Эдвард Бенсон
The Capsina. An Historical Novel

CHAPTER XI

But with the increase in the number of the garrison the flock of goats dwindled like patches of snow when the spring had come, and after a three days' grilling on the rock, and a calculation which showed that there was food for the whole number of men for only three days more, it was judged more prudent that, since the Turks showed no signs of meditating another assault, half the garrison should cut their way through the Turkish lines and go back to the Greek camp at Lerna and return again with fresh supplies of food. The Turkish fleet, meantime, had not appeared, and it seemed certain that the army would not hold Argos much longer. Forage and food were getting daily scarcer and more distant of gathering, and many men were stricken down with a virulent dysentery and fever, arising, no doubt, from their constant expeditions into the marshy ground and the unripe fruit which they plucked and ate freely. And day by day the Greeks continued to collect on the mountains.

It was decided that the original occupiers should go, for many of them were hardly fit for longer service after their ten days on that gridiron rock; but a few Mainats – and among others Mitsos – sturdily declared that they would not leave the place while there was a piece of goat's-meat or a loaf of bread remaining. Hypsilantes also, whose untrained body felt the heat and the coarseness of the scanty food most severely, was, after many fruitless attempts at persuasion, induced to be of the evacuating party. His object was already gained: he had thrown in his lot with the people, turning his back on the idle and cowardly senators; and it was important, until more food was obtained, to have as few mouths as possible to feed, provided that those who remained could hold the place in case of attack.

Fortune favored their escape, for before sunset on the night on which this partial evacuation was fixed a wrack of storm-clouds, scudding out of the sea from the south and spreading over the sky with a rapidity that promised a hurricane, brought in their train a noisy night of storm. By nine o'clock the rain had come on in torrents, with thunder and lightning, and in the headlong pelt they marched silently out of the gate, and crept down the hill-side towards the Turkish lines. These had been now drawn round the rocks where the Mainats had entered three nights before, and as they had to cut a way through the enemy somewhere, it was best to choose a place where there should be quicker going than down the goat-path. To the left of the rocks the hill ended in a steep earth-covered slope, below which were the lines, and this point most promised success. Under cover of the storm they approached unheard, and then quickening up, they ran down the last slope, which, under the tropical downpour, was no more than a mud-slide. Between the alleys of tents were lanterns, somewhat sparsely placed, and by good fortune the first Greeks who entered the lines came straight upon one of these, round which were two or three sentries. The sentries were neatly and silently knifed before any had time to raise the alarm or fire, and still at the double, the Greeks passed the second line of tents into another parallel passage. Here they were hardly less lucky. A shot or two was fired, and the alarm was given; but under that blinding and deafening uproar of the elements the Turks ran hither and thither, over tent-ropes and into each other, and without loss of a single man the Greeks gained the plain beyond.

Twice during the following week Petrobey attempted to force his way by night through the Turkish lines, which now closely invested the Larissa, for the taking in of fresh supplies to the troops there, but both times without success. The Turks had drawn off a number of troops from the town to strengthen those blockading the citadel, and they were on the lookout for these expeditions. Yet still the fleet did not appear, and it was becoming a question of hours, almost, how long Dramali could remain in Argos, for the intense heat of the last days had withered the scanty forage of the plains, and the men were in no better plight. But meantime the main object of the citadel garrison had been effected. Dramali had been delayed at Argos, not caring to leave this for towns occupied by the Greeks in his rear, instead of pushing on nearer to Nauplia. The Greeks had now collected in force in the hills. But if Dramali was nigh provisionless, the garrison was even more destitute; and on the morning after Petrobey's second attempt it was found that the provisions were coming to an end and, almost worse than that, the water supply was beginning to run short. They had hoped that the tropical storm of a week ago would have replenished the wells, but the sources lay deep, and the thirsty soil absorbed the rain before it penetrated to the seat of the spring. The only difficulty was how to get out.

