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 |
"'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"
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.
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.