The fourth day after saw the two brigs returned in peace to Galaxidi
again, an expenditure of time which had cost the Capsina much misgiving
and impatience, but for which to the reasonably minded there was an
undeniable necessity. For the crews of both ships had lost somewhat
heavily in the battle at Porto Germano, and even the girl herself was
bound to admit that they wanted more men. Again, they had on their
hands three empty Turkish vessels, all fully equipped for war, which
they could not leave behind lest they should again fall into the hands
of the enemy, and which it would have been a glaring and inconceivable
waste to destroy. For there was on board a large quantity of ammunition
and shot, three or four hundred muskets, and, in all, eighteen guns;
and, though the Capsina grumbled that the powder was damp and the guns
would burst if used, and even offered to stand forty paces in front
of each of them in turn while Mitsos fired them at her, her remarks
were rightly felt to be merely rhetorical, and to express her extreme
impatience at the enforced delay and nothing further. So Mitsos was
put in command of one Turkish ship, Dimitri of another, and Kanaris's
first-officer of the third; Christos, chiefly because he rashly
expressed a wish to be transferred with Mitsos, was retained by the
Capsina on board the _Revenge_, and he stepped ashore at Galaxidi
looking battered. "God made the tigers and tigresses also," was his
only comment to Mitsos when the latter asked how he had fared.
The Capsina was already vanished on some hurricane errand by the time
Mitsos had brought his ship to anchor, and Christos and he being left
without orders or occupation took refuge in a café, where they sat
awhile smoking and playing draughts, for outside the day was nought
but a gray deluge of driven rain. To them at a critical moment in the
game entered the Capsina, and words adequate for the occasion failed
her. But Mitsos, seeing that her eye betokened imminent chaos, took a
rapid mental note of the position of the remaining pieces on the board.
Then he said, hurriedly, to Christos: "It's my move, remember, when we
get straight again," and stood up. Christos shrunk into a corner.
"Mitsos Codones, I _believe?_" remarked the Capsina, with a terrifying
stress on the last word, and a burning coldness of tone.
"And I believe so, too," said Mitsos, genially.
"Whom I engaged to play draughts in low cafés," said the Capsina,
with a wild glance, "and to waste his time--Oh, it is too much," and
the draughtsmen described parabolas into inaccessible places. "God in
heaven! is it not too much," cried the girl, "that I have to go hunting
you through the villages of Greece, up and down the Lord knows where,
to find you playing draughts with that pigeon-livered boy? And the
_Revenge_ is pulling at her hawser, while Mitsos plays draughts; and
the Greeks are being murdered all along the coast, and Mitsos plays
draughts!"
An interminable grin spread itself over Mitsos's face. "And the
Capsina, I doubt not, goes to see a strange baby, while the Greeks are
murdered all along the coast. And the _Revenge_ strains at her hawser,
and the Capsina spends her time in abusing her own first officer," he
said. "Oh, Capsina, and where is there a choice between us? Do not be
so hasty; see, I shall have to pick up all these draughts, for finish
the game I shall and will, and as you very well know we do not start
till to-morrow. It was my move, Christos, and these pieces were so--eh,
but there is another. Is it up your sleeve, Capsina?"
The Capsina glared at Christos a moment as if she were a careful mother
who had discovered him luring a child of hers into some low haunt and
directed the torrent of her grievance against him.
"Never did I see such a lad," she said; "if you were of the clan I
should set you to the loom and the distaff like the women. He would sit
and look at the sea by the hour, Mitsos; he would throw bread to the
gulls. Gulls, indeed!"
Mitsos fairly laughed out.
"Oh, Capsina," he cried, "sit down and watch us play. There is nothing
we can do, you know it well. The new men have volunteered--Kanaris had
the choosing of them; you settled that yourself, and the _Revenge_
cannot start before morning. Then how does it assist the war to stamp
up and down through the villages of Greece, as you say, and call me and
Christos bird-names? There, I am cornered; I knew that would happen;
and the pigeon-livered wins. Move, pigeon."
Mitsos shook back his hair from his eyes and looked inquiringly at the
Capsina.
"Does not that seem to you most excellent sound sense?" he said.
The Capsina stood a little longer undecided, but the corners of her
mouth wavered, and Mitsos, seeing his advantage, clapped his hands.
"Coffee for the Capsina!" he cried to the shopman. "Is it not so,
Capsina?" He fetched her a chair. "Now watch us finish, and then
Christos will play you, and I will take your side. Thus we stand or
fall together, and may it ever be so with us. Christos is the devil of
a cunning fellow, for be it known to you I am pretty good myself, and
see what there is left of me."
