The Capsina. An Historical Novel

Mitsos was trembling with some mysterious excitement; and his words were so unlike anything that Kanaris had suspected could come from him, that the latter was startled. His own emotions had been far more deeply stirred than he either liked or would have confessed, and to see Mitsos possessed by the same hysterical affection frightened him. He laid his hand on his shoulder.

"Get up, little Mitsos," he said; "you don't know what you are saying. See, the Capsina has gone on shore; you will have supper with us. We will have it all together here, as I have finished the doctoring. You feel you can eat to-night?" he said, turning to the boy.

Christos smiled.

"Surely, but you and Mitsos must feed me," and he looked with comic contempt at his bandaged hands.

"That is good," said Kanaris, and, clapping his hands, he told the cabin-boy to bring in supper for the three.

Mitsos's serene sense soon came back to him, and he wondered half-shamedly at himself, and thought of his previous excursion into the kingdom of hysterics, which he had made after the fight at the mill. Certainly Christos was human enough at supper, and they put victuals into his mouth, and in the vain attempt to ply him with wine simultaneously, brought him to the verge of choking.

Mitsos found the Capsina waiting up for him on the Revenge when he got back. She was sitting idle, a thing unusual, and she looked as if she had been crying. But she smiled at him, though rather tremulously, as he entered, and pointed to a seat, and all Mitsos's amazed horror at the hanging was struck from his mind.

"Oh, Capsina," he said, "you do not know how sorry I feel for you. Surely you were no more than just to those on the Turkish ships, and indeed this is no time for gentleness. You have been thinking of those that – that were in Elatina?"

The Capsina nodded.

"Of them, and, oddly enough, of the baby, which I have left here. How is the lad they crucified? You have seen him?"

"Yes." Then in a whisper, "Is it not strange?" he said; "his name is Christos."

"Oh, Mitsos! Was that why they did thus to him?"

"Yes. They said they would see if he could die as patiently."

The Capsina flushed, and her eyes were fire.

"Then may Christ never forgive me if I do not revenge this thing by blood and blood and blood! Here and by this I vow," and she laid her hand on the little shrine at the end of the cabin, "that if ever I stay my hand or spare one of those accursed enemies of Him, that that day shall be the last day of my life, for indeed I shall not be worthy to live and breathe pure air of His making. So I swear. And may all the saints of heaven, and may the blessed Christ, and the thrice-holy mother of Christ, help me to keep my vow!"

She knelt a moment before the shrine, crossing herself, and then turned to Mitsos.

"We will take the lad with us, if he will come," she said, "for I think that the blessing of God cannot fail to rest on the ship that carries him. I will go and see him in the morning. And now, little Mitsos, let us go to bed, for it has not been a very quiet day for us; and for me, I could sleep like a child tired with play. Good-night, lad. I thank God every day for that meeting of ours."

She held his hand in hers for a moment, with a gentle pressure, looking at him with great shining eyes and smiling mouth.

"Good-night," he said; "and oh, Capsina, I bless God for that meeting, too, and as far as there is strength in me I will help you to keep your vow. It is even so; they are the enemies of the Christ, and He has graciously made to us for Him. Yet – yet, do not hang a man again. For somehow it seems to me poor manners to add insults to death, and to insult is what Turks do."

Sophia looked at him, silent, then laughed, passing her hand wearily over her eyes.

"And as you are of the Mainats, and I of the clan of Capsas, you think we should have fine manners. Oh, little Mitsos, you are a boy of the very oddest thoughts. Well, be it as you say. I was angry when I did that, and indeed we have no time for anger, for the sword does not feel angry when it strikes. It only strikes, and strikes true. So."

CHAPTER VII

From the moment of entering the Gulf of Corinth one precaution was of primary necessity to the success of the Capsina's expedition, and that was that no word of the coming of her ships should go about between the various Turkish ships in the gulf. Their good fortune had determined that the nine ships which they knew were there were separated into groups of three, and she felt confident that her two could tackle three. But supposing word went about, and the remaining six mobilized, the position would be serious enough to steady even those two brigs full of tigers.

