_, where the Capsina had caused him to be moved when he was
enough recovered, and looked with a kind of religious awe at the lad
whom the infidels had crucified. And the great pride the boy took in
what had been done to him was inspiring to see.
But the Capsina's impatience found a bridle in directing and
superintending, with Mitsos and Kanaris, the establishment of a fort
at Galaxidi which should command the harbor. Galaxidi boasted one of
the few well-sheltered harbors on the gulf which could for certain
be reached by a well-handled boat in stormy weather, for while the
harbor at Aegion faced nearly north and was impossible to make in
a northwesterly gale, and the harbor at Corinth had so narrow an
entrance that, with a heavy cross sea, a ship was as like as not to be
shouldered on to the breakwater, at Galaxidi the harbor faced south,
and had a wide entrance protected from the violent westerly winds by
the long headland, on the other side of which lay Elatina. Otherwise,
the shore for several miles was rocky and inhospitable, and no enemy's
ship, as the Capsina saw, could take Galaxidi unless it first had
possession of the harbor, and it was on the end of the promontory which
commanded it that she caused the defences to be begun.
Heretofore the whole of this coast district had taken no part in the
work of the Revolution, and the bloody scheme of the Turks was to wipe
out those fishing villages one by one, so as to secure themselves
against the possibility of such movements in the future. Such had been
the fate of Elatina; for such a fate, no doubt, had Galaxidi been
devilishly designed, when the two Greek brigs overtook and spoke with
the designers thereof.
On the second day of their stay there, when even the Capsina had been
forced to be prepared to stop at least a week, she and Mitsos prowled
about the quay and harbor like whelps on some sure trace of blood, how
rightly no future was to prove.
"It is a death-trap, little Mitsos," said the girl. "See, this is my
plan. Let us put up a big shed on the quay, for all the world like a
Turkish custom-house, with the Turkish flag over it, if you will--don't
frown, Mitsos, you seem to think that it is our mission to render the
Turkish nation immortal--a flag to give confidence, as I was saying.
But it shall be no custom-house, or rather a custom-house where the
dues are rather heavy, and of our sort. Thus, supposing by some devil's
luck either of those two companies of ships escape from us, we can at
least do our best to head them towards Galaxidi."
"Where they will see their own flag flying," put in Mitsos. "Eh, but I
am a partner with a tigress."
"And I with a ba-a-lamb, it seems," went on the girl, with a glance at
this fine-grown ba-a-lamb. "Thus they will sail in unsuspecting, and
all the fiends in hell are in it if ever they sail out," she concluded,
with a sudden flare.
"There is more to it than that," said Mitsos. "We are in this gulf for
a month, or more than a month maybe. It is well to have a place for
breathing in. It is sure that we cannot get out of the gulf until the
coming of the fleet, or so I think. Well, with a fort here in the hands
of the Greeks, we shall not need to."
The Capsina stood silent a moment surveying the harbor, with her head a
little on one side.
"It is by no means a rotten egg we are trying to hatch," she said, at
length. "The mayor, who is my cousin, shall dine with us to-day, and
there will be much talking. Go back to the ship, lad, and smoke your
pipe. That is what you want."
"Am I so stupid this morning, then?" asked Mitsos.
"There is no mellowness in tobacco," said she, sententiously, quoting
a Greek proverb. "No, you are not stupid, but I have other business in
which you have no share."
"And what is that?"
"And who will have made the little Mitsos my confessor?" said she,
drolling with him. "Well, father, I am going to see the baby."
"The blessing of the saints be on your work, my daughter," said Mitsos,
with prelatical solemnity. "But you are never away from the baby,
Capsina. Am I to be superseded?"
She flushed a little.
"Not from my affection," she said, with secret truth; "only in the
matter of advice, I claim a right to consult another." And she turned
and walked briskly away from the quay.
The mayor, Elias Melissinos, was a little withered man, with a face the
color of a ripe crab-apple. His eyes, bright and black like a bird's,
peeped out from a great fringe of eyebrow, and seemed the very hearth
and home of an infernal shrewdness. He was the first cousin of the
Capsina's mother, but thought nothing of his connection with the clan,
remarking with much truth that the same God made also the vermin, and
the tortoises upon the mountain. But as he had grave theological doubts
as to whether it was God or the devil who had made the Turks, he was
a suitable ally. He ate his dinner peeking and peering at his food,
and swallowing it gulpingly like pills, with a backward toss of his
head, occasionally glancing at Mitsos, who fed Christos and himself
alternately, and asking sharp little questions. When they had finished
they went on deck, and Elias sucked at his pipe like a grave little
baby, while the Capsina made exposition.