"Oh, fool of a little Mitsos!" said the girl, and she looked at him a
shade longer than a friend would have done and sat down.
"There came a caique in from Corinth this afternoon," she said, "with
news of the other three ships, and with news, too, from overland--from
Nauplia!"
Mitsos paused with his finger on a piece.
"What is the news?" he asked.
"The three Turkish ships tried to put in there, but they could not make
the harbor."
"No, I mean the news from Nauplia?"
The Capsina looked up, raising her eyebrows.
"Are they at home so dear? Yet you have been with me a month now,
Mitsos, and except only that you want to say good-bye to those at home
before starting, I know not if you have father or mother. And it is bad
manners," said she, with her nose in the air, "to ask for what one is
not given."
"But what is the news?" repeated Mitsos.
"Good news only: the town is blockaded by land and sea, so that no Turk
can go out or in. The Greek women and children with the men who do not
serve--but there are few such--all left the town the night before the
blockade began and have encamped on the mound of Tiryns. But in the
spring the Turks will send a fresh army south, in time, they hope, to
raise the siege."
"Praise the Virgin!" said Mitsos; "but Nauplia will be starved out
before that. I move, and my king goes as straight as a homing honey-bee
into the mouth of the pigeon-livered. But there is no other way, oh,
your Majesty!"
The Capsina laughed.
"Surely there has never been a lad yet so single of purpose," she said.
"To him there is nothing in all the world but a little wooden king."
"Even so, if only the news from Nauplia is good!" said Mitsos, smiling
half to himself, "and if the little Turks will be kind and sail
northward to us."
"Yet still you do not tell me," said the girl, "and I will throw my
manners away and ask. Have you a mother, Mitsos?"
"No, nor father either," and he stopped, remembering what he and
Suleima had said to each other as they walked beneath the stars down to
the boat.
"Then who is it who is so dear?" she asked, and with a sudden uprising
of anxiety waited for the answer.
"It is Suleima!" said Mitsos, "the little wife, and he the adorable, so
she calls him, the littlest one."
The Capsina stared a moment in silence.
"So," she said, at length, "and you never told me that! Little Mitsos,
why have you so greatly made a stranger of me?"
She rose from where she sat, and with that the flame in her eyes was
quenched, and they were appealing only as of a chidden dog.
"Indeed, Capsina," and again "Indeed," he said; but the girl turned
quickly from him and went out of the place, leaving her coffee
untouched, into the dark and rain-ruled night.
She walked up the quay and down again, hardly conscious of the driving
rain. On the right the water below the harbor wall hissed and whispered
to itself like an angry snake under the slanting deluge. The _Sophia_
and _Revenge_ lay side by side some two hundred yards out; from nearer
in she could hear the rattle of the crane which was unloading the
Turkish ships which they had captured, and a great oil flare under the
awning flickered and flapped in the eddying draughts. The wind kept
shifting and chopping about, and now and then the drippings from off
the houses would be blown outward in a wisp of chilly water across her,
and again the spray from the peevish ripples in the harbor would be cut
off and thrown like a sheet over the quay. But in the storm of her soul
she heeded not, and that chill and windy rain played but a minor part
in the wild and bitter symphony of her thoughts. At first it seemed an
incredible thing to her: ever since she had seen Mitsos come up out of
the sunset from his boat, her conviction had been unchanged, that this
was he, the one from the sea and the sun, who was made to fulfil her
life. As if to put the seal on certainty, that very night he had joined
her on the ship; they had tossed together to the anger of the Ægean,
together they had played like children on a holiday, and they had been
together and as one, comrade with comrade, in the work to which they
had dedicated themselves. Comrade to comrade! That was exactly Mitsos's
view of it, but to her the comradeship was her life. Yanni, the cousin
of whom he had often spoken, Kanaris, the lad Christos--she was to
Mitsos as they were, perhaps a little less than they, for she was a
woman.
