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The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence

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Title: The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence

Author: E. F. Benson

Illustrator: G. P. Jacomb Hood


        
Release date: September 6, 2014 [eBook #46782]
                Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VINTAGE: A ROMANCE OF THE GREEK WAR OF INDEPENDENCE ***
THE VINTAGE

_A Romance of the Greek War of
Independence. By_ E. F. BENSON
_Author of "Limitations" "Dodo"
"The Judgment Books" etc._

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

"And the wine-press was trodden without the
city, and blood came out of the wine-press"



HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

1898


[Illustration: "'COME AND SIT DOWN'"]


THIS ROMANCE

DEALING WITH THE REGENERATION OF HER PEOPLE

IS DEDICATED BY PERMISSION

TO

HER MAJESTY

OLGA

QUEEN OF THE HELLENES



CONTENTS


PART I

THE VINEYARD


    I.  The House on the Road To Nauplia
   II.  The Coming of Nicholas Vidalis
  III.  The Story of a Brigand
   IV.  The Midnight Ordeal
    V.  Mitsos Picks Cherries for Maria
   VI.  The Song from the Darkness
  VII.  The Port Dues of Corinth
 VIII.  The Mending of the Monastery Roof
   IX.  The Singer from the Darkness


PART II

THE EVE OF THE GATHERING

    I.  Mitsos Meets His Cousins
   II.  Mitsos and Yanni find a Horse
  III.  Mitsos Has the Hysterics
   IV.  Yanni Pays a Visit to the Turk
    V.  The Vision at Bassae
   VI.  Three Little Men Fall Off their Horses
  VII.  Mitsos Disarranges a House-roof
 VIII.  The Message of Fire

PART III

THE TREADING OF THE GRAPES

    I.  Te Deum Laudamus
   II.  Two Silver Candlesticks
  III.  The Adventure of the Fire-ship
   IV.  The Training of the Troops
    V.  The Hornets' Nest at Valtetzi
   VI.  The Entry of Germanos
  VII.  The Rule of the Senate
 VIII.  The Song from Tripoli
   IX.  Private Nicholas Vidalis
    X.  The Fall of Tripoli
   XI.  Father and Daughter
  XII.  The Search for Suleima
 XIII.  Nicholas Goes Home
  XIV.  The House on the Road to Nauplia



ILLUSTRATIONS

"'COME AND SIT DOWN'"
"'I AM FATHER ANDRÉA,' HE SHOUTED"
"HALF CARELESSLY SHE THREW INTO THE BOAT THE ROSES SHE HAD PICKED"
"SHE KISSED HIM LIGHTLY ON THE FOREHEAD"
"MITSOS SURVEYED HIM WITH EASY INDIFFERENCE"
"YANNI WAS STRUGGLING IN THE GRASP OF TWO MEN, THE GREEK AND THE TURK"
"KATSI AND A FINE SELECTION OF COUSINS ACCOMPANIED THE TWO"
"AFTER SUPPER MITSOS EXPOUNDED"
"IN THE CENTRE OF THE GREAT CHAMBER STOOD ONE WHOM IT DAZZLED HIS EYES
    TO LOOK UPON"
"'AH, BUT IT IS GOOD TO BE WITH YOU AGAIN'"
"MITSOS TORE UP GREAT HANDFULS OF UNDERGROWTH AND THREW THEM ON"
"MIXED WITH THE NOISE OF THE SINGING, ROSE ONE GREAT SOB OF A THANKFUL
    PEOPLE BORN AGAIN"
"BOTH THE BOYS, SEIZING THEIR OARS, ROWED FOR LIFE"
"CASTING HIMSELF DOWN THERE, IN AN AGONY BITTER SWEET, HE PRAYED"
"MITSOS, FLYING AT HIM LIKE A WILD-CAT"
"BORNE IN A CHAIR ON THE SHOULDERS OF FOUR MONKS"
"HE HAD CLAMBERED UP AND DROPPED DOWN ON THE OTHER SIDE"
"UNBUCKLING HIS SWORD, HE LAID IT ON THE TABLE"
"YANNI WAS BY HIM WITH A BRILLIANT SMILE ON HIS FACE"
"'WOULD YOU SLAY ME, FATHER?' SHE CRIED AGAIN"
"BY AN EFFORT HE RAISED HIMSELF ON HIS ELBOW"
"'SULEIMA!' CRIED MITSOS"




THE VINTAGE

Part I

THE VINEYARD




CHAPTER I

THE HOUSE OF THE ROAD TO NAUPLIA


Nauplia, huddled together on the edge of its glittering bay, and
grilled beneath the hot stress of the midsummer noon, stood silent as a
city of the dead. Down the middle of the main street, leading up from
the quay to the square, lay a scorching ribbon of sunshine, and the
narrow strips of shadow, sharp cut and blue, spoke of the South.

Along one side of the square ran the barracks of the Turkish garrison
of occupation, two-storied buildings of brown stone, solid but airless,
and faced with a line of arcade. These contained the three companies of
men who were stationed in the town itself, less fortunate in this oven
of heat than the main part of the garrison who held the airier fortress
of Palamede behind, overlooking the plain from a height of five
hundred feet. Down the west side stood the quarters of the officers,
and opposite, the prison, full as usual to overflowing of the native
Greeks, cast there for default of payment to the Turkish usurers of
an interest of forty or fifty per cent. on some small loan; for these
new Turkish laws of 1820 with regard to debt had made the prisons more
populous than ever. A row of shops and a couple of cafés along the
north struck a more domestic note.

A narrow street led out of the square eastwards, and passing the length
of the town, burrowed through the wall of Venetian fortification in
the manner of a tunnel. On the right the outline of the gray fortress
hill, precipitously pitched towards the town in a jagged edge like
forked lightning, rose steep and craggy, weathered by the wind in
places to a tawny red, and peppered over with sun-dried tufts of grass.
Along the base of this the road ran, cobbled unevenly in the Turkish
fashion, and after passing two or three villas which stood white and
segregate among their gardens of flowering pomegranate and serge-clad
cypress, struck out into the plain. Vineyards and rattling maize fields
bordered it on one hand; on the other, beds of rushes and clumps of
king-thistles, which peopled the little swamp between it and the bay.
The spring had been very rainless, and these early days of June saw the
country already yellow and sere. The clumps of succulent leaves round
the base of the asphodels were dried and brown; only the virile stems
with their seeding sprouts remained green and vigorous.

The blinding whiteness of the forenoon gave place before one of the day
to a veiled but unabated heat, and sirocco began to blow up from the
south. Furnace-mouthed, it raised mad little whirlwinds, which spun
across the road and over the hot, reaped fields in petulant eddies,
and powdered all they passed with fine white dust. Two or three hawks,
in despair of spying their dinner through this palpable air, and being
continually blown downwind in the attempt to poise, were following
the example of the rest of the world, and seeking their craggy homes
on the sides of Palamede till the tempest should be overpast. A few
cicalas in a line of white poplars by the wayside alone maintained
their alacrity, and clicked and whirred as if sirocco was of all airs
the most invigorating. The hills of Argolis to the north were already
getting dim and veiled, and losing themselves in an ague of heat.

By the roadside, a mile from the town, stood a small wine-shop, in
front of which projected a rough wooden portico open to the air on
three sides, and roofed with boughs of oleander, plucked leaf and
flower together. A couple of rough stools and a rickety table stood
in the shade in order to invite passers-by to rest, and so to drink,
and the owner himself was lying on a bench under the house wall in
wide-mouthed sleep. A surly-looking dog, shaggy and sturdy, guarded his
slumbers in the intervals of its own, and snapped ineffectually at the
flies.

Directly opposite the wine-shop stood a whitewashed house, built in
a rather more pretentious style than the dwellings of most Greek
peasants, and fronted by a garden, to which a row of white poplars
gave a specious and private air. A veranda ran around two sides of
it, floored with planks, and up the wooden pillars, by which it was
supported, streamed long shoots of flowering roses. A low wooden
settee, cushioned with two Greek saddle-bags, stood in the shade of the
veranda, and on it were sitting two men, one of whom was dressed in the
long black cassock of a priest--both silent.

Then for the first time a human note overscored the thundering of
the hot wind, and a small gray cat scuffled round the corner of the
veranda, pursued by a great long-limbed boy, laughing to himself. He
was dressed in a white linen tunic and tight-fitting linen trousers;
he had no shoes, no socks, and no hat. He almost fell over the settee
before he saw the two men, and then paused, laughing and panting.

"She was after the fish," he explained, "and I was after her. She shall
taste a slapping."

One of the two men looked up at the boy and smiled.

"You'll get into mischief if you run about in the heat at noonday
without your cap on," he said. "Come and sit down. Where are your
manners, Mitsos? Here is Father Andréa."

Mitsos knelt down, and the priest put his hand on the boy's rumpled
black hair.

"God make you brave and good," he said, "and forgive all your sins!"

"Now sit down, Mitsos," said his father. "Who is going to taste a
slapping?"

The boy's face, which had grown grave as he received the priest's
blessing, dimpled into smiles again.

"Why, my cat, Psepséka," he said. "The greedy woman was going down to
the cellar where I put the fish, and I went after her and caught her by
the tail. She spit at me like a little she-devil. Then she scratched
me, and I let go. But soon I will catch her again, and she shall pay
for it all twice over, Turkish fashion. See!"

He held out a big brown hand, down which Psepséka had scored three red
lines.

"What a fierce woman!" said his father. "But you're overbig to run
about after little cats. You're eighteen now, Mitsos, and your uncle
comes here this evening. He'll think you're a boy still."

The boy looked up from his examination of his hand.

"Uncle Nicholas?" he asked.

"Yes. Go and wash your hand, and then lay the table. Put some eggs to
boil, and get out some bread and cheese, and pick some cherries."

Mitsos got up.

"Will the father eat with us?"

"Surely; and put your shoes on before you come to dinner."

And without waiting the boy was off into the house.

The priest looked up at Mitsos' father as he disappeared.

"He is full young yet," he said.

"So I think, and so perhaps Nicholas will think. Yet who knows what
Nicholas thinks? But he is a good lad, and he can keep a secret. He is
strong too; he walked from here to Corinth last week, and came back
next day, and he grows like the aloe flower."

The priest rose and looked fiercely out over the garden.

"May the God of Justice give the Turks what they have deserved!" he
cried. "May He send them bitterness to eat and death to drink! May
their children be fatherless and their wives widows! They had no mercy;
may they find none! The curse of a priest of God be upon them!"

Mitsos' father sat still watching him. Eleven years ago Father Andréa
had been obliged to make a journey to Athens to settle about some plot
of land belonging to his wife, who had lately died, and, if possible,
to sell it--for under the Turkish taxes land was more often an expense
than a revenue. He had taken with him his only daughter, a girl of five
or six years of age, pretty even then, and with promise of wonderful
beauty to come. On his way home, just outside Athens, he had been
attacked by some half dozen Turks, and, after a desperate, hopeless
resistance, had been left on the road more dead than alive, and his
daughter had been carried off, to be trained, no doubt, to the doom of
some Turkish harem. He must have lain there stunned for some hours,
for when he awoke again to an aching consciousness of soul and body,
the day was already reddening to its close, and the shadow of the
hills of Daphne had stretched itself across the plain to where he lay.
Wounded and bleeding as he was, and robbed of the money he had got
for the land, he had dragged himself back to Athens, and stayed there
for weeks, until his hope of ever finding his Theodora again had faded
and died. For it was scant justice that was given to the Greeks by
their masters, who treated them as a thoughtless man will scarce treat
an animal that annoys him. Rape, cruelty, robbery was their method of
rule, and for the unruly a noose.

Since that time one thought, and one only, possessed his brain, a
thought which whispered to him all day and shouted to him in sleep--the
lust for vengeance; not on one Turk alone, on those who had carried
Theodora off, but on the whole of that race of devils. For eleven years
he had thought and schemed and worked, at first only with nothing more
than wild words and bloody thoughts, but of late in a soberer belief
that his day would come; for organized schemes of throwing off the
Turkish rule were on foot, and though they were still things only to be
whispered, it was known that agents of the Club of Patriots were doing
sure and silent work all over the country.

Father Andréa was a tall, finely made man, and, to judge from his
appearance, the story that he would tell you, how he and his family
were of pure Greek descent, had good warrant. He came from the
southwest part of Argolis, a rough, mountainous land which the Turks
had never entirely subdued. His father had died five years before, but
when Andréa went home after the capture of his daughter, the old man
had turned him out of the house and refused to see him again.

"A child is a gift which God has given the father," said he; "it were
better for him to lose himself than lose God's gift; and now we, who
are of the few who have not mixed with that devil-brood--we are fallen
even as others. You have brought disgrace on me, and on our dead, and
on our living, and I would sooner have seen you dead yourself than hear
this from your lips!"

"They were six to one," said Andréa, "and they left me for dead. Would
to God they had killed me!"

"Would to God they had killed you," said his father, "and her too."

"The fault was not mine. Will you not forgive me?"

"Yes, when the fault is wiped out by the death of Theodora."

"Of Theodora? What has she done?"

"She will grow up in shame, and mate with devils. Go!"

Five years passed before they met again. But one day Andréa's father,
left lonely in his house, moved by some vague desire which he hardly
understood himself, saddled his mule and went to Nauplia, whither
Andréa had gone. He was very old and very feeble in body, and perhaps
he felt that death could not be far from him; and to Andréa's cry of
welcome and wonder--"I have come to you, my son," said the old man,
"for otherwise we are both alone, and--and I am very old."

Day by day he used to sit looking up and down the road for Theodora.
There was a bend in it some quarter of a mile farther up, and
sometimes, when the spring days were warm to his bones, he would hobble
up to the corner and sit waiting for her there, where he could command
a longer stretch of country. But Theodora came not, and one evening,
when he came back, he sank into a chair without strength and called
Andréa to him.

"I am dying," he said, "and this is no season to waste idle words. When
Theodora comes back"--he always clung to the idea that she would come
back--"tell her that I waited for her every day, for I should have
loved to see her again. And if you find it hard, Andréa, to forgive
her, forgive her for my sake, for she was very little and the fault was
not hers; nor is it yours, and I was hard on you; yet if I had loved
you not, I should have cared the less. But if, when the day comes,
you spare your hand and do not take vengeance on the Turks to the
uttermost, then may my ghost tear you limb from limb, and give you to
the vultures and the jackals."

The old man rose from his chair.

"Vengeance!" he cried; "death to man, woman, and child. Smite and spare
not, for you are a priest of God and they are of the devil. Smite,
smite, avenge!"

He sank back in his chair again, his head fell over on to his shoulder,
and his arms rattled against the woodwork. And with vengeance on his
lips, and the desire of vengeance in his heart, he died.

From that day a double portion of his spirit seemed to have descended
on Father Andréa. One hope and one desire ruled his life--to help in
wiping out from Greece the whole race of Turks. To him innocent or
guilty mattered not; they were of one accursed brood. But though the
longing burned like fire within him, he kept it in, choking it as it
were with fresh fuel. He was willing to wait till all was ready. For
a year or two large organizations had been at work in North Greece
collecting funds, and, by means of secret agents, feeding and fanning
the smouldering hate against their brutal masters in the minds of the
people. Soon would the net be so drawn round them that escape was
impossible. And then vengeance in the name of God.

Mitsos had encouraged a small charcoal fire to heat the water, and he
went to fetch the eggs. Two minutes of puckered brow were devoted to
the number which he was free to boil. His father usually ate two, the
priest--and he cursed his own good memory--never ate more than one, and
he himself invariably ate as many as he could possibly get. He looked
at the basket of eggs thoughtfully. "It is a hungry day," he said to
himself, "and the hens are very strong. Perhaps father might eat three,
and perhaps Father Andréa might eat two. Then I am allowed three, a
tale of eight."

Mitsos drew a sigh of satisfaction at this liberal conclusion, and his
eyes began to smile; his mouth followed suit, and showed a row of very
white teeth.

"It is such a pity that I am always hungry," he said to himself; "but
when Uncle Nicholas measures me he will see I have grown."

And putting the eight eggs into the pot, he ran off to pick the
cherries.

For the last year both Constantine, Mitsos' father, and the boy had
worked the little land he owned, like common laborers. Two years before
a Turkish pasha, Abdul Achmet by name, in passing through the country
had been struck by the Avilion climate of Nauplia, and had built a
house on the shore of the bay. The land belonged to Constantine, and
the Turk had promised him a fair price for it, feeling that a less
scrupulous man would have taken it off-hand. At the same time he
intimated that if he would not take a fair price for it, he would
get no price at all. The money, of course, was still owing, and on
Constantine's old vineyard stood the house, now finished. Abdul Achmet,
who was Governor of Argos, took up his quarters here permanently,
with his harem; for it was within easy distance of Argos, and on warm
evenings the women were often seen in the garden looking over the
sea-wall which separated it from the bay, a wall some ten feet high,
over which creepers sprawled and flamed. Abdul himself was a fat,
middle-aged Turk, slow of movement and sparing of speech. In temper of
mind he was a Gallio, and his neglect to pay Constantine the money he
owed him was as much due to negligence as to the usual Turkish method
of dealing with Greeks, which was not to pay at all. His harem, for the
years had long since quenched the ardor of his body, were given a good
deal of freedom, and were allowed to wander about the garden, which was
walled off from the country road, as they pleased.

Constantine had applied several times for payment, but had already
given up hopes of securing any equivalent for the land seized. He was a
Greek of the upper peasant class--that is to say, of the first class of
the country--who lived on their own land and employed labor. Like his
race, he was thrifty and industrious; but now, between the loss of his
vineyard and the iniquitous increase in the last year's taxes, which
promised to grow indefinitely, he found it difficult to do more than
make a sparing livelihood. He and Mitsos worked all the spring with
the laborers in the harvest-field, and in the autumn, when they had
finished making the wine from a half-acre of vines still left them, as
laborers in the neighboring vineyards.

Constantine felt the change in his position acutely. Instead of being
a man with men under him, he was himself obliged to work for his
bread, and, what was an added bitterness, it was by gross injustice,
and through no fault of his own, that he was thus reduced. Every year
the taxation became more and more heavy; only six months before he had
been obliged to sell his horse, for a new tax was levied on horses, and
all that remained were an acre or two of ground, a pony, his house,
and his boat. But of late he seemed to have taken up a patient,
uncomplaining attitude, which much puzzled the growling Greeks whom he
met at the cafés. While others grumbled and cursed the Turks beneath
their breath, Constantine would sit with a quiet smile on his lips,
looking half amused, half indulgent. Only two nights before a neighbor
had said to him, point blank:

"You have suffered more than any of us, except perhaps those who have
daughters. Why do you sit there smiling? Are things so prosperous with
you?"

The question was evidently prearranged, for the two or three men
sitting round stopped talking and waited for him to answer.

Constantine knocked the ashes out of his chibouk before replying.

"Things are not prosperous with me," he said; "but I am a man who can
hold his tongue. This I may tell you, however: Nicholas Vidalis comes
here in three days."

"And then?"

"Nicholas will advise you to hold your tongues, too. He will certainly
tell you that, and it may be he will tell you something besides. I will
be going home. Good-night, friends."

And now, when Father Andréa was cursing the Turks in the name of God,
though Constantine crossed himself at that name, he watched him with
the same smile. Then he said:

"Father Andréa, I ask your pardon, but Nicholas does not like too much
talk. He says that talking never yet mended a matter. You know him--in
these things he is not a man of many words, save where it serves some
purpose."

The priest turned round.

"You are right and wrong," he said; "Nicholas is a man of few words;
but I have made a vow that for every time the sun rises, and at every
noonday and every sunset, I will curse the Turk in God's name. That vow
I will keep."

Constantine shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"Well, here is Mitsos. Do not curse before the boy. Mitsos, is dinner
ready?"

Mitsos wrinkled up his forehead till his eyebrows nearly disappeared
under his curly hair.

"Yes, it is ready; but for me, I can find one shoe only."

"Well, look for the other."

"I have looked for it," said the boy, "but it is not, and I ache for
emptiness."

He raised his eyes appealingly to his father, but Constantine was firm.

"You must find it first," he said. "Come, Father, let us go in."

Father Andréa followed him, leaving Mitsos half-shod and disconsolate.




CHAPTER II

THE COMING OF NICHOLAS VIDALIS


An hour later, Mitsos, having found his shoe and eaten his dinner in
decency, was curled up in the shady corner of the veranda fast asleep.
He had been out fishing most of the night before, and as the harvest
was over there was no work on hand except to water the vines when the
sun was off the vineyard, which would not be before four. He slept, as
his father said, like a dog--that is to say, he curled himself up and
fell into a light sleep, from which any noise would arouse him--as soon
as he shut his eyes.

