"Talking of the prize-money—" he began.
"Which we were not doing," said the Capsina.
"Then let us do so now. It is thus: I do not want it, for it was not for that I came, and I would rather that you gave it to the war fund."
The Capsina turned a little away and played with the end of a rope lying near her.
"Then why was it you came?" she asked, unable not to give Mitsos the opportunity her heart knew he would not take.
He frowned.
"Why? Why?" he repeated. "Was there not reason enough, and are not the reasons justified? Or"—and he smiled—"or shall I make pretty speeches to you?"
"The Virgin defend me!" said the Capsina, with leaden calmness, again shrinking from what she had encouraged. "But you are absurd, little Mitsos. Are you to go home to—what is her name?—to Suleima empty-handed, and have no fairing for her and the baby?"
"Oh, Suleima wants no presents," said he.
"You mean she will be so happy when she sees you that—Oh, saints in heaven!" she broke off.
Then, as Mitsos stared at her with the quiet, habitual wonder with which he regarded her sudden outbursts as common phenomena:
"You think she will be so pleased to see you she will have no thought for aught else?"
Mitsos blew out a great blue cloud of smoke before he replied.
"It is thus," he said. "Had Suleima been away all this time, what, think you, should I have cared what she brought me so long as she brought herself? And I think—yes, I think it is not different with her."
"Oh, you men-folk make me mad!" she cried. "Little Mitsos, you are just exactly like my cousin Christos, and that, I may tell you, is no compliment from my lips. He could not understand, his mind was simply not able to appreciate how it was that I preferred the sea, and the brig, and—and Michael, to marrying him. 'What more can the girl want,' says he to himself, 'than to have a husband such as me?' And, indeed, you think, like Christos, that a woman has no other wish. Is a woman not a human thing? Because Suleima is so fortunate a girl as to have this great, fine Mitsos for her husband, is there nothing else in the world she can desire?"
The Capsina brought the words out like hammer-blows on an anvil. Then she went on hurriedly, reverting to the main topic.
"About the money," she said; "if you won't take it as prize-money, take it as wages, for, indeed, I think you are worth your pay, though lazy and given to tobacco, and I am not dissatisfied with you. Not—not as wages, for the Mavromichales, you say, have never accepted wages. The more fools they. Take it as a present from me. Does that offend you? I see it does, for you make a moon-crescent of your mouth. Then give it to Suleima as a present from me. It offends you still, for though you make your mouth straight, your nose is in the air. But, before God, little Mitsos, you are the queerest and the proudest lad I have ever seen. You should have been of the clan of Capsas."
"That you might treat me as you treated the cousin Christos, to whom I am so like? The words are from your own mouth, Capsina, not from my moon-crescent, as you are pleased to call that where I put my food."
The Capsina flushed ever so slightly.
"Ah, you talk nonsense," she said, quickly. "I do, too, being a woman; I know it; but that is no excuse for you."
Mitsos took the pipe out of his mouth and made a mock bow.
"What the Capsina does is good enough for me to do," he said.
The girl smiled back at him, her heart beating a little quicker than its wont, and sat for a moment silent, watching him as he lounged lazily with down-dropped eyes, stirring up the live charcoal which burned in the bowl of his narghile.
"Oh, it is a queer people the good God has made," she said. "I am of the clan of Capsas, you of the Mainats, and never have Mainats and Capsiots gone hunting together before. Why are we made so—you a Mainat, I a Capsiot? For, indeed, little Mitsos, you are more like the clan than Christos. Think if I had married Christos! I should have been, like the others, long before this day counting the eggs the hens have laid instead of the Turks that I have killed, and cooking the supper, and talking like one of a company of silly sparrows in a bush. Why is it that one thing happens to me, and not another? Why did you meet Suleima? Why—"
And her voice was a little raised and tremulous, and she stopped abruptly, though her silence half strangled her. She seemed unable to exchange an ordinary word with him without letting her sex obtrude itself. If she was never to be aught but a comrade to Mitsos, it would be something, at any rate, to make him know how much more he was to her. Her fierce, full-blooded nature, accustomed to impose its will on others and to exercise no control on itself, if baffled in the first respect might at least realize the other. She was hurt; each day of her life hurt her; at least, she could cry aloud. But the mood passed in a moment: Mitsos was full of the thought of Suleima, whom he would see that evening. He would think her mad, or worse; and still, he would not care. She would cease even to be a comrade to him.
Mitsos had not noticed the raised voice nor the abrupt breaking off. He was dimly suspicious that the Capsina was making metaphysical remarks to which politeness required an answer, and he frowned and shook his head hopelessly to himself, there being no subject of which he knew less. But the sudden introduction of Suleima into the question made things clearer.
"Suleima?" he said. "Why did I meet her? Oh, Capsina, how could it have been otherwise? Tell me that. For I could not be myself without her. Oh, I cannot explain, for God, in His wisdom, made me a fool!" he cried, and he puffed away at his pipe.
"And tobacco is always tobacco," remarked the Capsina, justly enough.
They sat in silence a while longer, and then the girl got up from where she was sitting and strolled towards the bows of the ship, which pointed up the gulf. She could see the ruddy-gray side of the fortress hill Palamede which stood up five hundred feet above Nauplia, but the town itself lay out of view behind a dark promontory which ran rockily out. The sea was perfectly calm and of a translucent brilliance, clear as a precious stone, but soft as the air above it. Fifteen fathoms below lay the sandy bottom of the gulf, designed, here and there, like a map, with brownish-purple patches of sea-weed, and between it and the surface, poised in the water, drifted innumerable jelly-fish and medusæ, shaped like full-blown balloons, with strange, slippery-looking strings and ropes trailing below them. Some were pink, some of a transparent and aqueous green, some rustily speckled like fritillary flowers, but all, as in a stupor of content, drifted on with the current of warm water settling into the bay. Now and then a shoal of quick fish would cross, turning and wheeling all together like a flight of birds, their burnished sides glittering in the sun-steeped water, or stopping suddenly, emblazoned, as if heraldically, on the green field. A school of gulls were fishing behind, dipping in and out of the water for chance fragments from the ship. Mitsos, lying at ease on the deck, with his pipe in his mouth and his cap pushed forward to shield his eyes from the sun, seemed to excel even the jelly-fish in content, and to the girl it appeared that she alone, of all created things, was of an uneasy heart. That evening they would reach Nauplia. News of their coming would before now have gone about, and she tingled at the thought of the welcome they would get together. Not only for her would those shouts go up, but for Mitsos with her, thus sounding with more than double sweetness to her ear. And when the shouting and acclamation were over she would go back to the ship, and Mitsos would go to Suleima. She hated this girl whom she had never seen, and mixed with her hatred was an overwhelming curiosity to see her.
Mitsos finished his pipe, got up thoughtfully foot by foot, and strolled towards where she was standing leaning over the bulwarks. He was getting impatient for the coming of the tardy wind, but judged it to be on the first page of good manners that he should keep his impatience private. Also he wanted to let this girl know in what admired esteem and affection he held her, and his tongue was a knot when he sought for words. Day after day they had run the same fine risks, their hearts had beat as one in the glory of the same adventures, they had laughed and fought and frolicked like two lads together, welcoming all that came in their path; and yet he could not take her arm and let his silence speak for him. Even Yanni had never been more ready and admirable of resource, more ignorant of what fear was, more apt and suited to him, nor more lovable, as comrades love. She had all the live and fighting gifts of his own sex, yet in that she was a woman he felt that they were the worthier of homage, and that he was the more unable to pay it.
