Эдвард Бенсон
The Capsina. An Historical Novel

CHAPTER XVIII

Suleima and the Capsina were sitting in the veranda of the white house a few days after this, and the adorable one was pulling Michael's tail with gurglings of glee and apparent impunity. From inside came Mitsos's voice, singing.

"So do not think thus," said Suleima, "for indeed I would have him go. What should I think of a man who loafed his days in a house with womenfolk? Such a man I should never have cared for, nor you either, so I believe."

She laughed.

"It was that I cared about first in Mitsos," she went on, "at the time I have told you of. I was pent in the perfumed house. It seemed better to live as he lived, half in the sea and all in the air; the sea-gull, Zuleika and I used to call him. So take him again. Indeed, I doubt if he would stop even if I bade it, and I do not bid it. But bring him back to me safe, Capsina; bring him yourself."

The girl sat silent, and Suleima, with a woman's tact, rose and spoke of other things.

"It is a day taken from summer," she said, "and yet in a week it will be Noël. By the New Year, or soon after, you will be back. Oh, littlest one, Michael will surely open his mouth at you and take you down at one gulp like a fig, if you are so bold with him. How would you like to have a great man, as strong as you, pull your tail?"

She picked the baby up and brought it to the Capsina.

"Was ever such a fighter seen?" she said. "He fights all the creatures of God. First he fought the frogs, and then the hens and chickens, then the cat; now it is Michael. Soon he will be fighting the boys, and come home with a blacker eye than he has already, and after that, pray God, he will fight the Turks. If there are any left to fight, oh, pray God, he will be a good fighter against the Turks."

"He will surely find none in Greece," said the Capsina. "Oh, the day is not far when not one will be left. You will see it yourself, and if I am not with you on that day, Suleima, think of me and account me happy."

Suleima looked at her out of the depths of her great eyes.

"I pray the Virgin every day," she said, "that you may be very happy, happy in all that is best, and in all that the soul and the heart desire; happy, dear friend, as you deserve. And, indeed, I think that is not a little."

The girl sat with down-dropped eyes.

"Is the Virgin as generous as you, I wonder?" she said. "You know the worst of me, Suleima; I think I have told you the worst; yet how can you think I deserve happiness?"

"You have told me the worst," said Suleima. "Yet what if I find the whole very good? Is that my fault? Not so; your own. Ah, dearest friend, I have no tongue to tell you how fully – " and she broke off. "It is best said in a word," she continued, "and that is that I love you; and thus all is said. And the blessed Mother of God is more loving than I. Let that suffice."

The child thrust out an aimless, fat-fingered hand and pawed the Capsina's face.

"Cap-sin-a! Cap-sin-a!" it crowed in a voice of staccato rapture.

The girl put out her arms suddenly and lifted the baby to herself. "Yet Capsina is a wicked girl," she whispered, bending over it, "and she hates herself. But she will grow better in time, or so we hope. In time even she may not be ashamed to look her friends in the face."

Suleima laid her hand on her knee.

"Ah, don't, don't!" she said. "Indeed you are talking nonsense."

The Capsina kissed the baby, and gave it back to its mother.

"You are right; I won't," she said, rising and giving herself a little shake. "And now I must go. I have many things to arrange in Nauplia to-night, for the Revenge must set off to-morrow. Tell little Mitsos we shall pass here and call for him by midday."

She held Suleima's two hands for a long moment in her own, gave her a quick, trembling little kiss, and went off down the garden-path and mounted her pony at the gate.