He was an enormous boy, of the Greek country type, close on the edge
of manhood, with black, curly hair coming down onto his shoulders,
straight, black eyebrows, long, black eyelashes, and black eyes. His
nose was short and square-tipped, his mouth the fine, scornful mouth
of his race, quick to reflect the most passing shades of emotion.
His hands and face were of that inimitable color for which sun,
wind, and rain are the sole cosmetic--a particularly soft, clear
brown, shading off a little round the eyes and under the hair. As he
slept, with his head thrown back, there showed on his neck the sharp
line where the tanning ended and the whiter skin began. He had that
out-door appearance which is the inheritance of those whose fathers
and grandfathers have lived wholesomely in the open air from sunrise
to sunset all their lives, and who have followed the same course of
life themselves. He had kicked off his shoes again, and his hands were
clasped behind his head, and what would at once characterize him to any
one who was acquainted with the Greek peasant race was that both hands
and feet were clean.

He slept for a couple of hours, and was awakened by the pale,
dust-ridden sunshine creeping round the corner of the veranda and
falling on his head. At first he rolled over again with his face to the
wall, but in a few moments, realizing the uselessness of temporizing,
he got up and stretched himself lazily and luxuriously, with a
cavernous yawn. Then he went round to the stone fountain which stood at
the back of the house and plunged his head into the bright cool water
to finish the process of awakening, and, seeing that the tall shade of
the poplar had stretched its length across the vineyard, took up his
spade and went off to his work.

The stream, which passed through their garden and out into the bay
below, ran for some half-mile along a little raised aqueduct, banked up
with earth to keep it to its course. It passed between small vineyard
plots on each side, so that the water could be turned into them for
irrigation, and Mitsos went out of the garden gate straight into their
vineyard, which lay just above.

Each of the vines stood in its several little artificial hollow dug in
the ground, and he first cleared the water-channels in the vineyard of
all accumulated rubbish and soil, so that, when he let the stream in,
it might flow to all the trees. Having done this, he went back to the
aqueduct and removed a spadeful of earth from the bank, which he placed
in the bed of the stream itself, stamping it down to keep it firm, so
that the whole of the water was diverted into the vineyard. Standing,
as he did, a few feet above the surface of the vines, he could see when
the water had reached them all, and then, hooking out his temporary dam
from the bed of the stream, he replaced it, so as to again send the
water back into its channel; then, jumping down, he hoed away round
the roots of the vines, so that the water might sink well in close to
them, for there had been no rain for weeks, and they must be thoroughly
watered.

The sun was off the land, but it was still very hot, for the sirocco
had increased in violence and was sweeping over the fields like the
blast from the pit. On the windward side of the trees the dark rich
green of the vine-leaves was powdered over with the fine white dust
driven up from the bare, harvested fields. Mitsos stopped now and then
to wipe the sweat off his forehead, but otherwise he worked hard and
continuously, singing to himself the peasant song of the vine-diggers.

His work was nearly over when he saw his father coming towards him. The
latter stood for a moment on the edge of the bank, looking at what the
boy had been doing.

"Poor little Mitsos," he said, "you have had to work alone to-day! I
was obliged to go into Nauplia. You have watered the vines very well.
You have finished, have you not?"

"There are three more vines here," said Mitsos, "which are yet to be
dug. But it won't take long."

His father stepped down into the vineyard.

"You can go and rest," he said. "I'll finish those."

Mitsos threw down his spade.

"Oh, it is hotter than hell!" he said. "Uncle Nicholas will be roasted
coming across the plain."

"He will want a bath," said Constantine. "Do you remember his making
a bath last year out of those spare planks? I suppose it holds water
still?"

"I wish it didn't hold so much," said Mitsos; "it holds six cans."

Constantine laughed.

"And Mitsos' back will ache, eh?"

"I hope not; but it is a great affair to carry six cans of water from
the fountain."

Constantine worked on for half an hour or so, while Mitsos looked on.

"There, that is finished," he said, at last. "You won't go fishing
to-night, will you? The wind is too strong."

"It may go down at sunset," said Mitsos; "but there are enough fish for
to-night and to-morrow night, unless this hot weather turns them. But I
put them in the cellar in water, and I expect they will keep."

They walked back together, but as soon as they got onto the road they
saw that three mules were standing opposite the house. Constantine
quickened his pace.

"Nicholas must have come," he said. "He was ever quicker than a man
could expect. Come, Mitsos."

The veranda was full of boxes and rugs, and the two went through into
the house. A man was sitting on a low chair by the window. As they came
in he got up.

"Well, Constantine," he said, "how is all with you? I have just come.
And Mitsos, little Mitsos is growing still. I will give you a hundred
piastres when you are as tall as your father. It is the devil's own
day, Constantine, and I am full inside and out of this gritty wind. Man
is not a hen that he should sit all day in the dust. May I have a bath
at once? Mitsos, we made a bath together. The mule men will help you to
fill it."

He laid his hand on Mitsos' shoulder.

"You look fitter than a mountain hawk," he said. "Get me plenty of
water, and give me ten minutes of scouring, and then we will talk
together while I dress."

Mitsos left the room, and Constantine turned to his brother-in-law.
"Well?" he asked.

"He is a fine boy," said Nicholas; "I must see if he can be trusted."

"A Turk would trust him," said his father, eagerly.

"Ha! we shall not require that. But in the face of fear?"

Constantine laughed.

"He does not know what fear is."

"Then he has that to learn," said Nicholas, "for the bravest men
learn that best. No one can be brave until he has known the cold fear
clutching at the stomach. However, we shall see."

Nicholas was dressed like Constantine, in Albanian costume, with a
woollen cloak thrown over one shoulder, a red embroidered jacket, cut
very low and open, showing the shirt, a long fustanella and white
leggings, tied with tasselled ends. He was tall and spare, and his face
seemed the face of a man of forty who had lived very hard, or of a man
of fifty who had lived very carefully. In reality he was nearly sixty.
He was clean shaven and very pale in complexion, as one who had never
lived an out-door life; but you might have been led to reject such a
conclusion, if you remarked the wonderful clearness and freshness of
his skin. His eyes looked out from deep under a broad bar which crossed
his forehead from temple to temple; they were large and dark gray in
color, and gathered additional depth from his thick black eyebrows.
His nose was finely chiselled, tending to aquiline, with thin, curved
nostrils, which seemed never still, but expanded and contracted with
the movement of the nostrils of some well-bred horse snuffing some
disquieting thing. His mouth was ascetically thin-lipped, but firm and
clean cut. His hair, still thick and growing low on his forehead and
long behind, was barely touched with gray above the temples. His head
was set very straight and upright on a rather long neck, supported
on two well-drilled shoulders. In height he could not have been less
than six feet three, and his slightness of make made him appear almost
gigantic.

"I have travelled from Corinth to-day," he continued, "and there is
much to tell you. At last the Club of Patriots have put the Morea
entirely into my hands. I have leave to use the funds as I think fit,
and it is I who shall say the word for the vintage of the Turks to
begin. Are there men here whom you can trust, or are they all mule-folk
and chatterers?"

"The main are mule-folk," said Constantine.

"The mule-folk can be useful," remarked Nicholas; "but the man who
travels with a mule to show the way goes a short journey. They follow
where they are led, but some one has to lead. But is there not a priest
here--Father Andréa, I think--with a trumpet for a voice? I should like
to see him. As far as I remember, he talked too much, yet you would not
call him a chatterer."

"He curses the Turk in the name of God three times a day," said
Constantine. "It is a vow."

"And little harm will the Turk suffer from that. Better that he should
learn to bless them, or best to keep a still tongue. Well, little
Mitsos, is the bath ready? You will excuse me, Constantine, but I am an
uneasy man when I am dirty. Come to my room in ten minutes, Mitsos, and
tell me of yourself."

"There is little to tell," said Mitsos.

"We will hope, then, that it is all good. By the way, Constantine, I
have brought some wine with me. Mitsos will drop it into the fountain,
for it must be tepid. Tepid wine saps a man's self-respect, and if a
man, or a boy either, doesn't respect himself, Mitsos, nobody will ever
respect him."

Mitsos followed him out of the room with his eyes, and then turned to
his father.

"My hands are so dirty from that vine-digging," he whispered. "Do you
think Uncle Nicholas saw?"

"He sees everything," said his father. "Wash, then, before you go up to
his room."

Mitsos adored his uncle Nicholas with a unique devotion, for Nicholas
was a finer make of man than any he had ever seen. He had been to
foreign countries, a feat only attainable by sailing for weeks in big
ships. He had been able to talk to some French sailors who had once
been wrecked, within Mitsos' memory, on the coast near, and understand
what they said, though no one in the place, not even the mayor, could
do that; indeed the latter, before Nicholas had interpreted, roundly
asserted that they spoke as sparrows speak. Then Uncle Nicholas was
constantly going on mysterious journeys and turning up again when he
was least expected, but always welcome; and he had a wonderfully low,
soft voice, as unlike as possible to the discordant throats of the
country folk; and he had long, muscular hands and pink nails. Also he
could shoot wild pigeon when they were flying, whereas the utmost that
the mayor's son, who was the acknowledged Nimrod of the neighborhood,
could do, was to shoot them if they were walking about. Even then he
could only hit them for certain if there were several of them together
and he got very close. Also Uncle Nicholas was omniscient: he knew
the names of all birds and plants; he could imitate a horse's neigh
so well that a grazing beast would leave its fodder and come to his
voice; and once when Mitsos was laid up with the fever he had picked
some common-looking leaves from the hedge and boiled them in water, and
given him the water to drink, the effect of which was that next morning
he awoke quite well. Above all, Nicholas told the most enchanting
stories about what he had seen at the ends of the earth.

So Mitsos washed his hands and went up to Nicholas's room, finding him
already bathed and half dressed. His dusty clothes lay on the floor,
and he pointed to them as Mitsos came in.

"I shall be here four days at the least," he said, "and I want these
washed before I go away. The most important thing in the world is to be
clean, Mitsos."

"Father Andréa says--" began the boy.

"Well, what does Father Andréa say?"

"He says that to love God and hate the devil--I think he means the
Turk--is the most important thing."

"Well, Father Andréa is right. But you must remember that I am right
too. Sit you in the window, Mitsos, and talk to me. What have you been
doing since I was here?"

"Looking after the vines," said Mitsos, "since the reaping was over.
And I go fishing very often, almost every night."

"Then to-morrow we will go together; to-night I have much to say to
your father."

"Will you really come with me?" asked the boy. "And will you tell me
some more stories?"

"Yes, I have a new set of stories, which you shall hear--I want to know
what you will think of them. How old are you?"

"Eighteen, nineteen in November; and my mustache is coming."

Nicholas turned the boy's face round to the light.

"Yes, an owner's eye might detect something. Why do you want a
mustache?"

"Because men have mustaches."

"And you want to be a man," said Nicholas; "but a man makes his
mustache, not his mustache the man. But before we go down I have one
thing to say to you, a thing you must never forget: if a Turk ever asks
you if you know aught about me, where I am, or where I may be going,
you must always say you know nothing. Say you have not set eyes on me
for more than a year. Do you understand? That must be your answer and
no other."

"I understand, just that I have not seen you for a year, and know
nothing about you."

"Yes. Whatever happens, do you think you can always answer that and no
more? I may as well tell you that if you answer more than that, if,
when you are questioned--I do not say you will ever be questioned, but
you may be--you tell them where I am, or whether I am expected here, or
anything of the kind, you will perhaps be killing me as surely as if
you shot me this moment with my own gun. Do you promise?"

"Of course, I promise," said Mitsos, with crisp, boyish petulance.

"And should they threaten to kill you if you do not tell them?"

"Why do you ask me?" he said. "I have made the promise."

Nicholas laid his hand on the boy's shoulder, and with a flashing
eye--"And, by God, I believe you are one to keep it!" he said.

The sirocco blew itself out during the night, and a light north wind
had taken its place when day dawned. A smell extraordinarily clean was
in the air, and the whole sky was brisk with the sparkling air of the
south. Northwards from Nauplia the sharp mountainous outlines of the
Argive hills were cut out clear against the pale cobalt of the heavens,
glowing pink in the sunrise, and all their glens and hollows were
brimmed with bluest shadow. To the west, a furlong away, the waters of
the bay gleamed with a transparent, aqueous tint; you would have said
that two skies had been melted together to make the sea. Beyond, the
hills over which the Turkish road to Tripoli wound like a climbing,
yellow snake, lay still in darkness. The lower slopes were covered with
pines; above, the bare, gray stone climbed up, shoulder by shoulder,
to meet the sky. By degrees, as the sun rose higher, the light struck
first the tops, and flowed caressingly down from peak to spur, and spur
to slope, till it reached the lower rounded hills at the base, and then
flashed across the bay and the plain of Argos. There it caught first
the tawny fortress walls of the citadel which kept guard over the town,
then the town itself which clustered round its base, until suddenly
from Constantine's house the sun swung over the rim of the hills to the
northeast, and the whole plain leaped from shadow into light.

There had been a heavy dew during the night, and the close-reaped
cornfields were a loom of gossamer webs, hanging pearly and iridescent
between the stubble-stalks, and in the vineyards the upper surface of
the broad, strong leaves was wet and shining, as if with a fresh coat
of indescribable green. In that first moment of light and heat all the
odors of flowering plants, grafted on the wholesome smell of moist
earth, which had been hanging as if asleep close to the ground all
night, rose and dispersed themselves in the air. A breath of wind shook
the web of sweet smell out of the mimosa trees that grew at the gate
of Constantine's garden, and sent it spreading and shifting like the
gossamers in the fields on to the veranda, and in at the open windows.
The border of wild thyme by the porch trembled like a row of fine
steel springs as the wind passed over it, and gave out its offering
of incense to the morning. A sparrow lit on a spray of rose and flew
off again, scattering dew-drops and petals. The world smiled, breathed
deep, and awoke.

During the morning Mitsos was chiefly employed in making coffee, for
many of the leading Greeks, to whom the secret of the imminent uprising
was known, came from Nauplia to see Nicholas, and to each must be
offered a cup of Turkish coffee. Nicholas sat in the veranda with his
narghilé, which he smoked without intermission, and he appeared to
be giving instructions to his visitors. Among the first to come was
Father Andréa, whom he treated with great respect. When he rose to go,
Nicholas accompanied him as far as the back gate, which led into a
field path towards his house, and Mitsos, who was washing cups at the
fountain screened behind bushes, heard them go by talking.

As they parted he heard Nicholas say, "Above all, be silent. We shall
want you to talk later, and to talk then with the full voice. At
present a word overheard might ruin everything, and the devil himself
scarcely knows when he is being overheard. Even now Mitsos, whom you
never noticed, but whom I noticed, knows all I say to you. Mitsos, come
here."

Mitsos came, cup in hand, flushed and angry.

"You are not fair to me, Uncle Nicholas," he said. "I was not
listening. I could not help hearing."

"No, little one, I am not blaming you," said Nicholas; "I only wanted
Father Andréa to see. That is an instance to hand, father; please let
there not be more. And here is my offering to the Christ and to my
patron saint for having brought me here safely."

Nicholas was punctual to his promise to Mitsos, and soon after sunset
they went off together to where the boat was lying. Mitsos carried a
couple of big pewter ladles, a bag full of resin, a wicker creel for
the fish, and two spears, while Nicholas walked on a little ahead with
the net wound round his shoulders. They were to begin the evening's
work with the spears, and later when the moon was up to sail across the
far side of the bay, where they would use the sweep-net in the shallow
water, where the bottom was sandy and shelving. But the nearer shore of
the bay was rocky, descending rapidly into deep water, and was no place
for netting. Nicholas, however, got into the boat in order to arrange
the net and dispose the lead in what he considered a more satisfactory
manner, leaving the boy to do the spearing alone.

Mitsos took off his linen trousers, fastening his shirt round his waist
with a leather belt. He then slung the creel and the bag round his
neck, and putting a half handful of resin into the ladle, set light to
it, took the spear in his right hand, and rolling up his sleeves to the
shoulder, stepped into the sea. He held the flare close to the surface,
so that its light showed clearly on the bottom of the shallow water, a
luminous lure for the fish. The spear he held ready to bring down if he
saw anything.

It was a scene which Rembrandt would have painted with the hand of
love. The moon was not yet risen, but in the clear starlight the
edges of the serrated hills were sharply etched against the sky, and
the water of the bay, just curdled by the wind, lay vast and sombre
across to the farther shore. The light from the resin-flare vaguely
showed the lines of the boat in which Nicholas was preparing the net,
but all was dim except Mitsos' figure and a few feet of glittering,
flame-scribbled water round him. The highest light was cast on his
brown down-bent face and on his left arm bared to the shoulder, which
stood out as clear-cut as a cameo against the darkness behind, and as
he moved, the water, which lapped about his knees, was stirred into
fire-crested ripples. The sea was slightly phosphorescent, and his
trail was palely luminous like the Milky Way. Now and again, with a
sudden splendid motion, down went the poised spear with a splashing
cluck into the sea, and he would draw it up again, sometimes with a
red mullet, sometimes with a thin brill flapping and struggling on the
point. More rarely he missed his aim, and looked up at Nicholas smiling
and showing his white teeth.

At the end of half an hour the latter had finished his fresh leading
of the net, and as a stiffer breeze had awoke, ruffling the surface
of the water and making it difficult to see the fish distinctly, they
started to sail across the bay. Mitsos waded out to the boat, trousers
and shoes in hand, set the big brown sail, and giving a vigorous shove
or two with the oar sent the boat round so that it caught the wind. In
a moment it heeled over without stirring, and then the whisper of its
moving came sibilantly from the forefoot, and gathering speed it glided
on across the dark water.

Nicholas had taken the rudder, and Mitsos sat down beside him.

"Eight mullet and a dozen other fish," he said. "That is no bad catch
for half an hour. Put her head for under that point, Uncle Nicholas. Do
you see it? There is a house with a light burning a little above it."

"I see. It will take nearly an hour with this wind. Well, what is it?"

"Will you tell me some of the new stories, Uncle Nicholas?"

"No, we will keep the stories for when we go home. It will take us
twice as long to get back against this wind. They are long stories."

For nearly an hour they sailed on in comparative silence; the wind had
freshened, and from over the hills towards Tripoli there came blinking
flashes of summer lightning. The lamp in the house above the point to
which they were steering had been put out, but in the half-darkness of
the summer night the promontory itself was clearly visible. Towards the
east the hills were blocked out with a strange intensity of blackness,
for the moon was on the point of rising behind them, and the deep
velvet blue of the zenith had turned to dove-color.

"Now for our fishing, Mitsos," said Nicholas, as they drew near to the
shore. "Can we run the boat in behind the promontory?"

"Yes, there is four feet of water right up to the land. Just there the
shore is steep. I will take in the sail."

"There is no need. As soon as we pass the corner it will be dead calm."

Nicholas put the helm hard to port as soon as they were opposite the
little point; next moment the sail flapped like a wounded bird against
the mast, and they ran up to the rocks. Mitsos jumped out and tied the
boat up.

They lifted the net on shore, and made their way round the wooded
headland to the little bays which they were to fish. Here the shore was
sandy and shelving, and sprinkled with clumps of succulent seaweed
which grew up from the rocks below, a favorite feeding ground, as
Mitsos knew, for mullet and sole. Nicholas had put on Constantine's
long fishing-boots, reaching up to his hips, before he left the boat,
Mitsos, as before, merely taking off his shoes and trousers.

The net was some twenty-five yards long, and Mitsos, taking one end
into his hand, stepped into the water at right angles to the shore.
He waded out till the net was taut between them, and then Nicholas
followed. As soon as the latter was some ten yards from land they both
moved shorewards up the little bay, which lay in front of them, getting
gradually nearer to each other as they approached the beach, till
when they were within five or six yards of the land they were walking
together, the net trailing in a great bagging oval behind them. The
resistance of the water, the dragging of the lead along the bottom,
and, it was to be hoped, the spoils enclosed made no small weight,
and it was a quarter of an hour or so before they got it in. The moon
had risen, and it was easy to see the silvery glitter of the fish as
they lay fluttering in the dark meshes of the net. The flat, brown
soles, however, required a more careful search, and the sound of their
flapping, rather than the eye, led to their discovery.

They fished for an hour or two with only moderate success, until Mitsos
proposed they should try a little farther down the coast, where shoals
of a certain fish, as small as the whitebait, and as sweet, grazed the
watery pastures. Here the depth was somewhat greater, and before going
in Mitsos divested himself of his shirt, leaving it on the rocks, and
went in completely naked. Nicholas, who had put himself entirely under
his directions, waited in the shallower water near the shore till the
boy had waded out to where the water covered him to the waist; then, as
before, they moved in converging lines towards the shore.

They had approached to within about twenty yards of the beach, and
within about five yards of each other, when Mitsos stopped and pointed
back. The upper edge of the net, fitted at intervals with corks to keep
it floating, was visible on the bright surface of the sea, trailing in
an irregular oval. But inside this oval the moonlit water was strangely
agitated and unquiet, quivering like a jarred metal-plate, and from
moment to moment a little silvery speck would glitter on it.