His bare-footed step was silent across the decks, and he came close to her before she knew of his coming. And after spitting thoughtfully into the water, leaning with both elbows, awkwardness incarnated, on the bulwarks next her, he spoke.
"Oh, Capsina," he said, "how good a time I have had with you! And will you make me a promise, if it so be you are one-tenth as satisfied as I? It is this: If ever again—for now, as you know, with this siege of Nauplia and the Turks coming south, my duty is here—if ever, at some future time, you have need of one who hates the Turks and will act as your lieutenant or your cabin-boy, or will, if you please, swim behind your ship or be fired out of your guns, you will send for me. For, indeed, you are the bravest woman God ever made, and it honors me to serve you."
And once again, as on the night he joined the ship, he took of his cap and bent to kiss her hand.
Mitsos blurted out the words shyly and awkwardly, in most unrhetorical fashion, yet he did not speak amiss, for he spoke from his heart. And the Capsina stood facing him, and, holding both his hands in hers, spoke with a heart how near to bursting she only knew.
"I make you that promise," she said, "and I need not even thank you for all you have done. And, oh, little Mitsos—this from me—if you should suggest we sail the ship to hell together and fire on Satan, I would help hoist the mainsail, for, indeed, you are the best of boys."
And she turned suddenly, with a quivering lip, and looked out to sea.
Presently after, just before sunset, the land-breeze began to blow, and they ran a three-mile tack towards the far side of the gulf, and from there, helped by the current that sweeps into the bay, they made a point a short mile outside Nauplia. Then, standing out again, they ran a short tack, and not long before the dropping of the wind cast anchor a cable's-length from the quay. Straight in front rose the lower town, on the side of the steep hill, pierced with rows of lights, as if holes had been knocked in the dark. Higher up, but below the Turkish walls, gleamed the fires of the Greeks who were besieging the place, and supreme and separate, like a cluster of stars, hung the lights at the top of Palamede. News of their coming had gone about, for the blockading ships cheered them as they passed, and all the length of the quay were torches and lanterns, hurrying to the steps where they would land, growing and gathering till they seemed one great bouquet of red flowers reflected in long snake-like lines on the water.
As soon as they were at anchor the Capsina and Mitsos were rowed to shore, and as they neared the quay, seen clearly in the blaze of the torches, the shouting broke out and swelled till the air seemed thick and dense with sound. The Capsina was the first to step out, and the folk crowded round her like bees round their queen. But she stood still, looking back, and held out her hand to Mitsos, and they went up the steps—the same steps up which he had come "from the sea and the sun"—hand in hand. Those who had never seen her, and knew her name only, having heard as in some old chivalrous tale of the wonderful maid who had chased the Turkish ships like a flock of sheep, crowded round to catch the glimpse of her, and her heart was full to brimming with the music of their acclamation. Yet the touch of Mitsos's hand was a thing more intimate and dearer to her.
Among the first was Father Andréa, and holding a hand of each:
"Now the Virgin be praised, you have come!" he cried. "And oh, little Mitsos, is it well?"
"Surely there is not much amiss," said he. "And again, is it well?"
"She waits for you impatiently content," said he, "and the child waits."
The crowd broke way for them to pass on, but surged after them as they walked in a babel of welcome and honor. Some pressed forward to touch Sophia's hand, other old friends crowded round Mitsos, pulling him this way and that, kissing him and almost crying over him, and the whisperer whispered and the gossips made comments.
"Eh, but what a pair would they have made!" said one. "They could pull the Sultan from his throne," and the speaker spat on the ground at the accursed name.
"The little Mitsos has grown even littler," said another. "See what a pillar of a man. And she, too; she is higher than his shoulder, which is more than you will ever be, Anastasi, till God makes you anew, and most different. Look at her face, too; no wonder the cousin in Hydra was loth to lose her."
Still hand in hand the two passed on to the mariner's church on the quay, where, as in duty bound, they offered thanks and alms to their name-patrons for their safe coming; and having finished their prayers they stood for a moment, silent, at the church-door.
"You will not sail to-morrow?" asked Mitsos. "You will come and see the home? May I not come for you in the boat in the morning?"
Sophia hesitated a moment.
"No, I cannot come," she said. "I sail to Hydra to-morrow, for I, too"—and she smiled at him naturally—"I, too, have a home. But surely we shall be together again, if you will. If this report of the Turks moving south is not true, we shall want you by sea, and speedily. Kanaris—you—me! Lad, the Turks will not be very pleased to see us again. So good-bye, little Mitsos; get you home."
And without another word she turned from him and went back to the ship.
Mitsos's way lay eastward, through the lower town, and many tried to make him stop awhile and tell them of the big deeds.
"Yes, but to-morrow," he would cry. "Oh, dear folk, let me go," and he had fairly to run from them.
The moon had risen, and the familiar homeward road stretched like a white ribbon in front of him. The bay lay in shining sleep; from the marsh came the ecstatic croaking of frogs, and the thought that they had stayed so long in one marsh made Mitsos smile. From the white poplars came the song of love-thrilled nightingales, and white owls hovered and hooted and passed, and now and then a breeze would blow softly across the vineyard, laden with the warm odors of spring and the smell of growing things. But he went quickly, for his heart's desire was a spur to him, and stayed not till he came to the garden-gate; and ere yet he had lifted the latch Suleima had knowledge of his coming, and they met, and the love which each had for the other brimmed their very souls.
The town of Nauplia itself lies on the north side of a tortoise-shaped promontory of land swimming splay-fashion out into the gulf. The upper part of this, surrounded by walls of Venetian fortification, was held by the Turks; the lower part, including the quay, by the insurgent Greeks. Behind the town, away from the sea, rose the rock on which was built Fortress Palamede, sharp, supreme, and jagged, like a flash of lightning, also in Turkish hands. A flight of steep, break-neck steps, blasted in many places out of the solid rock and lying in precipitous zigzags, communicated by means of a well-defended but narrow passage, battlemented and loopholed, with the citadel of the town proper. The south side of this promontory needed but little watching, for no man could find a way down crags which imminently threatened to topple over into the sea. On the west a water-gate communicated with a narrow strip of land giving into the shallow water of the bay, where no anchorage was possible. On the north the lower town was in the hands of the Greeks, whose lines of beleaguer stretched from the western end of the quay to the base of Palamede. On the east the only outlet was a small gate in the passage leading between Palamede and the citadel.
Now Nauplia was one of the strongest and, in the present state of affairs, quite the most important fortress in the Peloponnese still in the hands of the Turk. It communicated with the main arteries of war in the country; the harbor was well sheltered, defended by the town, and would give admirable anchorage to the the fleets of Europe, and the Sultan Mahomed, with his quick, statesmanlike sagacity, had seen that all his efforts must centre on its retention in Turkish hands. With Nauplia securely his, he could at will continue to pour fresh troops into the country, and there could be but one end to the war.
Had the Greeks acted with any singleness of purpose or the most moderate promptitude after the fall of Tripolitza in the previous October, Nauplia might have been taken without difficulty, but they let slip this opportunity. Instead they distributed honors and titles, and banners and tokens—a thing to make the more patriotic dead turn in their graves—and the Turks were in possession of a well-watered fortress, and had only to hold out till the fleet relieved them by sea and the army, which, under the command of the Serashier Dramali, had received orders to march straight to Nauplia, at the end of Rhamazan, drove off the besiegers.
April in the plains was somewhat rainless, and May unseasonably hot; and though the springs in the fortress did not run dry, yet the torrid weather made itself felt in the garrison of the sun-scorched Palamede. But the fleet, as was known, would set out in May, and Dramali would leave Zeituni, where he was encamped, in the first week of July. By the end of July, therefore, relief would be certain.