"See, cousin," she said, "Mitsos and I have examined the quay, and we
both think that it is easily defensible and hard to take. There is
already a big shed on there; you will have to build another one on the
promontory, opposite; between them they will command the harbor like a
two-edged sword."
"You will be putting guns on the sheds, maybe?" asked Elias, briskly.
"There would not be much advantage to us in building the sheds and
leaving them totally empty," remarked Mitsos.
"Yes, but my dear cousin," said Elias, "where are the guns to come
from? For I never yet authentically heard that they grew on the
mountain-side. Muskets we have and plenty of them, but I am thinking
that before a Turkish ship gets within musket-shot our sheds will be
spillikins and match-wood; and, if it comes on to rain, the muskets
will get rusty; but, indeed, I don't know that there will be any other
result worth the mentioning."
"You can have two four-inch guns from the _Revenge_ and two from
the _Sophia_," said the Capsina, "for we are a little overarmed if
anything. What say you, Mitsos?"
Mitsos scratched his head.
"I say that I wish there were not so many good guns lying at the bottom
of the Gulf of Corinth," he said.
"Where do they lie?" asked Elias.
The Capsina sprang up.
"Indeed, the little Mitsos has no wooden head, though he thinks
slower than snails walk, cousin. One ship and all its guns lie in
fifteen-fathom water, not a mile from land, in the bay westward from
the point of Galaxidi. I could lead you there blindfolded. Can you
raise them, think you?"
"We can try," said Elias. "But if your brigs are over-armed--"
"They are not overarmed!" cried the girl. "I wish we had more guns."
Elias bowed, with a precise little smile on his lips.
"The mistake is mine," he said. "I was wrong when I thought I heard you
say so. Please continue, cousin."
"For the expenses, I will provide out of the money we have put aside
for the war fund," continued the Capsina. "How much have we, little
Mitsos? Oh, is there nothing you know? In any case there is enough.
Then you want men. Are there plenty here who are ready to take up arms?"
"They are ready to stand on their heads, cousin, if you bid them," said
Elias.
"Good; now about the attempt to raise some of those guns," and she
plunged into details of rafts and gear and divers and tackling,
leaving, it is to be feared, both her listeners in a state of
bewildered confidence in her powers to draw the moon to the earth if so
she wished, but confused as to the methods she purposed to adopt.
In such ways the Capsina drew a curb on her impatience to be gone
again, and derived a certain satisfaction in curtailing the hour of
Mitsos's tobacco smoking. The six guns, after an infinity of trouble
and the swamping of two rafts, were raised and towed to Galaxidi; the
corn-mills were put to grind powder, a black flour of death; another
shed was run up opposite the quay, and loads of earth and sand to be
packed in corn sacks were stored as a protection for both forts. The
quantity indicated, as Mitsos pointed out, an outrageously impossible
harvest; but, as the Capsina retorted, Turkish ships coming to raid a
town do not usually pause to consider whether the preceding summer has
been weather suitable for the crops.
But the Capsina having put these preparations in train, intrusting
their complete execution to Elias, stayed not an hour after the
_Sophia_ was again fit for sea, for every hour wasted meant an hour's
risk to some perhaps defenseless village, and eight days after their
arrival they put to sea again eastward, touring round the gulf, and
leaving Galaxidi humming like a hive of bees.
For several days they made but little way, the winds being contrary
or calm, and the hours were the first hours of the cruise lived over
again. With the help of two crutches Christos was soon able to limp
about the deck, and, as his boyish spirits reasserted themselves,
became pre-eminently human, showing only a dog-like affection for
Mitsos, who fussed over him insistently. The thing both pleased and
enraged the Capsina; half the time she was jealous of the lad, but
for the rest found it suitable enough that the little Mitsos should
have rescued him, and that the rescued should agree with her in his
lovableness. When the deck was wet and Christos's crutches showed a
greater aptitude for slipping than supporting, Mitsos would take him
and carry him across to some sheltered place, where the three would
sit by the hour, talking and laughing together.
On one such evening, following a day of fretful and biting rain, the
sky had cleared towards sunset, and they were tacking out to sea
for a mile or two under a northeasterly wind, to anchor, as soon as
the land-breeze dropped, at the end of the second tack, making, if
possible, a dark wooded promontory which lay due east. The Capsina
always kept as near as possible to the shore, so as not to run the
least risk of missing the Turkish ships, which, as they knew, were
going from village to village, and a watch was kept for the enemy's
ships, the Capsina offering a prize to the sailor who first sighted
them.