That evening they had come to the end of the meat, there were only a few loaves left, and the water that day had been muddy and evil tasting; and Mitsos, as they sat round the remains of their scanty meal, tried to persuade himself that Petrobey would have advised their continuing to hold the place, for to propose that they should evacuate was a bitter mouthful. But the more prudent, and so to him less savory, council prevailed. The Mainats were sitting about, gloomy and rather dispirited, and none felt equal to the courage of saying they had better go. Mitsos had been selected by a sort of silent vote to the command, and they waited for him to speak. During a long silence he had been lying full length on the ground, but suddenly he sat up.

"Oh, cousins of mine!" he said; "it is not pleasant to say it, but it shall be said. Assuredly, we cannot stop here any longer. There is no more food, but little water, and that stale and full of the well dregs, and the others have tried twice to get in, and failed. It remains for us to get out."

The Mainats who were close and heard his words grunted, and those farther off came to find out what was forward. Mitsos repeated his words, and again they found a response of grunts. At that he lost his patience a little.

"This is not pleasant for me," he said. "You seem to want to stay here, and you make a coward of me for my thoughts. So be it; we stay. Much good may it do any one."

Kostas raised himself on his elbow. His fine fat face was a little thinner than it had been.

"Softly, little Mitsos," he said. "Give time. I am with you."

"Then why not have said so?" asked Mitsos, in a high, injured voice.

Yanni, sitting close, bubbled with laughter.

"Oh, dear fool," he said, "do you not know us yet? I, too, am with you. So are we all, I believe."

"If it is so, good," said Mitsos, only half mollified; "and if it is not so, very good also."

The clan suddenly recovered their spirits wonderfully. One man began whistling; another sang a verse of the Klepht's song, which was taken up by a chorus. Two or three men near Mitsos patted him on the back, and got knocked about for their pains, and Yanni was neatly tripped up and sat on. Mitsos also regained his equanimity by the use of his hands, and turned to Kostas.

"Is there no word for 'yes' among you but grunts only?" he asked. "Well, let it pass. We must go to-night. Every day the defences are strengthened; and as for that sour bread, thank God, we have done with it," and he picked up the few remaining loaves and hurled them over the fortress wall.

"I am better," he said, "and we will grunt together, cousins."

Now at the back of the Larissa, some hundred yards from the rocks up which the Mainats had climbed, there lay a steep ravine, funnel-shaped, cut in the side of the hill from top to bottom. It ended at the bottom in a gentler slope, and being a very accessible place, since the night surprise it had been closely guarded. The sides of it were sharp-pitched, and a stone dislodged from the top went down, gathering length in its leaps till it reached the bottom of the hill. Kostas had discovered this, for one morning, leaning over the battlements, he had idly chucked a pebble over, and watching its course, saw it fall on the top of a Turkish tent below and, being sharp, rip a hole in it, and Kostas laughed to see that a man popped quickly out, thinking, perhaps, that it was a bullet from above. At the head of this ravine, close to the citadel walls, rose a tall pinnacle of loose, shaly rock. This, too, Kostas had noticed.

His proposal was as follows: A mine should be laid in this rock, with a long fuse. As soon as this was done they should all descend the hill with silence and despatch, keeping on the two ridges that bounded this ravine, and getting as close as possible to the Turkish lines, wait.

"Then," continued Kostas, with admirable simplicity, "will nature and gunpowder work; for the rock will blow up with the gunpowder, and nature will lead the large pieces very swiftly down the ravine. One pebble brought a man from his tent; how many will be left when a mountain falls? We shall be in safety, for stones do not climb steep sides; and when the stones have passed, we will pass also."

Kostas looked round, and knowing the Mainats better than did Mitsos, found encouragement in their grunts, and the grunts were followed by grins.

"There will be broken heads," said Yanni, sententiously, "yet no man will break them. What does the great Mitsos say?"

Mitsos reached out a large, throttling hand.

"There will be a broken head," he remarked, "and I will have broken it. It is borne upon me that Uncle Kostas is the great one. When shall we start?"

"Surely as soon as may be, since Mitsos, in his wisdom, threw the rest of the bread away. We have first to bore a big hole in that rock; five men can do that, while we collect all the powder there is left. We shall need none, because we bolt hare-fashion, and there will not be time for fighting. Also the portion of rock to fall must be very great."