In the Greek lines much cheerfulness and nonchalant good-humor prevailed. During April the Turks had made two sorties, which were repulsed with but little loss to the besiegers and at a heavy price to the besieged, and the latter now seemed inclined to wait for relief, trusting to the admirable fortifications which defended them and a certain growing slackness on the part of the besiegers, rather than make another attempt. Hypsilantes, an excellent field-marshal when there was nothing to do, treated the chiefs with a courtly condescension, and frequently entertained them at dinner; while Kolocotrones, with his new brass helmet and a hearty raucous voice, went hither and thither, often leaving the camp for a week at a time on some private raid, and swelled and strutted already with the anticipation of a plentiful plunder. For the Greeks considered their own ships as adequate to stop any fleet the Sultan might send from Constantinople, and thought it impossible that the garrison would hold out until the coming of the army.
Mitsos, the truant aide-de-camp, chiefly conspicuous hitherto by his absence, reported himself the morning after his return to Prince Hypsilantes, who, taking into consideration what he and the Capsina had done, was pleased to accept his lack of excuses and poverty of invention with graciousness, and further gave him furlough for a week, on the granting of which the lad posted back to Suleima and the silkworms. And that evening, when the child was gone to bed and Father Andréa had charged himself to see that nothing caught fire, and that no changeling fairy—a vague phantom terror dreaded and abhorred of Suleima's soul—malignantly visited the cradle of the littlest, the two went off for old sake's sake in the boat, Mitsos with the fishing spear and resin, to visit the dark, dear places of the bay. The land-breeze was steady, and the moon already swung high among the stars, and from afar they could see the white wall that both knew. As they passed it, Suleima clung the closer to Mitsos.
"How strange it all seems," she said, "to think that I was there year after year, not knowing of any but old Abdul and the eunuch—oh, a pig of the pit!—and Zuleika and the others. And now they are where?"
"In hell," said Mitsos, promptly, and with all the cheerfulness of unutterable and welcome conviction. "Yanni sent Abdul there himself at Tripoli. Oh, a fat man. His cheeks were of red jelly, you would say, forever wobbling. I pray I may never be a jelly-man."
Suleima laughed.
"Yet there were good things even in Abdul, though not of his intention, but his age rather," she said; "for instance, he was very calm and lazy, and he let us do as we liked, and never troubled us. Indeed, I think he hardly spoke to me six times. Yet had I been there a year longer, who knows? For latterly he used to look at me with his mole's eyes."
Mitsos frowned.
"Don't speak of it," he said, sharply; "he is in hell; even for me that is enough, and for me enough is not a little."
They tacked out to sea again after passing the white wall, for they were going across to the sandy bay where Mitsos used to fish. Nauplia, with the fires of the besiegers and besieged, gleamed like a low cluster of stars at the mouth of the bay, and the island, with its old Venetian castle on it, stood up a black blot against the glittering company. Towards Tripoli the hills were clear and black, and cut out with the exquisite precision of a southern night. Now and then from the town a sudden roar, soft and muffled with its travel over the water, would rise and die away again, but for the most part only the whisper of the severed water or the tap and gurgle of a wavelet crushed by the bows broke the silence. Then putting to land, Mitsos, with his spear and light, poked among the rocks for fish, while Suleima sat on the warm, dry sand watching him. And it seemed to both that the romance of the wooing was not yet over.
But to the beleaguered garrison of Nauplia scorching days and dewless, unrefreshing nights went by in hot procession, and by the middle of June, though the Greeks were not aware, the besieged knew that unless relief came within a few days surrender was imminent. Remembering in what fashion the Greeks had kept the treaty of Navarin, they had but little confidence in the observation of the terms of any capitulations they might make; but remembering, too, scenes of traffic, what Germanos with bitter truth had called "the market of Tripoli," they hoped that their lives might be spared, perhaps until the approach of the army, if they stipulated that until the capitulation was finally signed they should be supplied with food by the besiegers, though at famine prices.
Now Ali, the Governor of Aryos, being supreme in Argolis, was the superior of Selim, the commander in Nauplia, but as there was no possibility of his conferring with Ali through the Greek lines, the proposed draft of the treaty of capitulation had to be drawn out by him. He was a shrewd man, busy and cunning, and the terms he proposed showed that he had not failed to intimately acquaint himself with the character of the chiefs who besieged the place. Accordingly, one day in the last week of June, Mitsos, who had returned to his duties as aide-de-camp, came to Hypsilantes saying that a white flag was flying over the northern gate, and that the Turkish commander wished to confer with the head of the Greek army.
Now at that time Kolocotrones was absent from Nauplia with a large band of his irregular troops, and in his absence, since nothing whatever had previously occurred during the siege which demanded strength in the hand or thought in the head, Hypsilantes had always been given a supremacy of courtesy, in virtue of his original mission from the Hetairia, and that this business should have occurred while Kolocotrones was away—though without doubt if, when the latter came back, he found fault with what Hypsilantes had done he would revoke his acts—was honey to the prince, who still clutched at the show of power. So calling together the other chiefs and members of the national assembly, he intimated to them what had happened, in beautiful language, and Mitsos was forthwith sent with a flag of truce in his hand to conduct Selim to Hypsilantes.
Selim was a brisk, lively little person, who conducted conversation, you would say, more by a series of birdlike, intelligible chirrupings than by human talk, and, more abstemious in his ordinary life than his countrymen, he had suffered less from the sparing rations they had been on for the last fortnight. The gate was opened as soon as Mitsos approached it, and Selim came trotting out, as pleased with his flag of truce as a child with a new toy, and twittered away to Mitsos, as they went back to Hypsilantes' quarters, with the utmost vivacity in rather imperfect Greek.
"And it's pleasant indeed," he said, "just to take a walk down these streets again, even if his highness and I can come to no terms and I am sent back like a hen into that infernal cage, though indeed it's little fattening we get there. And how old may you be, and how long have you been a rebel to his majesty?"
He looked up sharp and quick in Mitsos's face like a canary, and the lad smiled at him.
"Ever since the beginning of the war," said he; "and, indeed, you may have seen a fine blaze my cousin and I made not so far from here?"
"What, the ship that was burned going out of the harbor?" asked Selim. "You did that, Mishallah? If we meet again, not under the flag of truce, there will be high blows."
And, as Mitsos laughed outright, "Do not be so merry," he said. "I could reach up as far as that big chest of yours and send the sword home."
"And what should I be doing the while?" asked Mitsos, "whistling a tune and looking the other way?"
The little man frowned.
"Maybe you would have had a poke at me, too. No, I'm not denying it."
Hypsilantes and the other members of the assembly then at Nauplia were awaiting their arrival. These consisted of two primates, both greedy and mischievous men; Poniropoulos, who had been turned out of the camp at Tripoli for intrigue with the besieged, but whom affinity of interest had ingratiated with Kolocotrones. He had, like the others, collected together a corps of savage, undisciplined men who were too large a factor in the army to leave unrepresented in the assembly. In addition, there were a couple of other captains no worse and no better than he. Selim had known very well with whom he was to deal, and his proposals were greeted by eyes which gleamed with the prospect of speedy and ample gains. And here is his offer, how correctly calculated those eyes bore witness:
1. That the Turks should surrender the fortress, their arms, and two-thirds of their movable property.
2. That the Greeks should give them safe conduct out of the place, and further, hire neutral vessels, which should convey them to Asia Minor.
3. That the Greeks should supply them with provisions till the vessels were ready, upon which Clause 1 of the capitulation should be put into effect.