Mitsos had come slipping and sliding across the deck with Christos in
his arms, and a sudden roll of the ship had come near upsetting them.
"So, hereafter," said Mitsos, "you shall shift for yourself, Christos,
for you put on the weight of a sack of corn every day. You didn't hurt
yourself, did you?"
"Not in any way."
"Are you sure?"
The Capsina burst out laughing.
"Oh, little Mitsos, that I should compare you to a hen. But a hen with
one chicken, no other--you and Christos."
Mitsos sat down and filled his pipe and Christos's.
"Well, I know one who clucked considerably over a baby," he said. "And
I like taking care of people. There's your pipe, lad. Open your mouth."
The Capsina laughed again.
"Chuck, chuck, chuck," said she.
"Well, let me have two chickens, then," cried Mitsos. "What can I do
for you, Capsina?"
"You can be my very good comrade."
"Surely, I hope so. But let me fuss for you. Christos is getting well,
and I must take care of somebody."
"Well, you can tell me if it is time to put about."
"Eh, but I didn't bargain that I should have to get up," said Mitsos,
raising himself foot by foot, and looking out. "Well, yes, we shall
make that promontory on the next tack, and then we can lie to. Nothing
been seen of the devils, Dimitri?"
Dimitri shrugged his shoulders.
"Well, we'll put about. You'd best move, Christos. When we go on the
other tack you'll get wet there."
"It is of no consequence whether I get wet," remarked Sophia.
"Well, come along, then," said Mitsos. "I'll carry you across first."
Sophia hesitated.
"Help me up, then," said she, and laughed.
Mitsos bent down, gathered her up, and staggered across the deck with
her, half laughing, half puzzled.
"Eh, but God made you a big woman," he said. "Why, Christos is half
your weight. Steady, now."
But the Capsina slipped from his arms.
"Oh, Christos; it is always Christos!" she cried. "There, go and fetch
him, little Mitsos! He is trying to walk himself, and he will get a
fall."
Mitsos stared a moment, but obeyed, and the Capsina finished the
journey across the deck alone, and stood looking out over the sea for
a moment with a flushed face and a hammer for a heart. A thrill of
tremulous exultation shook her, and unreasonably sweet she found it.
The thing had been nothing--he had taken her up as he would take a
child up to help it over a brook, but for a moment she had lain in his
arms, with his face bent laughing into hers, and the very fact that
this had meant no more than the shadow of nothingness to him gave her a
sense of secret pleasure to be enjoyed alone. She had felt the sinews
of his arm harden and strain as he lifted her--her own arm she had
cast, for greater security, round his neck. She had felt on her wrist
the short hair above his collar, for since they had come to sea he had
cut it close, saying that the salt and spray made it sticky. And at
that physical contact the last shred of unwilling reserve went from
her.... She was his, wholly, abandonedly....
In a few moments Mitsos returned with Christos's long legs dangling
from his arms, and for an hour more they sat together beneath the
lee bulwarks, while the ship started on its last tack. The sun was
already a crimson ball on the sea, and the mountains on the north of
the gulf were obscured in a haze of luminous gold which seemed to
penetrate them, making them glow from hither. A zigzag line of fire
was scribbled across from the horizon to the ship, and from the sheets
of spent foam which flung themselves over the weather-side as the brig
shouldered its way along through the great humping seas, the spray
turned for a moment to a rosy mist before it fell with a hiss white and
broken on the weather-deck. With a crash and a poise the bows met the
resounding waves, then plunged like a petrel down the sheer decline of
the next water valley, and the black promontory which they were already
opposite, with its fringe of foam, rose and fell like the opening and
shutting of a window over the jamb of the bulwarks. The land-breeze
was steady and not boisterous, and hummed like a great sleepy top in
the rigging. Mitsos sat on the deck with his back to a coil of rope,
facing the other two, his face turned rosy-brown by the sunset, and the
Capsina, looking at him, knew the blissful uncontent of love. And the
sunset and the sea died to a pearly gray; one by one the stars pierced
the velvet softness of the sky, until the whole wheeling host had lit
their watch-fires, and presently, after the brig passed the promontory,
the white sails drooped and were furled, and the whole world waited,
silent and asleep, for the things of the morrow.