It was practically certain that the Turkish garrison of Lepanto had before this received news from Patras of their entrance into the gulf, and if so only the most dire stress of circumstance would drive the Capsina to attempt to pass again, except at night, for the channel was altogether commanded by the heavy guns of the fortress, and she preferred the windy waters of the gulf, with room to turn and manoeuvre, to that tight-rope of a way. Hitherto all had gone well, for of the three ships they had encountered neither man, woman, or child would do aught else than toss with the ooze and tangle of the gulf, and tell their tale to the fishes; and a further point in their favor was that only a very few villages on the shore had Turkish garrisons, so that any combined movement to drive them into a corner would be difficult of execution. Their safety chiefly lay in expeditious action, and their danger in the escape of any Turkish ships which might manage, after being attacked by them, to join the others.

Now the Capsina's recklessness was of the more judicious kind, or, rather, it may be said that she was prudent, except when the occasion demanded a free disregard of possible consequences; it was clearly a poor economy to save a little time and go to sea with ships not thoroughly up to the mark, and she waited with a rebellious patience until the Sophia was altogether fit for action again. The folk of Galaxidi regarded her more in the light of some splendid incarnation of the spirit of insurrection than a woman, and to them, as to Mitsos, Christos was almost a sacred thing. Men and women came in shoals on to the Revenge, where the Capsina had caused him to be moved when he was enough recovered, and looked with a kind of religious awe at the lad whom the infidels had crucified. And the great pride the boy took in what had been done to him was inspiring to see.

But the Capsina's impatience found a bridle in directing and superintending, with Mitsos and Kanaris, the establishment of a fort at Galaxidi which should command the harbor. Galaxidi boasted one of the few well-sheltered harbors on the gulf which could for certain be reached by a well-handled boat in stormy weather, for while the harbor at Aegion faced nearly north and was impossible to make in a northwesterly gale, and the harbor at Corinth had so narrow an entrance that, with a heavy cross sea, a ship was as like as not to be shouldered on to the breakwater, at Galaxidi the harbor faced south, and had a wide entrance protected from the violent westerly winds by the long headland, on the other side of which lay Elatina. Otherwise, the shore for several miles was rocky and inhospitable, and no enemy's ship, as the Capsina saw, could take Galaxidi unless it first had possession of the harbor, and it was on the end of the promontory which commanded it that she caused the defences to be begun.

Heretofore the whole of this coast district had taken no part in the work of the Revolution, and the bloody scheme of the Turks was to wipe out those fishing villages one by one, so as to secure themselves against the possibility of such movements in the future. Such had been the fate of Elatina; for such a fate, no doubt, had Galaxidi been devilishly designed, when the two Greek brigs overtook and spoke with the designers thereof.

On the second day of their stay there, when even the Capsina had been forced to be prepared to stop at least a week, she and Mitsos prowled about the quay and harbor like whelps on some sure trace of blood, how rightly no future was to prove.

"It is a death-trap, little Mitsos," said the girl. "See, this is my plan. Let us put up a big shed on the quay, for all the world like a Turkish custom-house, with the Turkish flag over it, if you will – don't frown, Mitsos, you seem to think that it is our mission to render the Turkish nation immortal – a flag to give confidence, as I was saying. But it shall be no custom-house, or rather a custom-house where the dues are rather heavy, and of our sort. Thus, supposing by some devil's luck either of those two companies of ships escape from us, we can at least do our best to head them towards Galaxidi."

"Where they will see their own flag flying," put in Mitsos. "Eh, but I am a partner with a tigress."

"And I with a ba-a-lamb, it seems," went on the girl, with a glance at this fine-grown ba-a-lamb. "Thus they will sail in unsuspecting, and all the fiends in hell are in it if ever they sail out," she concluded, with a sudden flare.

"There is more to it than that," said Mitsos. "We are in this gulf for a month, or more than a month maybe. It is well to have a place for breathing in. It is sure that we cannot get out of the gulf until the coming of the fleet, or so I think. Well, with a fort here in the hands of the Greeks, we shall not need to."

The Capsina stood silent a moment surveying the harbor, with her head a little on one side.

"It is by no means a rotten egg we are trying to hatch," she said, at length. "The mayor, who is my cousin, shall dine with us to-day, and there will be much talking. Go back to the ship, lad, and smoke your pipe. That is what you want."