"Look," he said to Nicholas, "the little fish are there. We must be as
quick as we can. Sometimes if the shoal begins jumping they will all
jump out."

And bending forward to get his whole weight into the work, he pushed
forward towards the land.

The moonlight fell full on his body, dripping and glistening from the
waist downwards with the salt water, and threw the straining muscles
which line the spine, and those chords behind the shoulder-blade which
painters love, into strong light and shadow, as he pulled against the
weight of the dragging net. Already the water came only to his knees,
and the catch was imminent, when suddenly from the net there came a
rustle and a splash like myriad little pebbles being thrown into the
sea, and he turned round just in time to see the whole shoal, which
glistened like a silver sheet, rise and drop into the water outside.

"The little Turks," he said, angrily, "they are all gone."

"Better to pull the net in and look," said Nicholas; "a part only may
have leaped."

Mitsos shook his head.

"When they go like that it is all of them," he said.

Mitsos was quite right. There was a stray fish or two still in the net,
but so few that they were hardly worth picking out.

"That will do for to-night, won't it?" he said. "We have fished all the
best places."

Nicholas assenting, he lay down and rolled over in the warm, dry sand
once or twice, and then standing up brushed the wet stuff off his body.
Then spreading the net out on the rocks higher up on the beach, Mitsos
went off to fetch his shirt. Nicholas employed himself in picking up a
few stray fish, and put them into the creel. Then rolling up the net
they walked back to the boat.




CHAPTER III

THE STORY OF A BRIGAND


The wind, which had taken them straight across the bay, still blew
freshening from the same quarter, and was dead against them. They would
have to make two long tacks to get home--the first, right across to the
island in the middle of the bay; the second, back again to the head of
it; and as soon as they were well off on the outward tack, Mitsos went
to the stern of the boat and sat down by Nicholas.

"It is time for the stories, is it not?" he said.

"Yes, we will have the stories now."

Nicholas paused a moment.

"Mitsos," he said, "I am going to tell you about a part of my life of
which I have never spoken to you before, for, until now, I have only
told you boys' stories to amuse a boy. But now I am going to tell you a
story for a man. This all happened before you were born, twenty years
ago, when I was a brigand."

Mitsos stared.

"A brigand, Uncle Nicholas? You?"

"Brigand, outlaw, klepht, whatever you like to call it. A man with a
price set on his head--it is there now for you to take if you like--a
man without any home but the mountains. Yet one may do worse than live
in the mountains, Mitsos, and drink to the 'good bullet,' praying one
might be killed rather than fall alive into the hands of the Turk.
The first part of my story is like many other stories I have told you
before; it is the second part, when I tell you why I was a brigand,
that will be new to you--a story, as I have said, not for a boy, but
for a man.

"I used to live then at Dimitzana, in Arcadia, and I became a brigand
on the night that my wife died. Why and how that happened comes later.
Well, there I was living in the mountains round Arcadia, sheltering and
hiding for the most part of the day in the woods, but keeping near some
mountain path, so that if a Turk or two or three came by I could--how
shall I say it?--do business with them. For a month or two I was
a-hunting alone, and then I was joined by other men from Dimitzana, who
also had become outlaws. With them I went hunting on rather a larger
scale--we used to take Turks and get ransoms for them. But never did we
take or molest a Greek or lay hands on any woman, Greek or Turk. For
the most part we were very fortunate, and all the time we lost but few
men, and of those the heads of none fell into the hands of the Turks,
for if one was wounded beyond healing we all went and kissed him and
said good-bye; and then one cut his head off and buried it, so that the
Turks should not dishonor him."

Nicholas paused a moment, and then laughed gently to himself.

"Never in my life shall I forget when we took Mohammed Bey--a fat-belly
man, Mitsos, and a devil, with a paunch for two men and a woman's skin.
To see him tied on his mule, crying out to Allah and Mohammed to rescue
him and his dinner from the infidels, as if Mohammed had nothing better
to do than look after such swine! I told him that he would only spend
a day or two with us in the mountains until his friends ransomed him,
adding that we would do our best to make him comfortable. But he wept
tears of pure oil and said that Mohammed would avenge him, which, as
yet, the Prophet has omitted to do. But there is one drawback to that
sort of life, little Mitsos--one cannot keep clean. Sometimes, if one
is travelling or being pursued, one has to go a whole day, or more,
without water to drink, much less to wash in. Once, I remember, we had
been all day without water, and could not find any when we stopped for
the night; but there was a heavy dew, and, though it was a cold night,
we all sat without our shirts for an hour, laying them on the ground
until they were wet with dew, and then wrung them out into our mouths.
Ah, horrible! horrible!"

Nicholas spat over the side of the boat at the thought, and then went
on.

"For the most part we lived up in the mountains to the north of
Arcadia, but somehow or other when summer came we all began to head
southward again. We never spoke to each other of where we were going,
for we all knew. And one evening, just before sunset, we were on the
brow of a big wooded hill above Dimitzana and looked at our homes
again. Homesickness and want of water--these were the two things which
made me suffer, and I would drink the wringings of a shirt sooner than
be sick for home.

"All next day we stopped there, sitting on that spur of wooded hill
looking at home as if our eyes would start from our heads. Now one of
us and then another would roll over, burying his face in his hands, and
the rest of us would pretend not to notice. I cannot say for certain
what the others did when they buried their faces like that; for myself
I can only say that I sobbed--for some had wives there, and some
children. And it hurts a man to sob unless he is a Turk, for Turks sob
if the coffee is not to their taste.

"That evening I could not bear it any longer, and I said to the others,
'I must go down and see my house again.' They tried to stop me, for it
is a foolish thing for an outlaw to go home when there is a price on
his head; but I would not listen to them.

"And I went down to the village and walked up the street, past the
fountain and past the church. I met many Greeks whom I knew, but I
made signs to them that they should not recognize me. Luckily for me
the garrison of Turks had been changed, and though I passed several
soldiers in the street, they stared at me, being a stranger, but did
not know who I was.

"Then I went up past the big plane-tree and saw my house. The windows
were all broken and the door was down, for that, too, had the Turks
done in their malicious anger at not finding me there. And on the
door-step my father was sitting. He was very old, eighty or near it,
and he was playing with a doll that had belonged to my daughter."

Nicholas paused a moment.

"Mitsos," he went on, "you do not know what it is to feel keen,
passionate joy and sorrow mixed together like that, ludicrously. It
is not right that a man should have to bear such a thing, for when
I saw my father sitting there nursing the doll I could not have
contained myself, not if ten companies of angels had been withstanding
me or twenty of devils; and I ran up to him and sat down by him, and
kissed him, and said, 'Father, don't you know me?' But he did not say
anything. He only looked at me in a puzzled sort of way, and went on
nursing his doll.

"It is odd that one remembers these little things, but the stupid face
of the doll, somehow, I remember better than I remember the face of my
father.

"I stopped in the village for an hour, perhaps more, and I swore an
oath which I have never yet forgotten and which I will never forget.
In the church we have a shrine to the blessed Jesus and another to His
mother, and one to St. George, and to each of them I lit tapers and
prayed to them that they would help me to accomplish my oath. They have
helped me and they will help me, and you, Mitsos, can help me, too."

The boy looked up.

"What was your oath, Uncle Nicholas," he said, "and how can I help you?"

He laid his hand on Nicholas's knee, and Nicholas felt it trembling.
The story was going home.

"I will tell you," he said; "but, first, I must tell you how it was I
became an outlaw. This was the way of it:

"You never knew my wife: she died before you were born. She was
the most beautiful and the best-loved of women. That you will not
understand. You do not know yet what a woman is to a man, and your
cousin Helen, to whom the doll belonged, would have been as beautiful
as her mother. A fortnight before I became an outlaw there came a new
officer to command the garrison at Dimitzana. He was a pleasant-seeming
man, and to me, being the mayor of the village, he paid much attention.
He would sit with us all in the garden after dinner. Sometimes I asked
him to take his dinner with us; sometimes he asked me to dine with him.
But Catharine always disliked him; often she was barely civil to him.
He had been in the place nearly a fortnight when I had to go away for
a night, or perhaps two, to Andritsaena for the election of the mayor,
for I had some little property there, and therefore a vote in the
matter. I left about midday, but I had not gone more than four hours
from the town when I met a man from Andritsaena, who told me that the
election would be an affair of form only, as one of the two candidates
had resigned. So I turned my horse round and went home.

"It was dark before I got to the village, and I noticed that there was
no light in my house. However, I supposed that Catharine was spending
the evening with some friend, and I suspected nothing. But it got later
and ever later and she did not come, so at last I went out and called
at all the houses where she was likely to be. She was not at any of
them, and no one had seen her. Then unwillingly, and with a heart grown
somehow suddenly cold, I determined to go to the officer's quarters and
ask if he had seen her. There was a light burning in one of the upper
windows, but the door was locked.

"It was when I found that the door was locked that I drew my pistol
from my belt and loaded it, and then I waited a moment. In that moment
I heard the sound of a woman sobbing and crying from inside the house,
and the next minute I had burst the door open. The room inside was
dark, but a staircase led up from it through the floor of the room
above, and I made two jumps of it. Helen--she was only seven years
old--ran across the room, perhaps knowing my step, crying 'Father,
father!' and as my head appeared the officer fired. He missed me, and
shot Helen dead.

"Before he could fire again I fired at him. He fell with a rattling,
broken sound across the floor, and never spoke nor moved. Catharine was
there, and she came slowly across the room to me.

"'Ah, you have come,' she said; 'you are too late.'

"I sat down on the bed, and my throat was as dry as a sirocco wind, and
laid the double-barrelled pistol, still smoking, by me. Neither of us,
I am sure, gave one thought to the man who was lying there, perhaps
hardly to Helen, for dishonor is worse than death; and for me I could
say no word, but sat there like a thing broken.

"'You are too late,' she repeated; 'and for me this is the only way.'

"And before I could stop her she had taken up the pistol and shot
herself through the head.

"The shots had aroused the soldiers, and two or three burst in up the
stairs. With the officer's pistol, for I had no time to reload mine, I
killed the first, and he went bumping down the stairs, knocking one man
over. Then I opened the window and dropped. It was not more than ten
feet from the ground, and I had only a few feet to fall."

He paused a moment and stood up, letting go of the rudder and raising
his hands.

"God, to whom vengeance belongs," he cried, "and blessed Mother of
Jesus, and holy Nicholas, my patron, help me to keep my vow."

He stood there for a moment in silence.

"And my vow--" he said to Mitsos.

"Your vow--your vow!" cried Mitsos. "The foul devils--your vow is to
root out the Turk, and to-morrow I, too, will light tapers to the holy
saints and make the vow you made. Christ Jesus, the devils! And you
must show me how to keep it."

"Amen to that," said Nicholas. "Enough for to-night, we will speak of
it no more."

He sat down again and took the rudder, and for five minutes or so there
was silence, broken only by the steady hiss of the water round the
boat, and then Mitsos, still in silence and trembling with a strange
excitement, put about on the second tack. Nicholas did not speak, but
sat with wide eyes staring into the darkness, seemingly unconscious of
the boy.

This second tack brought them up close under the sea-wall of Abdul
Achmet, and the white house gleamed brightly in the moonlight. Then, as
Mitsos was putting about again on the tack which would take them home,
Nicholas looked up at it and spoke for the first time.

"That is a new house, is it not?" he said.

"Yes, it is the house of that pig Achmet," said Mitsos.

"Why is he a pig above all other Turks?"

"Because he took our vineyard away and said he would pay a fair price
for it. Not a piastre has he paid. Look, there are a couple of women on
the terrace."

Two women of the house were leaning over the wall. Just as they went
about Nicholas saw a man, probably one of the eunuchs, come up out of
the shadow, and as he got up to them he struck the nearer one on the
face. The woman cried out and said to him, "What is that for?"

Nicholas started and looked eagerly towards them. "Did you hear,
Mitsos?" he said, "she spoke in Greek."

"One of those women?" said Mitsos. "And why not?"

"How do you suppose she knows Greek?"

"Yes, it is strange. We shall not get home in this tack."




CHAPTER IV

THE MIDNIGHT ORDEAL


For the next two days Nicholas devoted himself to the education of
Mitsos. He took the boy out shooting with him and taught him how to
stand as still as a rock or a tree, how to take advantage of the
slightest cover in approaching game, and how, if there was no cover, to
wriggle snake-wise along the ground so that the coarse tall grass and
heather concealed him. There were plenty of mountain hares and roe-deer
on the hills outside Nauplia towards Epidaurus, and they had two days'
excellent shooting.

They were walking home together after sunset on the second day, and
slung over the pony's back were two roe-deer, one of which Mitsos had
shot himself, and several hares which Nicholas, with a skill that
appeared almost superhuman to the boy, had killed running. The pony was
tired and hung back on the bridle, and Mitsos, with the rope over his
shoulder, was pulling more than leading it.

"And if," Nicholas was saying to him, "if you can approach a roe-deer
as you approached that one to-day, Mitsos, without being seen, you can
also approach a man in the same way, for in things like these the most
stupid of beasts is man. And it is very important when you are hunting
man, or being hunted by him, which is quite as exciting and much less
pleasant, that you should be able to approach him, or pass by him
unseen. After two days I shall be going away, but I shall leave this
gun behind for you."

"For me, Uncle Nicholas?" said Mitsos, scarcely believing his ears.

"Yes, but it shall be no toy-thing to you. For the present you must
go out every day shooting, but you must take the sport as a matter
concerning your life or death, instead of the life and death of a piece
of meat. Stalk every roe as if it were a man whose purpose is to kill
you, and if ever it sees you before you get a shot you must cry shame
on yourself for having wasted your time and my gift to you. But go
fishing, too, and treat that seriously. Do not go mooning in the boat
just to amuse yourself, or only for the catching of fish. Before you
start settle how you are to make your course, in two tacks it may be,
or three, and do so. Practise taking advantage of a wind which blows no
stronger than a man whistling."

"I can sail a boat against any one in Nauplia," said Mitsos, proudly.

"And Nauplia is a very small place, little Mitsos. For instance, we
ought to have got back from our fishing in two tacks, not three. And
study the winds--know what wind to expect in the morning, and know
exactly when the land breeze springs up. Go outside the harbor, too;
know the shapes of the capes and inlets of the gulf outside as you know
the shape of your own hand."

"But how can I shoot and fish, and also look after the vines and get
work in other vineyards in the autumn?"

"That will be otherwise seen to. Obey your father absolutely. I have
spoken to him. Also, you stop at home too much in the evenings. Go and
sit at the cafés in the town and play cards and draughts after dinner,
yet not only for the sake of playing. Keep your ears always open, and
remember all you hear said about these Turks. When I come back you
must be able to tell me, if I ask you, who are good Greeks, who would
risk something for the sake of their wives and children, and who are
the mules, who care for nothing but to drink their sour wine and live
pig-lives. Above all, remember that you haven't seen me for a year--for
two, if you like."

Mitsos laughed.

"Let it not be a year before you come again, uncle."

"It may be more; I cannot tell. You are full young, but--but--well, we
shall see when I come back. Here we are on the plain again. Give me
that lazy brute's bridle. Are you tired, little one?"

"Hungry, chiefly."

"And I also. But, luckily, it is a small thing whether one is hungry
or not. You will learn some day what it is to be dead beat--so hungry
that you cannot eat, so tired that you cannot sleep. And when that day
comes, for come it will, God send you a friend to be by your side, or
at least a drain of brandy; but never drink brandy unless you feel you
will be better for it. Well, that is counsel enough for now. If you
remember it all, and act by it, it will be a fine man we shall make of
the little one."

Nicholas went to see the mayor of Nauplia the next day, and told
Mitsos he had to put on his best clothes and come with him. His best
clothes were, of course, Albanian, consisting of a frilled shirt, an
embroidered jacket, fustanella, gaiters, and red shoes with tassels. To
say that he abhorred best clothes as coverings for the skin would be
a weak way of stating the twitching discomfort they produced in him;
but somehow, when Nicholas was there, it seemed to him natural to wish
to look smart, and he found himself regretting that his fustanella
had not been very freshly washed, and that it was getting ingloriously
short for his long legs.

The mayor received Nicholas with great respect, and ordered his wife to
bring in coffee and spirits for them. He looked at Mitsos with interest
as he came in, and, as Mitsos thought, nodded to Nicholas as if there
was some understanding between them.

When coffee had come and the woman had left the room, Nicholas drew his
chair up closer, and beckoned Mitsos to come to him.

"This is the young wolf," he said. "He is learning to prowl for
himself."

"So that he may prowl for others?" said Demetri.

"Exactly. Now, friend, I go to-morrow, and while I am away I want you
to be as quiet as a hunting cat. I have done all I wanted to do here,
and it is for you to keep very quiet till we are ready. There has been
much harm done in Athens by men who cannot hold their tongues. As you
know, the patriots there are collecting money and men, but they are so
proud of their subscriptions, which are very large, that they simply
behave like cocks at sunrise on the house-roofs. Here let there be no
talking. When the time comes Father Andréa will speak; he will put the
simmering-pot on the fire. I would give five years of my life to be
able to talk as he can talk."

"The next five years?" asked Demetri.

Nicholas smiled.

"Well, no, not the next five years. I would not give them up for fifty
thousand years of heaven, I think. Have you any corn?"

"Black corn for the Turk?"

"Surely."

Demetri glanced at Mitsos, and raised his eyebrows. "Even now the mills
are grinding," he said.

"Let there be no famine."

Mitsos, of course, understood no word of this, and his uncle did not
think fit to enlighten him.

"You will hear more about the black corn," he said to him. "It makes
good bread. At present forget that you have heard of it at all. Have
you got these men for me?" he asked, turning again to Demetri.

"Yes; do you want them to-day?"

"No. Mitsos will go with me as far as Nemea, and they had better join
me there to-morrow night. Turkish dress will be safer."

He rose, leaving the brandy untasted.

"Will you not drink?" asked Demetri.

"No, thanks. I never drink spirits."

Nicholas left next day after sunset, for a half-moon would be rising
by ten of the night, and during the day the plain was no better than
a grilling-rack. Already also it was safer for Greeks to travel by
night, for it was known or suspected among the Turks that some movement
of no friendly sort was on foot among them, and it had several times
happened before now that an attack had been made upon countrymen,
who were waylaid and stopped in solitary mountain paths by bands of
Turkish soldiers. They were questioned about the suspected designs of
their nation, on which subject they for the most part were entirely
ignorant, as the plans of their leaders were at present but sparingly
known, and the interview often ended with a shot or a dangling body.
But through the incredible indolence and laziness of the Turks, while
they feared and suspected what was going on, they contented themselves
with stopping and questioning travellers whom they chanced on, and made
no increase in the local garrisons, and kept no watch upon the roads
at night. Nicholas, of course, knew this, and when, as now, he was
making a long journey into a disaffected part of the country, where
his presence would at once have aroused suspicion--and indeed, as he
had told Mitsos, there had been a price put on his head twenty years
ago--he travelled by night, reaching the village where he was to stay
before daybreak, and not moving again till after dark.

Accordingly he and Mitsos set off after sunset across the plain towards
Corinth. The main road led through Argos, which they avoided, keeping
well to the right of the river bed. Their horses were fresh, and
stepped out at an amble, which covered the ground nearly as quickly as
a trot. By ten o'clock the moon was swung high in a bare heaven, and
they saw in front of them a blot of huddled houses in the white light,
the village of Phyctia. Again they made a detour to the right, in order
to avoid it, for a garrison of Turks was stationed there, turning off
half a mile before its outlying farms began, so as not even to run the
risk of awakening the dogs. Their way lay close under the walls of
the ancient Mycenæ, where it was reported that an antique treasure of
curious gold had lately been found, and as they were in plenty of time
to reach Nemea by midnight, Nicholas halted here for a few minutes, and
he and Mitsos looked wonderingly at the great walls of the citadel.

"They say the kings of Greece are buried here, little Mitsos," said he;
"and perhaps your beard will scarce be grown before there are kings of
Greece once more."

Beyond Mycenæ they followed a mountain path leading through the woods,
which joined a few miles farther up the main road from Corinth to
Argos, and as it was now late, and the ways were quiet, Nicholas saw
no reason for not taking this road as soon as they struck it, and they
wound their way up along the steep narrow path towards it.

The moon had cleared the top of Mount Elias behind them--the moon
of midsummer southern nights--and shone with a great light as clear
as running water, and turning everything to ebony and gleaming
cream-colored ivory. Mitsos was riding first, more than half asleep,
and letting his pony pick its own way among the big stones and bowlders
which strewed the rough path, when suddenly it shied violently, nearly
unseating him, and wheeled sheer round. He woke with a start and
grasped at the rope bridle, which he had tied to the wooden pommel on
the saddle-board, to check it. Nicholas's pony had shied too, but he
was the first to head it round again, and Mitsos, who had been carried
past him, dismounted and led his pony, trembling and restive, up to the
other. Nicholas had dismounted too, and was standing at the point where
the bridle-path led into the main road when Mitsos came up.

