Mitsos returned home after the destruction of Dramali's army, arriving
there the day after the Capsina had left. Suleima met him at the gate.
"Oh, welcome, Mitsos!" she cried, in a hurry. "And I, too, have seen
her. She has been here."
"I seem of little account," said Mitsos; "but who may 'she' be?"
"When you talk of 'she,' do I not know whom you mean? You are less wise
than I. And she saved my life and that of the littlest."
"The Capsina?" cried Mitsos.
"Yes, slow one."
And Suleima told him how she had fled to Tiryns, and how the Capsina
had concealed her and the little one till the Turks had been routed;
only she did not tell that which it was not for Mitsos to know.
"So come in now, Mitsos, and you shall eat and wash--and indeed you
are as dusty as a hen--and in the evening you shall go to Nauplia, and
thank her, if so be you are pleased at what she did."
Suleima went to the bedroom and laid out for him a clean fustanella and
shirt, the one on which the Capsina had used her unaccustomed needle,
and went out smiling to herself. In a little while came Mitsos's voice,
calling her, and back she went very grave.
He held out a ragged sleeve, with stitches loose and large.
"I have a fine housewife," said he, very sarcastically.
Suleima examined the shirt.
"Indeed, it was torn much," she said; "but it does not seem to me badly
mended."
Mitsos shrugged his shoulders hugely.
"It is as I have always said," he remarked; "a woman cannot even mend a
shirt."
"Who mends your things when you are cruising, Mitsos?" she asked.
"I don't know. They are always well done. The Capsina is excepted; she
can do everything."
Suleima could not keep the corners of her mouth from breaking down, and
next moment she burst out laughing.
"It was she did who it," she said; "I swear to you it was she."
Mitsos had half slipped off the shirt, but on it went again in a
twinkling.
"It is not badly mended," said Suleima, still laughing, "but I could
do it better. Take another one, Mitsos. I will mend this again. Ah, it
is less good than I thought. See how big and bad are those stitches.
Oh, it is shocking! Off with it! I will not have for a husband one they
would think was a beggar."
Mitsos looked at her darkly and sideways.
"This, no doubt, is the best way to mend a shirt, though I know nought
of shirt-mending," he said. "Do not be too proud to take example,
Suleima. See how fine and big are the stitches. Why, she would mend ten
shirts while you mended one."
"Even so," said Suleima; "indeed, if she mended a dozen while I did
one, it would not surprise me, or more than that even. And see how
convenient on a hot day like this; the wind will blow coolly on your
arm through the stitches."
Mitsos broke out laughing.
"She shall see me in it," he cried. "And, oh little wife, I am pleased
to be home again. Dust and hot wind were the drink in the Larissa, so
see that there is wine to fill even me. Oh, I love wine!" he cried.
"Ah, it is for the wine alone you would be home again," said Suleima,
with the light of love returned in her eyes.
Mitsos bent down from his great height, and put his face to hers.
"Yes, for the wine alone," he said, softly, "the wine of many things.
And are you not wine to my soul, my own dear one?"
Soon after they had dinner, and, dinner finished, Mitsos set off into
Nauplia. The _Revenge_ was fretting at her anchor in the land-breeze
as a horse, eager to be off, plays with its bridle, but close under
the fort where Hastings and Hane had fired the incombustible balls he
saw the Capsina's boat, a light caique, in which she sailed on her
hurricane errands when in port, which would go like a fish if there
was wind, and could be pulled by one man. Even Mitsos, used as he was
to over-canvassed boats, used to feel certain qualms when the little
cockleshell, with its tower of sail, was scudding through a broken sea.
But the Capsina, knowing this, used to watch his face for any sign of
apprehension, till he, seeing her, would exclaim:
"It is as a bird with wings and no body, and that is not the safer sort
of bird; and oh, Capsina, drowning is a cold manner of death. Oh yes,
hoist more sail, by all means, and I shall pray the while."
It was the day after Poniropoulos had told Hastings that his services
were no longer required, and both Poniropoulos and the gunners under
Hastings were feeling a thought disconcerted. The Capsina had approved
very warmly of that silent and iron man, and when, on going that
morning to the fort, she had found Hastings gone she sailed across
with dipping gunwale to Poniropoulos and demanded where and why he had
disappeared.