"Am I so stupid this morning, then?" asked Mitsos.

"There is no mellowness in tobacco," said she, sententiously, quoting a Greek proverb. "No, you are not stupid, but I have other business in which you have no share."

"And what is that?"

"And who will have made the little Mitsos my confessor?" said she, drolling with him. "Well, father, I am going to see the baby."

"The blessing of the saints be on your work, my daughter," said Mitsos, with prelatical solemnity. "But you are never away from the baby, Capsina. Am I to be superseded?"

She flushed a little.

"Not from my affection," she said, with secret truth; "only in the matter of advice, I claim a right to consult another." And she turned and walked briskly away from the quay.

The mayor, Elias Melissinos, was a little withered man, with a face the color of a ripe crab-apple. His eyes, bright and black like a bird's, peeped out from a great fringe of eyebrow, and seemed the very hearth and home of an infernal shrewdness. He was the first cousin of the Capsina's mother, but thought nothing of his connection with the clan, remarking with much truth that the same God made also the vermin, and the tortoises upon the mountain. But as he had grave theological doubts as to whether it was God or the devil who had made the Turks, he was a suitable ally. He ate his dinner peeking and peering at his food, and swallowing it gulpingly like pills, with a backward toss of his head, occasionally glancing at Mitsos, who fed Christos and himself alternately, and asking sharp little questions. When they had finished they went on deck, and Elias sucked at his pipe like a grave little baby, while the Capsina made exposition.

"See, cousin," she said, "Mitsos and I have examined the quay, and we both think that it is easily defensible and hard to take. There is already a big shed on there; you will have to build another one on the promontory, opposite; between them they will command the harbor like a two-edged sword."

"You will be putting guns on the sheds, maybe?" asked Elias, briskly.

"There would not be much advantage to us in building the sheds and leaving them totally empty," remarked Mitsos.

"Yes, but my dear cousin," said Elias, "where are the guns to come from? For I never yet authentically heard that they grew on the mountain-side. Muskets we have and plenty of them, but I am thinking that before a Turkish ship gets within musket-shot our sheds will be spillikins and match-wood; and, if it comes on to rain, the muskets will get rusty; but, indeed, I don't know that there will be any other result worth the mentioning."

"You can have two four-inch guns from the Revenge and two from the Sophia," said the Capsina, "for we are a little overarmed if anything. What say you, Mitsos?"

Mitsos scratched his head.

"I say that I wish there were not so many good guns lying at the bottom of the Gulf of Corinth," he said.

"Where do they lie?" asked Elias.

The Capsina sprang up.

"Indeed, the little Mitsos has no wooden head, though he thinks slower than snails walk, cousin. One ship and all its guns lie in fifteen-fathom water, not a mile from land, in the bay westward from the point of Galaxidi. I could lead you there blindfolded. Can you raise them, think you?"

"We can try," said Elias. "But if your brigs are over-armed – "

"They are not overarmed!" cried the girl. "I wish we had more guns."

Elias bowed, with a precise little smile on his lips.

"The mistake is mine," he said. "I was wrong when I thought I heard you say so. Please continue, cousin."

"For the expenses, I will provide out of the money we have put aside for the war fund," continued the Capsina. "How much have we, little Mitsos? Oh, is there nothing you know? In any case there is enough. Then you want men. Are there plenty here who are ready to take up arms?"

"They are ready to stand on their heads, cousin, if you bid them," said Elias.

"Good; now about the attempt to raise some of those guns," and she plunged into details of rafts and gear and divers and tackling, leaving, it is to be feared, both her listeners in a state of bewildered confidence in her powers to draw the moon to the earth if so she wished, but confused as to the methods she purposed to adopt.

In such ways the Capsina drew a curb on her impatience to be gone again, and derived a certain satisfaction in curtailing the hour of Mitsos's tobacco smoking. The six guns, after an infinity of trouble and the swamping of two rafts, were raised and towed to Galaxidi; the corn-mills were put to grind powder, a black flour of death; another shed was run up opposite the quay, and loads of earth and sand to be packed in corn sacks were stored as a protection for both forts. The quantity indicated, as Mitsos pointed out, an outrageously impossible harvest; but, as the Capsina retorted, Turkish ships coming to raid a town do not usually pause to consider whether the preceding summer has been weather suitable for the crops.