Oh, it was impossible! God could not be so unkind. She who spent her
days, and risked her all--and oh, how willingly!--fighting against His
enemies, was this her wage? Who was this Suleima? A Turkish name by
the sound. Some moon-faced, pasty girl, no doubt, fat, fond of sweet
things, a cat by the fire, what could she be to Mitsos? The littlest
one, Mitsos's son--and at the thought impotent, incontinent jealousy
and hatred possessed her soul. Mitsos was not hers but another's,
pledged and sealed another's--and she walked the faster. Michael,
who had accompanied her without murmur, since such was the duty of a
dog, stood a moment under the protecting eaves of a house, with his
head on one side, looking at her in reproachful protest, for even his
shaggy coat was penetrated by the whipping rain. But she still walked
on, and he shook himself disgustedly from head to tail and went after
her. Opposite the café again she hung on her step, looking in through
the rain-slanted window-panes. Mitsos was bent over his little wooden
kings, absorbed and sheltered, while she was outside rain-drenched,
with anguish for a heart. Ah, what a humiliation! Why could she not
have lived like the other women of her class, have married Christos
the cousin, and long ago have settled down to the clucking, purring
life, nor have looked beyond the making of jam, the weaving of cloth,
marriage among the domestic duties? She had thought herself the finest
girl God had made, one who could treat with scorn the uses and normal
functions of her sex, one who had need of no man except to serve her,
one who thought of woman as a lower and most intensely foolish animal,
whose only dream was to marry a not exacting man, and settle down to
an ever-dwindling existence of narrowing horizons. Yet, where were all
those fine thoughts now? She had sailed her own ship, it was true,
and sent a certain number of the devil's brood to their account, but
what did that profit her in the present palpable anguish? Her pain and
humiliation were no less for that. The clucking women she despised were
wiser than she; they at any rate had known what they were fit for;
she alone of all had made a great and irrevocable mistake. She, the
Capsina, was brought down to the dust, and Mitsos played draughts with
the little wooden kings. Her flesh and blood, her more intimate self,
and that childish need for love which even the most heroically moulded
know, cried out within her.
Then pride, to her a dominant passion, came to her rescue. At any
rate none knew, and none should ever know, for thus her humiliation
would be at least secret. She would behave to Mitsos just exactly as
before: not one tittle of her companionship, not an iota of her frank
show of affection for him should be abated. And, after all, there
was the _Revenge_, and--and with that, her human love, the longing
of the woman for the one man came like a great flood over the little
sand and pebbles of pride and jealousy and anger, and she cried out
involuntarily, and as if with a sudden pang of pain, bringing Michael
to her side.
They had reached the end of the quay; on one side of the road was
a little workman's hut, erected for the building of the Capsina's
"custom-house," and, entering, she sat down on a heap of shingle,
which had been shot down there for the making of the rough-cast walls
of the building. Michael, cold and dripping, but too well bred to
shake himself when near his mistress, stood shivering by her, with a
puzzled amazement in his eyes at the unusual behavior of the pillar of
his world. The girl drew him towards her, and buried her face in his
shaggy, dripping ruff.
"Oh, Michael, Michael!" she sobbed, "was not one to come from the
sea--all sea and sun--and we, were we not to be his, you and I and the
brig, and was not heaven to fly open for us? Indeed, it is not so: one
came from the sea and the sun, but it was not he. I was wrong. I was
utterly wrong, and now the world holds no other."
The rain had ceased, and from outside came only the sullen drumming
of the waves breaking on the shingle beyond the harbor, followed
rhythmically by the scream of the pebbly beach, dragged down by the
backwash, and the slow, steady drip from the sodden eaves. Suddenly
these noises became overscored with the rise and fall of voices, and
the Capsina drew Michael closer to her and hushed his growling.
"So, indeed, you must not mind, Christos," said Mitsos's voice,
"for there is none like her. Her eyes but grow the brighter for the
excitement, when, to tell the truth, my heart has been a lump of cold
lead. It is an honor to us that we are with her, that she trusts
us--she even likes us--which is more than she did for any of those in
Hydra. Eh, but it will be rough to-morrow. Look at the waves! I suppose
she has gone back to the ship."
"I expect so," said Christos; "let us go, too, Mitsos."
"No, but wait a minute. There is nothing like the sea at night, unless
it be the Capsina. It is strong, it is ready to knock you down if you
come too near, yet it will take you safely and well if you only make
yourself--how shall I say it?--make yourself of it. The fire-ship--did
ever I tell you about the night of the fire-ship? Of course I did not,
for I never told any but Uncle Nikolas, nor am I likely to, except to
one only. Yes, so it is; I admire her more than I admire the rest of
this world rolled into one--always, so I think, I would do her bidding.
She might chide me--I would crawl back to her again; I would even
bring Suleima, too, on her knees, if so it pleased the Capsina. She
must know Suleima. I feel she does not know me, nor I her, until she
knows Suleima. Well, come; let us get back. I think the good news from
Nauplia must have made me drunk. Surely I was anxious and knew it not.
Did I ever tell you how the Capsina and I ... Oh, she is of finer mould
than all others!" And the voices were caught and drowned in the riot of
the sea.