4. That hostages should be given on both sides for the fulfilment of the treaty.
And thus for the time the siege of Nauplia was at an end and the market of Nauplia began.
Selim made his offer and withdrew, but there was little need of that, for he was scarce out of the room when a whisper and a nod of perfect comprehension went round the chiefs, and being immediately recalled, he was told that his proposals were accepted.
"And I will see," said Hypsilantes, with a grand air, "that arrangements for the ships to convey you away are put in hand at once. Meantime—"
But Poniropoulos interrupted.
"May I have your highness's permission," he said, with a great hurry of politeness, "to supply the citadel with bread?"
"Certainly," said Hypsilantes, not seeing the man's meaning, "and it were well to put that too in hand at once."
But Selim was the sharper, and he leered at Poniropoulos, if a canary can be said to leer, with a twinkle of perfect comprehension in his eye.
"I doubt," chirped he, very clearly and loud, "that bread is most expensive in Nauplia."
And Poniropoulos scowled at him, for he had meant that it should be very expensive indeed.
So the terms were accepted, and Hypsilantes parted in a dignified manner from the Turk, and the latter went back to the citadel.
Poniropoulos, with hands itching for the touch of gold, took prompt and characteristic measures. He went straight to the nearest baker's, bought the whole of the bread he had in stock, staying only to haggle over a few piasters in the total, and not caring even to go back to his quarters for his own beast, hired a mule and hurried up the path with plying stick to the citadel. The baker, Anastasi, Mitsos's friend, stood for a moment wondering what was in the wind, when the solution struck him; and being a man born with two eyes wide open, saw that there was large profit to be made here, but no reason why the "Belly," as they called Poniropoulos, should be monopolist therein; and running out, he conferred with other bakers in the town, and it was unanimously and merrily agreed that all bread sold directly and indirectly to the "Belly" should be at just three times the price of the bread sold to others, and that if this did not satisfy him, why, he might make bread himself, and be damned to him.
The news spread rapidly—it could hardly have failed to spread—for before an hour was up the camp presented the dignified spectacle of various captains and primates bargaining and arguing over wine and olives with the shop folk, and literally racing each other to the citadel, where they sold their produce at starvation rates, laughing to themselves that Kolocotrones at any rate was out of it. Mitsos, who was buying fish in the market for himself, was pointing out to the shopman the impropriety of selling stale fish to a man with a nose, when the primate Caralambes came in to buy all the fish, he could find. And Mitsos, grinning evilly:
"This is a fish I would have bought," he said, "but it is not so fresh. We make you a present of it. You will get five piasters for it above, for the use of the church."
Kolocotrones returned after a few days, and entirely approved of the terms. Hypsilantes was engaged in his usual finicking and dilatory manner upon hiring ships for the embarkation of the Turks, according to treaty, but Kolocotrones told him that he need trouble himself no more about that, as he himself would see to it. But it was thus that he saw to it: Three ships which had been already engaged he dismissed with a certain compensation, saying that they would not be needed, and turned from the hiring of ships to the more immediate and lucrative pursuit of selling provisions to the half-starved garrison. The ships could be hired afterwards, and then there was a penny to be turned in the matter of passage-money.
The longer this traffic went on the better were both sides pleased. For the Turks, every day brought the arrival of relief forces nearer, and every day the captains reaped a golden harvest. There would be time, so thought Kolocotrones, to see about getting the ships when the new army drew nearer, and in any case the treaty of capitulation held, for the Turks, when the ships were ready, were bound to deliver over the fortress, their arms, and two-thirds of their movable property. And again the captains licked their lips.
Meantime the end of Rhamazan had come, and Kanaris, who with the Capsina had joined the Greek fleet in the eastern sea, had paid the Turks a visit which should cause them always to remember Rhamazan, 1822. The Greek fleet under the Admiral Miaulis had encountered the enemy off Chios, and the latter had retreated to the Gulf of Smyrna. There they had engaged the Greek in a desultory and ineffectual cannonade for a day or two, the Greeks not venturing in under the guns of the fort which protected the fleet, and the Turks not caring to sail out and give battle in earnest. Eventually the Greeks retreated to Psara, and the Turks again anchored off Chios, some six miles from the entrance to the Gulf of Smyrna.
All the last day of Rhamazan gala preparations went forward on board the ships for the solemn celebration of Bairam, and before night fell watchers were stationed on the main-tops of all the fleet to look for the first appearance of the new moon, which was the beginning of the feast. As the sun went down lines of bright-colored lanterns designed with their light the rigging of all the ships, the more conspicuous and the most bedecked being the eighty-gun ship of the captain, Pasha Kara Ali, who entertained for the feast the chief officers of the fleet. The deck was a house of Syrian tents and awnings, and troops of dancing-girls were in waiting to amuse the guests. As a salute to the end of the Rhamazan, ten minutes before sunset all the guns of the fleet volleyed again and again, till the air was thick with the smoke of the firing. Then, as the last echo died away, for a space there was silence, while all waited for the word. Suddenly, from the mast-heads, it was cried, "The moon, the moon of Bairam!" and the jubilant cry, wailing and mournful to western ears, was taken up by every throat. On board the flag-ship of Kara Ali all waited, standing at their places at the tables till the word was cried, and at that they reclined themselves, and the feast began.
Now many had noticed, but none had thought it noticeable, that all day there had lain close to the entrance of the Gulf of Smyrna, as if unable to get in, two small Greek ships. As soon as dusk fell and their movements were obscured, they changed their course. They carried, each of them, a cargo of brushwood soaked with turpentine, and their sails were steeped with the same. Kanaris, a straw in his mouth, for he could not with safety smoke on a fire-ship, commanded one, and Albanian Hydiot the other. The wind held fair, and Kanaris went straight for the ship of Kara Ali, and favored by the land-breeze blowing freshly off the coast, towards which the bows of the ship were pointing, ran his bowsprit straight through a port as near the bows as possible, set light to his ship with his own hands, and jumped into a boat that was towed behind. In a moment the flames leaped, licking from stem to stern of his caique, and driven by the wind, mounted like a flicked whiplash up the sails and in at the open ports. The awning on the quarter-deck caught fire, and being dry from the exposure to the hot sun all day, burned like timber. And Kanaris, having exchanged the straw for a pipe, rowed back to a safe distance, and watched the destruction of the ship with his habitual calm.
"It will burn nicely now," he said.
He saw a few boats launched, but into them poured so hurried and panic a flight of men and women that they were overloaded and sank. Other escape there was none, for the flames, driving inward and with a roaring as of bulls in spring, rendered it impossible to reach the seat of the fire. From overhead the blocks were falling from the rigging, and when boats began to arrive from other ships of the fleet, the heat of the flames and the fierce licking tongues which shot out at them rendered it impossible to approach; and the ship, with all on board, excepting only a few who jumped overboard and were picked up, perished. Kara Ali, as he was putting off in a small boat, was struck on the head by a falling spar. He died before they reached the shore.
Now the Sultan's orders had been curt. He had himself sent for Kara Ali before the fleet set out, and removing his jewelled mouth-piece a moment from his lips, said: "To Nauplia. Kosreff succeeds you if there is disaster. You have my leave to go." And he put the mouth-piece back into his mouth again, and turned his back on Kara Ali. Now Kosreff was at Patras, having been in charge of the western fleet the autumn before, and the captains of the other vessels had but little choice left them. They were bound to Nauplia, but there was no admiral. It was clearly their part to pick up the admiral at Patras, and then go back to Nauplia. There was always a little uncertainty, in acting under Sultan Mahomed, as to what was the right thing to do; but if a man did the wrong thing, it was not at all uncertain what the consequences would be, and no one felt at all inclined to take on himself the responsibility of handling the fleet when the Sultan had signified that Kosreff was to do so. And next day the fleet weighed anchor and set off for Patras, leaving Nauplia to take care of itself till their return.