The Turkish fleet had gone back to Constantinople; not another ship was in Greek waters, and it was certain that until spring there would be no more work for the Revenge. Mitsos was too much disgusted with the conduct of the siege of Nauplia to take any part in operations by land. Indeed, the only commander he would have served under, Petrobey, had gone back with his Mainats home, vowing that he would never again co-operate with Kolocotrones. That chief was boasting far and wide of his exploits. Already he called himself the conqueror of Dramali; he had only to show himself at the walls of Nauplia, and the Turks surrendered; it was Joshua and Jericho, and not a penny of the treasure had he taken for himself. This last fact was true, and he ground his teeth at it. But Galaxidi, the port in the Corinthian gulf where the Capsina had begun to make a naval station, where also she had left the baby saved from Elatina, gave a scope to their energies, and she was going to start overland next day with Mitsos and most of the sailors from the two brigs to spend a month there fortifying and arming the place. Kanaris had gone home to Psara, and the brig Sophia was laid by for the winter, so, with the sailors from her and most of those on the Revenge, she would march four hundred men. Enough sailors were left on the Revenge for the working of the ship, but no more, for it was certain there were no Turkish vessels now in Greek waters. The Revenge meantime was to sail round, carrying on board some half-dozen guns to be mounted in a battery at Galaxidi, and join them there. The Turkish fort at Lepanto would be thinking that all the Greek fleet was still at Nauplia, and the risk of passing the guns of the fort could again be neutralized by co-operation with Germanos in Patras, to whom the Capsina sent her compliments. For themselves they were to march across the Isthmus of Corinth – a brush with the small Turkish garrison there was possible – north along the east end of the gulf, passing through Vilia, which they had defended from the raid of the Turkish ships the winter before, and so westward to Galaxidi. It was an informal, haphazard little excursion, after the heart of the Capsina, with a great goal of usefulness for its end. Nominally the march was to be on foot; any one who could do so might, however, provide a beast – the term was left vague – for himself. The keep of the beast would go to the charges of the expedition. Mitsos was in command of the men during the march, and in case of any attack; for the work of fortification at Galaxidi itself he might claim the right to be heard, and no more.

It still wanted an hour to noon when the "Capsina's Own," as Kanaris had christened them, appeared on the road from Nauplia, strangely irregular in appearance, but certainly fighting fit. A convoy of baggage-mules shambled along in front, carrying what baggage there was, and that was little, and most of the "Capsina's Own" were mule-drivers for the time being. Here a gay Turkish horse pranced along by the side of the road, the very sailor-like seat of its rider provoking howls of laughter and derision. Close beside it trotted a demure, mouse-colored donkey, the rider of which, being long in the leg, could paddle with his toes on each side of the animal. Other men, a minority, were on foot, and for these there were stirrup-leathers and tails to hold by. In the middle of the heterogeneous crowd came a great Bishareen camel, once the property of Selim, with a howdah on its back, on the curtains of which were embroidered the crescent and star; but, by way of correction, a short flagstaff, bearing the blue-and-white ensign of Greece, rose above the roof-beam and fluttered bravely in the wind. Out of the curtains of the howdah peered the face of the Capsina, rather anxious.

"Oh, lad!" she cried to Mitsos, as soon as they were within hearing, "this is like being at sea again in a heavy roll, and I feel as if I had sprung a leak somewhere. You will have to come up here and lend a hand with the tiller. The tiller is one rope, as you see, and it appears to me as if the brute's head were a long mile off. Here, furl the main-sail, one of you! I mean, take hold of its head and knock it down. I want to get off."

The camel sank down joint by joint, and the Capsina held on to the side with fixed and panic-stricken eyes.

"There are six joints in each leg!" she screamed; "and each joint is six miles long, and the joints are moved singly and in turn."

The "Capsina's Own" cheered wildly when the camel was brought to anchor and she slid down out of the howdah.

"Oh, stop laughing!" she cried to Mitsos. "Indeed, you will not laugh when you are up there. But I would have it; it looks so grand. Hark! How it groans! Am I not like some barbarous queen?"

And she gave him a great poke in the ribs, and was half-way up the garden-path to meet Suleima.

"And I have come with a light heart," she cried, "and a heavy one – heavy to go and blithe to go. Where is the child? Let him say 'Capsina,' please, so. And it is good-bye."

The two turned and walked a few paces away.

"To-day I have a light heart," said the girl, "such as I have not had for months. Indeed, I think you have laid a spell on me. I am not going to be wicked any more; indeed I am not. Where is Mitsos? Come here, lad; we will say good-bye together."

Mitsos came up the path to them, and the three stood hand-in-hand. In the middle of them the child sat on the ground, chuckling and babbling to itself.

"Pick it up, Mitsos, and lay it on your arm," said the girl. "So; it is complete."

She stood there a moment smiling, but with dimmed eyes, fresh, vivid, alert, looking first at Mitsos and the baby, then at the mother.

"So we part with a smile and with love," she said, "and there is no parting." And she kissed the baby, and clung awhile round Suleima's neck, and then, disengaging herself, stood looking at her a moment more.

"Bring him safe back, dear one," said Suleima; "bring him back yourself."

The girl nodded without speaking, and went off down the path. Mitsos handed the baby to Suleima, folded them both together in his huge arms, said only, "Suleima, Suleima!" and followed.

