THE HOPE THAT FAILED.
Leaving Sir Frank Francis to pursue his dignified way alone, Wylie
ran back to the village, only to see a considerable body of
insurgents, armed with rifles hastily snatched up, half-way to the
tower. They were approaching it from the back, whereas the Consuls and
their forces, with the rescued garrison, were assembled in front of
it, waiting for Sir Frank’s return to begin their march back to the
sea, but a collision seemed inevitable. With a wild idea of flinging
himself between the contending parties, Wylie ran towards the tower,
hoping to intercept his followers before they could reach the front of
the building. Sir Frank, in the natural exasperation induced by
intercourse with these wretched insurgents, who were giving the
consular body trouble so absurdly disproportionate to their
importance, might call him a renegade Englishman, but he could not see
the British flag fired upon by his own men. His intention was
frustrated, however, by two of them, who rose up, as if by magic, from
behind a bush, and laid violent hands upon him. Protest, command,
entreat as he might, it was no use; they dragged him behind the bush
and held him fast there, considerately choosing a position from which
the tower and its assailants were clearly visible. To Wylie’s intense
relief, the main body of his men halted at a ridge which commanded the
whole side of the tower, and lay down behind it, covering the consular
force with their rifles. Only three ran on, and Wylie saw that they
carried ropes. Arrived at the back of the tower, one of them threw his
rope over a sculptured gargoyle which projected from the building at
about a third of its height, and wriggled up it, his companions
holding the ends. The lower part of the masonry alone had been kept in
good repair, and when he reached the gargoyle the climber had passed
his greatest difficulty--the stretch of squared stones with the
crevices well filled with mortar. Above it the stones were
weather-worn, and the mortar of the Venetian builders was crumbling
away from between them, so that he was able to find holes for his feet
and hands. Wylie gathered from the remarks of the men who held him
that the adventurer was a noted cliff-climber, and smiled, even in his
disgust, at the reticence which had hitherto been maintained as to his
profession. With such an auxiliary it would have been comparatively
easy to storm the tower on a windy night, with the garrison in the
proper state of exhaustion, induced by constant false alarms, but the
man and his associates had alike kept their own counsel.
The approach of the insurgents to the tower had not passed unnoticed
by the rear ranks of the consular force in the front, and when the
three men ran forward warning shouts were raised, two or three
officers stepping out and calling to them, evidently under the
impression that they did not know the place was mined. As they took no
notice, the commander of the Magnagrecian guard, who was the nearest,
began to march his men round to the back. Instantly, to Wylie’s
speechless horror, the insurgents lining the ridge fired a volley. He
could hardly believe his eyes when he saw that they had fired into the
air, and that the Magnagrecian detachment was untouched. But the
bullets whistling overhead had alarmed the rest of the force, and the
Magnagrecians were hastily recalled. No one seemed quite to know
whether the volley had been an accident, an act of hostility or one of
warning, and while the officers of various nationalities discussed the
matter excitedly, a shout of triumph from the insurgents drew their
attention to the top of the tower. The daring climber stood there, and
the Roumi flag which had floated proudly from its staff was torn down
and rent savagely into fragments. In its place the eagle of the
Eastern Empire rose into view and blew out defiantly. So much they
saw, then the climber seemed to throw himself headlong from the
battlements, scrambling down the ruined masonry for dear life. Arrived
at the gargoyle, he took a flying leap, regardless of safety, and as
his feet touched the ground the building blew up. The time-worn walls,
which had seen so many changes since their builders had first hoisted
the standard of St Mark, ended their career under the flag of Free
Emathia.