"What did they shy at?" Mitsos began, when suddenly he saw that which
stopped the words on his tongue.

From a tree at the juncture of the paths, in the full, white blaze of
the moonlight, hung the figure of a man. His arms were dropped limply
by his side, and his feet dangled some two feet from the ground. On his
shoulder was a deep gash, speaking of a struggle before he was secured,
and blood in black clots was sprinkled on the front of his white linen
tunic. Above the strangling line which went round his neck the muscles
were thick and swollen and the glands of the throat congested into
monstrous lumps.

But Nicholas only stopped the space of a deep-drawn breath, and then,
throwing his bridle to Mitsos, drew his knife and cut the rope. The
two horses shied so violently as Nicholas staggered forward with his
murdered burden that Mitsos, unable to hold them both, let go of his
own and clung with both hands to the bridle of Nicholas's horse, while
his own animal clattered off down the path homeward. Then soothing its
terror from the other, he led it past into the main road, where he tied
it up to a tree some twenty yards on, and himself returned to where
Nicholas was kneeling over the body.

He looked up and spoke with a deadly calm. "We are too late," he said;
"he is quite dead."

And suddenly, after the hot-blooded, warm-hearted nature of his race,
this strong man, who had lived half his life with blood and death and
murder to be the companions of his days and nights, burst into tears.

Mitsos was awed and silent.

"Do you know him, Uncle Nicholas?" he asked, at length.

"No, I do not know him, but he is one of my unhappy race, whom this
brood of devils oppresses and treats as it would not treat a dog.
Mitsos," he said, with a gesture of fire, "swear that you will never
forget this! Look here, look here!" he cried. "Look how they have
made of him an offence to the light; look how they killed him by a
disgraceful death, and why? For no reason but because he was a Greek.
Look at his face; force yourself to look at it. The lips are purple;
the eyes, as dead as grapes, start from his head. He was killed like
a dog. If they catch you alone in such a place they will do the same
to you, to you whose only offence is, as this poor burden's has been,
that you are Greek. Look at his neck, swollen in his death struggle. Do
you know how the accursed men killed Katzantones and his brother? They
beat them to death with wooden hammers, sparing the head only, so that
they might live the longer. Katzantones was ill and weak, and cried out
with the pain; but Yorgi, as he lay on the ground, with arms and legs
and ankles and hands broken, and lying out of semblance of a man, only
laughed, and told them they could not kill a fly with such puny blows."

The boy suddenly turned away.

"Enough, enough!" he said. "I do not wish to look. It is too horrible.
Why do you make it more frightful to me?"

Nicholas did not seem to hear what he said, and went on, in a sort of
savage frenzy.

"Look, look, I tell you!" he cried, "and then swear in the name of God,
remembering also what I told you of my wife and child, that you will
have no pity on the race that has done this--on neither man, woman,
nor child; not even on the poor, weak women, for they are the mothers
of monsters who do these things. This is the work of the men they
bear--this and outrage and infamous lust, and the sins of the cities
which God destroyed."

He was silent a moment, and then spoke more calmly.

"So swear, Mitsos, in the name of God!"

And Mitsos, with quivering lips of horror, but suddenly steeled, looked
at the dead thing and swore.

"And now," said Nicholas, "take hold of the feet, and we will give it
what burial we can. Stay, wait a moment." He tore off a piece of the
man's tunic, and, dipping his finger in the blood that still was wet
on the shoulder, wrote in Turkish the word "Revenge," and fastened it
to the end of the rope which still dangled from the tree. Then he and
Mitsos took the body some yards distant into the copse that lined the
road, and tearing up brushwood gave it covering. On this they laid
stones until it was completely concealed and defended against the
preying creatures of the mountain.

Then Nicholas bared his head.

"God forgive him all his sins," he said, "and impute the double of them
to his murderers. Ah, God," he cried, and his voice rose to a yell,
"grant me that I may kill and kill and kill; and their souls I leave to
Thee, most Just and most Terrible!"

They went to where Nicholas's horse was tied up, and he, hearing the
other had bolted, made Mitsos mount his, as he would have to walk back,
and himself went on foot. It was in silence that they climbed the pass,
but in another hour they came to the junction of the two roads from
Nemea and Corinth, and Nicholas told his nephew to go no farther.

"It is safer that I should go alone here," he said; "and it is already
late, and you will have to walk. Waste no time about getting back to
the plain; the nights are short."

He paused for a moment, looking affectionately at the boy.

"Thus are you baptized in blood," he said, then paused, and he
moistened his lips. "A great deal may depend on you, little one," he
went on. "I have watched you growing up, and you are growing up as I
would have you grow. Distrust everything and everybody except, perhaps,
your father and myself, and be afraid of nothing, while you suspect
everything. At the same time I want you, and many will want you; so
take care."

He put his hands on his shoulders.

"I shall be back in a year or six months, or perhaps to-morrow, or
perhaps never. That does not concern you. Your father and I will always
tell you what to do. And now good-bye."

He kissed him on the cheek, mounted his horse, and rode off, never
looking behind. Mitsos stopped still for a moment looking after him,
and then turned to go home.

Five minutes more brought Nicholas to the edge of the village where
the three men whom Demetri had sent were waiting for him. One of them
was a Greek servant, who held Nicholas's horse while he dismounted
and changed his Albanian costume for a Turkish dress; the others were
leaders of local movements against the Turks, and were going with him
to Corinth. Like Nicholas himself, they all spoke Turkish.

Nicholas dressed himself quickly, but then stopped for a moment
irresolute. Then--

"Take the horse on," he said to the servant. "I will go on foot awhile."

Mitsos meantime was walking quickly along the road back towards Argos.
He would scarcely acknowledge to himself how very much he disliked
the thought of taking that bridle-path through the woods, for the
recollection he retained of that end of rope dangling from the tree,
with the fragment of tunic fluttering in the breeze, and that heap of
white stones glimmering among the bushes, was too vivid for his liking.
Even his pony would have been companionable; but his pony, as he hoped,
was near home by this time.

Once or twice he thought he heard movements and whispered rustlings in
the bushes, which made his heart beat rather quicker than its wont.
Ordinarily he would not have noticed such things, but the scene at the
crossroad still twanged some string of horror within him.

However, the road must be trod, and keeping his eyes steadily
averted--for like his race he held ghosts in accredited horror--he
marched with a show of courage past the spot, and began making his way
down the rough bridle-path.

Thin skeins of clouds had risen from the sea, and the moon was
travelling swiftly through them, casting only a diffused and aqueous
light; but the path, with the glimmering white stones of its cobbling,
showed clearly enough, and there was no fear of his missing his way.
But about a couple of hundred yards down the path he heard a noise
which made his heart spring suddenly into his throat and stay there
poised for a moment, giving a little cracking sound at each beat. The
sound needed not interpretation; two men, if not three, were running
down the main road he had just left. Instantly he had left the path,
and striking into the bushes at the side moved quickly up the hill
again, hoping to turn them off the scent. But as they came nearer he
stopped, still crouching in the bushes, and though he was, as he knew,
very indifferently concealed, he dared not go farther among the trees
for fear that the sound of his steps crackling among the dry brushwood
should lead them to him, and, remembering Nicholas's lessons in the
art of keeping still, he waited. His pursuers, if pursuers they were,
seemed to go the more slowly as they turned into the path he had just
left, and soon he caught sight of them through the tree trunks. There
were two of them, and he saw they were Turks. As they came nearer he
could hear them speaking together in low tones, and then one ran off
down the path, in order, so he supposed, to see whether he was still on
ahead.

Mitsos drew a long breath; there was only one to be reckoned with now,
and stealing out of the bush where he had been crouching, he moved as
quietly as he could farther into cover. But a twig cracking with a
sharp report under his foot revealed his hiding, and the man who had
waited in the path shouted out to the other. The next moment they were
in pursuit.

As he pushed through the trees that seemed to stretch out fingers to
clutch him, Mitsos felt in his belt for the knife he always carried
with him, but to his wondering dismay found it had gone. Never in his
life could he remember being without it; but this was no season to
waste time, and knowing that his only chance lay in running he plunged
along through the bushes in order to get back to the path and match his
speed against theirs. But his pursuers were close behind him, and in
jumping, or trying to jump, a small thicket which closed his path, he
caught his foot and fell.

Then came cold fear with a clutch. Before he had time to recover
himself they had seized him. Once he let out with his right hand at the
face of one of the men, who just avoided the blow, and then both wrists
were seized. They whipped a cord round his legs, tied his hands behind
his back, and carried him off straight to the tree from which the end
of the rope and its ghastly legend were still hanging.

A third Turk was sitting there on the ground in the shadow smoking, and
as the others came up he said a word to them in Turkish which Mitsos
did not understand. Then one of his captors turned to him, and speaking
in Greek, "Tell us where Nicholas Vidalis is," he said, "and we will
let you go."

Silence.

"We know who you are. You are Mitsos Codones, the son of Constantine,
from Nauplia, and he is your uncle."

Mitsos looked up.

"That is so. But I have not seen him for a year--more than a year," he
said.

One of the men laughed.

"Tell us where he is," he said, "and we will let you go, and this for
your information, for you were seen with him yesterday in Nauplia," and
he held out a handful of piastres.

This time Mitsos laughed, though laughing was not in his thoughts, and
the sound was strange to his own ears.

"That is a lie," he said; "he has not been at Nauplia for a year. As
for your piastres, if you think I am telling you a lie, do you suppose
that I should speak differently for the sake of them? Be damned to your
piastres," and he laughed again.

"I will give you one minute," said the other, "and then you will hang
from that tree if you do not tell us. One of your countrymen, I see,
has cut the rope, but there will be enough for a tall boy like you."

They strolled away towards where the third man was sitting, leaving him
there bound.

"Perhaps the end of the rope might help him to speak," said one. But
the third man shook his head.

What Mitsos thought of during these few seconds he never clearly knew,
and as far as he wished for anything, he wished them to be quick. He
noticed that the edge of the moon was free of the clouds again, and it
would soon be lighter. He felt a breeze come up from the east, which
fluttered the rag of tunic hanging from the rope, and once a small
bird, clucking and frightened, flew out of a thicket near. Then the
two men came up and pulled him under the tree. The end of the piece of
tunic flapped against his forehead.

They untied the rope, and the one made a noose in it, while the other
turned back the collar of his coat. Then the rope was passed round his
throat and tightened till he felt the knot behind, just where the hair
grows short on the neck.

"One more chance," said the man. "Will you tell us?"

Mitsos had shut his eyes, and he clinched his teeth to help himself not
to speak. For a moment they all waited, quite still.

"Then up with him," said the man.

He waited for the choking tension of the rope, still silent, still with
clinched teeth and eyelids. But instead of that he felt two hands on
his shoulders, and fingers at the knot behind, and he opened his eyes.
The third man, who had been silent, was standing in front of him.

"Mitsos," he said, "my great little Mitsos."

For a moment the world spun dizzily round him, and he half fell, half
staggered against Nicholas.

"You!" he said.

"Yes, I. Mitsos, will you forgive me? I ought to have been certain of
you, and indeed in my heart I was; but I wanted to test you to the
full, to put the fear of death before you, for it was needful that I
should give convincing proof to others. My poor boy, don't tremble so;
it was necessary, believe me. By the Virgin, Mitsos, if you had hit
one hundredth part of a second sooner one of these men would have gone
home with no nose and fewer teeth. You hit straight from the shoulder,
with your weight in your fist. And that double you made up the hill was
splendid. Mitsos, speak to me!"

But the boy, pale and trembling, had sunk down on the ground with bent
head, and said nothing.

"Here, spirits," said Nicholas, and he made Mitsos drink.

He sat down by him, and with almost womanly tenderness was stroking his
hair.

"You were as firm as a rock," he said, "when you stood there, and I saw
the muscle of your jaw clinch."

Mitsos, to whom spirit was a new thing, recovered himself quickly with
a little choking.

"I wasn't frightened at the moment," he said; "I was only frightened
before, when I knew I was caught."

Then, as his boyish spirits began to reassert themselves, "Did I--did I
behave all right, Uncle Nicholas?"

"I wish to see no better behavior. It is even as your father told me,
that you were fit for the keeping of secrets."

Mitsos flushed with pleasure.

"Then I don't mind if it has made you think that, though, by the
Virgin, my stomach was cold. But if I had had my knife there would have
been blood let. I cannot think how I lost it."

Nicholas laughed.

"Here it is," he said. "It was even I who took it away from you while
you were dozing as you rode. I thought it might be dangerous in your
barbarous young hands."

Mitsos put it back in his belt.

"I am ready now. I shall start off again."

Nicholas rose, too.

"I will come with you as far as the plain, and then my road is forward.
The piastres were a poor trick, eh?"

"Very poor indeed, I thought," said Mitsos, grinning.

The uncle and nephew walked on together, and the other two men strolled
more slowly after them. Nicholas could have shouted aloud for joy. He
had found what he had sought with such fastidiousness--some one whom
he could trust unreservedly, and over whom he had influence. To do
him justice, the cruelty of what he had done made his stomach turn
against himself; but he was associated with men who rightly mistrusted
everybody, except on convincing proof of their trustworthiness. Mitsos
had stood the severest test that could be devised without flinching. He
was one of ten thousand.

At the end of the woods they parted. Mitsos' nerve had come back to
him, and the knowledge that he had won Nicholas's trust, combined with
the fascination the man exercised over him, quite overscored any grudge
he might have felt, for Nicholas's last words to him were words to be
remembered.

"And now, good-bye," he said. "You have behaved in a way I scarce
dared to hope you could, though I think I believed you would. You have
been through a man's test, the test of a strong, faithful man. Others
will soon know of it, and know you to be trustworthy to the uttermost.
Greece shall be revenged, and you shall be among the foremost of her
avengers."

So Nicholas went his way northward and Mitsos towards home, and just as
the earliest streak of dawn lit the sky he reached his father's house.

The truant pony was standing by the way-side cropping the dew-drenched
grass.




CHAPTER V

MITSOS PICKS CHERRIES FOR MARIA


At Nauplia the summer passed quietly, though from other parts of the
country came fresh tales of intolerable taxation, cruelty, and outrage,
hideous beyond belief. But this Argive district was exceptionally
lucky in having for its governor a man who saw that it was possible
to overstep the mark even in dealing with these infidel dogs; partly,
also, Nicholas's visit, his injunctions to the leading Greeks to keep
quiet, and his hints that they would not need to keep quiet long
produced a certain effect; as also did an exhortation delivered by
Father Andréa, in which he spoke of the blessings of peace with a
ferocious tranquillity which left no loop-hole for misconstruction.

July and August were a tale of scorched and burning days, but the vines
were doing well, and the heat only served to ripen them the sooner.
In some years, when the summer months had been cold and unseasonable,
the grapes would not swell to full ripeness till the latter days of
October, and thus there was the danger of the first autumn storms
wrecking the maturing crop. But this year, thanks to the heat, there
was no doubt that they would be ripe for gathering by the third week in
September, and, humanly speaking, a fine grape harvest was assured.

A certain change had come over Mitsos since the events of the night
recorded in the last chapter. He suddenly seemed to have awoke to a
sense of his budding manhood, and his cat, much to that sedately minded
creature's satisfaction, was allowed to shape her soft-padded basking
life as she pleased. He used to go out in the dewiness of dawn, while
it was still scarce light, to try for a shot at the hares which came
down from the hills at night to feed in the vineyards, and at evening
again he would lie in wait near a spring below Mount Elias to shoot
the roe when they came to water. But during the day there was no mark
for his gun, for the game went high away among the hills to avoid the
broiling heat of the plains, or stayed in cover of the pine woods
upon the mountain-sides, where the growth was too thick for shooting,
and where some cracking twig would ever advertise a footstep, however
stealthy.

But the sudden and violent winds of the summer months had set in, and
sailing gave him day-long occupation. He made it his business to know
the birth-hour of the land-breeze, the length of the dead calm that
follows, and the hour when the sea-breeze again winnows the windless
heaven; to read the signs of the thread-like streamers in the upper
air, which mean a strong breeze; the vibration on the sea's horizon,
like the trembling of a steel spring, which means heat and calm, and
the soft-feathered clouds, with dim, blurred outlines that tell of
moisture in the air, which will fall the hour after sunset in fine,
warm, needle-pointed rain. His boat might often be seen scudding across
the bay and into the water of the gulf outside, skirting round the
promontories, running up into the creeks and inlets until, as Nicholas
had told him he should do, he got to know the shape of the land as
he knew the shape of his own head. Above all, he would practise
beating out to sea in the teeth of the sea-breeze, running out to a
given point in as few tacks as possible, and then, when the sea-breeze
died away, he would put into some inlet, fish for a little, and sleep
curled up in the bottom of the boat, awake with the awakening of the
land breeze, and run back again, close hauled, past Nauplia, and up to
the side of the bay, where he beached his boat. In these long hours
alone on the sea he would sit in the stern, when the boat was steady
on some two-mile tack, thinking intently of the new life for which he
was preparing himself. Though Nicholas's stories, and the tales of
oppression and outrage with which all mouths were full, made personal
to him the longing for vengeance on that bestial breed, it was Nicholas
himself who was the inspirer, and his indignation was scarce more than
an image in a mirror of Nicholas. His uncle had long been acquiring
that domination a man can have for a boy, and the main desire and
resolve of his mind was to obey Nicholas, whatever order he might lay
on him, and this resolve to obey was rapidly becoming an instinct
over-mastering and unique. His father, far from making objections to
his spending his time in sailing and shooting, encouraged him thereto,
for Nicholas had bade him hire labor whenever he wanted a lad in
Mitsos' place, saying that the club at Athens had authorized him to
make payments for such things. Mitsos, in fact, had definitely entered
into the service of his country, and it was only right that his father
should be compensated for the loss of a hand.

But during these months there was little or no farm-work to be done.
Early in July Constantine had put up a little reed-built shed to
overlook his vineyard, and there he spent most of the day scaring away
the birds that came to eat the grapes, and playing with his string of
polished beads, which he passed to and fro between his hands, every
now and then stopping to sling a pebble at a bird he saw settling in
the vines. The sparrows were the greatest enemies, for they would
fly over in flocks of eighty or a hundred and settle in different
parts of the vineyard, and when he cleared one quarter and turned
to clear another, the first covey would be back and renewing their
depredations on the grapes. He had an almost exaggerated repugnance
in taking the funds of the club unless it was absolutely necessary
to hire an extra hand, and until the last week before the harvest he
managed alone; but then--for the grapes were tight-skinned and juicy,
and a single bird holding on to a bunch with its claws and feeding
indiscriminately from this grape and that would spoil the hundredfold
of what it ate--he hired a boy from Nauplia, and erected another shed
some fifty yards off. There they would sit from sunrise to sunset, and
at sunset Mitsos returned brown and fresh, with a song from the sea,
with his black hair drying back into its crisp curls after his evening
bathe, and an enormous appetite. He and Constantine sat together till
about nine, and then Mitsos would go off to the cafés, following
Nicholas's instructions, and play cards or draughts, ever pricking an
attentive ear when comments on the Turks were on the board. Nicholas's
directions, however, that there should be no talking of the great
matter, was being obeyed too implicitly for Mitsos to pick up much; but
he acquired great skill at the game of draughts, even being able to
play three games at a time.

One evening, just before the vintage began, he returned earlier than
usual with a frown on his face. His father was sitting on the veranda,
not expecting him yet.

"Have you heard," said Mitsos, "what these Turks have in hand about the
vintage?"

"About the vintage? No."

"Instead of paying one-tenth to the tax-collector, we are to pay
one-seventh; and instead of paying in grapes, we pay in wine."

"One-seventh? It is impossible!"

"It is true."

"Where did you hear it?"

"In the last hour at the café in the square. They are all clacking and
swearing right and left, and the soldiers are patrolling the streets."

Constantine got up.

"I must go, then," he said. "This is just what Nicholas did not want to
happen. Have there been blows between the soldiers and the Greeks?"

"Yanko knocked a Turkish soldier down with such a bang for calling him
a dog that the man will never have front teeth again. They took him and
clapped him in prison."

"The fat lout shall eat stick from me when he comes out. I suppose,
as usual, he was neither drunk nor sober," said Constantine. "As if
knocking a soldier down took away the tax. Is Father Andréa there?"

"I passed him just now on the road," said Mitsos, "going to the town."

Constantine got up.

"Stop here, Mitsos," he said; "I will catch Father Andréa up, and make
him tell them to be quiet. He can do what he pleases with that tongue
of his."

"But mayn't I come?" said Mitsos, scenting an entrancing row.

"And get your black head broken? No, that will keep for a worthier
cause."