Now the Serashier Dramali, the commander of the land army, was in receipt of orders just as peremptory. He was to wait at Zeituni till the end of Rhamazan, and then, as soon as the horses, according to the immemorial custom, had eaten the green barley of the fresh crops, was to go straight to Nauplia, where he would overwhelm and defeat the Greek force besieging it by land. There, too, he would meet the Sultan's fleet, which would drive off the Greek ships and throw provisions into the town. Such an attack, if delivered according to orders, said the Sultan, with a somewhat sinister stress on the word "if," could not conceivably fail of success.
Now the executive government of Greece was so busy mismanaging a hundred unimportant affairs that it had left the one thing needful quite undone, and the landforce of Dramali passed without opposition right through Eastern Greece, and reached, on the 17th of July, the isthmus of Corinth. Here the Acro-Corinth was in the hands of the Greeks, and defended only by a small guard; for the place was impregnable on all sides but one, and well supplied with provisions and water. But the commander, named Theodrides, no sooner saw the long lines of brilliant Turkish cavalry beginning to deploy on the plateau below the fortress, and marked the infantry mounting the steep ascent to the gate, than a sort of panic fear, unjustified though he knew indeed nothing of military matters, seized him. He gave orders that all the Turkish prisoners in the town should be murdered, and himself led the way out of the fortress by an almost impracticable path to the east, and with his gallant band made for the mountains, spreading the news that the Turks were in numbers as the sand-fly in August. Then, without a blow, Acro-Corinth fell into Dramali's hands.
He had long held the valor of the Greeks in unmerited contempt, but since he started from Zeituni it seemed that his contempt was not so ill-deserved. As he marched through the narrow gorge of Locris and Doris not a hand had been raised to stop him. On the hills north of Corinth the guards had fled at his approach. Here, at Corinth, at the sight of his troops a fortress nigh impregnable had been given up, as if by a tenant whose lease had expired to the incomer. The fleet, he supposed, would meet him at Nauplia, and without delay he decided to push on with his whole army there, leaving only a small garrison in Corinth.
He pointed contemptuously to the murdered prisoners. "Look," he said, "that is all these dogs do; they have the madness, and they shall be done by as they have done!"
And indeed it seemed that his contempt was very well merited.
The main road from Corinth to Nauplia, through Argos, lies up a long hill-side, passing at length into a barren and mountainous region set with gray bowlders and only peopled with lizards. Thence, gaining the top of a considerable ridge, it lies for the space of five miles or so in a narrow, downward ravine, called the Dervenaki, before it emerges into the plain of Argos. A riotous water passed down this, and the road crosses and recrosses by a hundred bridges—sometimes lying close to the torrent, at others climbing hazardously up the flanks of the ravine. On either hand the hill-side rises bowldersown and steep, too near the precipitous to let large trees get a grip of the soil; and between the gray stones grew only the aromatic herbs of the mountains. Even the hawks and eagles, looking from aloft for prey with eye that would spy even a mouse in a crevice, cut not their swinging circle in the sky above it, for no living thing, except the quick lizards, find food there. Three other roads besides, but less direct, crossed these hills between Corinth and Argos—two to the east, and westward one.
Through this Dervenaki Dramali marched rapidly. He found it altogether unguarded, and his scouts, who made casts to the east and west, reported that the other roads were clear also. At that Dramali's contempt began to breed want of caution, and instead of occupying Nemea and Aghionores, villages which commanded two of the other roads, and leaving troops to keep the pass and his communication with Corinth open, he went straight on with his whole army through the hills and on into the plain of Argos.
Meantime, at Nauplia and Argos, the supreme government had continued to display the imbecility usual with it. Ali, of Argos, had been allowed to enter the fortress of Nauplia, though without provision or arms, and he had at once arrested the Greek secretaries who were registering the property of the Turks. The Greeks had taken no steps to secure ships for the embarkation of the Turks, and had, consequently, failed to do their part of the treaty. The Greeks' hostages he retained as pledges for the Turkish hostages in the hands of the Greeks; for the rest, he supposed that the Turkish fleet would arrive from day to day. Dramali, he knew, had reached Corinth, and would push on at once.
The members of the central government of Greece were at the time at Argos, where they were chiefly employed in promoting each other unanimously to various lucrative appointments, and causing what they called the national archives to be written—a record of the valor of some of them, and the judicious statesmanship of others, the remainder. Among such business they had just appointed Prince Hypsilantes to be president of the legislative board, which made a quantity of regulations about the prevention of punishment of crime in the new Greek republic, and enjoyed handsome salaries. Hypsilantes, who had wit sufficient to see that their only object was to deprive him of his military command, was still debating what course to take, sitting about the time of sunset in the veranda of his house, which looked towards the Dervenaki, when he observed a quantity of little bright specks issuing therefrom. This being not a natural phenomenon he looked again, and the specks redoubled. At that he got up with a smile.
"I fancy the legislative measures will wait," he said to himself, and went across to the council chamber, where the ministers were already assembling for the purpose of mutual appointments. He went to his place, bowed, and pointed out of the windows. "I would draw your attention to this, gentlemen," he said.
For a moment there was silence, and then a babel of confused and incoherent cries went up from the terror-stricken lips of the legislative and executive boards. Metaxas, a consummate lawyer, was the first to run from the room; Koletres, unequalled in the knowledge of conveyancing, called lamentably on the Virgin and followed. At a stroke, on the scent of danger, the red-tape rule, and the grabbing greed which called itself patriotism, banished itself and fled. Ministers, senators, lawyers, and what not, ran incontinently to take refuge on the few Greek vessels which lay opposite Argos; the alarm spread like the east wind in March through the town, and women and children, some with bundles of their property snatched hastily up, rushed out in all directions to find safety, some with the blockading Greeks at Nauplia, some in the neighboring villages, others in the mountains. Many fugitives from towns on the coast which the Turks had sacked were in the place, and these, remembering the red horrors from which they had but lately escaped with bare life, left behind them the scanty remains of their property and, like rabbits remorselessly ferreted from one burrow to another, fled in the wildest confusion. Encamped in the square, crowding the poorer quarters, were hordes of camp-followers who had been drawn here by the prospect of the fall of Nauplia—wild men of the mountains, attended by great sheep-dogs, almost less savage than themselves. These being of able body and for the most part unencumbered by families or property, but very willing to become encumbered with the latter, spent a fruitful hour while the Turkish troops were still creeping from the entrance of the Dervenaki across the plain in plundering the houses of the wealthier citizens who had abandoned them, preferring to make sure their escape than to risk it for the sake of their goods. Among others, the secretary of state, Theodore Negris, a bibliophile, gave no thought to the small library of valuable books he had brought with him to Argos, supposing that the seat of government would be there, if not permanently, yet for a considerable time; and a Laconian camp-follower, entering his house after his flight, and unwilling to leave behind what might be of value, packed the most of the books in a sack and slung them over a stolen horse. But the horse fell lame, and the man wishing to push on to the hills, thought himself lucky to sell it, books, lameness, and all, for two dollars to a Greek officer who was in need of an animal to carry water for the troops at Lerna.