In the shock and amazement of this transformation scene, it was
difficult to perceive what actually happened. The Consuls and their
naval contingents declared that the insurgents lining the roofs of
Ahmed Pasha, in the excitement of their triumph, opened fire upon the
representatives of Europe. The insurgents, on the other hand,
declared, and Wylie believed they spoke the truth, that it was not
bullets that wounded several sailors at this juncture, but flying
fragments of masonry, and that they had merely fired their rifles
again into the air. However this might be, there was no doubt that the
consular force, with marvellous celerity, took cover behind the ruins
of Segreti, and that bullets were flying between it and Ahmed Pasha,
rendering the position of those who found themselves on the broken
ground stretching from one to the other unpleasant in the extreme. The
insurgents lining the ridge behaved with a steadiness of which Wylie
would have been proud in less exasperating circumstances. They
separated into two parties, which took turns in running back and
halting to cover each other’s retreat with the greatest precision,
picking up Wylie and his two guards by the way, and tumbling proudly
into Ahmed Pasha without the loss of a man, though one or two
exhibited flesh-wounds. Even the climber and his two companions had
somehow escaped from the wreck of the tower, and joined the rest.
An informal Assembly for mutual congratulation was, of course, the
first thing to be thought of, the periods of the orators being
pleasantly punctuated by the bullets which struck the houses round
them. Nobody was concerned to apologise to Wylie, who had very
skilfully been prevented, so the general opinion seemed to run, from
making a regrettable exhibition of himself, and the seriousness of the
situation was quite overborne by the gratifying reflection that
Emathia was actually engaged in hostilities with the whole of envious
Europe. But it was very speedily borne in upon the minds of the
triumphant talkers that war with Europe did not merely mean exchanging
long shots from cover with another force equally well protected. A
shell came screaming and tearing overhead, without any innocuous
warning this time, and exploded in the courtyard of one of the houses,
from which rose a thick cloud of smoke. Other shells followed, one
dropping almost in the midst of the Assembly, which broke up with
unprecedented celerity, and Wylie seized the opportunity of the
general consternation to resume his command. It was useless to try and
retain Ahmed Pasha under the fire of the ships, but the fact had in it
this compensation, that it would be equally impossible for the Powers
to reestablish the Roumis in the place if they could be beguiled into
destroying it. They would probably go on dropping shells as long as no
sign of surrender appeared, and by sunset the place would be untenable
for any self-respecting Moslems. The insurgents, confused and
terrified by the sudden reversal of their fortunes, were willing
enough to obey the man who proposed to deprive their enemies of any
profit from it, and under Wylie’s orders the wounded were first
conveyed out at the back of the village, and then such stores as
remained. Lastly, the garrison left in small parties, keeping the now
burning houses between themselves and Segreti, and taking care not to
concentrate anywhere on the road, lest the ships should take a fancy
to enlarge the area of their fire. Wylie was perhaps the only man
present who realised that the brief attempt of the insurgents to
obtain a footing on the mainland was now ended. They were driven back
upon Karakula, and might be thankful if they were allowed to retain
even that.
Though the insurgents’ love for the Powers could hardly be expected to
have been increased by the events of the day, they were sufficiently
frightened by this second bombardment and its results to become more
amenable to discipline. Ahmed Pasha was now a heap of smoking ruins,
and the shells began to fall into Karakula--apparently out of pure
vindictiveness, since it was well within the line which the Admirals
had laid down as the limit of the insurgents’ territory. The village
itself was not capable of defence, as the houses had never been
repaired since its first seizure, and it was commanded by the steep
slope behind it, and therefore Wylie did not linger there. He posted
his pickets from shore to shore of the isthmus, in case an attempt
should be made by the Roumis to break through, and concentrated the
rest of his force in a hollow well shielded from the fire of the
warships, from which they could quickly reinforce any part of the line
that might be threatened. From a high point of the ridge which formed
the backbone of the peninsula he could obtain a view of the consular
force sheltering behind Segreti, and he noted that the firing ceased
as though at a signal, presumably when each ship had dropped a certain
number of shells. A detachment of armed sailors was then thrown
forward to examine the ruins and make sure that they were not
occupied, and thereafter the Consuls, their guards and their rescued
charges, embarked in safety. No attempt was made to cross the line and
approach Karakula, for which Wylie was devoutly thankful, since his
men, posted in an advantageous position, which the fire from the ships
could not easily search out, would certainly have refused to withdraw
without fighting, and could not have been dislodged without heavy
loss.