"Then let five men go out very silently now," said Mitsos, "and begin. Let some one watch on the wall, and when we have finished open the gate and come out very gently. Then we will set the fuse and go. Anastasi, collect the powder from each man's horn, and bring it out when it is collected. I go for the boring. Who is with me?"

Mitsos got up and went off with four other volunteers to drill the rock. They chose a place behind it, and away from the ravine, so that the loosened pieces might not fall and perhaps lead to extra vigilance on the part of the Turks. The rock was soft and crumbly, and though the night was a swelter of heat, a hole was drilled without very much labor. By the time it was ready the powder had come, and was carefully rammed in. Mitsos laid a long train of damp powder in sacking, making a fuse of about ten minutes' law, and when all was ready he whistled gently to the watcher on the wall. A moment afterwards the gate was put softly ajar, and the men filed out. He waited till the last had emerged, and then set a light to the train.

The night was not very dark, for although the moon was not yet risen, the diffused light of the stars made a clear gray twilight. But the two ridges of the ravine down which they climbed were rough with upstanding bowlders, and by going very cautiously and quietly, it was easily possible to approach the lines without being seen. Indeed, the greater fear was from the hearing, for the dry stones clanged and rang metallically under their feet, and as they began to get nearer the men took off their mountain shoes, so that their tread might be the more noiseless. Already the foremost were as far as they thought it safe to go, and in silence the others closed up till the shadow of each bowlder was a nest of expectant eyes. The air was still and windless; each man heard only the coming and going of his breath; above them was not a sound except that from time to time a bird piped with a flute-like note among the rocks. The strain grew tenser and yet more tense; now and then a murmur would come drowsily up from the Turkish lines, and the bird piped on. Mitsos was only conscious of one perplexing doubt: would the bird be killed or not?

Suddenly, with a roar and crash and windy buffet, that which they were waiting for came. The crash grew into a roar, which gathered volume and intolerable sound every moment, and in a great storm of dust the shattered rocks passed down the ravine, the smaller pieces leaping like spray from a torrent up the sides, the larger coiling and twisting together like the ropes of water in a cataract. They passed with a rush and roar down on to the Turkish lines below, and as the tumult went on its way there mingled with it the noises of ripped canvas, broken poles, and human cries. Close on the heels of this avalanche came the Mainats; from the tents near men were fleeing in fear of another shower of stone coming; the path of the rocks themselves lay through the lines as if cut by some portentous knife. None thought of stopping them; the lanes through the camp passed like blurs of light, and keeping to the edge of the path cut by the rocks, they reached the plain without a shot being fired at them. But they did not halt nor abate the pace. Though they carried muskets they were without powder, and but for their knives defenceless, and, without even waiting to fall into any sort of formation, they struck out over the plain towards the lower hills at the base of which the camp at Lerna stood.

The vigilance of the Greeks was of another sort to that of the Turks, and knowing that they would run a most considerable risk, if they approached the camp without giving warning, of being shot, they halted some three hundred yards off, and Mitsos yelled aloud.

"From the citadel," he cried, "Greeks of Maina!"

A shout answered him; and now that they were beyond all reach of pursuit, they went the more quietly. The sentries at the first outpost had turned out in case of anything being wrong, but in a moment they were recognized and passed.

Petrobey met them.

"So Benjamin has come home," he said, kissing Yanni. "And oh, Mitsos, you have come to friends."

All that week the Turks in Argos and the Greeks at Lerna and on the mountains waited, the one for the Ottoman fleet to appear, the other for that which should certainly follow on its non-appearance. Already, so it was rumored, some of the Turkish cavalry horses had been killed to supply food for the men, and the Greeks heard it with a greedy quickening of the breath. One morning two ships appeared suddenly opposite Nauplia, and it was feared they were the first of the Turkish ships, but Mitsos announced they were the Revenge and the Sophia, though why they had come he knew not. The hills round were a line of Greek camps, waiting, like birds of prey, for the inevitable end. Down at Lerna the men were growling discontentedly at the waiting; the hot, foul air of the marshes smote them, but they swore they would smite in return. And thus in silent and hungry expectation the first week of August went by.