Night fell on a scene of panic and confusion. The last of the sunset had shown the van of the Turks no more than four miles off, with arms glistening red in the fire of the evening sky, moving steadily, though without hurry. The advance-guard of cavalry was already clear of the pass, and after an interval the main part of the army had been seen defiling out of it. They would enter the town in not more than two hours. Any one with a horse to sell, and a pistol to protect himself and it, could sell the beast for its value told a hundred times. Mules, oxen even, and calves were laden with valuables and kicked and goaded along the roads, away from the quarter from which the Turks were advancing. Had the executive council possessed the slightest authority or power of organization, much of this wild struggle for escape could have been avoided, but the executive council were hurrying like scared hares down to where a couple of Greek ships lay in the bay. There, too, were disgraceful things to see: more than one boat sent to convey the fugitives on to the ships was swamped by the stampeding crowds; others, private speculators, refused to take the panic-stricken folk on board, except at the payment of thirty piasters per head, and in one case only was the revolting greed properly punished, for a couple of men having agreed to pay the stipulated sum, were taken on board and straightway tipped the owner over his own gunwale into the water, and, heedless of his bubbling remonstrances, filled the boat with fugitives, denying him a place in it, and spent the next two hours in plying to and fro between the ship and the land.
But, meantime, the Greek garrison at Argos, consisting mainly of Albanians, had behaved with the utmost quietness and decency, and waited for orders. Hypsilantes, it was known, had been summoned by the terror-stricken council to join them in his new capacity of legislator on the ships, and he had returned answer that he would do no such thing; his place was where he could be useful, and as soon as the alarm was given, he, with Mitsos in attendance, Kolocotrones, Niketas, and a few others, met, and deliberated hastily what to do. It was quickly decided to destroy all the grain and forage in the town—as it was impossible to stand a siege—fill up the wells, and retire to Lerna, a heavy and small Greek camp, some two miles off on the sea-coast, defended on one side by the mountains, on one by the sea, on another by a large belt of swampy ground, which cavalry could not well pass. The Turks would hardly go on to Nauplia leaving them unattacked in their rear; if, on the other hand, they attacked, Lerna was well defended, and the dreaded Turkish cavalry at least were useless.
Above Argos, just outside the town, stands the Larissa, an old Greek fortress, subsequently built up by the Venetians. The hill it crowns is very steep and difficult of access, and it is well supplied with water. It was a matter of the first importance that this should not be let to fall, as had happened at Corinth, into the hands of the Turks, and a small body of volunteers, among whom was Mitsos, threw themselves into this, determining to hold it as long as possible. What artillery the Turks had they did not know, but unless they had heavy field-guns, there was a reasonable hope that for a time, at any rate, they could defend it successfully, and be another deterrent to the Turkish advance on Nauplia.
Meantime, while they were busy taking up as much provision as they could lay hands on, the rest set to with destroying forage, and generally making the place untenable; until a picket stationed at the Corinth gate gave the alarm that the Turks were near, at which all but those who were to keep the Larissa set off through the now deserted and silent streets for the new camp at Lerna.
All through the hot hours of the summer night the seemingly endless procession of Turks continued to enter Argos. One by one their watch and cooking fires were kindled until the town, empty an hour before, twinkled with lights. Dramali's troops numbered not less than ten thousand men, nearly the half of whom were cavalry. And at present he intended to keep this formidable force at Argos, until the fleet appeared which should bring provisions and supplies to Nauplia by sea. He could then make a simultaneous assault by land, as the Sultan had so curtly intimated, and establish his headquarters there. But until the fleet arrived he could do nothing which might help Nauplia, for he had to forage for his own supplies, and could throw none into the beleaguered fortress. And the fleet, it will be remembered, had already passed Nauplia going to Patras to fetch the new captain, Pasha Kosreff, in place of the victim of Kanaris's fire-ship. But of this Dramali knew nothing, and waited for its appearance to deliver thegrand-coupin the manner prescribed to him at Constantinople. News of the taking of Argos by the Turks had blazed like stubble-fed fire through the Peloponnese. The incompetent and useless administration had gathered their skirts and fled, and the war once more was in the hands of the people, commanded, it might be, by many avaricious and greedy men, but by no cowards.
And as a thunder-cloud collects on some grilling afternoon on the hills, so from all sides did sullen bands, full of potential fire and tumult, gather and grow on the mountains round. To attack the Turks, with their great force of cavalry, on the plain was no sane scheme, and the lesson had been taught at Tripoli, and taught thoroughly. But, though no attack was made on the Turks, it was soon found that Dramali, with Heaven-sent stupidity, had neglected to hold the range of hills over which he had come, and gradually the Greeks amassed a force high on the four roads which crossed from Corinth. Niketas, with not less than two thousand men, was intrenched in the easternmost road, and murmured softly to himself the words he had learned from an English sailor, "This is dam fine!" and Kolocotrones, finding Lerna inconveniently crowded, removed to the mountains to the west of Argos.
And all waited—wild beasts, hungry.
For the time all party and personal jealousy ceased. Petrobey, with a thousand Mainats, came from the south and joined the Greek force assembled in the main camp, and the scornful clan, it was noticed, were very silent, as their habit was when there was work to the fore. He had a long conference with Hypsilantes, and to their council came Krevatas, a primate from the country of Sparta, a man made of blood, courage, and hatred, who would go about among the soldiers, seeing visions by day and night, and exclaiming, "The Lord is a man of war!" He had but little other conversation, and cried thus very frequently. Like Hypsilantes, Petrobey saw that there was no object to be served in attacking the Turks in Argos. Supposing the fleet came, and Dramali moved to the capture of Nauplia, they would have to attack then. If, on the other hand, something, as was now possible, had delayed the fleet, it was certain that Dramali's supplies could not last him very many days, for the Turks were foraging far and wide both for corn and provender for their horses, and when he retreated to Corinth, as he must needs do, the fleet not coming, there were the hills he had left unguarded to be passed, and Petrobey's blue eye danced, like the sun on water, and Krevali's exclamation was fit commentary.
Twice in the first day of his occupation Dramali directed an attack on the small band of some five hundred men in the Larissa, but finding that it was no easy matter to storm it, and thinking perhaps that the place was ill-watered and the defenders would surrender, shrugged his shoulders, and left it, as the Greeks had left Nauplia, to the slower but not less sure process of starvation. But Petrobey saw the immense strategical advantage of the place. Dramali could hardly advance to Nauplia, leaving a well-fortified citadel in his rear, into which the Greeks would pour as soon as he left Argos, and he insisted that the garrison should be increased.
"They may be as fierce as hawks and as swift," said he, "but their numbers are too small. Also, if we can throw men into it, we can also throw provisions. The lad Mitsos will be glad of that: he would eat a roe-deer as I eat an egg—at one gulp."
Yanni, who was with his father, looked up.
"Oh, if it is possible, let me go among them," he said, "for my place is with Mitsos."
Petrobey, another of whose sons had been killed that year in a skirmish, looked at the boy.
"Benjamin, too," he said, half smiling, half with entreaty. "Yet did he not come back safe to his father? So be it, Yanni. Now, let us talk how it is to be done. We will go on dear Nikolas's plan, and say all the impossible things, and so take what is left."
"Daylight," said Yanni, promptly.
"A great noise," remarked Hypsilantes, with the air of a man who says a good thing.
Petrobey laughed.
"So much is certain," he said. "But then comes a difficulty. If by night, as like as not the lads will think it is an attack from the Turk. Thus will Benjamin come home, shot through the head by his very dear friend Mitsos."
"Cannot we call to them as we approach?" said Yanni. "Or wait. Oh, father, cannot we signal during the day from the hills behind?"
Petrobey nodded.
"Not so bad," he said, "but of the men there, who knows the signal tongue?"
"Mitsos and I did signalling work at Tripoli."