Thus Poniropoulos learned her true opinion of him, and she went back to
the island where Mitsos found her.
"Ignorant folk," she had been saying, "always think that no one is
so wise as they. When you came here you knew nothing. You have been
taught to fire off a gun without getting in front of it, and you think
you know all. Why did you let Hastings go? What did he care about
the plunder of Nauplia? If you had asked him to stop, he would have
stopped. You know that as well as I. He saw that if you continued to
fire the big guns the fort would tumble about your long ears. So what
have you done since? Eaten garlic and talked about piasters! Oh, I
will teach you!"
To her, shaking her fist, Mitsos appeared in the doorway. She looked
up once, dropped her eyes, and looked up again. Then she turned to the
gunners.
"Go away, pigs, all of you!" she cried. "He and I will talk things
over, and there will soon be orders. The place must be repaired at
once."
And she stood there, looking out of the window, till the men had filed
out.
Then Mitsos approached.
"Capsina," he said, "I have seen Suleima. She has told me--"
He did not pause in his speech, but as he said those words, the color
was already struck from the girl's face, leaving it as white as a
lamp-globe when the light is extinguished, for, for the moment, she
thought Suleima had told him all. She turned a little more away from
him.
"She has told me what you have done for me and mine," he went on, "how
you saved her; how you put yourself between her and death. And I--God
made me so stupid that I cannot even find words to thank you."
It was a glorified face that turned to him one smile.
"Oh, little Mitsos!" she said. "Surely we do not need words for such
things. When you saved my life at Porto Germano, did I thank you for
it? I think I only said, 'How slow you are,' when you picked up my
knife for me. So that is finished. We had a long talk, we washed and
dressed the littlest one, and he said 'Capsina.' That pleased me in
an extraordinary manner, but you remember that I like children. And
Suleima is a fine woman, a woman, yet not foolish, the sort of woman
that does not make one wish to be a man, and those are rare. So I
approve, but I doubt whether she is severe enough to you. A wife should
not be too full of care for the husband."
"Indeed, I have been speaking to her to-day," said Mitsos, "saying she
is not careful enough of me. A wife should be able to sew and mend,
should she not? And see what a shirt she has given me."
And Mitsos pulled his shirt-sleeve round till the patch was shown, and
made a marvellously poor attempt to look grave; and, each seeing that
the other knew, they burst out laughing, and the Capsina gave Mitsos a
great slap on the shoulder.
"Boy and baby you will always be," she said. "And now, do you know
anything of fortification work?"
"Not a thing."
"Nor do I. So we will patch up this fort, learning, as is right, by
experience, and may the Virgin look to those within when we have done
our mending. It is as safe as a tower of bricks that a child builds.
Lad, Hastings is a brave man to stand firing the guns here with his
hands in his pockets."
"The others are as brave."
"No. They did not know the danger; in fact, they knew nothing. Look
at that piece of wall there! If you look hard, it will fall down like
a Turk. Oh, Mitsos, if you had given the time you spend in tobacco to
learning building, you might be of some use this day."
"If you wish, I will push it, and it will fall," remarked Mitsos.
The Capsina looked at his great shoulders and sighed.
"If only I had been born a man!" she said. "Oh, I should have liked it!
If I pushed it now--"
"If you pushed it," said Mitsos, "you would push with all your weight.
So when it fell out, you would fall with it, eight feet to the beach
below; also your petticoats would fly."
The Capsina struggled with inward laughter for a moment.
"It is likely so," she said. "Therefore show me how to push it."
The fragment of wall which Mitsos was to push outward was a rotten
projecting angle once joining a cross-wall, but now sticking out
helplessly, in the decay of the others, into space. It was some six
feet high, and the top of it on a level with Mitsos's nose. He looked
at it scornfully a moment, and then at the Capsina.
"It shall be as you will," he said, "but I shall dirty my beautiful
clean shirt, even tear it perhaps on the shoulder, and who shall mend
it again for me?"