* * * * *
They were now nearing the easternmost end of the gulf, and about twelve
of the next day they could see dimly, and rising high in heaven, the
upper ridges of Cithaeron--"a house of roe-deer," so said Christos. The
sea-haze rose, concealing the lower slopes, but the top was domed and
pinnacled in snow, clear, and curiously near. All the coast was well
known to Christos, for his father had been a man of the sea, trading
along the shore. Vilia, so he told them, was the chief village at the
gulf's end; the immediate shore was without settlements, except for a
few cottages which clustered round certain old ruins, walls, and high
towers, so he said, big enough for a garrison of Mitsos's men; and thus
his ears were pulled. Porto Germano was the name of the place, because
a man of outlandish language, so it seemed, and of guttural voice, had
made great maps of the place. "There are only walls and towers," said
Christos; "yet he spent much time and labor over them, and gave money
to those who held machines and tapes for him, writing many figures in a
book, and talking to himself in his throat."
Mitsos and the lad were sitting aft as Christos delivered this
information in a half-treble staccato voice, with an air of sceptical
innocence, and shyly as to a demigod. The Capsina had left them and
gone forward, but she returned soon to them with a quicker step and a
heightened color.
"Mitsos," said she, "come forward. No, come you, Christos, for you are
sharp-eyed, and you, little Mitsos, signal to Kanaris that he join us."
"Is there, is there--" began Mitsos.
"Oh, little Mitsos!" cried the girl. "But there will be blood in the
sunset, if God is good. Go you and signal, lad; and come forward,
Christos. It seems I have won my own prize."
They were some six miles off the eastern shore of the gulf, running
before a favorable wind, and after Mitsos had signalled to the
_Sophia_, which was between them and the north coast, on the port tack,
and had seen her put about on the starboard tack in answer, he went
forward to join the Capsina and Christos.
Right ahead and close in to land they could see the masts of three
ships, but the hulls were down. The moment was critical, for the ships
were evidently at anchor, as no sails were spread, and they were close
in shore. Thus, every minute, perhaps, was murder and rapine to some
Greek village. It was possible that they had only just come, and that
the Capsina was in time to save a village. Again, it was possible that
the infernal work was even now going on, even that it was over.
The Capsina stood in thought for a moment only.
"It is this," she said to Mitsos. "We are certain that Vilia is the
village they are making for. Vilia is how far inland, Christos?"
"Two hours and a steep way through pine-woods."
"Thank God for the pine-woods. Look, Mitsos, they will have meant
to leave the ships at anchor while they raided Vilia, but beyond
any shadow of doubt they will have left some part of their crews on
board, who will, of course, give the alarm if Greek ships are seen
approaching. We have to get between their ships and the men they have
sent up to Vilia. There is no village on the mountain-side except
Vilia, Christos?"
"None."
"How are we to do it?" asked Mitsos. "The moment they see us they will
send after their men."
"There is no time to lose," said the Capsina, quietly. "Hoist the
Turkish flag," and she looked at Mitsos as if questioningly, and Mitsos
met her gaze.
"Yes," he said, "it is one of the things I do not like, and I am
unreasonable. There is no other way of getting in, and all things are
right to save Vilia. I would turn Moslem if so I could kill more of
them. Oh, Capsina, I quite agree with you. I will even hoist it myself.
How comes it you have one?"
"Because I am one who looks beyond to-morrow," said she, much relieved.
"I made it in Hydra myself."
The signal was made to Kanaris, and a few moments afterwards they saw
the Turkish flag run up on the _Sophia_. The wind still held, and the
_Revenge_ took a reef in to let the _Sophia_ join her, and by the time
the hulls of the Turks had risen above the horizon line of water, the
two were sailing close together.
They approached quickly, under a steady and singing west wind, and
before two o'clock they could already see the thin line of cutting
ripples breaking on the shingle, and yet from the Turkish ships came
no sign. They lay at anchor some furlong from the shore, it would seem
deserted.
The Capsina's orders were to be ready to fire on the word, but if
possible to pass the Turkish ships without firing a shot and cast
anchor between them and the shore. Her object was, if the men had
landed to take Vilia, to cut them off from their ships, which, if
possible, they would capture; but at present there was no means of
telling in what state things were; only the deserted appearance of the
Turkish ships argued the probability of the raid having set forth.
The Capsina, if this probability should prove true, had given orders,
signalling them to Kanaris, to leave one-third of the men on the ships
and land with the rest in pursuit of the Turks, for if, as was now
certain, since the brigs had been allowed to approach so close, they
had no suspicion that armed ships of the Greeks were in the gulf, they
would have attacked Vilia with all their available men, leaving a
handful only on their ships.