Constantine hurried off and caught Father Andréa up before he entered
the town.

"Father," he said, "you can stop this, for they will listen to you.
Remember what Nicholas said."

Father Andréa nodded.

"I heard there were loud talk and blows in the town, and I am on the
road for that reason. Nicholas is right. We must pay the extra tax, and
for every pint of wine we pay we will exact a gallon of blood. Ah, God,
how I have fasted and prayed one prayer--to wash my hands in the blood
of the Turks."

"Softly," said Constantine, "here is the guard."

The guard at the gate was unwilling at first to let them pass, but
Andréa, without a moment's hesitation, said that he was a priest going
to visit a dying man who wished to make a confession, with Constantine
as witness, and they were admitted.

"God will forgive me that lie," he said, as they passed on. "It is for
His cause that I lied."

Since Mitsos' departure the disturbance had increased. There were
some forty or fifty Greeks collected in the centre of the square,
and Turkish soldiers were coming out one by one from the barracks
and mingling with the crowd. The Greeks, according to their custom,
all carried knives, but were otherwise unarmed; the Turks had guns
and pistols. There was a low, angry murmur going up from the people,
which boded mischief. Just as they came up Father Andréa turned to
Constantine.

"Stop outside the crowd," he said, "do not mix yourself up in this.
They will not touch me, for I am a priest."

Then elbowing his way among the people, he shouted: "A priest--a priest
of God! Let me pass."

The Greeks in the crowd parted, making way for him as he pushed
through, conspicuous by his great height, though here and there a
Turkish soldier tried to stop him. But Andréa demanded to be let into
the middle of them with such authority that they too fell back, and he
continued to elbow his way on. He was already well among the people
when two voices detached themselves, as it were, from the angry, low
murmur, shrilling up apart in loud, violent altercation, and the next
moment a Greek just in front of him rushed forward and stabbed a Turk
in the arm. The soldier raised his pistol and fired, and the man turned
over on his face, with a grunt and one stretching convulsion, dead.
There was a moment's silence, and then the murmur grew shriller and
louder, and the crowd pressed forward. Andréa held up his hand.

[Illustration: "'I AM FATHER ANDRÉA,' HE SHOUTED"]

"I am Father Andréa," he shouted, "whom you know. In God's name listen
to me a moment. Silence there, all of you."

For a moment again there was a lull at his raised voice, and Andréa
took advantage of it.

"The curse of all the saints of God be upon the Greek who next uses his
knife," he cried. "Who is the officer in command?"

A young Turkish officer standing close to him turned round.

"I am in command," he said, "and I command you to go, unless you would
be seized with the other ringleaders."

"I shall not go; my place is here."

"For the last time, go."

"I offer myself as hostage for the good conduct of the Greeks," said
Andréa, quietly. "Blood has been shed. I am here that there may be
no more. Let me speak to them and then take me, and if there is more
disturbance kill me."

"Very good," said the officer. "I have heard of you. But stop the riot
first, if you can. I desire bloodshed no more than you."

The group had now collected round them, still waiting irresolutely, in
the way a crowd does on any one who seems to have authority. Father
Andréa turned to them.

"You foolish children," he cried, "what are you doing? The Sultan has
added a tax, it is true, but will it profit you to be killed like dogs?
You have knives, and you can cut a finger nail with knives, and these
others have guns. This poor dead thing learned that, and he has paid
for his lesson. Is it better for him that he has wounded another man
now that he has gone to appear before God? And those of you who are not
shot will be taken and hanged. I am here unarmed, as it befits a priest
to be. I am a hostage for you. If there is further riot you yourselves
will be shot down like dogs, or as you shoot the little foxes among the
grapes and leave them for the crows to eat; I shall be hanged, for I
go hostage for you; and the tax will be no less than before. So now to
your homes."

The crowd listened silently--for in those days to behave with aught but
respect to a priest was sacrilege--and one or two of the nearest put
back their knives into their belts, yet stood there still irresolute.

"Come, every man to his home," said Andréa again. "Let those who have
wine-shops close them, for there has been blood spilled to-night."

But they still stood there, and the murmur rose and died, and rose
again like a sound carried on a gusty wind, until Andréa, pushing
forward, laid his hand on the shoulder of one of the ringleaders.

"Christos," he said, "there is your home, and your wife waits for you.
Go home, man, lest you are carried in feet first."

The man, directly and individually addressed by a stronger, turned
and went, and the others began to melt away till there were only left
in the square the Turkish soldiers and Andréa. Then he spoke to the
officer again:

"I am at your disposal," he said, "until you are satisfied that things
are quiet again."

The officer stood for a moment without replying. Then, "I wish to treat
you with all courtesy," he said, "and you have saved me a great deal
of trouble to-night. But perhaps it will be better if you stop in my
quarters for an hour or two, though I think we shall have no more of
this. With your permission I will give you in custody."

And with the fine manners of his race, which the Greeks for the most
part could not understand and so distrusted, he beckoned to two
soldiers, who led him off to the officer's quarters.

The Turkish captain remained in the square an hour longer, but the
disturbance seemed to be quite over, and he followed Father Andréa.

"You will smoke or drink?" he said, laying his sword on the table.

"I neither smoke nor drink," answered Andréa.

The officer sat down, looking at him from his dark, lustreless eyes.

"It is natural you should hate us," he said, "and but for you there
would have been a serious disturbance, and not Greek blood alone would
have been shed. I am anxious to know why you stopped the riot."

Father Andréa smiled.

"For the reason I gave to the rioters. Is not that sufficient?"

"Quite sufficient; it only occurred to me there might be a further
reason, a further-reaching reason, so to speak. I will not detain you
any longer. I am sure no further disturbance will take place."

Andréa rose, and for a moment the two men faced each other. They were
both good types of their race: the Greek, fearless and hot-blooded; the
Turk, fearless and phlegmatic.

"I will wish you good-night," said the captain; "perhaps we shall meet
again. My name is Mehemet Salik. You owe nothing to me nor I to you.
You stopped the riot and saved me some trouble, but it was for reasons
of your own. I have detained you till I am satisfied there will be no
more disturbance; so if we meet again no quarter on either side, for we
shall be enemies."

"I shall neither give quarter nor ask it," said Andréa.

The vintage began the next week, and for the time Mitsos had to
abandon his boat and gun for the wine-making, since he alone knew
the particularities of manufacture which Constantine practised--the
amount of fermentation before finally casking the wine, the measure
of resin to be put in, and the right quality of it, all which were as
incommunicable as the unwritten law of tea-making for an individual
taste. The small vineyard close to the house, which was all that was
left to them after the seizure of the bigger vineyard by the Turk,
contained the best vines, which, being nearer to hand, had inevitably
received the better cultivation. These again were divided into two
classes, most of them being the ordinary country stock; but the other
was a nobler grape from Nemea, which yielded the finest wine. They were
always gathered last, and fermented in a barrel by themselves.

The evening before the grape-picking began, several girls from
neighboring farms came to find labor in the gathering for a couple of
days, as the harvest would not be ripe in other vineyards for a day or
two yet. Constantine engaged four of them, who came early next morning,
just as he and Mitsos were getting out the big two-handled panniers in
which the grapes were carried to the press from the vineyard, which lay
dewy and glistening under the clear dawn. Spero, the boy who had been
employed for the last week in scaring birds, was also engaged for the
picking, and in all they were seven. For the larger half of an hour
they all picked together, until two of the big baskets were full and
the treading could begin. The press, an old stone-built construction,
moss-ridden and creviced outside, and coated inside with fine stucco,
stood close to the house. The bottom of it sloped down towards a
small wooden sluice which opened from its lower end, and which could
be raised from the inside when there was sufficient must trodden to
fill one of the big shallow casks in which it was fermented. Mitsos
had spent the previous day in washing and scouring it with avuncular
thoroughness, scrubbing the sides with powdered resin, and when Spero
had wanted to assist in treading the grape instead of gathering, he
looked scornful, and only said:

"We do not make wine for you to wash in. Get you back to the picking."

They poured the first two big panniers of grapes into the press just as
the sun rose, stalks and all, and after turning his trousers up to the
knees, and scrubbing his feet and legs in hot water, Mitsos stepped in
and began the treading. The purple fruit was ripe and tight-skinned,
and the red stuff soon began to splash and spurt up, staining his legs.
Another basket came before he had got the first two well under, and
by degrees the pickers gained on him. The day promised a scorching,
and the press, which had at first stood in the shade, had been swung
round into the full blaze of the sun before a couple of hours were
over. About nine o'clock Constantine, who had just carried up another
basket with Spero, and stayed for a moment looking at Mitsos dancing
fantastically in the sun, saw that there was already stuff enough to
fill a cask.

"There is food for a cask there," he said to Mitsos, "but it is not
trodden enough yet. You will not keep pace without some one to help
you."

Mitsos paused a moment and wiped his face with the back of his hand.

"I am broiled meat," he said. "Yes, send one of the girls. Make her
wash first."

Constantine smiled.

"There speaks Nicholas," he remarked, "who is always right."

So Maria was sent to help Mitsos. She was a pretty girl, about
seventeen years old, fawn eyed and olive skinned. As she stood on the
edge of the press before stepping in, with her shoes off and her skirt
tucked up, Mitsos found himself noticing the gentle curve of her calf
muscle from the ankle to behind the knee, and how prettily one foot,
pink from the hot water, broadened as she rested her weight on it for a
moment. He gave her his hand to help her down into the press, and their
eyes met.

"We shall do nicely now," he said.

Constantine meantime had fetched one of the casks, open at the top,
and with a tap at the bottom, about six inches above the other end,
from which the fermented liquid would be drawn off when it was clear,
and placing it under the sluice, looked over to see if the must was
sufficiently trodden. No baskets had come in for a quarter of an hour,
and Mitsos and Maria between them had reduced the whole must to one
consistency.

"It is ready now," he said to Mitsos; "raise the sluice."

The must had risen above the ring by which the sluice was raised at
the lower end of the press, and Mitsos and Maria groped about for half
a minute or so before they found it. Once they tightly grasped each
other's fingers, and both exclaimed triumphantly, "I've got it."

Maria found it first; but the wood had swollen with the scouring of the
day before and it was stiff, so Mitsos had to raise it himself. Then
with a gurgle and a gulp the purple mass of pulp, juice, stalks, and
skins poured riotously out, splashing Constantine, and foaming into the
cask with a lusty noise. When it was three-quarters full Mitsos closed
the sluice again, for in the process of fermentation the must would
swell to the top, and Constantine and Spero took the barrel, clucking
as it was moved, off into the veranda out of the sun, and covered it
with a cloth.

They all rested for an hour at mid-day, and ate their dinner in the
shade of the poplar by the spring. The others had brought their food
with them, with the exception of Maria, who said she was not hungry and
did not care to eat. But Mitsos, pausing for a moment in his own meal,
saw her sitting close to him looking rather tired and fagged from the
morning's work, and fetched her some bread and some fresh cheese, cool
and sweet from the cellar, and Maria's want of appetite vanished before
these things. After dinner they all lay down and dozed for that hour of
fiercest heat, when, as the poet of the South says, "even the cicala is
still," some in the veranda, some in the shade of the poplars. Mitsos
was the first to wake, and he, under a stern sense of duty, aroused
himself and the others. Maria had disposed herself under a farther
tree, where she lay with her hands clasped behind her head, and her
mouth half open and set with the rim of her white teeth. She had drawn
up one leg, and her short skirt showed it bare to above the knee.
Mitsos stood looking at her a moment, thinking how pretty were her long
eyelashes and slightly parted mouth, and wondering why it had never
occurred to him before that she was pretty, when she woke and saw him
standing in front of her. She sat up quickly and drew her skirt down
over her leg, and a faint tinge of red showed under her skin.

"Is it time to go on?" she said; "and I am nothing but a bag of sleep."

"I will help you up," said Mitsos, putting out his hand.

But she stretched herself, smiling, and got up without his assistance.

Then the work went on till nearly sunset; a second cask and a third
were filled, which were taken away to the veranda, where they were put
on trestles and covered like the first; and, as there would not be time
to fill a fourth before sunset, they stopped work for the day.

Mitsos and Constantine ate their supper together, but afterwards Mitsos
said he would not go to the café to-night, he was sleepy, and to-morrow
would be as to-day. The two sat there in silence for the most part, the
father smoking and playing with his beads, and Mitsos lying full length
on the floor of the veranda intermittently eating a cherry from the
remains of their supper.

About nine he got up and stretched himself.

"I am for bed," he said. "How pretty Maria is. I wonder why I never
noticed before that girls were pretty."

Constantine smiled.

"We all notice it sooner or later," he said. "I noticed it when I was
about as old as you."

"Did you? What did you do then?"

"God granted me to marry the one I thought the prettiest."

"My mother? It is little I remember of her. But I am not going to marry
Maria. Yet she is even very pretty."

The second day was devoted to picking the remainder of the ordinary
grapes, which Mitsos and Maria trod, as on the day before, and Mitsos
feeling a desire--to which he had hitherto been a stranger--to look
well in a girl's eyes, told her stories about the shooting, and his own
prowess therein--for all the world like a young cock-bird in spring and
the mating-time strutting before his lady. The girls were not required
for the third day's picking, and in the evening Constantine paid them
their two days' wage. Mitsos walked back with Maria through the garden,
and together they washed their feet of the must at the spring. A little
further on they came to the cherry-tree, and here he told her to hold
out her apron while he picked a little supper for her, again taking
pride to swing himself with an unnecessary display of gymnastics from
one bough to another, while Maria looked on from below with up-turned
eyes bidding him be careful, and saying, as was indeed true, that there
were plenty of cherries on the lower boughs, and his exertions were
needless. Something in his conduct seemed to amuse her, for as they
said good-night at the gate she broke out into a laugh, and, with the
air of a great, fine lady to a pretty boy, "Good-night, little Mitsos,"
she said; "and will you come to my wedding?"

Mitsos, in spite of his determination of the night before, felt a
perceptible shock.

"Your wedding? Whom are you going to marry?"

"Yanko. At least, so I think. He has asked me, and I have not said no."

"Yanko Vlachos? That ugly brute?"

Maria laughed again.

"I don't find him ugly--at least, not to matter."

Mitsos recollected his manners.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I like Yanko very much. He knocked a
Turkish soldier down last week--such a bang on the back of his head!"

"Oh, he's a very good man," said Maria, walking off with a great,
important air.

Mitsos went slowly back to the house, his strutting over.

The third day was devoted to the gathering of the finer grapes, which
were fermented by themselves in a separate cask. These the two boys and
Constantine picked together, until all the trees but one were stripped,
but instead of throwing them in stalk and all, they picked each grape
separately off the bunches and shed them into the cask, until there was
a layer some fifteen inches deep. Mitsos trod these as before, while
his father and Spero went on picking, and when they were sufficiently
pulped he poured on to them about a quart of brandy. More grapes
were then put in, trodden, and more brandy added. When the cask was
three-quarters full they moved it away with the others, but covered it
more closely with two layers of thick woollen blanket. The remainder of
the fine grapes were sufficient to fill another half-cask.

Then there came the final act of the grape-gathering, a page of pagan
ritual surviving from the time when the rout of Dionysus laughed and
rioted through the vineyard. Mitsos fetched a big bowl from the house,
and Constantine cut all the grapes from the remaining vine. These he
placed in the bowl and left in the middle of the vineyard for the birds
to eat.

For the next two days the must required no attention, though the
fermentation, owing to the heat of the weather, was going on very
rapidly, and by the end of the second day the thin acrid smell mingled
strongly with the garden scents. Once or twice Constantine raised the
cloths which covered the casks to see what progress it made, or drew a
little from the tap at the bottom. But the stuff was still thick, and
had not cleared sufficiently to be disturbed yet.

On the second day Mitsos went off to get fresh resin for the wine.
The ordinary pine resin was generally used by Greeks for this, but
Constantine always preferred the resin from the dwarf pine, which
was less bitter and finer in quality. The sides of Mount Elias were
plentiful with the common pine, but the dwarf pine only grew on the
hills round Epidaurus, a five hours' journey. Mitsos took his gun with
him on the chance of sighting and slaying game, and started off on
his pony before dawn, for the way wound over low, unsheltered hills,
a day-long target for the sun; but before he reached the shoulder of
mountain in which was cut the old grass-grown theatre, about which
the dwarf pines grew, the sun, already high, had drawn up the heavy
dews of the night before, and the air was quivering with heat like
a man in an ague fit. The growth of these pines was that of bushes
rather than trees, some of them covering a space of ten yards square,
gnarl-trunked, and sprawling along the ground. On some dozen of them he
selected a place near the root and cut off a piece of bark a few inches
square in order that the resin might ooze from the lips of the wounded
trunk, placing below each a flat stone to catch the dripping. In a few
days' time there would be sufficient resin collected for the year's
wine. On several trees he found the incisions he had made in previous
years, in some of which, where the flow of resin had continued after
he had removed it for the wine, it had gone on dripping until a little
pillar, like the slag-wax from a candle, stood up between the stone and
the tree. He cut off one of these to see whether it was still good, but
the damp had soaked into it, and the outside surface was covered with a
gray fungus growth which rendered it useless.

He ate his dinner under shelter of the more shady trees which grew
higher up the slope, and waited till the sun had lost its noonday heat,
listening lazily to the bell on the neck of his pony, which was grazing
on the hill-side above, dozing and wondering what the next year would
bring for him. He had no idea what Nicholas would call on him to do,
but he was willing to wait. The love of adventure and excitement was
fermenting in him, though he was contented to go on living his usual
life from day to day. Nicholas, he knew, would not fail; some day, he
knew not when, the summons would come, and he would obey blindly. Then
he thought of the horrible scene which Nicholas and he had looked on
three months ago, when they saw that dead, misshapen thing dangling
from a tree, and his blood began to boil and the desire to avenge the
wrongs done to his race stirred in him.

"Spare not man, woman, or child," Nicholas had said.

He lay back on the short turf and began to think about Maria. Supposing
Maria had been a Turkish woman, and Nicholas had put a knife into his
hand while he was looking at her mid-day sleep beneath the poplars, and
told him to kill her, would he have been able? Could he have struck
anything so soft and pretty? Fancy that heavy lout, Yanko, marrying
Maria; he was all fat, and sat drinking all day at the wine-shop, yet
he was never drunk, like a proper man, and he was seldom sober. Then
Mitsos for the first time in his life became analytical, though his
vocabulary boasted no such word. Why was it that since the day he stood
in front of Maria as she lay asleep he had regarded women somehow with
different eyes? What was it to him whether Yanko or another had her?
Hitherto he had thought of women in the obvious, work-a-day light in
which they are presented to a Greek boy, as beasts of burden, hewers of
wood and drawers of water, inferior beings who waited on the men, and
when alone chattered shrilly and volubly to each other like jays, or a
bushful of silly, jabbering sparrows--creatures altogether unfit for
the companionship of men. But since that moment he or they had changed;
there was something wonderful about them which men did not share,
something demanding protection, even tenderness, affording food for
vague, disquieting thought. He had not understood at all, not having
known his mother, why Nicholas had spoken as he had of his wife, except
in so far that she was a possession of which the Turks had robbed him.
But Mitsos could think of nothing the loss of which would make him
devote his life to the extermination of the race that had robbed him of
it. Even if the Turks took away his gun he realized that he would not
wish to destroy the whole race for that. The brutal hanging of a man
was a different matter; a man was a man, and a woman--Well, that woman
was Nicholas's wife. Suppose the Turks killed Maria, would that be
worse than if they killed, say, Nicholas? Well, not worse, not nearly
so bad in fact, but, somehow, different.

Thus knocked Mitsos at the door of the habitation called love, and
waited for its sesame.




CHAPTER VI

THE SONG FROM THE DARKNESS


When Constantine looked at one of the casks of fermenting wine on the
fourth day, he saw that the crust of skins, stalks, and stones had
risen to within six inches of the top, like coffee on the boil, and
was thickly covered with a pink, sour-smelling froth. The fermentation
was at its height, and it was time to mix up the crust with the fluid
again to excite it even further. In one cask, into which the ripest
fruit from the more sun-baked corner of the vineyard had been put, this
crust had risen even higher, and threatened to overflow. The ordinary
custom in Greece at this time was for a naked man to get into the cask
and stir it up again, a remnant, no doubt, of some now insignificant
superstition; but Constantine, though he still put the grapes of one
vine in a bowl for the birds to eat, did not think it necessary to make
this further concession, but only stirred up the frothing mass with an
instrument like a wooden pavier. The crust was already growing thick
and compacted, and it was ten minutes' work to get it thoroughly mixed
up again with the fluid in each case, and from the seething, bubbling
surface there rose thickly the sour fumes of the decomposing matter,
heavily laden with carbonic-acid gas. One cask leaked slightly round
the tap at the bottom and was dripping on the floor. A little red
stream had trickled down to the edge of the veranda, and he noticed
that it was full of small bubbles, like water that had stood in the
sun, showing that the fermentation was not yet over. He caulked this up
with a lump of resin, and then moved all the casks out of the shade for
an hour or two, so that the heat might hasten the second fermentation,
which naturally was slower and less violent than the first. The cask
and a half of fine wine, however, he did not touch; there it was better
that the fermentation should go on slowly and naturally.