Night fell at last, and leaving Prince Romanos in command on one shore
of the isthmus, Wylie took up his post on the other, that nearest to
Therma and Skandalo. It was here, if anywhere on the isthmus, that an
attack would be made, and he had conceived a plan for drawing the
assailants into a morass not far from the shore by means of a feigned
retreat. He had everything in readiness to give them a warm reception,
but with a sad lack of consideration they declined to come.
Distrustful, owing to much bitter experience, of the wakefulness of
his supporters, he watched through most of the night himself, and felt
almost as if he had been cheated when it had passed uneventfully. The
labours and trials of the last few days had left their mark upon him,
and Prince Romanos started when they met.
“You are ill!” he said. “Or were you wounded yesterday after all?”
“This place is feverish,” said Wylie irritably. “I felt it in the
night. I suppose I had no business to sleep out, but there wasn’t much
choice. I must send for my quinine from the monastery, and then I
daresay I shall shake it off.”
“Better rest for to-day,” suggested Prince Romanos; but Wylie was an
impracticable patient, all the more determined to do all he could at
once because he knew it was highly unlikely that he would be able to
do it on the morrow. The new line of defence behind Karakula must be
strengthened, and more use made of the marsh, so that it might appear
to be the only unguarded spot, positively inviting an attack. This was
a kind of warfare the insurgents could understand, and they entered
heartily into the contrivances for concentrating a heavy fire on an
imaginary force in difficulties. One man even volunteered to offer to
act as guide to the Roumis, with the amiable intention of leading them
into the trap, but the drawback to this scheme was that there were no
Roumis to lead astray--not the slightest apparent intention on the
part of Jalal-ud-din to profit from the advantage secured for him by
the Powers yesterday. Still Wylie worked on, growing more ghastly in
appearance as the hours passed, until Prince Romanos was summoned by a
violent outcry from the trench which was being dug under his
superintendence. Wylie had collapsed at last, and as he lay insensible
in the sun, knives were being drawn above him. His own guards, and the
other Slavs in the neighbourhood, declared that the Greeks had
murdered him, and the Greeks were vehemently rebutting the accusation,
crying out that the Slavs had brought it against them to conceal their
own guilt. Prince Romanos patched up a hollow peace by sending for Dr
Terminoff, who pronounced the illness to be entirely due to natural
causes, and ordered the patient to be carried to the hospital. Before
he arrived there, however, Wylie recovered consciousness sufficiently
to murmur, “Ephestilo camp; not hospital--not monastery,” and the
doctor consented unwillingly to do as he wished, sending word to
Maurice of the change. Maurice hurried to Ephestilo as soon as the
news reached him, and found his friend established in the chief house
in the village, from which his guards had expelled the inhabitants on
their own authority. Wylie could not lift his head from the rolled-up
cloak which served as a pillow, but his eyes met Maurice’s anxiously.
“Hoped I should be--sensible--when you came,” he said with difficulty.
“Don’t let--ladies--come here.”
“But it’s nothing infectious,” said Maurice, in astonishment. “I know
they will want to nurse you.”
“Then don’t--tell them,” was the obstinate reply.
“My dear fellow, you must be properly looked after,” remonstrated
Maurice. “They won’t tease you to talk, or anything of that sort,”
with a vague effort to get at the root of the objection.
“My men”--with an attempt to glance in the direction of the guards,
who were sitting playing cards on the floor--“look after--me all
right--good fellows--do as they’re told. I will not--have any one
else. Promise.”
There was so much determination in the weak voice that Maurice
compromised. “Well, if Terminoff thinks your men are enough----”
“Promise,” persisted Wylie. “Not even--if--I mention names.”
“Whose names?” asked Maurice, taken aback. Wylie glanced at him with a
kind of sick contempt.