"So you did. It is worth trying. Now the attention of the Turks on the night you enter, if the signalling goes well and enter you do, must be elsewhere. Perhaps your highness would conduct a skirmishing party with much noise and bush-firing and swift running away in the opposite quarter."
"I?" asked the prince, and a sudden glow of courage exalted the man. "I should sooner be of those who attempt to enter the Larissa."
Petrobey looked at him approvingly.
"It is an honorable service," he said, "and the Larissa is a steep hill. I then will see to the other. Now Yanni, off with you, and a nice, warm walk you will have. Get you to the hill behind the Larissa and signal till you attract their attention, or until your arms drop off like figs over-ripe. It is yet early, so say that a relief party will make the attempt to enter the citadel to-night, an hour before moonrise. They will climb the back of the hill, or wherever they find it unguarded. Those inside will know best the disposition of the Turkish troops."
The hours went on through the suffocating calm of mid-day, when no breeze stirs the still and stifling air, and the Greek camp at Lerna, lying against the mountain-side, was a bakehouse of heat. In the low, marshy ground below, among the vineyards and melon-patches which stretched down to the bay, they could see companies of Turkish soldiers, guarded by their cavalry, picking the grape-leaves as fodder for their horses, while the men gathered the only half-ripe fruit for themselves. Once a band of some fifty approached to within five hundred yards of the outworks which had been thrown up round the mills where the Greeks lay, and the Mainats on guard snarled and grumbled like caged lions who long to smite and crack the heads of those who look through their prison-bars. But the cavalry were too close to risk an attack, which must have ended in trampled flight and knifing, and they could only store up their hate for future use. On the other hand, the Greeks were equally secure, for the broken ground near the camp, intersected by channels and banks for irrigation, and further defended by the steep water-eaten banks of the torrent-bed of the Erastinus, now summer-dry, rendered the approach of the Turkish cavalry impossible, and a combined attack of Dramali's infantry would have been necessary to drive them out of their secure position. Such an attack Dramali could not afford to make: the object of his expedition was the relief of Nauplia, and until that was effected he dared not risk defeat. Several small skirmishes had indeed taken place, but Petrobey, pursuing his policy of keeping his men out of the reach of cavalry, had always forbade them to follow retreating Turks into open ground. Furthermore, the two Greek vessels moored not far off covered the open space which was near the bay across which the Turks must advance, and, in case of any massed attack, were ready to open fire on them. Meantime Petrobey, though burning to be at work, found a certain shrewd comfort in watching the Turks eating the unripe melons. "They are cool for the mouth," he said, "but burning fire in the bowels." And, indeed, before many days a sort of dysentery broke out among the Turkish troops, which added to the difficulties and hazards in which, as Dramali was soon to find, he had placed his army.
Kolocotrones had left Lerna to take up his position on the hills before Petrobey, with his Mainats, arrived, and it was to below an outlying post of his camp that Yanni climbed to signal to those in the Larissa. The day was extraordinarily hot, and his way lay over long, palpitating flanks of gray bowlder-covered hills. There all vegetation had long ago been shrivelled into brown, ashy wisps of stuff, though up higher, near the point to which he was making, a spring which gushed from the mountain-side still flushed an acre or two of cup-shaped hollow below it with living vegetation. The great green lizards alone seemed not to have been turned brown by the drought, and slipped pattering over the bowlders into cracks and crevices as Yanni passed. Overhead the sky was a brazen wilderness, deserted of birds, and the air over the hot mountain trembled and throbbed in an ague of heat. But Yanni went fast and very cheerfully. He carried no arms, for the Turks never went beyond the plain, and it was a healthier heat to walk just in linen trousers and shirt, open from neck to waist, than to lie sweltering in guard and under arms in the camp at the hills of Lerna.
An hour's climb gave him elevation sufficient to be able to see over the outer circuit of walls on the Larissa, and show him the sun-browned tops of the hill peopled with the tiny, living, moving specks of the garrison who held it. Below the base of the hill the lines of Turkish tents formed a circuit nearly complete, but at the back, where the rocks rose almost precipitously, there was a break in them. Whether the hill was accessible or not at that point he did not know—evidently the Turks seemed to think not—but if he succeeded in attracting the attention of the Greeks in the citadel, he could learn from them where was the best place to make the attempt. He had brought with him a strip of linen for the signalling, but finding the distance was greater than he anticipated, he saw that it would be too insignificant an object to be noticed, and, stripping off his shirt, he made wild waving with it, signalling again and again, "Mitsos! Mitsos Codones!"
For five minutes he stood there, with the sun scorching his uncovered shoulders like a hot iron, without attracting any attention; but before very much longer he saw a little white speck from the top of the citadel, also waving, it would seem, with purpose.
"Oh, Mitsos, is it you?" he said, aloud, and then repeated "Mitsos" as his signal, and waited.
The little speck answered him. "Yes, I am Mitsos," it said. "Who are you?"
Yanni laughed with delight.
"Yanni," he waved, "your cousin Yanni."
"Have the clan come."
"Many okes of them, under father. We are going to send a party to support you in the citadel to-night, an hour before moonrise. Be ready." There was a pause, and Yanni, forgetting that he was rather over a mile off, shouted out, "Do you see, little Mitsos?" and then laughed at himself. Soon the waving began again.
"We can hold the place, I think, but we are short of food."
And Yanni answered:
"Oh, fat cousin, we bring much food. Where shall we make the attempt?"
"From the back, between where you are standing and me. It is steep, but quite possible for those not old and fat. It is where you see no Turkish tents. Who is in command?"
"Hypsilantes."
"I am laughing," waved Mitsos, "for I see his big sword tripping him up. Go very silently. If the alarm is given, and the Turks attack you, we will help from above. Good-bye, Yanni; it is dinner-time, and the littlest dinner you ever saw."
Yanni put on his shirt again, and, seeing that Kolocotrones' outpost was not more than two hundred feet above him, though concealed from where he stood by a spur of rock, he bethought himself to go up there and get a drink of wine before he began his downward journey—for his throat was as dust and ashes—and also give notice of the intended relief. He found that Kolocotrones was there himself, and was taken to him.
That brave and avaricious man was short of stature, but of very strong make, and gnarled and knotted like an oak trunk; his face was burned to a shrivelled being by the sun, and he wore his fine brass helmet. Unlike Petrobey, who was scrupulously fastidious in the matter of clothes, cleanliness, and food, he cared not at all for the things of the body, and was holding a mutton-bone in the manner of a flute to his mouth, gnawing pieces off it, when Yanni entered. The old chief remembered him at Tripoli, and though he was on the most distant terms with the clan, who regarded him with embarrassing frankness as a successful brigand, he nodded kindly to the boy.
"Eat and drink," he said; "talk will come afterwards," and he would have torn him a shred of meat off the flute.
"Surely I will drink," said Yanni, seating himself, "for indeed it is thirsty work to stand in the sun. No, nothing to eat, thank you."
Kolocotrones poured him out wine into rather a dirty glass and when the boy had drank, "What is forward?" he asked. "Are you of Maina come?"
"A thousand of us. To-night we are sending a relief force to those in the citadel. I have been signalling to Mitsos with my shirt from the hill-side."
Now when money was not in the question, Kolocotrones was the most enthusiastic of patriots. There was certainly nothing to be got from the citadel, and he dropped his mutton flute and struck the table a great blow with his hand.
"That is very good," he said. "My compliments to the clan, and to Petrobey. Lad, but I have these Turks in the hollow of my hand. The fleet still comes not, and without the fleet how shall they relieve Nauplia, where already the besieged purchase food from the besiegers; they cannot hold Argos more than a week now, for here, too, their food is failing. Then they will try to get back to Corinth. All the hills are guarded, and I shall be there for them. Oh, I shall be there! and where would all of you be without old Kolocotrones to think for you, ay, and act for you when the time comes?"
