Эдвард Бенсон
The Capsina. An Historical Novel

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 the grand-coup in 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."