But the Capsina having put these preparations in train, intrusting their complete execution to Elias, stayed not an hour after the Sophia was again fit for sea, for every hour wasted meant an hour's risk to some perhaps defenseless village, and eight days after their arrival they put to sea again eastward, touring round the gulf, and leaving Galaxidi humming like a hive of bees.

For several days they made but little way, the winds being contrary or calm, and the hours were the first hours of the cruise lived over again. With the help of two crutches Christos was soon able to limp about the deck, and, as his boyish spirits reasserted themselves, became pre-eminently human, showing only a dog-like affection for Mitsos, who fussed over him insistently. The thing both pleased and enraged the Capsina; half the time she was jealous of the lad, but for the rest found it suitable enough that the little Mitsos should have rescued him, and that the rescued should agree with her in his lovableness. When the deck was wet and Christos's crutches showed a greater aptitude for slipping than supporting, Mitsos would take him and carry him across to some sheltered place, where the three would sit by the hour, talking and laughing together.

On one such evening, following a day of fretful and biting rain, the sky had cleared towards sunset, and they were tacking out to sea for a mile or two under a northeasterly wind, to anchor, as soon as the land-breeze dropped, at the end of the second tack, making, if possible, a dark wooded promontory which lay due east. The Capsina always kept as near as possible to the shore, so as not to run the least risk of missing the Turkish ships, which, as they knew, were going from village to village, and a watch was kept for the enemy's ships, the Capsina offering a prize to the sailor who first sighted them.

Mitsos had come slipping and sliding across the deck with Christos in his arms, and a sudden roll of the ship had come near upsetting them.

"So, hereafter," said Mitsos, "you shall shift for yourself, Christos, for you put on the weight of a sack of corn every day. You didn't hurt yourself, did you?"

"Not in any way."

"Are you sure?"

The Capsina burst out laughing.

"Oh, little Mitsos, that I should compare you to a hen. But a hen with one chicken, no other – you and Christos."

Mitsos sat down and filled his pipe and Christos's.

"Well, I know one who clucked considerably over a baby," he said. "And I like taking care of people. There's your pipe, lad. Open your mouth."

The Capsina laughed again.

"Chuck, chuck, chuck," said she.

"Well, let me have two chickens, then," cried Mitsos. "What can I do for you, Capsina?"

"You can be my very good comrade."

"Surely, I hope so. But let me fuss for you. Christos is getting well, and I must take care of somebody."

"Well, you can tell me if it is time to put about."

"Eh, but I didn't bargain that I should have to get up," said Mitsos, raising himself foot by foot, and looking out. "Well, yes, we shall make that promontory on the next tack, and then we can lie to. Nothing been seen of the devils, Dimitri?"

Dimitri shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, we'll put about. You'd best move, Christos. When we go on the other tack you'll get wet there."

"It is of no consequence whether I get wet," remarked Sophia.

"Well, come along, then," said Mitsos. "I'll carry you across first."

Sophia hesitated.

"Help me up, then," said she, and laughed.

Mitsos bent down, gathered her up, and staggered across the deck with her, half laughing, half puzzled.

"Eh, but God made you a big woman," he said. "Why, Christos is half your weight. Steady, now."

But the Capsina slipped from his arms.

"Oh, Christos; it is always Christos!" she cried. "There, go and fetch him, little Mitsos! He is trying to walk himself, and he will get a fall."

Mitsos stared a moment, but obeyed, and the Capsina finished the journey across the deck alone, and stood looking out over the sea for a moment with a flushed face and a hammer for a heart. A thrill of tremulous exultation shook her, and unreasonably sweet she found it. The thing had been nothing – he had taken her up as he would take a child up to help it over a brook, but for a moment she had lain in his arms, with his face bent laughing into hers, and the very fact that this had meant no more than the shadow of nothingness to him gave her a sense of secret pleasure to be enjoyed alone. She had felt the sinews of his arm harden and strain as he lifted her – her own arm she had cast, for greater security, round his neck. She had felt on her wrist the short hair above his collar, for since they had come to sea he had cut it close, saying that the salt and spray made it sticky. And at that physical contact the last shred of unwilling reserve went from her… She was his, wholly, abandonedly…