Obedience, admiration, liking--that was all. And she would have given
them all at that moment--for at that moment the devil and all his
friends were lords and masters of her soul--for one flash of the human
longing and desire of flesh and blood felt by him for her. No matter in
what form it came, a moment's heightened color, the sudden leap of the
enchanted blood, an involuntary step towards her, hands out-stretched,
and eyes that longed, she would have given all for that; let him hate
her afterwards, or be as indifferent as the Sphinx, to have once
called out that which must call itself out, yet never tarries when its
own call comes, would be sufficient for her. That he should for one
second forget Suleima, remembering her, that he should be unfaithful to
Suleima and before the accuser could pronounce the word turn faithful
again, would be enough. And the evil thoughts suddenly shot up like the
aloe loftily flowering, and she clutched Michael till the dog whimpered.
She drove not her thoughts away, but picked those bright and evil
flowers, pressing them to her bosom: she tended them as a shepherd
tends his sheep, and like sheep they flocked into her soul, on the
instant a familiar abiding-place. If Suleima should die; better even
if she should not die, but live bitterly, for, no doubt, she too loved
him. He would come to her, how well she could picture in what manner,
great and awkward and burning and beyond compare, saying little but
letting all be seen. Not content with that picture, she went on to put
specious, despicable words into his mouth. Suleima, he should say,
would soon get over it; for him he was simply one of the sea, and
Suleima hated the sea; she would live with Mitsos's friends--a man's
friends were always kind to women who had wearied him. No, it was not
her fault nor his either--she had wearied him, he had wearied of her.
Besides, he loved. And even as she imagined him saying such sweet and
terrible things, her heart rose against him, and her better self spat
out like an evil taste the false image she had conjured up of him.
Sullen and windless rain began again outside, and fell hissing and
spitting like molten lead into the harbor water, yet somehow to her it
was a baptism and a washing of the soul. And she rose, and with quick
step and firm went back to opposite the _Revenge_, and blew her whistle
for the boat. And strangely sweet and bitter was it to hear Mitsos's
voice shouting an order, and to see him beneath the flare bareheaded
to the rain clamber quickly down the ship's side into the boat and
row with all the strength of those great limbs to come and fetch her,
himself and alone.
Almost before the sun was up next morning they prepared to put to sea.
The rain had again fallen heavily during the night, but it ceased
before daybreak, and Mitsos, stumbling sleepily on deck, was soon
awakened by the chilly breeze from the mountains which should take them
out of the harbor. The deck was dripping and inclement to the bare
feet, and his breath trailed away in clouds like smoke in the cold
air. Land and sea and sky were all shades of one neutral gray, more or
less intense and strangely sombre. The tops of the hills to the west
were pale and pearly, reflecting the more illuminated clouds eastward,
and deepened gradually without admixture of other color into the lower
spurs and ridges behind the village. The sea which had grown calm again
during the night was but a mirror of the low-hanging clouds overhead,
and to the south it faded so gradually and with so regular a tone into
the sky that the horizon line eluded the eye. Even the ripple which
broke against the wall of the quay seemed in the misty air to be woolly
in texture, as if drawn from the ooze of the bottomless sea and to have
lost the sparkle of foam. But early as he was the Capsina had come on
deck before him, and before he had stood more than a few seconds on
the bridge she joined him, nodded him a greeting in silence, and they
waited side by side, Mitsos occasionally shouting an order while the
ship cleared the harbor mouth.
Then Mitsos yawned, stretched himself, and rubbed his eyes.
"This is no proper hour," he said; "it is neither night nor morning,
even as the jelly-fish is neither plant nor animal; and oh, Capsina,
but it is extraordinarily cold."
He turned and looked at her, and something arrested his gaze. She
had slept but little, but the added touch of pallor only lent a more
potent brilliance to her black eyes; the courage of a resolution but
newly taken was there, and the animation which effort to be herself
gave her. She had twisted a brilliantly colored shawl round her head,
but her hair just loosely coiled showed in two broad bands over her
forehead, and it was wet and sparkling with fine drops of condensed
mist. Surrounded on all sides by the endless gray of the enormous
morning she seemed to him more vivid than ever, and her beauty, for he
was a man with eyes and blood, rose and smote him. Then throwing back
his head he laughed for very pleasure, not from the lips only, but from
head to heel--the whole man laughed.
"But you are splendid," he said; "indeed, there is none like you!"
She looked up at him quickly; was this the leap of the blood, the
sudden step nearer which she had told herself would be sufficient for
her? And again, more quickly than the upward sweep of her eyelids, she
indorsed that thought. But even before she looked her heart told her
that it was not thus he spoke of Suleima, nor thus he would speak to
her. The admiration in his voice, the involuntary tribute so merrily
paid, all the appreciation he gave, all that he had to give, but one
thing only, did not make up that little more, which is so much. For
he was not, so she thought, one who would make pretty speeches, or
play at love-making with one woman while he thought of another, and,
indeed, she would not have accepted such a travesty of the heart's
deed. But let him come to her but once, were it only with a glance, or
a handshake, involuntary and inevitable--that was a different matter.