At length, on the morning of the 6th, the end came. When day broke it was to show the long bright lines of Albanian mercenaries who formed the advance-guard of Dramali's army, marching across the plain northward towards the guarded hills. From Lerna, lying low, they were only visible when they began to reach the foot-hills of the range towards Corinth, and by that time the cavalry had begun to leave the north gate of Argos. Instantly in the camp there was a sudden fierce outburst of joy and certain vengeance. The hills were guarded, the Turks in a trap; it only remained to go.

The hills between Argos and Corinth were rough and bowldersown. The main pass over them, called the Dervenaki, lay due north from Argos, and was that over which the Turks under Dramali had come. This, however, had now been occupied five days before by a large body of Greeks from the villages round – hardy men of the mountains, as leaderless as a pack of wolves, and fiercer. They had taken up a senseless position too near the plain and below the gorge through which the road passed, and which was narrow and easily held. The Albanians, therefore, the advance-guard of the force, seeing that the pass was occupied, turned westward towards the village of Nemea by another road, which joined the Dervenaki again, after a long détour, beyond the gorge. Kolocotrones with his son Panos and some eight thousand Greeks were in possession of Nemea, and news that the advance-guard, consisting of about a thousand Albanians, was approaching was brought him as he sat at breakfast in his brass helmet.

Now the Albanians were not Turks, but Greeks serving as mercenaries under the Sultan. Many of them had relations and friends among the Greeks, and a year ago, at the siege of Tripoli, a separate amnesty had been concluded with them, and they had not been prevented from going home. Moreover, they were excellent men of arms and poor. All these things Kolocotrones considered as he debated what to do. While he was still debating the first rank of them came in sight. He looked at them for a moment, and then turned to the scouts who had brought the news.

"May hell receive you!" he snarled. "They are Greeks."

They were Greeks; every one knew that. They were allowed to pass unmolested. They were also poor, and that Kolocotrones knew.

Besides the Dervenaki and the Nemean way to the west, two other possible roads led over the pass, both to the east. Of these one lay parallel with the Dervenaki, and only five or six hundred yards from it, till nearly the top of the pass. The roads then joined and, after running for some half-mile one on each side of a narrow, wedge-shaped hill, became one. Farther away, again to the east, lying in a long loop, was a third road. Both of these branched off from the Dervenaki before coming to the spot where the irregular Greeks on that pass were encamped. The road farthest away to the east was held by the English-speaking Niketas. He had with him two thousand men, including many Mainats.

The advance-guard of the Turks preceded the main army by some half-hour. Dramali rode with the second body of cavalry, and when he saw the Albanians take the western road, which he knew was held by Kolocotrones, he burst into a torrent of Mussulman abuse. He had been betrayed, sold, bartered; these Albanians were in league with the Greeks. So he ordered an advance up the shortest and most direct road – namely, the Dervenaki. His scouts soon returned saying it was held by the Greeks, and Dramali turned eastward into the parallel road, which appeared to be untenanted. A low ridge divided the two, and as he crossed it he was seen by Niketas's outposts. He, without a moment's hesitation, divided his band into two parts. With one he crossed the road Dramali was taking, and took up a position near the top of the pass on the steep, wedge-shaped hill that separated it from the Dervenaki, and on the road itself, blocking it. To the others he gave orders to hang on the right flank of the Turks as they advanced northward. Of the Turks, now that the Albanians were separated from them, the greater part of the cavalry came first as an advance-guard; the most of the infantry followed. Between them marched an army of luggage-mules, with tents and all the appurtenances of Turkish warfare, mules and camels carrying embroidered clothes, gold-chased arms, money, women, and behind, again, the lesser part of the cavalry and the remainder of the infantry.