In a few moments Mitsos returned with Christos's long legs dangling from his arms, and for an hour more they sat together beneath the lee bulwarks, while the ship started on its last tack. The sun was already a crimson ball on the sea, and the mountains on the north of the gulf were obscured in a haze of luminous gold which seemed to penetrate them, making them glow from hither. A zigzag line of fire was scribbled across from the horizon to the ship, and from the sheets of spent foam which flung themselves over the weather-side as the brig shouldered its way along through the great humping seas, the spray turned for a moment to a rosy mist before it fell with a hiss white and broken on the weather-deck. With a crash and a poise the bows met the resounding waves, then plunged like a petrel down the sheer decline of the next water valley, and the black promontory which they were already opposite, with its fringe of foam, rose and fell like the opening and shutting of a window over the jamb of the bulwarks. The land-breeze was steady and not boisterous, and hummed like a great sleepy top in the rigging. Mitsos sat on the deck with his back to a coil of rope, facing the other two, his face turned rosy-brown by the sunset, and the Capsina, looking at him, knew the blissful uncontent of love. And the sunset and the sea died to a pearly gray; one by one the stars pierced the velvet softness of the sky, until the whole wheeling host had lit their watch-fires, and presently, after the brig passed the promontory, the white sails drooped and were furled, and the whole world waited, silent and asleep, for the things of the morrow.

They were now nearing the easternmost end of the gulf, and about twelve of the next day they could see dimly, and rising high in heaven, the upper ridges of Cithaeron – "a house of roe-deer," so said Christos. The sea-haze rose, concealing the lower slopes, but the top was domed and pinnacled in snow, clear, and curiously near. All the coast was well known to Christos, for his father had been a man of the sea, trading along the shore. Vilia, so he told them, was the chief village at the gulf's end; the immediate shore was without settlements, except for a few cottages which clustered round certain old ruins, walls, and high towers, so he said, big enough for a garrison of Mitsos's men; and thus his ears were pulled. Porto Germano was the name of the place, because a man of outlandish language, so it seemed, and of guttural voice, had made great maps of the place. "There are only walls and towers," said Christos; "yet he spent much time and labor over them, and gave money to those who held machines and tapes for him, writing many figures in a book, and talking to himself in his throat."

Mitsos and the lad were sitting aft as Christos delivered this information in a half-treble staccato voice, with an air of sceptical innocence, and shyly as to a demigod. The Capsina had left them and gone forward, but she returned soon to them with a quicker step and a heightened color.

"Mitsos," said she, "come forward. No, come you, Christos, for you are sharp-eyed, and you, little Mitsos, signal to Kanaris that he join us."

"Is there, is there – " began Mitsos.

"Oh, little Mitsos!" cried the girl. "But there will be blood in the sunset, if God is good. Go you and signal, lad; and come forward, Christos. It seems I have won my own prize."

They were some six miles off the eastern shore of the gulf, running before a favorable wind, and after Mitsos had signalled to the Sophia, which was between them and the north coast, on the port tack, and had seen her put about on the starboard tack in answer, he went forward to join the Capsina and Christos.

Right ahead and close in to land they could see the masts of three ships, but the hulls were down. The moment was critical, for the ships were evidently at anchor, as no sails were spread, and they were close in shore. Thus, every minute, perhaps, was murder and rapine to some Greek village. It was possible that they had only just come, and that the Capsina was in time to save a village. Again, it was possible that the infernal work was even now going on, even that it was over.

The Capsina stood in thought for a moment only.

"It is this," she said to Mitsos. "We are certain that Vilia is the village they are making for. Vilia is how far inland, Christos?"

"Two hours and a steep way through pine-woods."

"Thank God for the pine-woods. Look, Mitsos, they will have meant to leave the ships at anchor while they raided Vilia, but beyond any shadow of doubt they will have left some part of their crews on board, who will, of course, give the alarm if Greek ships are seen approaching. We have to get between their ships and the men they have sent up to Vilia. There is no village on the mountain-side except Vilia, Christos?"