And she answered him without pause, speaking from the heart, while he
thought she spoke from the lips only.
"Indeed, little Mitsos," she said, "but you are very sleepy. Surely you
are but half awake, and are dreaming of Suleima."
Mitsos laughed.
"Surely Suleima would not know me if I spoke to her like that," he said.
"What, then, do you say to Suleima?"
"Oh, nothing, or a hundred things, all sorts of foolishness; for
some mornings she will do nothing but stare at the baby by the hour
and just say at the end that it will be a tall lout like me, and for
answer I say it will be like to its mother. Other mornings she will be
shirt-mending and do no more than grunt at me. Yet you and I, too,
talked only silly things for the first week of our voyage, Capsina, so
there is excuse for Suleima and me."
The Capsina turned away a moment with a sudden gasping breath. "Look,
the sun is up," she said, "and it is getting warmer. Also our coffee
will be getting cold. Come down, little Mitsos. And is the lazy
Christos abed yet?"
"He shall soon not be," said Mitsos, taking a flying leap down the
stairs. "Ohé, Christos!" he cried.
But Christos appeared to be not yet on deck, and Mitsos went down to
his cabin, and a moment after cries for mercy mingled themselves with
the Mitsos's voice raised in solemn reproof.
"Is it not a shame," he said, "that the Capsina and I should have our
eyes grow dim with the midnight watches and the Greeks be murdered
all along the coast, as she herself said, while you lie here--no,
away comes that blanket thing--and that we should burn our fingers
making coffee for those fine ladies who lounge in bed? This shall not
be, indeed it shall not. Christos, there are more uses for a slipper
than to put on a foot; them shall you learn. Lord, what a wardrobe of
clothes the lad has! it is enough for a Turk and his harem. Here is a
red sash, if it please you, and a gay waistcoat; a razor, too--what
in the name of the saints does the smooth-faced Christos want with a
razor? Suleima will be wanting me to buy her a razor next, or perhaps
the little Nikolas. Let go that rug, Christos, and be turned out of bed
cool and peaceful, or sharper things will be done to you. Now be very
quick, for I shall continue to drink coffee, and thus there may be none
left in ten minutes, for I do not drink slowly."
Mitsos, having once spoken of "the little wife" to the Capsina, spoke
of her more than once again that morning, and to his secret surprise
he found the girl extraordinarily sympathetic, and as if much pleased
and interested in being told of her. And this was beyond measure an
astonishing thing to him, for heretofore his intercourse with her had
been either of adventure past or to come, or they had, as at first,
been no more than two children at play. But any matter touching the
heart had been so remote from the talk on the board that Mitsos had
never thought of her as a human woman, one to whom these things could
or rather must be of any concern. She, to her bitter cost, had seen him
merely as a great, strong, and silly boy, boyish altogether, though
to her a magnet for the heart; and of the more intimate lore of man
and woman, so she had planned it, they were to learn together. And
the surprise to him of finding that she was clearly willing to hear
him talk thus was perhaps hardly less strong than the shock to her of
finding that he had known too well what she had thought they would
learn together. And thus, with a strange flush of pleasure to the boy
and a new bond between them, he told her of the ride from Tripoli,
the finding of Suleima at home. Only of the anguish of the night of
the fire-ship he spoke not at all. There was no intimacy but one only
close enough for that. So to all the admiration and affection he felt
for the girl, this added a tenderness to his thoughts of her, and
without knowing it the knowledge of the thing itself, which had severed
them irrevocably in the Capsina's mind, was the very cause of a new
tie binding Mitsos to her, and the strands of it were of a fibre more
durable and more akin to that which she now despaired of than any that
had bound them yet.
They sailed a southeasterly course, for the ships that had put out from
Corinth had gone, according to their information, north, and it was
not unlikely that they were on their way to join the three which the
Capsina had already accounted for at Porto Germano, and which were now
being made ready, in hot haste, to take the sea again under the flag
of the cross instead of the crescent. It was at any rate certain that
they would keep close to the coast, unless driven out to sea by bad
weather, destroying as they went, and thus the Greeks had a winning
chance of falling in with them at the narrow end of the gulf. But after
a breezy morning, at mid-day the wind had died down and they lay a mile
or so off shore, with canvas flapping idly, and Mitsos whistled the
"Vine-digger's Song" to stir the heavens, but the wind came not for all
his whistling.