That evening Mitsos went out fishing, as the work of wine-making was
over for the present. In four or five days he would have to go over to
Epidaurus to get the resin from the pine-trees, but just now there was
nothing more to be done. Later on the vines would have to be cut back,
but Constantine preferred delaying this till the leaves fell and the
sap had sunk back again into the roots and main stem.

Though the day was one of early autumn, and in most years the serenity
of summer would continue into the middle or end of October, the top
of the hills above the farther side of the gulf had been shrouded all
day in thick storm-boding clouds, and as sunset drew near these spread
eastward, making a sullen sky. The sun, as it dropped behind them,
illumined their edges, turning them to a dark translucent amber, and
the afterglow, which spread slowly across the heavens, cast a strange
lurid light through the half opaque floor of cloud. The night would
soon fall dark, perhaps with storm. It was very hot, and the land
breeze was but a languid air, and blew as if weary with its travel over
the broiling plain, but there was quite enough of it, with Mitsos'
economical methods, to send the boat along at a good pace. He sailed
almost before it out seaward for two miles or so, meaning to fish
from the island, but then changed his mind, and went back on tedious
tacks to the head of the bay, the water seeming to him a thick thing,
and the boat going but heavily. Dark fell, dense and premature, and
when an hour later he put the boat about on the last tack he had to
keep two eyes open as he neared the land; but as there were no other
boats abroad, he did not think it necessary to light his lantern at
the bows. Against the dark sky and the dark water it would hardly have
been possible to see the brown-sailed craft from more than forty yards
distant, and even then, if the thin white line of broken water at the
forefoot had not caught the eye, or the stealthy, subdued hiss as it
cut through the sea fallen on the ear, it might have passed close and
unnoticed. Then, with a curious suddenness, he saw faintly the white
glimmer of the sea-wall of Abdul Achmet's house straight in front of
him, and knew that in the dead darkness he had taken too starboard a
course. However, by running up as close as possible to this, one tack
more would certainly take him across to the fishing bay where he was
bound, and sitting rudder in hand, he waited till the last possible
moment before putting about. He had, however, forgotten that the wall
would take the wind from him, and when he was about fifty yards off,
the sail flapped once and fell dead against the mast, and the boom
swung straight, the line of white water faded from under the forefoot,
and the hiss of the motion was quenched. He got up for an oar, so as
to pull her round again, when quite suddenly he heard the sound of a
woman's voice from the terrace singing. For a moment or so he stood
still, and then his ear focussed itself to the sounds. She was singing
a song Mitsos knew well, a song which the vine-tenders sing as they are
digging the vines in the spring of the year, and she sang in Greek:

  "Dig we deep around the vines,
     Give the sweet spring showers a home,
   Else the fairest sun that shines
   Sends no sparkle to our wines,
     Lights no lustre in the foam."

He could not see the singer; all he saw was the circle of black night,
the faint lines of his boat a shade blacker against it, and just ahead
the white glimmer of the wall. The voice, low and sweet, came out
of the darkness like a bird flying through a desert--a living thing
amid death. Mitsos stood perfectly still, strangely and bewilderingly
excited. Then he took up his oar and turned the boat's head round,
rowed a few strokes out, and waited again. But the voice had ceased.

He felt somehow unaccountably shy, as if he had intruded into another's
privacy; but having intruded, he was determined to make his presence
known. So just as the sail caught the wind again he stood up in the
stern, and in his boyish voice answered the unseen singer with the
second verse:

  "Dig we deep, the summer's here;
     Saw we not among the eaves
   Summer's messenger appear,
   Swallows flitting here and there,
     Through the budding almond leaves?"

The boat bent over to the wind, the white line streaked the water, and
he hissed off into the night again.

He sat down, let go of the tiller, and let the boat run on by itself.
He had never known that that common country song was beautiful till
he had heard a voice out of the darkness sing it--a voice low, sweet,
soft, which might have been the darkness itself made audible. Who was
this woman? How did she, a Greek, come to be in the house of a Turk?
Then with a flash of awakened memory he brought to mind the evening
when he and Nicholas had sailed home after fishing; how a man came up
and struck a woman who was leaning on the sea-wall; how she had cried
out and said, in Greek, "What was that for?"

The flapping of the sail in the last breath of the wind roused him
and he looked up; the breeze had died out, and he was floating in the
middle of a shell of blackness. He had no idea where he was until he
saw the lights of Nauplia, where he least expected them, on the left
of the boat instead of behind him, dim, and far away. For his craft,
left to itself, had of course run straight before the land-breeze out
into the mouth of the gulf, and now the breeze had died out and he was
miles from the land. That did not trouble him much; fishing was a minor
consideration, and spending the night in the boat was paid for by a
shrug of the shoulders. He wanted one thing only--to get back to the
white glimmering wall, to the voice from the darkness.

A puff of hot air wandered by the boat, the sails shivered for a moment
and were still again. A veiled flash of lightning gleamed through the
clouds over the Tripoli hills and was reflected sombrely across the
sky, and a peal of thunder droned a tardy answer. A faint rim of light,
like the raising of tired eyelids, opened over the sea, and he saw the
ropes of his boat stand out sharp against it. Then, suddenly, there
came from the hills a sound he knew, and knew to be dangerous--the
shrill scream of a mountain squall from the highlands to the west of
the gulf. He sprang to the ropes and had the sail down just before it
struck him, but in less than a minute the bows were driven round, and
the white tops of little waves began to fleck the bay. He felt the salt
spray on his face and hands, and laughed exultantly. This was what he
wanted.

With a joy in the danger of the thing he hoisted the sail, struggling
and pulling to be free, and in a moment he was tearing back straight to
the head of the gulf, with the rudder pushed hard a-port.

At the pace he was going the boat was quite steady, cutting through
the waves instead of rising to them, and now and then one was flung
over the bows like a white rag. The wind screamed, the white snakes
of foam flew by, and, bareheaded, Mitsos clung with both hands to his
rudder, controlling the course of the boat like the rider of a restive
horse, laughing to himself for some secret glee, and every now and then
shouting out a verse of the vine-diggers' song. Before long the wall
appeared again, and he took in his sail; the water was already rough,
and was dashing up against it; but he let the boat drift on till he was
within thirty yards of it. The rim of light over the sea had widened,
and he could see the edge of the top of the wall quite distinctly, and,
behind, the tall sombre cypresses in rows. But there was no one there.

 * * * * *

Just then the rain began hissing into the sea like shot, and for a few
minutes turning the whole surface milky white. Mitsos, frowning and
peering awhile into the darkness, put up his collar, and with some
difficulty proceeded to put about. The wind was blowing hard ashore,
and he had to take down the sail altogether and row. Even then he
seemed hardly to be making way against the maddened air, and it was
a quarter of an hour's hard work to get far enough from the shore to
sail again. Then he fetched a long tack towards Nauplia, and from
there managed to handle the boat back opposite the shore where his
house stood. The surf was breaking nastily on the rock-ridden beach,
and he had to get through a narrow channel, both sides of which were
shoal water, not sufficiently deep to allow the boat to pass. But he
had the light from his own house and that from the café opposite to
steer by, and he knew that he could run in when they were in a line. As
he neared the shore he could see it was impossible to bring the boat
round sharply enough, and while there was yet time he beat out again
for a quarter of a mile and approached it more directly. This time he
was successful, and the boat skimmed past the tumbled water on each
side--and as he passed he saw sharp-toothed rocks foaming and gnashing
at him--safe into the smoother water of his anchorage. Constantine was
waiting up for him, and when his tall figure appeared in the doorway,
he looked up with relief.

"Mitsos, you shouldn't sail on nights like these," he said; "the best
seamen in the world might not be able to handle a boat in such a
squall. How did you get in?"

"It's easy enough when you get the lights from the house and the café
in a line," said Mitsos; "besides, I was six miles out in the bay when
the squall came down."

"Six miles out? You have not been long getting back," said his father,
marvelling at the lad's knowledge.

Mitsos walked to the door to close it, turning his back on Constantine.

"No, there was a fine wind to sail on," he said, and whistled the
vine-diggers' song beneath his breath.

Constantine did not ask any more questions, and Mitsos went to make
himself some hot coffee and get out of his wet clothes, for he was
drenched from head to foot.

Two days after this the ordinary wine had cleared completely, and it
was racked into fresh casks, for if it stood too long on the lees in
contact with the skins and stalks it would become bitter. The crust
itself Constantine removed from all the barrels and put into the still
for the making of spirits. This only required one man to look after,
and on the day Mitsos went to Epidaurus to get the resin he employed
himself with it.

The apparatus was of the simplest. He placed all the crusts from the
barrels in a big iron pot, under which he lit a slow charcoal fire;
into a hole in the lid of this, which screwed on to the body, he
inserted a bent iron pipe, on to which he screwed another pipe made
in spirals. A big wooden tub filled with water, through the bottom of
which passed a third pipe fitting at one end into the spirals which
lay in the water, and communicating at the other with the glazed jar
into which the spirit was to be stored, completed the apparatus. The
fire drove off the alcohol from the fermented crust in a vapor, which
distilled itself into spirit as it passed through the tube that lay in
the cold water, and dripped out at the farther end into the jar.

He finished the day's work by soon after five, and, having business
in Nauplia, set off there at once; so that Mitsos, returning a little
later from Epidaurus with the resin, found him out, and, without
waiting to get any food, he set off again at once down to the bay.

It was drawing near that moment when all the beauty of the day in sea,
land, and sky is gathered into the ten minutes of sunset. The sun,
declining to its setting, was dropping slowly above a low pass in the
hills, shining with an exceeding clearness, and it was still half an
hour above the horizon when Mitsos got into the boat. The land-breeze
was blowing temperate and firm, and his boat dipped to it gently, and
glided steadily on the outward tack. Between him and the Argive hills
hung a palpable haze of thinnest blue; but the whole plain slept in
a garment of gold, woven by the level rays. The surface of the water,
unruffled under the shadow of the land, was green and burnished like a
plate of patinated bronze, and the ripple from the bows broke creamily
and flowed out behind the boat in long, feather-like lines. As the sun
neared its setting, the golden mist grew more intense in color, and
the higher slopes of the mountains turned pink behind their veil of
blue. The sky was cloudless from rim to rim, except where, low in the
west, there floated a few thin skeins of vapor, visible against the
incredible blue only because they were touched with red. Just as Mitsos
neared the wall on his second tack the sun's edge was cut by the ragged
outline of the mountain, and in ten minutes more it would have set.

She, the nameless, ineffable she--and Mitsos never questioned that
this was the sweet singer--was leaning on the edge of the wall looking
seawards. She saw Mitsos sitting in the stern of his boat, and guessed
at once--for few boats passed so close--that it was he who had sung
the second verse of the vineyard song two nights ago, and that it was
his boat which passed close under the wall last night, when the other
women of the harem were there with her. She had not known till she saw
him that she wished to see the owner of that half-formed boyish voice,
which had come so pleasantly out of the darkness; and now, when she did
see him, she looked long. He, too, was looking, and her eyes made a
bridge over the golden air that lay between them and brought them close
together.

The boat drew nearer, and she dropped her eyes and began playing with
a spray of roses that trailed along the top of the wall. She picked
a couple of buds, smelled them, and then very softly she began the
first verse of the vine-diggers' song.

[Illustration: "HALF CARELESSLY SHE THREW INTO THE BOAT THE ROSES SHE
HAD PICKED"]

The boat had got under shelter of the wall, and drifted windlessly
near. Mitsos was still looking at her; her eyes were still cast down.
She sang the first verse through, and the first two lines of the second
verse, and then apparently she recollected no more, for she stopped,
and from the boat Mitsos sang very softly the two lines that followed.
Still, without looking up, she sang them after him; he finished the
verse, and she sang the whole through.

From the bay the sun had set, but the mountains on the east glowed
rosier and rosier every moment. All that Mitsos saw was a girl's
slender figure wrapped in a loose white cloak, with a gold band round
the waist--a hand that held two rosebuds, a face veiled up to the eyes,
eyes down-dropped, and eyelashes that swept the cheek.

"There is a third verse," he said.

Then she looked up, and her eyes smiled at him, and they were as black
as shadows beneath the moon.

"I will learn that another night," she said, softly, "if it be you will
teach me; and this is for your teaching. Go, now; others are coming."

Half carelessly she threw into the boat the roses she had picked, and
turned away.

Mitsos waited a moment longer, and then, hearing voices in the garden
behind the wall, rowed quickly away. His thoughts were a song; his
mind, one sweet secret frenzy, that made the heart quick and the eye
bright. All the common details of life were seen and taken in by him
but dimly, as sounds come dimly to a sleeper, and are but the material
out of which he weaves a golden vision; for the first splendor of
love, hackneyed as a theme, but as an experience from generation to
generation ever new, was dawning on him.

 * * * * *

Maria was married next morning, and Mitsos went without emotion to
the wedding. The bride and bridegroom appeared to him to be admirably
suited to each other.

About four o'clock that afternoon the lad was just about to set off
down to the shore when his father appeared.

"We'll finish with the wine this evening," he said. "Come and begin at
once, Mitsos."

Mitsos paused a moment.

"I was just going sailing," he said. "Cannot it wait till to-morrow?"

"No; it had better be finished now. Besides, you can sail afterwards.
Come, it won't take a couple of hours."

"Uncle Nicholas told me to sail every day," he began.

"And to obey me, Mitsos."

Mitsos stood for a moment irresolute, but soon his habit of obedience
reasserted itself.

"Yes, father," he said; "I am sorry. I will come."

The casks in which the first fermentation had taken place had been
thoroughly scoured with boiling water, which had quite got rid
of the sour-smelling fermented stuff, and they were to rack the
cleared resinated wine back into them. They filled each cask again
three-quarters full, and into the remaining space they poured a portion
of the fine wine, dividing it equally among all. To Mitsos the process
seemed insufferably long and tedious. The sun had set before the casks
were filled, and it was dark before the work was over. Never before,
it seemed to him, had the taps dribbled so dispiritingly. His father
now and then addressed some remark to him, which he barely answered,
and after a time they both lapsed into silence. Mitsos knew that he was
behaving badly, and he thought he could not help it. Perhaps she was
there; perhaps--bewildering thought--she was even wondering why he did
not come. How could he simulate the slightest interest in the wine of
grapes when the wine of love was fermenting within him, driving him mad
with those sweet, intoxicating fumes for which there is no amethyst?

At last it was over. No, he would not eat now; he would eat when he
came in, and ten minutes later he was on his way. Soon the wall began
to glimmer in front of him. Something, it looked only like a white
shadow, was leaning on it, and as he drew nearer he heard again the
voice singing low in the darkness, singing the common country song
which had become so beautiful.




CHAPTER VII

THE PORT DUES OF CORINTH


Nicholas got safely across to Corinth early in the morning after he
had parted from Mitsos, but was obliged to wait there two days for a
caique to take him to Patras. The revolution for which the leading
Greeks throughout the Peloponnese were preparing was there in the hands
of the Archbishop Germanos. Like Nicholas, he too had felt the cruel
appetites of the Turk, and, like Nicholas, he was willing to leave
revenge unplucked until the whole scheme was ripe to the core. An agent
of his had met the latter at Corinth, bidding him come, if he had a few
days to spare, at once; if not, as soon as he could. But as Nicholas
had left Nauplia with the idea of proceeding to Patras at once, he sent
the messenger back, saying he was on his way, but that for greater
security he would come by sea. That he was suspected of being concerned
in intrigue against the Turk he knew, and as his plans were now already
beginning to be thoroughly organized, and the club had made him their
principal agent in the Morea, he wished to avoid any needless risk in
passing through the garrisoned towns on the gulf.

On the second day, however, a Greek caique laden with figs was starting
from Corinth, and Nicholas went on board soon after dark, and about
midnight they started.

For a few hours an easterly breeze drew up from the narrow end of
the gulf, but it slackened and dropped between three and four in the
morning, and daylight found them becalmed, with slack sails, some
eight miles out to sea, and nearly opposite Itea. To the north the
top of Parnassus wore morning on its face, and stood high above them
rose-flushed with dawn, while they still lay on a dark, polished plain
of water as smooth as glass. On the opposite side of the gulf, but
farther ahead, Cyllene and Helmos, on the north side of which last
winter's snow still lay heraldically in bars and bezants, had also
caught the light, which, as the sun rose higher, flowed like some
luminous liquid down their slopes, wooded below with great pine forests.

Nicholas had pillowed himself on the deck, and woke when the sun had
risen high enough to touch the caique. The captain and owner of the
boat, who had been all night in the little close cabin below, came up
as he roused himself and sat down near him.

"The wind has dropped altogether," he said; "we may be here for hours.
Are you in a hurry to get on?"

Nicholas filled his pipe very carefully.

"I am never in a hurry," he said, "if I am going as quick as I can.
I would make a wind if I could, but I cannot, and so I am content to
wait. If swearing would do any good I would even swear, but I find it
has no effect on the elements. You have a good heavy cargo."

"A good, heavy cargo?" said the man. "Yes, and we should have a dipping
gunwale if those devils had not seized six crates of figs at Corinth."

"The Turks?" asked Nicholas.

"Who else? Port dues, they call them. Much of a port is Corinth--a heap
of stones tumbled into the water, and five rickety steps."

"Harbor dues! They are a new institution, are they not?"

"A month old only," said the man; "but if I hear right they will not be
very much older when they are taken off again."

"Taken off? How is that?" asked Nicholas, blandly.

"They say there will soon be a great cutting of the swines' throats. I
spend my life on the sea, and for the most part my ears are empty of
news; but surely you know what was being said at Corinth?--that before
a year is out we Greeks shall not have these masters any longer."

One of the crew was standing near, and the captain motioned him to go
farther off.

"I do not like to say this before my own men," he said; "but why should
I not tell you? you will be landed at Patras, and you will go your way
and I mine. Besides, for all your Turkish clothes you are no Turk,
for they are a short-legged folk. I heard it at the café last night.
Four Turks were talking about the arms which they say the peasants
are collecting. They spoke of one Nicholas Vidalis as a leader--they
expected to take him, for word had come to them that he was travelling
to Corinth."

"Thus there are disappointed men," thought Nicholas. Then aloud, "Who
is this Nicholas?"

"Nay, I know him not," said the man. "I am from the islands. I thought
it might be you could tell me of him."

"From which island?" asked Nicholas.

"From Psara."

Nicholas lit his pipe with a lump of charcoal and inhaled a couple of
long breaths, silent, but with a matter in balance.

Then, looking straight at the man, he said:

"I am Nicholas Vidalis, the man whom the Turks would dearly like
to catch. But at present they catch me not, for I am a clean and
God-fearing man, and I hate the Turk even as I hate the devil, for the
two are one. And now there are two ways open to you--one is to give
me up at Patras, the other to try to help me and others in what we
are doing. For this will be no time for saying 'I have nothing to do
with this; let those who will fight it out.' You will have to take one
side, and you had better begin at once. See, I have trusted you with my
secret, because you may be of use to me. You come from Psara, and you
probably know the coast of Greece as a man knows the shape of his boots
and gaiters. We have got plenty of men to fight on land, and plenty to
pay them with; what we want are little ships, which, in case of need,
will hang about the Turks if they try to escape from their destruction,
and sting them as the mosquito stings the slow cattle in the evening."

Nicholas paused for a moment, and his face lit up with a blaze of
hatred.

"For it is already evening with them," he cried, "and when the day
dawns night shall have swallowed them, and they will awake no more. Do
you know what is the strongest feeling that ever grips a man's heart?
No, not love, nor yet fear, but revenge. And if you had suffered as I
have suffered you would know what it is to be filled with one thought
only--to see blood in the sunrise and blood in the setting of the sun;
to feel that you have ceased to be a man and have become a sword. That
is what I am, and the hand that holds me is the right hand of God. And
by me He will smite and spare not. And when there are no more to smite,
perhaps I shall become a man again, and live to see peace and plenty
bless a free people. But of that I know nothing, and I do not greatly
care. Come, now, what answer do you give me?"

Nicholas rose to his feet; the other had risen too, and they faced each
other. There was something in the earnestness and intensity of this man
with one idea which could not but be felt, for enthusiasm is the one
fact that cannot be gainsaid, a noble disease in which contagion ever
makes infection. And his companion felt it.

"Tell me more," he said, eagerly; "but wait a moment--here is the wind."