"Push; oh, push!" said the Capsina. "Be a little man."
Mitsos braced his shoulder to it, wedged his right foot for purchase
against an uneven stone in the floor, and his left foot close to the
wall, so that he could recover himself when it should fall outward.
Then with a fine confidence, "You shall see," he said, and butted
against it as a bull butts, sparring only half in earnest with a tree.
Wall and tree remain immovable.
"That is very fine," said the Capsina. "It nearly shook."
Mitsos put a little more weight into it, and felt the muscles tighten
and knot in his leg, and the Capsina sighed elaborately.
"It would have saved time to have picked it down stone by stone," said
she. "But never mind now; no doubt it is trembling. What a great man is
Mitsos!"
Half vexed--for, with all his gentleness, he was proud of his
strength--and half laughing, he put his whole weight from neck to heel
into it, doing that of which he had warned the Capsina, and felt the
wall tremble. Then pausing a moment to get better purchase with his
right foot, once more he threw himself at it, making a cushion of the
great muscles over the shoulder. This effort was completely successful;
the wall tottered, bowed, and fell; and Mitsos, unable to check
himself, took a neat header after it and disappeared in a cloud of dust.
The Capsina, who had perfect faith in his power of not hurting himself,
peered over the ledge with extreme amusement. Mitsos had already
regained his feet, and was feeling himself carefully to see if he was
anywhere hurt.
"Little Mitsos!" she cried, and he looked up. "You will want a new
petticoat as well as a shirt," said she.
They spent an hour or two in the place, deciding on what should be
patched up, and what pulled down, and the Capsina took Mitsos back
with her to the _Revenge_ to sup before he went home. The two were
alone. Mitsos had much to tell of the siege of the Larissa and the
destruction of Dramali's army, and to the Capsina so much still
remained of that spell of soothing which Suleima, and even more the
child who stammered her own name, had cast upon her, that she listened
with interest, excitement, suspense, to his tale, and even half forgot
that it was Mitsos who told it. But when it was over and they were on
deck, half-way between silence and continuous speech, she began to
think again of that which filled her thoughts. She was sitting on a
coil of rope, and he half lay, half sat, at her feet, leaning against
the fore-mast. The night was very hot and dark, for the moon was not
yet up, and the starlight came filtered through a haze of south wind.
Mitsos smoked his narghile, and as he drew the smoke in his face was
illumed intermittently by the glowing charcoal, lean and brown and
strong, and the jaw muscles outstanding from the cheek, and again as
he stopped to talk he would go back into darkness, and the words came
in the voice which she thought she knew even better than his face.
Sometimes in a crowd of faces she would think she caught sight of him,
but never in a company of voices did she catch note of a voice like
his. And though she knew that when he had gone, for every moment he had
sat close to her in the warm, muffled dusk she would sit another minute
alone, helplessly, hopelessly, with his voice ringing in the inward
ear, she still detained him, laughing down his laughing protests,
saying that he thought of himself far higher than Suleima thought of
him.
At last he rose to go in earnest, and she went with him to the boat.
"Soon the Turkish fleet will be here," she said, "and then there will
be work for us, little Mitsos. Shall we work together again?"
Mitsos raised his eyebrows and spoke quickly:
"How not? Why not?" he said. "Will you not take me again?"
"I? Will you come?" she asked.
"Yes, surely. But I thought you spoke as if, as if--"
"As if what?" asked the girl.
"As if you thought we should not be together."
"Oh, little Mitsos, you are a fool," she said. "While the _Revenge_ is
afloat there is need for you here. Good-night. Kiss Suleima for me, as
well as for yourself, and promise you will make the adorable one say
'Capsina.'"
"Indeed he shall, and many times. But when will you come yourself? I
have not yet welcomed you in my home, and for how many days have I been
made welcome in this swift house of yours! You will come to-morrow? Let
me tell Suleima so."
The Capsina nodded and smiled.
"Till to-morrow then," she said.