About four of the afternoon the cavalcade reached the hills leading up to the Dervenaki, and they encamped that night at the village of Nemea. The juvenile portion of its population were inclined to think that they were a circus, and seemed to take it as a personal matter that they were not, yet hung about, hoping that the fantasia might, after all, take place. Dimitri supped with the Capsina and Mitsos, and again it was like children playing. This time, at least, there was no spice of danger to make anxious any parting; they would merely advance the work at Galaxidi, returning before spring was ripe for hostile movements. The camel particularly seemed an admirable comedy. His injured, remonstrant face, his long, ungainly legs – "nigh as long as Mitsos's," quoth the Capsina – his unutterable groaning and complaints when they mounted him, were all an excellent investment in merry spirits. The men had lit their fires in a great circle in the market-place; jests, songs, and wine went freely; and after supper the chiefs visited the men of the "Capsina's Own" and made the night loud with laughter.

When the girl was alone she threw herself on to the rugs on which she was to sleep, and lay awake wondering at herself.

"What does it mean?" she asked herself. "Is it that I am cured of my suffering? Has the Virgin heard the prayer of Suleima? Yet he is no less dear." And her thoughts grew vaguer with the approach of sleep, and sleeping, she slept sound.

They passed Corinth about noon next day, openly and ostentatiously, with the hope of drawing a Turkish contingent out of the citadel; but the contingent came not, and they went by without opposition, a thing which Mitsos put down to the fierce and warlike eye of the camel.

"Let us go to Constantinople," he said to the Capsina, "you and I and the camel. Thus will the Sultan fall off his throne, and the Capsina shall sit thereon, and I shall be her very good servant."

And the howdah creaked and rocked and swayed over the broken ground, and presently after they put into port, so it seemed, for dinner. In the afternoon they crossed the isthmus, and thereafter for four days they marched an aromatic journey among the pine-woods which fringed the gulf. And if in the open the camel was a comedy, among the trees he was not less than a farce. When the older trees gave way to a garden of saplings, the howdah moved as a ship on green water above the feathery tops, and the camel grunted no more, but nipped off the young plumes with great content, but when the trees were big the progress was but slow, an endless series of collisions with and steerings round the strong boughs. Once, forcing him along, the girth snapped, and they were stranded, a preposterous bird's-nest, eight feet off the ground. Indeed, the joke seemed to be of that superlative kind in which repetition and variation of the same theme only add to the humor. Feet went silently over the carpet of needles; sea, air, and pines made an inimitable perfume; roe-deer and boar were plentiful, and it is doubtful whether, in the whole history of strategy, there was ever so cheerful an expedition.

It was still two days before the Noël when they reached Galaxidi. From the hill-side above they had seen the roofs of the Capsina's custom-houses on the quay, and descending farther, it was soon clear that the men of the place had not been idle during the year. The harbor lay looking south; on the east ran an artificial mole, continuing the line of a narrow promontory; on the west the land itself ran in a curve, making the other side of the harbor. The town itself lay to the northern end of the harbor, and on the western promontory; the eastern lay barren, for it was but narrow, and a gale from the east would raise waves which would stop traffic. On the mole itself was only the "custom-house," very business-like to the eye, and built strong enough to weather a heavy-breaking sea. And the face of the girl flushed as she looked.

"It will do," she said. "Mitsos, in a little it will do very well. Look on the west, too; they are building another custom-house, as I said. Surely the two will command the harbor so that no foreign goods shall pass."

That day, being so close to their journey's end, they had no midday halt, but pushed on, and reached the town about three. The men at once began throwing up a camp on the promontory to the west of the harbor, outside the town, and close to the building custom-house. On the march they had cut numbers of poles and beams from the pine-trees, which would form the skeletons of their huts, and over these they would make thatching with pine-branches, canvas, or whatever came handy. The Capsina found lodging with her cousin, the Mayor Elias. Mitsos went with the men.

The camp was on ground sloping away to the harbor, and, like the town, below the top ridge of the promontory which rose some fifty feet above it. It lay in oblong shape; at the south end was the custom-house, and the powder-magazine adjoining it; at the north the first houses of the town began. Along the top ridge of the promontory, running down as far as the sea and up towards the town, was a stout wall, banked up with earth; when finished it would run the complete circuit behind the town and join the sea again at the neck of the eastern promontory. Thus, in case of a party landing from Turkish ships, the town was easily defensible also on the land side. As yet it was finished only from the sea on the west to about half-way between the custom-house and the town; it had also been begun at the eastern end, and was being pushed rapidly forward in both directions. Out of the three Turkish ships which the Capsina had captured at Porto Germano they had taken twelve guns, four from each. Of these, five were already mounted in the custom-house on the mole, and the custom-house on the west of the quay was to receive five more. The other two, both 32-pounders, were, according to the plan of Elias, to be mounted farther back in the harbor in case a ship got through.