He hurried aft to give orders to the men. Far away on the polished
surface of the water behind them, smooth and shining as a sealskin,
a line had appeared as if the fur had been stroked the wrong way. In
a couple of minutes the men were busy with the ropes, and two stood
ready to slacken the sheets of the heavy square sail if the squall was
violent, and one stood at the tiller, for some cross-current had turned
the boat round, and it would be necessary to put about. Meantime the
rough line had crept nearer, and behind it they could see the tops of
little waves cut off by the wind and blown about in spray. A couple of
men had put out the long sweep-oars, and were tugging hurriedly at them
to get the head of the boat straight before the wind before it struck
them. But they were not in time; the wind came down with a scream,
the boat heeled over till the leeward gunwale touched the water, and
the mast bent; then, and with a perfect precision, the sheets were
slackened for a moment to let her right herself; and, braced again, she
began to make way, and in a few seconds they were scudding straight
down the gulf almost directly before the wind, till, with their
increasing speed, it seemed to die down again. The water all round them
was broken up into an infinite number of little green foam-embroidered
wave troughs, through which, at the pace they were going, they moved as
quietly as a skater over smooth ice.

Nicholas had a careful eye to the handling of the boat during these
operations, and he saw that the little crew of six men knew their work
perfectly, and that they were quick and prompt at the moment when a
mishap might easily have occurred. He never let slip the smallest
opportunity which might some day prove to be useful, and he knew
that for anything like united action it would be necessary for the
Greeks to have, if not command of their sea-coast, at any rate the
power to communicate with each other. The outbreak, as he would have
it, would take place first in the Peloponnesus, but, not to fail of
its completeness, it would have to spread over the north. Patras and
Missolonghi were within a few miles of each other by sea, but unless
there was free communication by the waterway they would be powerless
for mutual support. To some extent both his fear and his hope were
realized.

Half an hour later he and Kanaris, the captain of the boat, were
breakfasting together, and Nicholas was explaining to him exactly what
the weakness of the movement was, and the necessity for conjunction
between the sea and land forces. He wished him, he said, to continue to
exercise his trade for the sake of appearances, but always to be ready
at a moment's notice. When the outbreak took place it was quite certain
that many of the Turks, especially those on the sea-coast, would try
to escape by sea. That must not be; it was no polite or diplomatic war
on which they were to embark; their aim from the first must be the
annihilation of the Turks. He told him in detail how this means of
escape was to be cut off, as will appear later, and as he unfolded his
bloody plan Kanaris's heart burned within him, and he promised, in the
name of God, to help him gather that red vintage.

About mid-day the wind went down, and they lay becalmed again; but
Nicholas, who, as he had said, was never in a hurry when he was going
as quick as he could, felt that his time could hardly have been better
employed. Kanaris, it appeared, was of a large Psarian clan; for
generations he and his had been seafaring folk, men of the wind and
wave, whose help Nicholas knew to be so essential. He promised, if
possible, to come to Psara himself before the year was out; but he said
that his hands were very full, and he could pledge no certainty.

For three hours or so they lay on a tossing water, for the wind of the
morning had roughened the narrow sea, which so quickly gets up under a
squall from the mountains, and great green billows came chasing each
other down from the east beneath the brilliant noonday sun, which
turned them into a jubilant company of living things. The boat, lying
low in the water with its heavy cargo, reeled and rolled with a jovial
boisterousness, alternately lifting up sides all ashine with the sea
over the crest of a wave, and burying itself again with a choking
hiccough in its trough. The sun drew out from the crates of figs their
odor of mellow luxuriance, which hung heavy round the boat, dispersed
every now and then by a puff of wind which blew in the salt freshness
of the sea.

By four o'clock, however, the wind, still favorable, sprang up again,
and on they went into the sunset, the black nose of the boat pushing
and burrowing through the waves, and throwing off from its sides
sheets of spent foam. As the hours passed Kanaris felt ever more keenly
the fascination and strength of this strange man, and after supper they
sat together in the stern watching the heavens reel and roll above
them, and the top of the mast striking wildly right and left across a
hundred stars. Nicholas, perched on the taffrail, balancing himself
with an exquisite precision to every movement of the boat, talked in
his deep low voice of a thousand schemes, all blood-stirring, with
the Turk for target. For no one knew better than himself the value of
personal power, and the success of his proselytizing had been to a
large extent, even as in the case of Mitsos, the outcome of his own
individuality, which could so stir the minds of men, and fan to a flame
the smouldering hatred against the Turks, and cause it to leap up in
fire.

Germanos, the Metropolitan Bishop of Patras, had only just risen next
morning when his messenger came back, having travelled through the
night to announce Nicholas's coming, and also report the same talk in
the cafés which Kanaris had heard. The bishop smiled to himself at
the idea of any untoward fate laying hands on Nicholas, and told his
servant to let it be widely known that Nicholas had been taken and
killed.

"For," as he said, "the Turks will be delighted to believe that (and
men always succeed in believing what they wish), and all Greeks to whom
Nicholas is more than a name will know that this is one of those things
which do not occur. I am ready for breakfast, and let a room for my
poor dead friend be got ready, and also a bath in which the body may be
washed."

Germanos was a splendid specimen of a Greek of unmixed blood, now
nearly or quite extinct. His family came from the island Delos,
still unviolated by the unspeakable race, and from generation to
generation they had only married with islanders. He was rather above
the middle height, and his long black cassock made him appear taller.
In accordance with Greek rite, neither his hair nor beard had ever
been cut, and the former flowed black and thick onto his shoulders,
and his beard fell in full rippling lines down as far as his waist.
Though for three or four years his life had been one long effort of
organizing his countrymen against the Turks, the latter had never
suspected his complicity, and he intended to take the fullest advantage
of their misplaced confidence in him. Though Germanos had not trodden
the world so widely as Nicholas had done, he was nevertheless a man
of culture--shrewd, witty, and educated. And Nicholas too, though for
the sake of the great cause he would have condemned himself cheerfully
never to speak to a man of his own rank and breeding again, found it
a pleasant change, after his incessant wanderings among peasants, to
mix with his own kind again. His few days with Constantine at Nauplia,
it is true, he had much enjoyed, for it was impossible not to be
happy when that apostle of happiness, the little Mitsos, was by; and
Constantine, too, was of the salt of the earth. He only arrived in the
evening, just before dinner, and they sat down together as soon as he
had washed.

"There is a good man to hand, I think, to-day--the captain of the boat
I came by," said he. "I suggested he should come and talk with us
to-morrow. I would have brought him with me, but he was busy with his
fig cargo."

"My dear Nicholas, you are indefatigable. I do not believe there is
a man in the world but you who would wake at dawn on the gulf and
instantly set about making a proselyte. You should have been a priest.
What made you see a patriot in him?"

"It was a long shot," said Nicholas. "He spoke without sympathy of
the new Turkish harbor dues at Corinth, and told me my capture was
imminent. I risked it on that."

The archbishop frowned.

"New harbor dues? It is time to think of harbor dues when there is a
harbor."

"So he said," answered Nicholas. "Their methods have simplicity. They
seized six crates of his figs."

"We are commanded," remarked Germanos, "to love all men. I hope I
love the Turk, but I am certain that I do not like him. And I desire
that it will please God to remove as many as possible of his kind to
the kingdom of the blest or elsewhere without delay. I say so in my
prayers."

Nicholas smiled.

"That gives a double sound," said he; "you pray not for their
destruction, but for their speedy salvation. Is that it?"

"To love all men is a hard saying; for, indeed, I love my nation, and I
am sure that the removal of the Turks will be for their permanent good.
What does the psalmist say, though he was not acquainted with the Turk,
'I will wash my footsteps in the blood of the ungodly'?"

"As far as I can learn the ungodly were expecting to wash their
footsteps in my blood at Corinth," said Nicholas; "but they behaved as
it is only granted to Turks to behave. They expected me twenty-four
hours after I had gone away."

"How did things go at Nauplia?"

"Better than I could possibly have expected. I found the very man, or
rather the boy, I wanted in my young nephew."

"The little Mitsos? How old is he?"

"Eighteen, but six feet high, and with the foot of a roe-deer on the
mountains. Moreover, I can trust him to the death."

"Eighteen is too young, surely," said Germanos. "Again, you can
trust many people to just short of that point, and they are the most
dangerous of all to work with. I could sooner work with a man I could
not trust as far as a toothache!"

In answer Nicholas told him of that midnight test, and Germanos
listened with interest and horror.

"You are probably right then, and I am wrong," he said; "and a boy can
move about the country without suspicion where a man could not go. But
how could you do so cruel a thing? Are you flesh and blood--and a young
boy like that?"

"Yes, it was horrible!" said Nicholas; "but I want none but those who
are made of steel. I knew by it that he was one in a thousand. He
clinched his teeth, and never a word."

"What do you propose to do with him now?"

"That is what I came to talk to you about. It is time to set to work in
earnest. The Club, as you know, have given me a free hand and an open
purse. Mitsos must go from village to village, especially round Sparta,
and tell them to begin what I told them and to be ready. The Turks are,
I am afraid, on the lookout for me, and I cannot travel, as you say, in
the way he can without suspicion."

"What did you tell them to begin?" asked Germanos.

"Can you ask? Surely to grind black corn for the Turk. It must be done
very quickly and quietly, and chiefly up in the villages there in
Maina. You say you are collecting arms here?"

"Not here, at the monastery at Megaspelaion. Many of them have been
bought from the Turks themselves. There lies a sting. The monks carry
them in among the maize and reed stalks. Father Priketes was met the
other day by a couple of their little Turkish soldiers, who asked why
they were carrying so many reeds, and he said it was to mend the roof.
Reeds make a capital roof."

"Yes, the monastery roof will want many mules' loads of mending," said
Nicholas. "Do you suppose they suspect anything?"

"Certainly, but they have nothing to act on; besides, I would be
willing to let them search the monastery from top to bottom. Do you
remember the chapel there, and the great altar?"

"Surely."

"The flag-stone under the altar has been taken up and a hole made into
the crypt. The door into the crypt, which opens from the passage in the
floor below, has been boarded over and whitewashed, so that it looks
exactly like the rest of the passage wall. It is impossible to detect
it. Mehemet Salik, the new governor in Tripoli, appointed only this
month from Nauplia, was there last week and examined the whole place.
He is a young man, though suspicious for his age."

"That is good," said Nicholas. "Your doing, I suppose. How many guns
have you?"

"About a thousand, and twice as many swords. In another month we shall
be ready. Megaspelaion makes a far better centre than Patras would, as
it is so much nearer Tripoli. That is where the struggle will begin."

"Who knows?" said Nicholas. "When we are ready we will begin just where
it suits us. Personally, I should prefer--" He stopped.

"Well?"

"It is this," said Nicholas. "It is no gallant and polite war we
want; we do not want to make terms, or treaties, or threats. We want
to strike and have done with it; to exterminate. I should prefer, if
possible, striking the first blow either at Kalamata or Nauplia. Then
the dogs from all round would run yelping into Tripoli, as it is their
strongest place, and so at the end there would be none left."

"Exterminate is no Christian word, Nicholas. The women and the
children--"

"The women and children," said Nicholas, rising and pacing up and down
the room; "what are they to me? Once when I was an outlaw I spared
them--yes, and spared the men, too, only sending them riding back face
to the horse's tail. But did they spare my wife and my child? If there
is a God in heaven I will show them the mercy they showed me!"

Germanos was silent a few moments, and waited till Nicholas had sat
down again.

"Will you drink more wine?" he asked; "if not, we will sit on the
balcony; it is hot to-night. I think you are right about striking the
first blow somewhere in the south, so that they shall go to Tripoli. I
had thought before that it would be better to strike at the centre. But
your plan seems to me the wiser. Come outside, Nicholas."

Germanos's house stood just out of the town, high up on the hill, which
was crowned by the castle, and from his balcony they could see the
twinkling lights in the fort below like holes bored in the dark, and
beyond the stretch of starlit water, and dimly on the other side of
the gulf the hill above Missolonghi shouldering itself up in the faint
black distance. Before long the moon rose above the castle behind
them, and turned the whole world to silver and ebony. Cicalas chirped
in the bushes, and the fragrance of the southern night came drowsily
along the wind. Every now and then a noise would rise up for a moment
in the town, shrill to its highest, and die away again.

A boy brought them out coffee, made thick and sweet in the Turkish
manner, and two narghilés with amber mouth-pieces, and brazen bowls for
holding the coarse-cut tobacco. On each he placed a glowing charcoal
ember, and handed the mouth-pieces to the two men. For a long while
they sat in silence, and then Nicholas spoke:

"It will be no time for mercy--I shall go where my vow leads me, and I
have vowed to spare neither man, woman, nor child. I will show them the
mercy they showed me, and no other."

"God make you merciful on that day, as you hope for mercy," said
Germanos. "For me, I shall not be a party to any butchering of the
defenceless. There will be plenty of butchers without me. Blood must
be shed; it cannot be otherwise. Fight and spare not, but when the
fighting is over let the rest go out of the country, for we will not
have them here. But for massacre, I will not make myself no better than
a Turk!"

The two narghilés bubbled in silence again for a few minutes, and at
last Germanos broke in with a laugh:

"The Turks all think you are dead," he said. "I told the boy to let it
be widely known that you had been killed at Corinth. It is just as well
they should believe it. Mehemet Achmet, the sleepiest man God made, was
here this afternoon, and he regretted it with deep-seated enjoyment.
They seemed to know all about you here!"

"But none in Patras know me by sight," said Nicholas, "and as I am dead
they never will. It is possible that it may prove useful to me. What
are your plans for to-morrow?"

"We will do what you like. It might be well for you to see
Megaspelaion. We could get there in a day if the wind held to Vostitza.
They have, as I said, a curious little crypt there, which is worth a
visit."

Nicholas smiled.

"It is impossible for a man to see too much," he said, "just as it is
impossible for a man to pretend to know too little. I would give a
fortune, if I had one, for a face like my brother-in-law Constantine's,
for it is as a mask in carnival time, behind which who knows what may
be? Yet there is force in him, and Mitsos obeys him as--as he obeys me!
And yet he is too large a lad to take commands easily."

"Perhaps no other influence has come in yet. To fall in love, for
instance, sometimes makes a good lad less obedient than an orphan to
his parents."

"The little one in love would be fine," said Nicholas. "He would send
the whole world to the devil. Why, shooting is the strongest passion he
has known yet, and he shoots as if all the saints were watching him."

"I hope some of them are," remarked Germanos, "and that they will
especially watch him when he is inclined to send the whole world to the
devil. I hope Mitsos will not think of including me."

"I will warn him when I see him next. I shall go on there, I think,
in November. I must get back to Maina first and see my cousin, Petros
Mavromichales, who is the head of the clan, and find out if the clan
are prepared to rise in a body. That man Kanaris was handy enough with
his boat, but I would back Mitsos to sail against him in any weather."

"Ah! that fire-ship is a horrible idea of yours, Nicholas."

"Horrible, but necessary. We must not have supplies of arms and
gunpowder coming to the Turks by sea, and there must be no escape out
of the death-trap which we will snap down on them. And now let me tell
you all that is in my mind, for it may be we shall not meet again till
the great Vintage is ripe for the gathering."

For an hour or so Nicholas talked eagerly, unfolding his schemes,
Germanos listening always attentively, sometimes dissenting, but in the
main approving. He spoke of the Club of Patriots in north Greece, who
had given him leave to act in their name until the time came for them
to send a delegate who would act openly; for at present if it became
known that the leading men of Greece, many of whom were in official
positions under the Turks, were concerned in schemes of revolution, the
whole project would be a pricked bubble. He sketched the rising of the
peasants, in whom the strength of the war would lie; the flame that
should run through the land, as through summer-dry stubble, from north
to south and east to west; and it seemed in after years to Germanos
that a spirit of prophecy had been on the man.

And as Nicholas went on another vision rose before the bishop's eyes:
the vision of his church, the mother of their hearts, throned not only
there, but in the glory of an earthly magnificence, in visible splendor
the bride of her Lord. Therein to him was food for hope and aspiration,
and his thoughts drifted away from war and bloodshed to that.

And when Nicholas had finished he met an eye that kindled as his own,
but with thoughts that were not spoken, but partook of their sweet and
secret food in silence and self-communing.




CHAPTER VIII

THE MENDING OF THE MONASTERY ROOF


Kanaris had finished his unlading the same evening, and he was ready at
daybreak to take Nicholas and Germanos as far as Vostitza, a fishing
village lying some four miles from the mouth of the gorge, at the top
of which stands Megaspelaion. Here the archbishop and Nicholas would
get mules and reach the monastery the same evening. Vostitza, with
their fair wind, was not more than four hours from Patras, and on
arriving there the archbishop went straight to the house of the Turkish
governor, from whom he procured mules, and to whom he introduced
Nicholas as his cousin; and the three talked together a while over a
cup of coffee, discussed the idle rumors that were abroad concerning
a movement against the Turks among the Greeks, and found cause for
comfort as lovers of peace in the undoubted fact that Nicholas had been
killed two days before at Corinth. He was a turbulent, hot-headed man,
said the archbishop, and did not value the blessings of tranquillity.
His cousin also had met him, a quarrelsome, wine-bibbing fellow, quoth
Nicholas; he could have had no more appropriate end than a brawl in a
wine-shop.

Thus they chatted very pleasantly and harmoniously while their mules
were being made ready, and Said Aga, who was no man of the sword, being
rotund and indolent in habit, was much relieved to find that Germanos
scoffingly dismissed the idea of any hostile movement being on foot
among the Greeks. True, there had been disturbances lately; a Turkish
tax-collector had been killed at Diakopton, three miles from Vostitza.
Had they not heard? The news had come yesterday!

"Alas! for this unruly people," said Germanos. "What was the manner of
it?"

"I hardly know," said Said Aga. "It was the usual story, I believe. He
had taken to himself a Greek woman, and the husband killed him. The man
has fled, but they will catch him, and he will suffer, and then die.
For me, I shrug my shoulders at these things. We Turks have certain
customs, and the Prophet himself had four wives, and when we are the
lords of a country we must be obeyed."

"True," said Nicholas, "quite true, and we must submit. It is not the
will of God that all men should be equal."

He caught Germanos's eye for a moment.

"I am glad that you think there is nothing in these rumors," went on
Said Aga. "Your countrymen would hardly be so foolish as to attempt
anything of the sort. But the rumors are somewhat persistent. It was
even said that the monks at Megaspelaion were collecting arms, and my
colleague Mehemet Salik, a very energetic young man who was lately put
in charge at Tripoli, thought best to make an inspection there. But he
was quite satisfied there was no truth in it."

Germanos laughed heartily.

"That is a little too much," he said. "You may at least rest assured
that we priests of God are men of peace. Our mules, they tell me, are
ready. A thousand thanks, Excellency, for your kindness."

They mounted and rode up the straying village street, paved with
big, uneven stones. The villagers were all out in the fields for the
fruit harvest, and the rough, shaggy-haired dogs, keeping watch in
the deserted house-yards, came rushing out barking and snarling with
bared teeth at the sound of their mules with their tinkling bells and
iron-shod feet grating over the cobbles. The mule-boys paid little
attention to their noisy menaces, though now and then some dog more
savage or less wisely valorous than his fellows would come within stick
distance, only to be sent back with better cause for crying than before.

But in ten minutes or so they got clear of the village, and taking
one of the field roads struck across the plain towards the mouth of
the gorge, about four miles distant. The grapes were not yet so far
advanced as at Nauplia and still hung hard, and tinged with color
only on the sunward side; but the fruit harvest was going on, and
under the fig-trees were spread coarse strips of matting on which
the fragrant piles were laid to dry. A few late pomegranate-trees
were still covered with their red wax-like blossoms, but on most the
petals had fallen, and the fruit, like little green-glazed pitchers,
was beginning to swell and darken towards maturity. The men were at
work in the vineyards cutting channels for the water, and through the
green of the fig-trees you could catch sight every now and then of the
brightly-colored petticoat of some woman picking the fruit, or else
her presence was only indicated, where the leaves were thicker, by the
dumping of the ripe figs onto the canvas strips below. The sun was
right overhead before they struck the mouth of the gorge, and the heat
intense--a still, fruit-ripening heat in the heavy air of the plains.
But as they approached the hills a cooler draught slid down from
between the enormous crags, bearing on it the voice of the brawling
torrent, which is fed by the snow of Cyllene and Helmos, and knows not
drought.

Here the country was given up to olives and wheat, and occasional
clumps of maize near the bed of the stream. The oleanders were still
in flower, and their great clusters of pink blossom marked the course
of the river. Another mile took them to the ford, on the far side of
which the path began to climb through the ever-narrowing gorge. Further
up they found it impossible to keep to the course of the stream, for
the road had been washed away in places and not repaired, and leaving
it on their right, they turned up over a steep grassy stretch of moor,
sprinkled here and there with pines. Looking back they could see below
them the hot luxuriant plain they had left, trembling sleepily under
the blue haze of heat, and further off the shimmering waters of the
gulf. As they ascended the vegetation changed: pines entirely took
the place of the olives, and the grass, all brown and dead below from
the summer's heat, began to be flushed with lively green, and studded
with wild campanulas and little blue gentians, throbbing hotly with
color. Then descending again they passed along the upper slope of the
cliffs above the gorge and saw before them the deep, sheltered valley
stretching up to Kalavryta, a land of streams and a garden of the Lord.