As they came alongside, with sails already furled, moving only by their
impetus and ready to swing round and cast anchor, a Turk strolled
across the deck of the ship nearest to the _Revenge_, and, leaning
carelessly on the bulwarks, shouted in Turkish, and for answer had
only the hiss of the lapping water and the sight of Mitsos's unfezzed
head, for the Capsina had told the rest to keep out of sight; and as
the appearance of a woman on the bridge would have seemed odd to even
those indolently minded folk, she had left Mitsos alone there, while
she crouched in concealment behind the bulwarks. At that suspicion
seemed to awake, and he popped his head down and was seen no more,
and a moment afterwards, just as the anchor of the _Revenge_ splashed
plunging into the sea, two shots were fired in rapid succession from
the Turk's bow gun, which was pointing out to sea and evidently aimed
at neither the _Sophia_ nor the _Revenge_.
At that the Capsina jumped up.
"That is a signal," she cried; "there is no time to lose! Down with the
devil's flag and up with the cross!"
A great cheer went up from the men as the blue-and-white ensign was
hauled up the mast, for, like Mitsos, they put the hoisting of the
crescent among the things they "did not like," and in three minutes the
first boatloads were on their way to the shore. Along the beach were
drawn up the boats in which the Turks had landed, guarded only by a few
men, who, as the Greeks drew near the shore, fled incontinently into
the olive-groves that grew down to within fifty yards of the sea, and
climbed to the foot of the pine-forests of the upper hills.
"Let them run," said Mitsos, "for I could ever run faster than a Turk,"
and he vaulted clean and lithe over the boat's side, and pulled her
in through the shallow water to the shore. "Eh, Capsina," he added,
"but it won't do to let those boats stop there, else the men will be
embarking to their ships again when we chase them, and sail off with
our prizes. Dimitri, see that as soon as we have gone all boats are
taken away from the shore and tied up to the _Revenge_ or the _Sophia_."
"So shall it be," said Dimitri. Then: "Oh, most beloved little Mitsos,
cannot I come with you?" he asked; "for I should dearly like to hunt
the turbaned pigs through the forest."
Mitsos shook his head.
"It is the Capsina's order," he said, "and we must not leave the ships
without good garrison. But," and his eyes twinkled, "when I am after
some fat brute, who trips in the brushwood, and calls on the prophet
who shall be very slow to help, I will think of you, Dimitri. Meantime
you have your hands full. Board the Turkish ships, one by one, with
three-quarters of the men from the _Sophia_ and _Revenge_ together, for
they have no boats, and cannot reach us, and make ready supper, for I
doubt we shall get no dinner to-day, except only food for joy. They
will not have left more than half a dozen men on each ship."
"And those half dozen?" asked Dimitri, completing the question with a
look.
"Yes, it must be so," said Mitsos. "And now off with you!"
The second boatload and the third came racing to land, and using for
greater expedition the deserted Turkish boat to disembark the men, in
less than half an hour the whole contingent, some four hundred and
fifty, were ranged ready to start. Mitsos had in vain endeavored to
persuade the Capsina not to come with them; they would have a run fit
to make a man burst, he said, up the hills, and at the end God knew
what rough-and-tumble fighting. But the girl, breeched like a man, and
carrying musket and pistol, scornfully refused to be left behind, and,
indeed, she seemed fit for any work. Mitsos looked at her with candid
admiration as she trotted briskly along up the slope from the beach by
his side, and:
"It is like being with Yanni again," he said. "When the lad found his
legs too short for the pace, why, he would lean on me, so," and he drew
the Capsina's arm within his own, and bade her give him of her weight.
And the Capsina, flushed and panting a little, did as he told her.
Mitsos had been intrusted with the ordering of this raid of the
raiders, and he called a halt as they got to the edge of the pine-wood,
and repeated his instructions. The men were to form a long open file
on each side of the path leading up the hill, so that should the Turks
have turned and scattered through the woods on the signal of recall
they might not slip past them. Fifty men were to stop there on patrol
at the edge of the wood so as to intercept any who might have passed
the advanced body, who, if they marched through the pine-wood which
extended to within a mile of Vilia without encountering the enemy, were
to form again on the open ground.
"And this, too," said Mitsos, in conclusion, with a voice of most
joyful conviction: "the Turks are certainly a work of the devil.
Therefore, it is entirely our business to hate them and to kill them.
This is the last raid of these men. God has willed it so, and has made
them short of leg and the more easily overtaken, short of arm and the
easier to deal with at close quarters. Therefore"--and he raised his
voice--"open out right and left as I gave the order."