Meantime the men in camp at Lerna, more than half Mainats, had seen the road the Turks had taken, and were in pursuit. Now that it was seen that the Turks were in retreat, and had no thought of attempting the relief of Nauplia, since the fleet had not arrived, there was nothing to be gained by continuing to hold the Larissa; it was better to concentrate all forces on the hills over which the Turks had to pass, if so be that they passed. The cavalry they had seen had gone first. It was no time to think of prudence and security, and they dashed through Argos and its empty and silent streets and out to the right at the tail of the Ottoman forces, risking an attack as they crossed the plain. But Dramali had no longer any thought of attacking. Those doomed lines with their trains of baggage-beasts moved but slowly, and Petrobey reached the outlying foot-hills before the rear of the Turks had left the plain.

The pass on each side of which Niketas's troops were posted narrowed gradually as it went, and near the top where they waited it was just a road, flanked on the left side by the steep promontory of hill, on the other by a stream riotous only in the melting of the snows, but now a mere starved trickle of water. Beyond that was a corresponding hill, covered sparsely with pines, which grew up big among big bowlders of white limestone, lying like some petrified flock of gigantic sheep. The day had broken with a pitiless and naked sky, and as the sun rose higher it seemed that the world was a furnace eaten up with its own heat. Niketas himself with some hundred men had already taken up his position on the left side of the pass through which the Turks would come on the steep turtle-backed ridge dividing it from the Dervenaki. Another contingent was on the road itself, employed in heaping up a rough wall of stones across it to shelter themselves and delay the advance of the cavalry vanguard. On the right of the road were the remainder of Niketas's troops, some five hundred in number, dispersed among the pines and bowlders of the hill-side, which rose so sheerly that each man could see the road, as it were a stage from the rising tiers of theatre-seats, and shoot down on to it. Petrobey sent Yanni forward to find Niketas and ask him where he would wish the fresh troops from Lerna to be posted, and the answer came back that they were most needed in the road to help the building of the barricade and stop the first cavalry charges. Those already there were under Hypsilantes and the priest Dikaios; would Petrobey take council with them? It was possible also that a reinforcement would be needed on the right of the road; if so, let the Mainats be divided. He himself had sufficient men to hold the hill on the left, and it was all "damn fine." Finally he wished Petrobey good appetite for the feast; Mainats he knew were always hungry.

The Turks were still half an hour away, and Petrobey led his troops down on to the road from off the uneven ground of the hill, so that they should make more speed, and in ten minutes they reached the place where the rest were building the barricade. Here all set themselves to the work: some rolled down stones from the slopes into the valley, others fetched them from the bed of the stream, while those on the road carried them to the site of the growing wall and piled them up. Now and then a warning shout would come from the hill-side, and a rock would leap down, gathering speed, and rush across the road, split sometimes into a hundred fragments and useless, but for the most part – for the limestone was hard – a valuable building stone. Eight or ten men, like busy-limbed ants at work, would seize it and roll it up to the rising barricade, piling it on top if not too heavy, or using it to form part of a buttress. But their time was short and the wall was but an uneven ridge across the road and stream, four feet high or so in places, elsewhere only a heap of stones, when it was shouted from the outposts that the cavalry was approaching, and the men ceased from their work and, gathering up their arms, retreated to behind the improvised barricade and waited.

To the left of the road, and below the barricade, rose the wedge of hill on which Niketas's contingent was stationed. They were drawn up in five ranks of about two hundred men each, in open order, with a space of some thirty paces between the last three ranks, so that, owing to the steepness of the ground, each man commanded a view of the road and each rank could fire over the heads of those in front. The ground, however, was of a more gradual slope as it approached the road, and the first rank lay, sheltering themselves as far as possible, among the bowlders not twenty paces from the road itself; the second rank, five paces behind it, knelt; and the third stood. On the right of the road the hill was too rugged and uneven, being strewn with bowlders and sown with shrubs and trees, to allow of any formation, and was in fact one great ambuscade, the men being hidden by the trees and stones. Here and there a gun-barrel glistened in the sun, but a casual passer-by might have gone his way and never suspected the presence of men. A bend in the road, some two hundred yards below, concealed the barricade and its defenders from the Turks.