“Zoe’s, of course,” he said irritably. “I might call out for her--no,
of course I shan’t,”--with a momentary accession of strength,--“but I
might. Don’t let her come.”
“Of course not,” said Maurice quickly; and Wylie sighed with something
like contentment, and then began to murmur incoherently, while Maurice
relieved his feelings by turning the guards out of the room, and
forbidding cards anywhere but on the piazza outside. One of the men,
who had acted as Wylie’s servant, was appointed head-nurse, and told
that he would be held responsible for the patient, and might choose
his own assistants, who must obey the doctor’s orders implicitly. The
men were all willing enough, but a very primitive surgery was their
only notion of curative treatment, and Maurice returned to the
monastery full of anxiety. Zoe was waiting for him at the gate.
“Colonel Wylie is ill?” she said.
“Attack of fever. I left him fairly comfortable.”
“And he won’t let me go near him, of course?”
“How did you know?” he asked in surprise.
“I know him. I suppose he has made you promise, Maurice? Don’t be
afraid; I am not going to make a fuss--only you must tell me if he is
dying.”
“I hope there’s no fear of that. If there was----”
“If there is, you must let me know, and I shall go to him. Even he
would not wish to keep me away then--he would forgive me at last. Do
you remember, Maurice?--‘an unforgiving brute,’ you called him once.”
She laughed drearily. “But he wouldn’t deprive me of that one little
scrap of comfort when there was no chance of my presuming upon it in
the future.”
“Then you think”--Maurice hesitated--“that he cares for you still?”
“I know he does. But he can’t forgive me.”
“I don’t know--I had an idea somehow that it was you. Eirene thought
you didn’t care for him.”
“Eirene ought to know better,” said Zoe indignantly. “But she really
thinks you don’t care for a person unless you show it by doing
something wild, I suppose. Maurice, if I had married him seven years
ago, do you think we should have been saved all this?” with a wave of
her hand that included the peninsula generally. “He would have been
quartered somewhere in Egypt or India, I suppose, and he would be an
ordinary hard-working soldier, and I the usual Anglo-Indian regimental
lady. You would not have embarked on this without him?”
“I don’t know,” said Maurice again slowly. “We should have had
Teffany-Wise’s legacy just the same, I imagine, and Eirene would have
been the same. She would not have waited for Wylie, you know. No, I
don’t think you need reproach yourself with that, Zoe,--as if you
hadn’t enough to bear.”
“Don’t!” said Zoe quickly, dashing away an intrusive tear. “And the
worst of it is that what I said to him when I refused him was
perfectly justified--absolutely true. Any reasonable man would have
seen it, only--you know----”
“This particular man is not reasonable?” suggested Maurice. “Of course
he isn’t--on this subject. If he was, he wouldn’t be Wylie. But if he
was, how glad I should have been if he had married you and taken you
out of this!”
“He wouldn’t have gone, and I wouldn’t have been taken,” said Zoe with
conviction. “We should stand by you and Eirene to the end, Maurice--as
we shall now. But surely things are no worse now than they were, if
the warships are going to let us alone? You and--he--always said that
it was only a source of weakness to hold Ahmed Pasha.”
“If the warships let us alone to starve?” said Maurice. “We can hold
out for a week on the present restricted allowance, no longer. And how
are we to get supplies?”
“Lord Armitage may come any day,” Zoe reminded him.
“No; I forgot to tell you. Demetri the fisherman came in to Skandalo
when I was there this morning, and said he had actually sighted the
yacht outside the blockading warships. He tried to signal to her how
bad our plight was, but unfortunately his boat attracted the notice of
a Hercynian destroyer,--she was beyond our own waters, of course. They
came to order her back, sighted the yacht, and went off in chase. He
heard the sound of firing, but can’t say whether she was captured.
It’s just possible that she gave them the slip in the night, of
course.”
“I should have thought Lord Armitage would have taken the risk and run
for Skandalo,” said Zoe.