Next morning the Capsina got up at the unearthly hour between day and night, and stormed at the camp till Mitsos, a sort of Jonah to save the rest, was thrown out to her, heavy with sleep. But the cold, pungent air soon shook off the cobwebs from him, and he went with the girl on a tour of inspection. The walls of the western custom-house had already risen above the gun-holes, and they could see that their position and direction was well chosen. The ports were wide, and the guns could be trained to a range of about forty-five degrees, and commanded an area some miles broad, through which ships attempting to come to Galaxidi must pass. The five guns in the other custom-house, on the contrary, commanded the immediate channel and entrance to the harbor, and could hardly fail at that close range to make good shooting. This fort was very low, and was protected outside by an earthwork and an angle of masonry.

"It looks but little like a custom-house," remarked Mitsos. "If I were a Turk I should not come near though the Sultan himself held the Turkish flag on the roof."

"I wish he did," said the Capsina, savagely; "he should not hold it long. But see, Mitsos, I have a plan in my head."

"I have sleep only."

"Well, you are awake enough to listen. There are two other guns not yet mounted, 68-pounders. Now the harbor has guns enough, or, at any rate, with the six the Revenge brings, will have enough. So come a little walk with me down to the water."

"The intention is kind," remarked Mitsos, guardedly, "but I will not be pushed into the sea by accident so that I may be more awake."

"You shall not be, great sleepy one; only come."

They went out, and climbing the scaffolding of the rising wall, dropped down on to the stony moorland outside. The sun was risen, and a fragrant rooty smell of herbs and damp earth rose into the morning. The Capsina sniffed it with a great contentment.

"How I know that smell," she said, "morning and the clean wind and the hills of Hydra all mixed. I have thought of Hydra much lately, and of the time when I was a toddling thing."

"A long-stepping toddler, I expect," said Mitsos, and they descended the slope to the water.

On the edge of the sea lay a ribbon of bare limestone rock, with deep fissures and ravines opening in it, and strewn about were fragments of rock as high as a man, looking as if some gigantic creature had got ready materials for his monstrous house and had stopped there. A little bay, some fifty yards across, with two jutting headlands, formed the extremest end of the promontory, and from here they got a wide sea-view left and right. Behind, the hill down which they had come rose steeply, crowned by its wall, but the custom-house, standing lower, and on the opposite slope below the ridge, lay concealed.

"And this, too, is a very convenient place," remarked the Capsina. "There is a wide sea-view; there are many large and suitable rocks. In how many shots would you wager yourself to hit a crack between two of these at a mile's distance and from a rolling ship's deck, little Mitsos?"

"In as many shots as there are hairs on my head. Why?"

She looked at him, wagging her head in reproof.

"Must I go on?" she asked. "Then in how many shots from between one of these cracks would you engage to hit a big ship at a mile's distance? Was there ever so slow a lad!"

"God forbid!" said Mitsos. "In as many noses as there are on my face. You see what I mean."

"I am not so slow as some," she said, glancing into his comely face, and in answer Mitsos smiled with eyes and mouth. He had never seen her so brilliant and good to look on. She had wound the brightly colored shawl round her head, the shawl he remembered her wearing one gray morning last year as they started from Galaxidi. But now the newly risen sun, wintry and luminously sparkling, bathed her from head to foot. She enchanted his eye, making captive of it, and he looked until the smile blossomed into a laugh.

"Oh, Capsina, may there be many long years for you!" he cried. "To-morrow is the Noël. What shall be my gift to you on the Noël?"

She paused a moment, uncertain of her answer. Then, "More of the gift you have always given me, dear Mitsos," she said, "your own help and comradeship, perhaps a little liking as well. Who knows?"

"God knows how much," said the lad.

The good moment finished. Her heart accused her of no disloyalty to Suleima, for from the heart she had spoken only of that she knew that Mitsos gave her, and flirted not with forbidden thoughts, and with that they went back to the work in hand. Yet it had been a good moment, even an excellent moment.