The day continued gray and unseasonably cold; from time to time a
little sprinkle of mingled sleet and rain pattered on the chilled deck,
and Mitsos stamped up and down the bridge cursing the delay of the dead
wind, for as soon as they had settled the remaining three vessels their
work in the gulf would be over, and he had a hundred schemes whereby
they might pass the guns of Lepanto and be off. They had already been
six weeks on the trail, and now, as he knew so well, the warmer March
winds and the blinks of spring sunshine would be beginning to open the
flowers of the plain of Nauplia. For himself flowers were no great
attraction, but Suleima, accustomed to the luxuriant Turkish gardens,
had planted row upon row of scarlet anemones under the orange-trees,
and it seemed to Mitsos that Suleima's flowers were among the
fundamental things of the world. Long winter afternoons he had spent
in a glow of grumbling content at her womanish fads in digging up the
roots on the hill-side, and evening by evening he had come back again
grimed with soil and washed with the winter rains, and with a great
hunger in his stomach, while Suleima turned over the spoils of the
afternoon, always saying that there were not yet near enough. Once out
of the gulf he would go home again, if only for a week or two, for the
Capsina, as she had told him, was meaning to join the Greek fleet on
its spring cruise, and till it started on that even she confessed there
was no further work to hand.
Towards evening the sleet, which had been continuous all the afternoon,
grew intermittent between the showers, and the air was hard and clear
as before a great storm; fitful blasts of a more icy wind scoured
across from the north, and Mitsos, feeling the sea-weed barometer which
hung in the cabin, found it moist and slimy. Supper was ready, and on
the moment the Capsina came down flushed with the stinging air.
"More rain," said Mitsos; "I wish the devil might take it to cook the
grilling souls of those Turks we have sent him. The sea-weed is as if
you had dipped it in an oil-jar."
The Capsina felt it.
"You have a trick of smelling the wind, Mitsos," she said. "Can you
smell the wind?"
"I have smelled strong wind all day, and it has not come for all my
smelling," said Mitsos, sulkily.
As if to exculpate the deceptiveness of his weather, almost before they
had sat down the rigging began to sing, and before Mitsos had time to
get on deck the song was a scream. The Capsina followed him, and he
looked rapidly round.
"Still north," he said; "and may the saints tell us what to do! Look
there;" and he pointed over the hills above Galaxidi. The sun had not
quite set--a smudge of dirty light still smouldered in the west. To
the north the sky lowered blackly, and a tattered sheet of cloud was
spreading and ripping into streamers as it spread over the heavens.
Even as he spoke a snake's tongue of angry lightning licked out of the
centre of it, followed at a short interval by a drowsy peal of thunder.
"We must beat out to sea," he continued. "God knows what is coming; the
wind may chop round, and Heaven save us if we are within two miles of
shore!"
But the Capsina felt suddenly exhilarated. The prospect of some great
storm which should take all their wits to fight braced her against her
secret trouble. Here was a more immediate employment for her thoughts.
"Out to sea, then, while we may!" she cried. "Oh, Mitsos, it is a fine
thing to be in the hand of God and all His saints! But what if the
Turks slip by us?"
"There will be rocks and big waves for the Turks," said Mitsos,
laconically. "Hoist jib and staysail; she cannot stand more than that.
Where are Kanaris and the _Sophia_?"
"Kanaris is as wise as we, and will get sea-room for himself," said the
Capsina. "There, that is done. Come back to supper, little Mitsos."
Mitsos looked round again.
"I think not yet," he said; "but go you down. I will stop here till
there is a spoonful or two more water between us and land."
"I am with you," said the girl, and they began pacing up and down the
deck together.
Night fell like a stroke of a black wing feathered with storm-cloud.
As a sponge with one wet sweep will wipe out the writing from a slate,
so that black cloud in the water sucked the light from the sky, and
the wind screamed ever higher and more madly. Once again the angry
fire licked out and was gone, and the thunder clapped a more immediate
applause, and with that they were the centre of an infinite blackness.
Land, sea, and sky were swallowed up and confounded in one terrific
tumult of unseen uproar. Fast as the brig scudded before the storm, the
waves seemed ever to be going the faster, as if to reach some terrible
rendezvous where they would wait for her. In Mitsos's mind the present
fear was that the wind would veer, as so often happens on those inland
seas, and before they were sufficiently far from land would be forcing
them back on to the lee shore. Then he knew there would be before them
a night's work of battling with the wind that yelled in exultation as
it took them back, of losing ground inevitably, and of desperately
fighting every inch until the storm blew itself out.