“Then he would have been sunk, to a certainty, and what good would his
stores be to us at the bottom of the sea? No, he will try to keep out
of sight till he finds a chance of getting in, but the worst of it is
they will all be looking for him now.”
“I should send the refugees back to the mainland,” said Zoe suddenly.
“The food would last much longer if we had only the insurgents and the
regular inhabitants.”
“My dear Zoe, don’t you think the Powers know that, and the Roumis
too? The moment our poor wretches showed their noses beyond that
barren labyrinth where Wylie and Christodoridi held up Jalal-ud-din,
they would be turned back, you may be sure. They would have tried it
themselves long ago if they hadn’t been certain of that. No, the
Powers, in the interests of humanity, will see us starved to the point
at which the Roumis are certain of a walk-over. That’s the secret of
their forbearance, in spite of all the moral sympathy that Panagiotis
assures us they feel. They are cruel only to be kind, of course.”
Two days of the allotted week passed by, and still the Powers and the
Roumis remained inactive. Wylie muttered incoherently on his sick-bed
at Ephestilo, and Zoe tried to compensate herself for her banishment
from him by caring for the wounded from Ahmed Pasha, who had at least
gained their injuries in his company. The third night was very foggy,
and the watchers along the coast could hear the muffled sound of
sirens and whistles as the European warships talked to one another.
The morning was also foggy, but the fog lay over the sea, not the
land. The warships were moored too far out to be seen, and even the
fishing-boats at anchor loomed dimly through the haze. From Skandalo
came exciting news. The boats lying farthest out had caught a glimpse
of the yacht. She had burst upon them out of the gloom, and they had
cheered her on, thinking that nothing could now prevent her from
reaching the port. But from the direction of Therma there came a small
foreign ship, steaming parallel with the shore, so as to cut the yacht
off from Skandalo, and she had turned and fled back into the fog. From
the cliffs at the southern extremity of the peninsula one or two
glimpses of her had been caught, and refugees and insurgents were now
crowding to the coast to watch for her. The warship had followed her
out of the range of vision, so there was still the hope that she might
shake off pursuit and run safely for Ephestilo, the only practicable
harbour on that side, and one into which the pursuer would not be able
to follow her.
Work was at a standstill that morning, for the imminence of the crisis
drew every one to the cliffs. Mothers carrying their babies, sick and
wounded men dragging themselves painfully over the ground, warriors
forsaking their posts inland, townspeople and farmers who were now
feeling the pinch of famine like their guests,--all converged on
Ephestilo. The slopes on either side of the bay down to the water’s
edge were parti-coloured with people, and all eyes were fixed on the
space between the headlands, looking out to sea, as though it were the
stage of a natural amphitheatre. Boom! came a hollow sound from
seaward, and as though the shot had rent the curtain of fog, the yacht
ran into sight at that moment, sparks mingling with the smoke from her
funnels in the intensity of her effort to reach the shore. Her pursuer
was visible immediately afterwards, close--terribly close--upon her,
and steaming as before to cut her off from the one opening in the
rocks that guarded the harbour. Sighs and moans of sympathy broke from
the watching people as the shells of the pursuer fell before, behind,
beside the yacht, then on board, causing her to shrink and stagger,
but she still held on.
“Good old Armitage! He’s going to run her on the rocks--thinks we can
salve the stores from her then,” said Maurice, and as he spoke a great
cry rose up from the multitude on the shore. The yacht had run
straight upon the reef. The fishermen, led by Maurice, rushed for
their boats, only to recoil in terror as a shell splashed into the
water of the harbour. Amid the tears and groans of the crowd, the
commander of the destroyer went about his work methodically, sending
an occasional shot into the bay to keep the onlookers quiet. The crew
of the yacht were taken off in boats and transferred to the pursuer,
which then withdrew a short distance and fired shot after shot into
the grounded vessel. Her boiler blew up at last, with a tremendous
explosion, and her shattered remains sank gently into the deep water
outside the rocks, followed by a long despairing wail from the shore.