Yanni was half amused, half offended, at the arrogance of the old chief, and took another great draught of wine, some bitter stuff; but, as Petrobey said, "That fellow cares nothing for what he eats, save that it should be meat; and nothing for what he drinks, save that it should be wet. Then answer me. Why did God give us a palate?"
Kolocotrones took another chew at his mutton-bone and tilted back his helmet a little, showing a bald forehead.
"Panos—my son Panos will be with me," he continued, "and the lad and I will chase them like sheep and kill them like chickens. Also there will be much gold."
And his eyes grew small and bright like a bird's.
Yanni's scornful young nose was in the air by this time, but his manners forbade his saying just what he thought of Panos, and he rose to go.
"I am cooler," he said, "and less dusty in the throat. I will be going back. Indeed, I think I would have paid weight for weight in gold for that wine."
"I wish you had," chuckled Kolocotrones, whose humor was of the most direct. "But it is a free gift, lad, and I do not grudge it you."
Yanni saluted and retired. Once out of the camp he executed a sort of war-dance of scorn down the mountainside.
"A free gift!" he muttered. "A free gift, indeed! What else should a draught of sour wine be? Thank God, I am of Maina, and not of that stock. I would sooner keep a khan than be that general or his pasty son."
And Yanni, bursting with indignation, went scrambling down the mountain-side, thinking how fine it was to be a Mavromichales.
The arrangements for the relief party were not long in making. Petrobey, as soon as night fell, was to lead a band of Mainats towards the southeast of Argos—an uneven tract of ground, full of bushes and marsh, and much intersected by dikes—where the cavalry could not be utilized against them. They were to advance as close as they safely might to the gate of the town, fire, and run away, come back and fire, and generally give color to the idea that a noisy and badly planned attack was being delivered from that quarter. The effect of this would be to make the enemy alert and watchful of movements in that direction; in any case, their eyes and ears would not be too keen on the Larissa, which was quite on the opposite side of the town. Orders were given that if they were pursued in any number, they should run away, scattering as they went, but return again and keep up the disturbance till the moon rose. By the rising of the moon the relief party would already have made good their entrance into the fortress, unless they had been repulsed, and there was no longer any necessity for the others to dance about like will-o'-the-wisps in the marshes. It would be dark by nine, and the moon did not rise till midnight, so that the others would have ample time to cross the two miles of plain which lay between them and the Larissa in the cover of the dark, and do their best. The relief party, consisting of between four and five hundred Mainats, were nominally under the command of Hypsilantes, but Yanni alone, having seen from the mountain the lay of the ground on the far side of the Larissa, and alone knowing the disposition of the Turkish blockading lines there, was to act as guide. The object of the expedition being in the main to get supplies into the fortress, they took with them a flock of goats, all carefully muzzled so that they should not bleat to each other, and on the back of each goat was a hamper of loaves. "Quite like little men on a journey," said Yanni. Round the beasts the men marched in a sort of hollow oblong, thus forming a pen for them. When they came near the lines of the Turks a small reconnoitring party was to be sent on to see if the steep rocks were practicable and unguarded. If so, they should make a dash for these, dragging two or three goats with them, which, once past the Turkish lines, they would unmuzzle, so that the others, hearing them bleat, might follow. It was impossible to take sheep, for the way up the rocks, though practicable for men and, therefore, for goats, might not be so for the less nimble animals. The whole expedition, its striking irregularities, its hazards, its remoteness from anything commonplace, was after the hearts of the clan, and they grinned to each other as the goats, with their luggage strung on their backs, were driven into their living pen and the door formed up between them.
They had to go slowly, for the leading and retention of the beasts was not very easy, and before they had marched half a mile they heard shouts begin from the opposite quarter of the town and knew that Petrobey's party had got to their dancing. Soon the black, gigantic walls loomed nearer, sharp cut against the blue-black of the star-sown sky, and they halted behind a bluff of upstanding rock, while Yanni and some others moved forward to examine the ground. A hundred yards farther on they got a good view of the Turkish camp-fires, so that they could tell, roughly, the disposition of the troops, and here they halted in council.
"It is even as Mitsos said," whispered Yanni. "There is a great gap in its lines, and that is, no doubt, where the steep rocks came into the plain. He said a man could climb there, and I told him the Prince was coming, at which he laughed, thinking he would trip up. Shall we do this?"
Kostas Mavromichales, the brother of Petrobey, shook with suppressed laughter.
"The assault of the goats," he said. "Oh, a very fine plan! I thought of it."
They were about four hundred yards from the Turkish lines, but the ground, evilly for their purpose, was level and without cover, and the more speedily this was passed the better. The gap in the lines was about three hundred yards in width; immediately above them the rocks began. Once there, every one must find his own path, the leaders dragging forward an unmuzzled goat or two to encourage the others. It was agreed that Kostas and Yanni should take one between them, Athanasi and Dimitri a second, and two other Mainats a third.
These whispered arrangements made, they hurried back to the others and gave them what they had seen. The six goat-draggers were to be in the first line, who, as soon as they reached the rocks, would take off the muzzles, and then climb and scramble on as fast as might be. If they were seen or heard before they got close up to the lines, it was very unlikely they would be able to get in at all, for it passed the wit of man to fight and drive goats simultaneously; and it was worse than useless to get in without the goats, for thus there would be the more mouths to feed, and nought to feed them with. So "with the goats or not at all" was the order.
The ground was hard with the long heat, and they moved forward as silently as possible, but accompanied as they went by the sharp, swift pattering of the goats' feet drumming like a distant tattoo. To the right and left of them twinkled the rows of fires, but straight ahead where the rocks went up there was sheer untenanted blackness. They marched quickly, and every man besides looking to his own steps had to give an eye to the goats nearest him; but carrying their muskets horizontally and at the full length of their arms, these formed a useful though rough barrier. Already they were between the lines of camp-fires, and the black rock was close ahead, when the report of a musket sounded from the left, a bullet from a one-sighted gun sang above their heads, and a voice shouted a Turkish something. At that Yanni paused, and with his knife cut the string muzzle of one of the goats.
"Catch hold of the other horn, Uncle Kostas," he whispered, "and run. Pinch the devil and make him talk. Holy Virgin, if it is a dumb goat! Pinch him, oh, pinch him!"
Yanni gave a great tweak to the goat's ear as he ran forward dragging him, and the beast bleated lamentably and loud. Meantime the other two goats had been served in like manner and made shrill remonstrances, and the herd passed on through the opening made in the front ranks, after the sufferers.
"Oh, it is done," panted Yanni; "here are the rocks. Good God, they are steep! By the hind leg, uncle, lift it. So. We have got a prize goat, I think. There is another shot. But we shall be up before the sentries have given the alarm."
The other men opened out a little, still forming a barrier to the right and left of the herd, to prevent them straying till they gained the rocks, and then went up hand over hand on the face of the cliff. The face of the hill, though steep, was firm and reliable, with good hold for hands and feet, and in a few minutes the Mainats were scattered over the ascent, the men black and almost invisible against the dark cliff, and the dappling of the trotting goats only showing vaguely and uncertainly. Below in the Turkish lines they could see men stirring, and a few shots were fired at the hindmost of them; but so swift had been their passage, and so scattered their climbing of the rocks that they were already in the higher bluff before the Turks realized what had happened. From above, ahead, came heart-broken bleatings, and that was all.