The sun was already near its setting when they joined the main road
leading up to the monastery from the valley, and they struck into a
train of some half-dozen mules covered and enveloped in loads of reeds,
the tops of which brushed rustling along the ground behind like some
court lady's dress. Two of the monks from the monastery were in charge
of these, and when they saw who it was with Nicholas they stopped and
kissed the archbishop's hands. As they moved forward again he said:

"I see you are carrying reeds, my sons. From where did they come, and
for what purpose?"

"From Kalavryta, father," said one. "We have six mules laden with them.
The monastery roof needs mending."

"That is good. Observe, Nicholas, how fine these reeds are. They seem
to be a heavy load. The monastery roof, they say, wants mending."

The younger of the two monks smiled.

"A great many things want mending, father!" he said. "We are making
preparations for mending them."

Nicholas, who was in front, checked his mule.

"And have you black corn," he said, "good black corn for the Turk?"

The monk shook his head.

"I do not understand," he said.

Germanos smiled back at Nicholas.

"A roof for the monastery first, Nicholas," he said; "there will be
time for the good black corn when the roof is mended. And now, my son,
I will ask you to go forward quickly and tell Father Priketes, with my
salutations, that my cousin and I will arrive very soon. We shall stop
with him for a day, or it may be two, for we wish to superintend this
mending of the monastery roof, and see that it is well done for the
glory of God."

Another half-hour through the gathering dusk brought them in sight of
the monastery, which from the distance was indistinguishable from the
face of the cliff, against which it was built. Chains of light shone
from the narrow windows, row above row, some from the height of all
its twelve stories, twinkling a hundred feet above them, as if from
cottages perched high on the cliff, others larger and nearer from the
windows of the sacristy and library. To the right stood the great
gateway, about which several moving lanterns seemed to show that the
news of their coming had anticipated them, and that due preparations
were being made to receive the archbishop. As they got close they
could see that the monks were pouring out of the arch, and taking
their places in rows on each side of the terrace leading up to the
gate. In front of them stood the novices, some mere boys of fourteen
and fifteen, but all dressed alike, and all with long hair, that had
never known the scissors, flowing onto their shoulders. In the centre
of the gateway--a tall, white-bearded figure--stood Father Priketes,
who helped the archbishop to dismount, and then knelt to receive his
blessing. Germanos paused a moment as he entered, and said in a loud,
clear voice to them all:

"The peace of God be upon this holy house and all within it, and His
blessing be upon the work"--and his voice dwelt on the word--"upon the
work you are doing."

Nicholas was already known to Father Priketes, but the latter looked as
if he had seen a ghost when he caught sight of him.

"We heard you were dead," he said.

Nicholas smiled.

"I am delighted to know it, father," he said. "Do not destroy the idea,
if you please."

They passed on to Father Priketes's rooms, where they were alone.

"I see your repairs are going on steadily," said Germanos. "We passed
some laden mules on the way. Nicholas wished much to see what you were
doing. He is--how shall I say it?--our overseer; we are the workmen. He
will tell us when the work must be finished. Let us go at once to the
chapel, my brother, and thank St. Luke, your founder, and the Blessed
Virgin, that they have brought us here safe. That is the first duty of
the soldiers of God."

Father Priketes led the way to the chapel, and pushed open the great
brazen door for Germanos to enter. He knelt in turn before the great
altar, the altar to the Beloved Physician, and before the black relief
of the Virgin, made, as tradition says, by the hands of St. Luke
himself, and said for himself and Nicholas a thanksgiving for the
aid of the Saints which had brought them safely to the end of their
journey. They then supped with Father Priketes, and went back to the
chapel.

The place was but dimly lighted with oil lamps, and after locking the
door behind them--for at present only a few of the monks had been
trusted with the secret of the crypt--the father lighted a lantern and
led the way up to the east end. Then after crossing himself he drew
from underneath the altar a small crowbar, and creeping under with the
lantern, he prized away a square paving-stone, which covered a hole
large enough for a single man to creep through. Rough wooden steps
had been erected from the floor of the crypt up to the level of this,
and one by one they descended. The crypt was some forty feet long by
twenty broad, and the light of the lantern struck from all the walls
a reflection of steel. Since Germanos's last visit, they had largely
added to the number of arms, and on a hasty glance Nicholas reckoned
that there could not be less than fifteen hundred guns.

His eyes glistened as he moved the lantern round the walls, and he
turned to Father Priketes.

"This will make a hole in the Turks bigger than the hole in your roof,"
he said. "You have enough, I think. They will be hungry, these reeds;
grind their food for them, and do not let them feel stint of that."

"Already?" asked Father Priketes.

"Already! It is August now, and when our vineyards are green with the
fresh leaves in the spring, the juice of the greater vintage shall be
spilled. And there will be a mighty gathering; the wine-press will be
running red, and fuller than the vats of Solomon. Where can you stow
the food for all these hungry throats?"

"There is room here, is there not?"

"Surely, room and to spare; but it would not be well to keep it here.
Whoever enters here must carry a light; a chance spark, and he may cry
to the Virgin in vain."

Father Priketes paused a moment.

"You shall take a walk with me to-morrow and we will see. You are
satisfied at present?"

"I shall never be satisfied," said Nicholas. "I should not be satisfied
if I saw all the armaments of angels in array against the Turk. But it
is time to think of other things. Could you raise men at once?"

"Five hundred in one minute from within these walls," said Father
Priketes, "and two thousand more in the time it would take an eager man
to climb up here from Kalavryta."

Nicholas looked round again, smiling as a man smiles to look on one he
loves.

"This feeds my soul," he said. "And swords too, little sickles for the
gathering! Look you, perhaps we shall not meet again till after our
vintage has begun; but remember this: After four months from now, we
cannot tell when the day of the beginning of the gathering will come,
and so be ready. Whatever the archbishop orders, do it, for he and I
work together. And, O Father, let no man take thought for himself on
that day. What matters it to whom the honor and the glory go, if once
Greece is free? If you desire such things, I give to you now by bequest
all the honor and riches that may come to me. Forgive me for saying
this, but that is the only loophole where failure may creep into our
camp, and that I fear more than ten Sultans and their armies. I say the
same thing to all, and I remind myself of it daily. I have been chosen
to conduct this matter, for the present, in the Morea, and I will give
my life and all I possess to it; and in company with others, of whom
the archbishop is one, and Petros Mavromichales, of Maina, another, I
will do my best, so help me God, honestly and without a selfish mind.
The moment a single dissentient voice is raised, not in the matter of
councils or plan of actions, on which we will listen to all that is to
be said, but of command and obedience, I only ask leave to serve in
the ranks. Let us deliberate together by all means till the time comes
to act, but when that time comes, and a word of command goes through
the country, let there be no delay. For all will depend, so I take it,
on the speed with which we act when we come to action. This is the
beginning and the end of success, and all that lies between."

"But how is the word of command to come," said Father Priketes, who had
secretly hoped for a little independent campaign, "if you are not with
us? Must I not act on my own judgment?"

"No, a thousand times no," said Nicholas. "What I have seen here shows
me that you in Megaspelaion and Patras will be no small portion of our
first success. How the war will spread afterwards, God knows; but when
the first grapes are cut it will be you, so I think, to garner them.
This is why you must obey absolutely. Nothing will be left to your
judgment. A message will come, and you will obey."

"How am I to tell who your messenger is?"

Nicholas smiled.

"Some afternoon, when you are sitting in the spring sunshine, or
perhaps some night in this next winter, when you are sleeping, a monk
will come to you and say, 'There is a man here, or a boy it may be, or
a girl even, who wishes to see you, and we cannot understand what he
means.' Then you will delay not, but go and see what it is. You will
say, 'I am Father Priketes; you have a message for me?' And the message
will be in this form: 'I am bidden to ask you if there is corn to be
given to those who need it?' And you will say, 'Is it black corn they
need, and are the needy hungry, or are they Turks?' And the messenger
will say, 'Send black corn for the Turks to Kalamata or Kalavryta, or
wherever it is, and let two hundred or five hundred or a thousand men
carry it.' Other instructions may come as well, but always in that
form. And as you obey, so may the Lord give you a place among His
saints in heaven."

Father Priketes was silent for a moment.

"You are right, Nicholas," he said; "and I swear by the picture of the
mother of God that I will obey in all things. Come, shall we go up
again?"

They climbed up into the chapel, and went out down the vaulted stone
passage to the story below, where another passage, whitewashed and
boarded on both sides, led to the monks' library and Father Priketes's
own rooms. Nicholas, who carried in his hand an olive-wood stick,
tapped the panelling carelessly as he went along, and once stopped a
moment and smiled at Germanos.

"The wall seems to be a little less thick here than at other places,"
he said. "Mehemet Salik, however, was too cunning to attend to such
simple things."

"The Lord be praised for making so many clever men," said Germanos,
piously. "To have a fool for an enemy has been the undoing of more good
people than Satan himself."

They went on to Father Priketes's room where they had supped before,
and Nicholas lit himself a pipe.

"That is quite true," he said. "A fool is always blundering into the
weak place by accident--there is nothing so disconcerting; whereas a
clever man is on the lookout for less patent weaknesses, and passes
over the patent ones on purpose. And the Turk is both clever and
indolent--a very happy combination."

"For us," said Priketes, who had, as Nicholas once said, a wonderful
faculty for seeing that which was obvious.

"As you say, for us," said Nicholas; "and we intend to profit by it.
And now, father, with your leave I will go to bed. I have seen all I
came to see, and think I had better push on to-morrow. You will find,
no doubt, a prudent place for your granary. It is impossible to be
too prudent now, just as it will be more than possible to be too wary
hereafter. When once we get into the open we keep there until all is
finished."

"Where do you go now?" asked Germanos.

"Southwards," said Nicholas. "I must travel as widely as I can in
Messenia, and also see my cousin Petrobey. The Maina district will be
raised by him. If once the war begins, as I would have it to begin, I
shall be at ease about the rest. Only the beginning must be as sudden
as the thunderbolt. Ah, but there is fever in my blood for that!"

Nicholas, as his custom was, rose early next morning and went from the
dark-panelled room, where he had slept, down towards the chapel. The
great green bronze bell hanging in the wooden balcony outside had just
begun to ring for matins, and the sound, grave and sonorous, floated
out over the valley like a dream. He waited there awhile looking at
the blackened Byzantine paintings which covered the roof, till the
monks began trooping up the cobbled passage, and with the first of them
he went inside the chapel. From the centre of the roof hung a great
gilt candelabrum in the form of a crown, and from side to side of the
building ran a row of silver lamps--some thirty in number--which had
been burning all night, but looked red and dim in the fresh morning
light. Set in the gilt altar-screen were the paintings of the Panagia
and of Christ, and at the south end--more precious to the faithful than
all--the wax relief of the Virgin and Child. The silver panel, behind
which it is placed, had been opened, and Nicholas, with the others,
made his obeisance before it. The head of the Virgin and the head of
the Child are all that can be seen, and these are black with age; the
rest is one mass of chased gold. The crown which the Child wears is
studded with rubies and emeralds grown dim; His mother's crown is less
magnificent; and on the silver rail in front of it hang the offerings
of those to whom, in the days of faith, its contemplation had brought
healing of many diseases. Over the gate to the altar hung two stoles of
red velvet, in which the priest who said the mass would robe himself.
A border of gold holly leaves ran down them on each side, and down the
middle they were embroidered with floreated and cusped ornaments in
red and gold, in the centre of each of which was worked the figure of
Christ. On the north wall, by the easternmost of the monks' stalls,
hung the picture of the daughter of the Emperor Palæologus. She is
dressed in a red cloak with golden eagles embroidered over it; her hair
is golden auburn, and she raises a face charmingly childlike and naïve,
and holds up hands of prayer to the gracious figure of the Virgin who
stands beside her.

Priketes and Germanos were the last to enter, and when the short
prayers were said, Nicholas went out with them, and they walked up
and down the terrace awhile talking. Some of the elder monks, with
their purple cassocks trimmed with fur wrapped closely round them,
sat outside the iron-sheeted gate, under the fresco of Adam and Eve
being driven out from Paradise, which fills the triangular space above
it, watching them with eager attention, for it had become known who
Nicholas was and what his errand. On their right rose the enormous
mass of the monastery, crowned by an overhanging cliff of gray rock,
which the smoke from the chimney had stained in places to a rich
vandyke-brown, in the hollow of which, as in the hollow of a sheltering
hand, the great pile of buildings stood, seeming rather to have been
the core round which the rock rose than to have been built into it. In
front the ground fell rapidly away into the valley, but was terraced up
into little gardens, full of cypresses and poplars or figs and plane
trees; under these stood many little wooden arbors, trellised over with
vines, where the brethren spent their tranquil days; and a hundred
riotous streams--some conducted down wooden shoots, some straying over
the paths--rattled headlong to join the river below. Further down, the
hill-side was covered with low-growing scrub, and on the opposite side
of the valley, the village of Zachlórou hung on by teeth and nails to
the climbing moor. A company of swallows cut curves and circles in the
thin morning air, their black backs showing metallic, like oxidized
steel in the sunlight, and a great flight of white pigeons clattered
out of the rock above and settled in a cloud by the fountain. In one of
these little arbors Germanos and Nicholas drank their coffee and smoked
a pipe of the monastery tobacco until the latter's horse was brought
round. Then, rising,

"We shall meet again," he said, "when the vintage is ripe, or, if
we meet not, we shall both be laborers in the treading; you here, I
perhaps in the south. So now, father, give me your blessing, for I must
go on my way."




CHAPTER IX

THE SINGER FROM THE DARKNESS


November went out with a fortnight of cold showers and biting winds,
and the woodcock came down in hundreds to the plain of Nauplia. Often
when the curtain of cloud which veiled Mount Elias day by day was rent
raggedly in two by some blast in the upper air, the higher slope of
the mountain, it could be seen, was sprinkled with snow. Then the peak
would again wrap itself in folds of tattered vapors as a beggar throws
his torn cloak over his shoulder, and perhaps would not peer through
the mists again for a couple of days. Down in the plain scudding
showers swept across from north to south and east to west, and the
earth, still thirsty from the long drought of the summer, drank them in
feverishly as a sick man drains the glass by his bedside and turns to
sleep again.

Mitsos had many round oaths for this horrible weather, but like a wise
lad cursed and had done with it. The bay and the sweet possibilities
of the bay were only in the range of thought, but the woodcock were
more accessible, and with something of the air of a martyr he would
pass a long day on the uplands towards Epidaurus, and come back, after
the fall of dark, with a leash of woodcock, and an appetite which
bordered on the grotesque, singing and contented. But later in the
evening he would be twitched by an eager restlessness, and make many
journeys to the door to see if the weather had cleared, or showed signs
of clearing, only to be met by a buffeting clap of windy rain in the
face, which made him close it again quickly, for where was the use,
he argued, of lying rolling and rocking off the white wall if he was
to be alone there? Once or twice during this fortnight he had sailed
by it, but his wages were only a wetting. Constantine was somewhat
puzzled and perplexed at Mitsos' behavior about this time, but he took
it all with his habitual serenity of tolerance, and likened him in
his own mind to a colt who is just beginning to find out that he is a
horse, and, knowing his own strength and learning his needs, whinnies
and kicks up his heels. He knew that it would be useless to try to
extract unvolunteered information out of Mitsos, and he guessed more
nearly to the truth than he knew, that Mitsos' somewhat spasmodic moods
were merely the natural results of his budding manhood, and were as
inexplicable to him as they were to his father. Meantime, though they
had neither heard nor seen anything more of Nicholas, Constantine felt
that Mitsos was growing in the way he would have him grow, and was
increasing in self-reliance and surefootedness of mind just as he was
increasing in bodily strength and stature.

But Mitsos was exercising more self-control than his father gave him
credit for. That acquaintance with Suleima, the Greek girl in the harem
of the Turk, begun so strangely, had ripened no less strangely. He had
sat below the wall night after night and talked to her from his boat,
rocking gently in the swell, or standing still and steady in the calm
water, till with a sign she motioned him away, seeing some other woman
of the harem or one of the servants come out into the garden.

Then Suleima had made a confidante of one of the elder women, who,
seeing Mitsos' handsome, laughing face, had given her sympathy, and,
what was better, a practical exhibition of it, and had promised
to watch in the garden so that they might talk without fear of
interruption; stipulating, however, through Suleima as interpreter,
half laughing, yet half in earnest, that Mitsos should give her a kiss
for every time she watched for them. Suleima had felt herself flushing
as she interpreted this into Greek, but Mitsos' tone reassured her as
he answered,

"She might as well do it for nothing. Oh, don't translate that, but say
we are very much obliged. Pay-day is long in the house of a Turk."

Then there came an evening, only just before the weather had broken,
when Mitsos took down to the boat a little rope ladder. Suleima had
told him that he was to come there late, not before midnight, and she
would have gone to her room early, saying she was not well. Then, if
possible, she would come out to him, and they would go for a sail
together.

It was an evening to be remembered--to be lived over again in
memory. Her reluctance and eagerness to come; the terrorizing risk
of discovery, which none the less was a whetstone to her enjoyment;
her delight at getting out, though only for an hour or two; her
half-frightened, childish exclamations of dismay as Mitsos put about,
when the water began to curl back from the forefoot of the boat as
they went hissing out to sea before the wind; her face looking as if
it was made of ebony and ivory beneath the moonlight, with its thin,
black eyebrows, and long, black eyelashes; her sense of innocent
wickedness, as in response to Mitsos' entreaties she unveiled it
altogether; her curious, fantastic story of how she was carried off
years ago by a Turk, and had forgotten all about her home, except
that her father was a tall man with a long, black dress; her pretty,
hesitating pronunciation of Greek; her bewildering treatment of himself
as if he was a boy, as he was, and she a person of mature experience,
as she was not, being a year younger than he; the view which she took
of this moonlight sail as just a childish freak, heavily paid for if
discovered, and to be repeated if not, while to him it was the opening
of heaven. Then, as he still remained serious, looking at her with
wide eyes of shy adoration, she too became just a little serious as
they turned homewards, and said that she liked him very much, and that
old Abdul Achmet was a fat pig. Then in answer to him--Oh, no, she was
quite content where she was, except when Abdul was in a bad temper or
the eunuch beat her. There was plenty to eat, nothing to do, and they
were all much less strictly looked after than in other harems, for
Abdul was old and only cared for one of them. For herself she was a
favorite servant of his chief wife, and not really in the harem. It was
not very exciting, but if Mitsos would come again now and then and take
her for sails she would be quite happy. Finally, it was useless for him
to come except when it was fine, for the harem was always locked up in
wet weather, and she would not be able to get into the garden. Also,
she hated rain like a cat.

Then intervened the fortnight when the climate of Nauplia, which for
the most part is that of the valley of Avilion, gave way to the angry
moods of a child--to screaming, sobbing, and steady weeping. The
surface of the bay was churned up by the rain and streaked with foam by
the wind, and the big poplar-tree, under which Maria had slept, shook
itself free of its summer foliage and stood forth in naked, gnarled
appeal to the elements. For a fortnight the deluge continued, but on
the night of the 1st of December, Mitsos, waking at that strange moment
when the earth turns in her sleep, and cattle and horses stand up and
graze for a moment before lying down again, saw with half an eye the
shadow of the bar of his window cast sharply onto the floor of his
bedroom by the slip of the crescent moon, which rode high in a starry
sky, and when he woke again it was to see a heaven of unsullied blue
washed clean by the rain.

Half the day he spent dreaming and dozing in the veranda, for he meant
to be out on the bay that night, and after his mid-day dinner he went
down to overhaul the boat, taking with him his fishing-net and a bag
of resin. He had wrapped up in the centre of the net the pillow from
his bed, for Suleima had said that the net on which she sat before
smelled fishy. But after supper that night he found himself beset by a
strange perplexity, the like of which he had never felt. His fustanella
was old and darned; it was hardly suitable. It did very well before,
but somehow now--and the moon would be larger to-night. The perplexity
gained on him, and eventually he took out and put on his new clothes,
only worn on festa days, which were thoroughly unsuitable for rough
fishing by night. He brushed his hair with extreme care, and wished it
was sleek and smooth like Yanko's, instead of growing in crisp, strong
curls, put his red cap rakishly on the side of his head, and laced up
his brown cloth leggings to the very top. All this was done with the
greatest precision and seriousness, and he went down-stairs on tiptoe
for fear of wakening his father, who was already abed, and had left
injunctions with him to lock the door and take the key with him if he
was likely to be late.

It was about half-past ten when he set off, and the moon had risen.
It too

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