And the men, with mouths full of laughter at the little Mitsos's
homily, opened out.
The pine-wood through which they hoped to hunt the "turbaned pigs"
grew thick and tall above them, and the ground was muffled with the
fallen needles. Here and there, in spaces where the pines grew thinner,
sprouted a tangle of scrub and brushwood, but for the most part the
ground was bare of undergrowth. The track, a cobbled Turkish road,
wound round the contours of the hill, and thus those in the wood on
each side had to march the more slowly, allowing for the deviousness of
the path. The morning was as if borrowed from the days in the lap of
spring; the mid-day sun shone with the cheerfulness of April, peeping
like a galaxy of warm-rayed stars through the clusters of needles on
the pines, and the west wind, fresh and vigorous from the sea, gave
briskness to the going of the blood. Glimpses of the snows of Cithaeron
far and high in front carried the foot on after the eye, and the
steepness of the ascent melted fast under vigorous feet. As the line
went forward up the mountain-side, the sea, like a friend, rose with
it, as if to watch and guard its foster-children, till a ravine cut
crossways through the mountain hid that cheerful presence from the eye
though its crispness lingered in the limb. Here the trees grew somewhat
thicker, a spring had flushed the hill-side with a more stubborn growth
of low creeping things, and owing to the windings of the road those
who marched on either side were hanging on their footstep to allow the
followers of the path to keep up with them, when the Capsina beckoned
to Mitsos, who was forcing his way through a belt of young poplar which
grew in the open. He paused, and, seeing what she had seen, crawled
into cover of the pines and passed the word down to halt, and that
those on the path should leave it for shelter of the bushes.
The slope of the ravine opposite them was thickly covered with trees,
but high upon it, three hundred feet above them, and a mile away, was
a little group of glittering points, winking and flashing among the
trees, like the dance of the sun on water, and moving down towards
them. Now and then, as if the sun had disappeared behind a cloud, they
would be hidden from sight by a thickness in the pines, to burst out
again in a fleet of bright moving spots where the ground was clearer.
The advancing line of the Greeks had halted, those on the path had
made concealment of themselves under the trees; and but for the
bright specks opposite the mountain-side seemed tenanted only by the
whispering pines, and only watched by a few high-circling hawks.
The Capsina was standing by Mitsos, and the lad's eyes blazed with a
light that was not the fury of hate which the burned ruins of Elatina
had kindled, nor veiled by the softening of pity for a man hung at
his own yard-arm, but the clear, sparkling madness of the joy of
fighting--the hungry animal joy of scenting the desired prey.
"Oh," he whispered, and "oh," again, and with that he looked up and saw
the circling hawks. "They will be nearer before night," he said, "and
fat with pickings. It is all as clear as sea-water, Capsina, and easier
than smoking. We wait here exactly where we are, but closing up a
little, and very still, till the Turks strike the bottom of the ravine
below us. Then a volley, perhaps two, and, for they will break and
scatter, then every man to feed his own knife and pistol. If it please
you, I will give the order."
"And think you Vilia is safe?" asked the Capsina.
"Oh, woman, how can I tell? But, safe or not, there is nothing to do
but what we are doing. We only know that the devils are not in Vilia
now and are coming to us. We deal with them first. Is it an order?"
"Surely."
Mitsos passed the word right and left and sat down, taking no notice of
the girl, but drawing his finger along the edge of his long knife. Once
or twice he drove the point tenderly and lovingly into the bark of a
tree, but for the most part sat smiling to himself, purring, you would
say, like some great cat. Suddenly he turned to the Capsina.
"Get you back to the ships," he said. "This is no work for a woman that
we have on hand. I would not have a woman see it."
The Capsina laughed softly.
"In truth, little Mitsos, you know not much about women. Who told you
that women have soft hearts and fear blood? Some man, no doubt, for it
is not so."
"It will not be fit for you," said Mitsos again. "Will you not go back?"
"Certainly I will not."
Mitsos sat still a moment frowning.
"It is true that I do not know much about you. But--"
"But then I am not like a woman, you think?" asked the girl, with a
sudden anguish at her heart.
"Yet I would there were more women like you," said Mitsos. "So be it,
then. Look, they are getting closer."