Half an hour passed and they were still running out to sea, when,
suddenly, the wind shifted westward, and the ship for a moment trembled
and shook as if she had struck a rock. The two men at the tiller knew
their work, and in a moment had the struggling tiller jammed down, and
the _Revenge_ checked like a horse, and again slowly made way on the
starboard tack.
And at the sight of the obedience of the ship, more like some
intelligent beast than a thing of wood, a great thrill of pleasure
struck the Capsina. "Well done!" she cried. "Well done, dear ship!"
Then the sky above them burst in a blaze of violet light, and Mitsos,
in that flash, though half-blinded, saw two things--the one a ship,
some two miles distant, as far as he could judge in that glance, and
straight before their bows on the troubled and streaky sea, the other
a great gray column rising like a ghost from the waves, not more than
four hundred yards away, and which was the more dangerous, he knew.
The Capsina, too, had seen it, and called out to him:
"Saints in heaven! What is it? What is it?" she cried. "No, not the
ship--the other. Is it the spirits of those from Elatina?"
But Mitsos was no longer there. He had seen that great gray column,
and known it for a water-spout, and, without a moment's pause, he had
rushed forward and told them to load the six-pounder in the starboard
bow. Ammunition was stored forward, and, though it seemed to him that
he waited through the suspense of a lifetime, in a few seconds the gun
was loaded, and he waited again, the fuse in his hand.
The darkness was intense; from the blackness came only the hoarse
scream of the wind and the threats and buffets of the sea. But soon he
saw against the blackness the glimmering column of gray, and he could
hear above the riot of the storm a drip as from a thousand house-roofs.
It came on in a slightly slanting direction, and, waiting till it began
to cut across the muzzle of the gun, he fired.
And with a crash of many waters the gray column vanished.
The Capsina had followed him forward, and as the smoke cleared away he
saw her eye dancing, and she slapped the brazen side of the gun.
"There will be more work for you to-night!" she cried. "Well, Mitsos,
gone is the gray ghost. But the ship remains."
Mitsos sat still a moment, the strain and responsibility of his aim
left him unnerved. But almost instantly he recovered himself.
"You will give chase to-night?" said he, incredulously.
"Why not?"
"Because God is blowing a great gale. There is no light, and who knows
where we shall drive to?"
Again the violent sheet of flame blazed from the cloud overhead, and
the Capsina laughed.
"No light? Is that no light, when the clouds are bursting to give it
us? I saw her quite plainly then. Oh, lad, what is the wind for except
to sail on? Would you chase the Turks in a calm? There again!"
Now whether it was from the mere infection of the excitement which
possessed the Capsina, or whether his nerves were strung by the
electricity in the air to that shrill pitch when a man will do and
dare anything, in any case something of the irresponsible recklessness
of the girl was on Mitsos, and it seemed to him a fine piece of
play--something between a dream and a drunkard's idea--to go a-hunting
of Turks in this wild storm. The flashes of lightning, repeated and
again repeated with redoubled quickness, kept showing them the ship
which, since they first sighted it, had furled all sail and lay rolling
on the water simply weathering the storm. The _Revenge_ was carrying
jib and staysail, and while the Turk drifted eastward, was rapidly
diminishing the distance between them.
Mitsos rubbed his hands exultantly.
"She will be as safe as a hare in a gin," he said, "when once we get
her between us and the land, for no power on earth will let her sail
out in the teeth of the wind. But, Capsina, where is the _Sophia_, and
where are the other two Turks?"
"Signal the _Sophia_," said the girl; "Kanaris will be on the watch,
and if he is near enough to hear our signals he will soon know what we
are about."
The two stern guns on the upper battery accordingly were fired in quick
succession, this being the signal agreed on with Kanaris, and before
long they saw the answering flash of two guns on their starboard, and
five seconds afterwards heard the report.
"He has beaten out farther to sea," said Mitsos, "for, indeed, he is
more prudent than we are. Well, we are alone in this piece. The Turks,
they say, are afraid of ghosts by night, and so, for that matter, am I.
They shall see a phantom ship, and it will speak with them."
The _Revenge_ was still going south at about right angles to the wind,
and as the coast trended eastward was every moment getting more sea
room. The Turk, as they knew, was drifting due east, but for five
minutes or so after the word to run out the guns was given no lightning
broke the black and streaming vault, and they waited in thick, tense
silence for another flash. But while above them the clouds remained
pitchy and unilluminated, once and again to the south there came a
flash distant and flickering like the winking of an eye, showing that
another storm was coming up from that quarter.
Mitsos stamped with angry impatience.