The vanguard of the Turks halted a moment, seeing that the hill to the left of the road was occupied, and then set forward again at a brisk trot, meaning perhaps to go under fire along the road commanded by Niketas and then, wheeling at the top of the pass, attack him, and thus enable the rest of the troops to march through the ravine while they were engaging its defenders, and reach the open ground which lay beyond. Just before the first ranks reached the bend in the road Niketas opened fire on them, but they did not wait to return it, and putting their horses into a canter swept round the bend.

At that the hill-side on their right flank blazed and bristled, and every shrub and stone seemed to burst into a flame of fire. On each side the Greeks, at short range, poured a storm of bullets into them; at each step another and another fell. Suddenly from in front the Mainats from between their barricades opened fire; retreat was impossible, for the whole of the cavalry were now advancing from behind; to stop meant one congestion of death, and they spurred savagely on. In a moment they were at the wall. Some leaped the lower parts of it, alighting, it seemed, in a hell of flame; others were checked by the higher portion, and their horses reared and wheeled into their own ranks; others passed through the stream-bed, or putting their horses at the wall of defenders as at a fence, found themselves faced by the rear rank of Mainats, who were waiting patiently higher up the road till they should have penetrated into their range.

Meantime the check given to the first division of the cavalry at the barricade had resulted in a congestion all down the advancing lines. The second division had closed up with the first, the third with the second, and on the heels of the cavalry came the infantry. Dramali, who was stationed in the rear still, almost on the plain of Argos, had ordered them to advance, at all costs, till they gained the top of the pass, whence they could intrench themselves on the open ground, and every moment added a crust to the congealment of destruction. The masses of those moving on from behind pushed the first rank forward and forward, all squeezed together, and pressing against the wall of barricade, as a river in flood presses against the arches of a bridge. At two or three points it had been entirely broken down, and through these – now free for a moment, now choked again with the bodies of horses and their riders – a few escaped through the first ranks of Mainats and into the road beyond, raked indeed by the other ranks, who held the pass higher up, but no longer exposed to the full threefold short range fire from Niketas, the barrier, and those in ambush on the left. Already the wall of dead and dying was heaped higher than the barricade that the Mainats had raised, and the horses of the Turks who forced their way through trampled on the bodies of the fallen. But pass they must, for they were forced forward, as by some hideous, slow-moving glacier, by a stream of dead and living. Here and there a dead horse carrying a dead rider was borne on upright and unable to fall because of those who pressed so closely on each side, the rider bowed forward over the neck of his horse or sprawling sideways across the knee of his fellow, the horse's head supported on the quarters of the beast in front or wedged between it and the next. More terrible even was some other brute, wounded and screaming, but unable to move except as it was moved and carried along for some seconds perhaps, till two or three of those in front forced their way through the breaches in the barricade of horses and riders and gave it space, so that it fell and was mercifully trampled out of pain and life.

For five deadly minutes they pressed on hopelessly and gallantly, while the leaden hail hissed from either flank and from in front into the congested horsemen; but at the end the Turks broke and fled in all directions, some up the hill where Niketas's troops, still untouched and unattacked, were stationed, others up the hill-side opposite, which still spurted and blazed with muskets. There every bush was an armed man, every stone a red flower of flame. But the rush could not be stopped any more than a rush even of cattle or sheep can be withstood by armed men. The Turks fled, scattering in all directions, northward for the most part towards Corinth, where they would find safety, and the Greeks troubled not to pursue, but shot as a man shoots at driven deer. Almost simultaneously with the breaking of the troops, those of the cavalry who had passed the first ranks of the Mainats who guarded the wall, once of stones, but now a heap of men and horses, succeeded, in spite of the steady fire of the rear ranks and with the cool courage of desperation, in clearing some sort of passage round by the stream-bed, which was now fuller than it had been, but red and with a froth of blood, and through this some four hundred of the cavalry passed. They drove the Mainats from the barricade with much slaughter, forcing them up the two hill-sides which bounded the ravine, and charging forward passed the other ranks without sustaining heavy loss, and made their way into the open ground, reaching Corinth that night.