Meantime the Greek line had closed up, and Mitsos stole away in cover
of the trees to give the orders. The signal for firing was to be one
musket-shot from the Greek line, given by himself. If the Turks stood
their ground, the firing was to continue; if they broke each man was
to be his own general, and his business was to kill. Turks were good
marksmen, but they were slow of foot; and the wood was thick, and
knives were the gift of God. The Greeks would collect again (and Mitsos
smiled like an angel militant), when the work was done, in the place
they now occupied.
Then came the space of quivering delay, when men could have found it in
their hearts to shriek aloud with the straining tension, pulling like
pincers at their flesh, while they were compelled to stand still and
watch in silence that little glittering patch dancing and shining down
the mountain-side. Mitsos for his own part was conscious of no thought
but an agonized desire for tobacco, and to Kanaris the fact that he
had left three if not four piastres lying loose on his cabin table was
the source of an immeasurable regret; a stray lock of the Capsina's
hair, which had escaped from her cap, and blew now and again against
her cheek, was an annoyance of nightmare intensity, but all watched
the growing, glittering patch. In another ten minutes it was nearly
opposite them on the hill-side in front, some quarter of a mile away,
and they could see that the men were hurrying along, half running, half
marching unencumbered by booty or captives; and at that Mitsos drew a
sigh of relief, for he knew that they had not reached Vilia when the
signal of recall turned them back. Then he took his musket up from the
ground where he had laid it, and holding it ready, with finger on the
trigger, looked round at the Capsina.
"It is nearly over," he whispered. "Indeed, I am in a hurry to-day,"
and she smiled in answer.
Slowly and now with perfect steadiness, though five minutes before his
hand had been like some ague-stricken thing, he raised the musket to
his shoulder, and picking out one of the foremost men who were coming
down the path opposite, kept him balanced on the sight of the gun, for,
with the thriftiness of his race, he saw no reason why his signal to
the others should not be in itself of some little use, and as the man
stepped on to the little arched bridge that crossed the stream below,
fired. The man spun round and fell, and a volley from right and left
indorsed his shot.
He shook some powder out of his flask into his hand.
"That is a good omen," he said. "Oh, Capsina, I am most exceedingly
happy!"
The Turks had halted for a moment, and a few fired wildly into the
trees. A bullet struck the ground at Mitsos's feet, burying itself in
the pine-needles, and the lad ripped up the ground with his knife, and
put the bullet he was going to ram home on the top of his charge into
his wallet again.
"To be returned," he said, and fired, and there was joy in his heart.
A second rather straggling volley came from the almost invisible
Greeks, and at that the Turks stood no longer, but broke in all
directions, some following the stream in its course to the valley, some
charging up the hill where the Greeks were posted in order to get back
to the ships, some rushing up the hill-side again in the direction of
Vilia.
"Shall we go, little Mitsos?" said the Capsina, as if she would ask him
to take a turn about deck.
They were standing not far from the path, and Mitsos for answer pushed
the Capsina behind a tree.
"Fire at those coming up the path," he said, "and for the sake of the
Virgin remember that I am in the brushwood not far in front," and he
jumped over a low-growing bush.
About fifty Turks had kept together, and were coming up the path
towards them at a double. Some two dozen Greeks had already begun
running down the path after the others, and there were a few moments'
tussle and fighting, two or three falling on both sides, but the Turks
struggled through them and hurried on. Mitsos, the Capsina, and a few
others fired coolly and steadily at them from cover, but they soon
passed them and were lost in the wood behind. Mitsos threw his musket
down.
"The knife and pistol for me," he said. "Come. The patrol outside will
talk to those."
For the first few minutes the odds were largely against the Greeks,
for many of the Turks, despairing of escape, had hidden themselves in
clumps of brushwood, which, as the Greeks came on, spurted and bristled
with fire, and some number were wounded, but a few only killed. But
when once they got the ambushed Turks out of the nearer hiding-places,
and on the move again, the odds were vastly the other way. The trees
were so thick that, as Mitsos had seen, muskets were of little use, and
it was hand-to-hand fighting, or pistols at close quarters. Pistols,
however, required reloading, and time was precious, for the main object
was to prevent the Turks from reforming, or gaining open ground where
they could make an organized resistance. But knives were always ready
to the hand, and needed no charging but the arm-thrust, and in a little
while only occasional shots were heard, and hurrying steps slipping
on the muffled floor of pine-needles, or the short-drawn gasp of the
striker or the groan of the struck. Now and then a couple of figures,
with perhaps two more in pursuit, would hurry across a piece of open
ground, and but for that a man on the slope opposite would have seen
only the hill-side, green and peaceful, and heard the whispering of
the trees above his head, or what he would take to be the sound of the
wild boars routing and tramping in the undergrowth, and have suspected
nothing of that dance of death raging under the aromatic pines. He
would, perhaps, have noticed that the hawks were wheeling in large
numbers, and very silently, without their usual shrill pipe, above the
trees, and would have said truly to himself that there was carrion
somewhere below them.