But Mitsos had construed her tone aright. Even in the very act of
speaking she had hesitated, wondering if she were firm enough of
purpose to sail without him, and wishing, or rather wanting, that she
were; and in the same act of speech she had known she was not, and the
question had halted on her tongue. But it had been asked and answered
now, and she was the gladder; for the pain of his presence was sweeter
than the relief of his absence.
Most of the sailors were on shore, a few only on the ship, and when
Mitsos had gone she went down to her cabin, meaning to go to bed. The
ripple tapped restlessly against the ship's side; occasionally the
footstep of the watch sounded above her head, and human sounds came
through the open port-hole from the Greek camp. The night was very hot,
and the girl lay tossing and turning in her bed, unable to sleep. It
was at such times when she was alone, and especially at night, that
the fever of her love-sickness most throbbed and burned in her veins.
Now and then she would doze for a moment lightly, still conscious
that she was lying in her cabin, and only knowing that she was not
awake by the fact that she heard Mitsos talking or saw him standing
by her. Such visions passed in a flash, and she would wake again to
full consciousness. But this night she was too aware of her own body
to doze even for a moment; it was a struggling, palpitating thing. Her
pulse beat insistently in her temples; her heart rose to her throat
and hammered there loud and quick. The port-hole showed a circle of
luminous gray in the darkness, and cast a muffled light on the wall
opposite; the waves lapped; the sentry walked; the ship was alive with
the little noises heard only by the alert. Her bed burned her; her
love-fever burned her; she was a smouldering flame.
She listened to the tread of the watch, growing fainter as he walked
to the bows; he paused a moment as he turned, and the steps came back
in a gradual crescendo, till he was above her head, then died away
again till they were barely audible. Again he paused at the turn, again
came his steps crescendo, and so backward and forward, till she could
have cried aloud for the irritation of the thing. Other noises were
less explicable; surely some one was moving about in the cabin next
hers, the cabin Mitsos used to occupy, some one who went to and fro in
stockinged or bare feet, but with heavy tread. Then Michael, who lay
outside her door, stirred and sat up, and began to scratch himself;
at each backward stroke his hind-leg tapped the door, and the Capsina
vindictively said to herself that he should be washed to-morrow. But
he would not stop; he went on scratching for ten hours, or a lifetime,
or it may have been a minute, and she called out to him to be quiet.
He lay down, she heard, with a thump, and, pleased with the sound of
her recognized voice, banged his tail against the bare boards. Then he
began to pant. At first the sound was barely audible, but it seemed as
if he must be swelling to some gigantic thing, for the noise of his
breathing grew louder and louder, till it became only the tread of the
sentry above. No, it was not the sentry; he walked a little slower than
the panting--why could the man not keep time?--and still next door the
padded footstep crept about.
Flesh and blood could not stand it, and getting up, she kindled her
lamp at the little oil-wick below the shrine of the Virgin at the end
of her cabin, and opened the door. Michael hailed her with silent
rapture and wistful, topaz eyes. She paused a moment on the threshold,
and then opening the door of Mitsos's cabin, went in, knowing all the
time that the tread of the stockinged feet was only a thought of her
own brain made audible inwardly.
The cabin was empty, as she expected, and she sat down for a moment
on the bare boards of his bunk, with the lamp in her hand, looking
round the walls vaguely but intently, curiously but without purpose.
Some pencil scratches above the head of the bed caught her eye, and,
examining them more closely, she saw they were sprawling letters
written upsidedown and written backward. She frowned over these for a
moment, and then the solution drew a smile from her; and putting the
lamp on the floor, she lay down on the bed, looking up. Yes, that was
it. He must have written them idly one morning lying in bed. And she
read thus:
"This is Mitsos's cabin.... Suleima!... Capsina!... Oh, Capsina!... Oh,
Mitsos Codones!... Suleima!..."
Again and again she read them, then continued to look at them,
not reading them, but as one looks at a familiar picture, half
abstractedly. The lamp, unreplenished with oil, burned low; Michael
sank on to his haunches, and then lay down. Through the open cabin door
filtered a silvery grayness of starlight, but before the lamp had gone
quite out the girl was asleep on the bare, unblanketed bed, her face
turned upward as she had turned it to read the little pencil scratches.