"That is what I feared," he said; "the wind will shift farther south
and we shall have to look to ourselves. Holy Virgin, send us a flash of
lightning and west wind for half an hour more."
He and the Capsina were standing together on the bridge, Mitsos
bareheaded and tangle-haired to the streaming rain, she with the
brilliantly colored shawl wrapped round her head. Once he shifted his
position, and putting forward his hand on the rail to steady himself,
laid it on the top of hers, and she could feel the blood pulsing
furiously through the arteries in his fingers. She stood perfectly
still, not withdrawing her hand, and, indeed, he seemed unconscious
that it was there. At last what they had been waiting for came; a
furious angry scribble leaped from west to east over their heads, and
peering out into the darkness they saw the Turk to leeward of them,
some four hundred yards distant. At that Mitsos grasped the girl's hand
till she could have cried out with the pain.
"There she is!" he cried. "We have her. We have her. Let go the helm
and be ready to furl the sails on the instant. Oh, Capsina, this hour
is worth living."
But the tumult in the girl's mind did not allow her to speak; the
moment was too crowded even for thought, and she could only strain
her eyes in the darkness to where they had seen the Turk. She felt
not mistress of herself, and Mitsos, as she knew, was nigh out of his
mind. Who could say what the next hour might bring? Death, shipwreck,
victory, lightning, love, and madness chased each other through her
brain. Meantime the ship, left to itself, spun round like a top into
the wind, and under the hurricane that followed it dipped and fled
like a bird born and bred to tempest after the other. But after a few
headlong seconds Mitsos cried the order to furl all sail, and the
canvas came dripping and streaming onto the deck. The men were at the
guns with orders to fire the moment the lightning showed the ship, and
as the spark leaped through the clouds again the forward guns on the
port side of the _Revenge_, from all three decks, added their bellowing
to the succeeding thunder. Anything approaching to accurate shooting
was out of the question. They had some two seconds, for the flash was
vivid and far leaping, for the sighting, and they simply fired into the
heart of the loud and chaotic darkness.
Mitsos saw the Capsina standing not far from him after the first round,
behind the fore-port gun on the main deck, and he took a step across
the reeling ship to her side.
"Oh, Capsina, assuredly we are both madder than King Saul!" he said,
"yet I find it glorious, somehow."
"Glorious!" and the girl's voice was trembling with passion and
excitement. "I am living a week to the minute. Ah!" she cried, as
another flash flickered overhead. "Again, again!"
The wind fell a little, but the violence and frequency of the lightning
doubled and redoubled, and the guns answered it. The thunder no
longer broke with a boom on some distant cloud-cliff, but with a
crash intolerably sharp and all but simultaneous with the light. Some
cross-current in the sea had swung the bows of the _Revenge_ more
southward, and Mitsos sent Christos flying aft to tell the stern guns
on the port side to be ready to fire. From the enemy, in reply to their
two first discharges, had come no response, but at the third they were
answered, and a couple of oversighted balls went whirring overhead
through the rigging like a covey of grouse. Then came two flashes of
lightning in rapid succession, and by the second they could see a hole
crash open in the side of the Turk from the balls they had fired by
the light of the first. There was not time, nor near it, to load the
guns twice, yet the Capsina in the frenzy of her excitement cuffed one
of the gunners over the head, calling him a slow lout. The man only
laughed in reply, and the Capsina laughed back in answer. Again and
again the heavens opened, and this time a ball from the Turks came in
through the port-hole of one of their guns, breaking the muzzle into
splinters and ricochetting off on to the man to whom the Capsina had
just spoken. He was shot almost in half, but his mouth still smiled,
showing his white teeth. The ball which had killed him whistled on,
striking a stanchion on the starboard side and plopped out again
overboard, and Mitsos, with a great laugh, threw his cap after it.
Then came the end; the ships were at close range, and a ball from the
_Revenge_, delivered from a port gun, struck the Turk just on the
water-line, opening a raking tear in her side, and when next they could
see her she was already listing to starboard, and with the rattle of
the thunder mingled hundreds of human voices. The giddy, complete
drunkenness of blood was on them; all the men laughed or shouted, or
went back to their supper and drank the health of the dead and their
portion in hell; and Mitsos, forgetting all in the frenzy and fury
of culminated excitement, opened his arms, and flung them round the
Capsina and kissed her as he would have kissed Yanni at such a moment.
"Another, another!" he cried; "thank God, another shipful will feed the
fish of the gulf!"
"Mitsos, oh, little Mitsos!" cried the girl, and she kissed him on the
cheek and on the lips.
The next moment they had started asunder, knowing what they had done,
and the Capsina, burning with an exulting shame, turned from him and,
without a word, went to her cabin.