Mitsos and the Capsina had kept close together, but Kanaris, cool and
business-like as ever, had lost them almost at once among the trees,
for he had turned aside a moment to investigate a musket-barrel which
pointed out of a clump of oleander by the stream, and had been rewarded
for his curiosity by having his hair singed by the fire which passed
close to his temple. Mitsos had paused a moment and laughed as he saw
Kanaris draw back a step or two and jump with knife raised into the
middle of the clump.
He shouted "Good-luck!" to him, and turned in time to see the Capsina
fly, like some furious wild-cat, holding her pistol by the barrel in
one hand and her long knife in the other, at a man who was crossing
her between two trees just in front. He saw the Turk's lips curl in a
sort of snarl, and he put his hand to his belt a moment too late, for
the next the Capsina's knife had flickered down from arm's-length to
his throat, and the butt of her pistol caught him on the temple. He
fell sprawling at her feet, and she had to put one foot on his chest as
purchase to pull the knife out again.
"Yet she is a woman," muttered Mitsos to himself, and, wheeling round,
"Ah, would you?" he cried, and another Turk, rushing at the Capsina,
who was still tugging at her knife, got Mitsos's weapon between his
shoulder-blades.
The girl turned. "Thanks," she said. "I owe you one. Pull my knife out
for me, little Mitsos--pull; oh, how slow you are!"
Even in so short a time the tide had completely turned, and the Turks
were but as game driven from one cover to another. The Greeks who had
gone off in pursuit of those who had fled down the bed of the stream
were returning, for no more of them were left to be slain, and the
fight was centring round a copse of low-growing trees more in the open
and higher up the hill. The majority of those Turks who were not yet
slain had taken refuge here, and already the place had proved expensive
to the Greeks, for more than twenty lay dead round it. The brushwood
was so thick that it was impossible to see more than a yard or two, and
while a man was forcing his way in after some Turk in front of him, a
shot would come from the right or left, or from closer at hand a knife
would lick out like a snake's tongue, and while he turned to his new
enemy, the pursued became the pursuer.
Such was the state of things when Mitsos and the Capsina came up.
The latter had received a nasty cut across her left arm, and Mitsos
had tied it up roughly for her, being unable to persuade her to stop
quiet out of harm's way while the work was finished. But she refused,
laughing wildly, for drunkenness of blood was on her, and the two went
forward together.
She paused a moment some fifty yards from the edge of the copse. From
the ground above it every now and then a Turk would make a dash for
the cover, sometimes getting through the Greeks, who were fighting on
the outskirts, sometimes knifing one on his way, or more often falling
himself; and once from behind them a man ran swiftly by, cutting at
Mitsos as he passed, and disappeared with a bound into the trees. The
Capsina looked round at the dead who were lying about, and her face
grew set and hard.
"What fool's work is this?" she cried. "We are in the open, they in
shelter. Smoke them out."
She caught up a handful of dry fern, and firing a blank charge into
it obtained a smouldering spark or two, which she blew into flames.
Half a dozen others standing near did the same, and fixing the burning
stuff on her knife she rushed forward to the very edge of the ambush,
while from without half a dozen muskets cracked the twigs above her,
and rammed it into the heart of the thick tangled growth. Other fires
were lighted along the west side of the copse, the dried raffle of last
year's leaves caught quickly, and the wind took the flame inward. The
greener growth of spring cast out volumes of stinging smoke, and when
the place was well alight she drew off the men, stationing them round
the other three sides, advancing as the flame advanced, for escape
through the choking smoke and fire was impossible. Then, at first by
ones and twos, the Turks came out like rabbits from a burrow, some
bursting wildly out and occasionally passing the line of Greeks, some
standing as if bewildered and trying to steal away unobserved, others
running a few steps out and then turning back again. An hour later the
whole copse was charred ash and cinders.
It remained only to search for the dead and wounded of the Greeks.
The dead, whom they accounted happy, they buried there on that
smiling hill-side, so that the preying beasts of the mountain and the
carrion-feeding birds might not touch them, but only next spring the
grasses and flowers would grow the more vivid on their resting-places;
the wounded they carried back tenderly to the ships. And how thick the
Turks lay there the hawks and eagles know.