The Capsina. An Historical Novel

Tenedos, comely in shape as a woman and tall, drew near, black against the sky on their port bow. On the starboard bow were the lights of the nearest Turkish ships, and, the wind still holding, they cast anchor under shadow of the land, some mile away from where the Turks were anchored. Like wolves they had followed the trail; here was the lair.

The night was very brisk and fresh, and the west wind sang through the cool air. Under shelter of the land the water was smooth, and in that mirror the stars shone and wheeled with scarcely less clearness than overhead. A planet, low in the east, had risen above the hills of the Troad, and traced across the water a silvery path, scarcely less luminous than a young moon. Soon after midnight Kanaris and Mitsos cast off in the one caique, the Psarians in the other, and, with the Capsina waving them farewell and good luck, rowed out of the sheltered bay till they should get the wind. But they had hardly gone a furlong from land when the wind dropped again, and they were left becalmed. The current of the backwater, however, drifted them gradually on, though diagonally to the proper path, yet diminishing the distance between them and the Turks. On the dropping of the wind a mist rose about mast high from the surface of the water, and the lights from the Turkish ships showed blurred and fogged. The ripples washed idly against the boat, rocking it gently to and fro, otherwise they were in a vast silence.

Kanaris frowned and frowned; the man was a frown.

"It is the devil's work, Mitsos," he said. "There is nothing to be done but to row in the darkness as near as we dare and wait for a wind. If there is none an hour before dawn, we shall simply row up to the nearest Turk and set light to the fire-ship. That will not please me."

"If there is no wind, where is the use?" asked Mitsos. "The flames will rise straight; they will toast their bread in our fire and then spit at it till it goes out."

"Also we cannot pick our vessel in the dark," said Kanaris. "Well, we must do the best. Come, lad, row."

They rowed on cautiously and silently till the blurred lights began to show clearer through the mist. The second caique was a little astern, and soon joined the other. Kanaris told them what to do, and giving Mitsos the first watch, he lay down, and sleep was on him as speedy and calm as if he was in his own house at home.

Mitsos sat with an oar in his hand, by which he kept the same position towards the light of the Turkish ships, whistled softly to himself, and kept an eye on the Greek sailors' "beacon star," the dipping of which was the signal for his waking Kanaris. Less phlegmatic than the other, his heart beat full and fast at the risk and adventure of the next day; he pictured to himself how they would run the ship in; he contrasted with a shudder the pleasing excitement of this adventure with the flaming horror of the other at Nauplia, and when the beacon dipped he awoke Kanaris. The latter, wide awake at once, took the oar from him and looked round.

"I dreamed there was a fine wind blowing," he said. "Good sleep to you, little Mitsos."

It was in the aqueous light of that dim hour before dawn when Kanaris awoke him. The air was tingling and cold, and the mist of the night was drifting eastward. Between them and Tenedos to the west, a mile away, the sea view was clear; in front a little mist still hung between them and the nearest Turk; a furlong off farther to the east it was still thick. Kanaris had a smile for him.

"Look," he said; "it is already clearing. Wet your finger, and you will feel it cold from the west. Oh, Mitsos, my dream is true: the wind will be here with the dawn. It and the dawn are waking together."

Mitsos sniffed with head thrown back.

"It is so," he said; "I smell it."

"There are two ships near us," said Kanaris, "both of the biggest kind. The farther one you and I take, the nearer the Psarians. Pray God, they are not utterly fools. With wind I would burn that ship with a tobacco-pipe."

Mitsos smiled sleepily but hugely.

"A fine big tobacco-pipe is this caique," he said. "Are the sails fastened?"

"I have done all while you slept," said Kanaris. "Look and see if it satisfies you. The turpentine only remains. There are the cans; we will do that now. After that no more tobacco."

"That is the drawback to fire-ships," said Mitsos.

Kanaris had nailed the sails to the mast so that they would stay there burning till all the canvas was consumed, and fastened the yards with chains so that they too would blaze until they were entirely burned, and not drop. The brushwood he had piled in the bow, half-mast high, and it only remained to pour the cans of turpentine over sails, deck, and fuel. Even as they were thus employed the stars paled, and were quenched, and with the first definite saffron light in the east a sudden shiver shook the sails, and the boat lifted and moved a little. After a moment another whisper came from the east; the sails flapped, and then began to draw. Kanaris and Mitsos went to the stern, and then Kanaris took the rudder, while Mitsos kindled an oil-lamp and soaked a little dry moss with turpentine, wherewith to fire the ship. A sudden rose flush leaped up to the zenith from the east; the boat rose to a new-born ripple and came down with a cluck into the trough of it; one star only, as if forgotten, hung unextinguished in the sky. The wind had yet scarcely reached the Turkish ships, and they still hung on their anchors, their stern swung round by the current, presenting a starboard broadside to the wind, which now blew shrill and steady, taking the caique along with hissing forefoot and strained canvas. Already Kanaris and Mitsos had passed under the bows of the first Turkish ship, and were not a hundred yards from the second when the Psarian sailors set light too soon to their fire-ship, and, jumping into the boat they towed behind, rowed away. Kanaris gave one grunt of dissatisfaction, for he saw that they had miscalculated their time, and that the fire-ship would only just catch in the bowsprit of the Turk, and also that they had fired it too soon, giving the alarm perhaps to the others. But the wind was brisk, and he had hardly turned his head again, when Mitsos said quietly, "It is time."

Kanaris nodded, put the helm hard aport, and jumped into the boat behind, as Mitsos thrust into the heap of brushwood at the bottom of the mast the pile of burning moss he had kindled at the lantern. He had calculated his distance to precision. The fire-ship struck as Mitsos jumped, staggering with the shock, into the smaller boat, just abaft the forechains, and was instantly glued to the side of the Turk by the force of the wind. In a moment a pillar of flame leaped from the deck to the top of her mast; an eddy of fire shot out like a sword-stroke across the deck of the Turk. Next moment the brushwood in their bows caught, and rose, a screaming curtain of fire, over the forepart of the other. Nor was the fire-ship of the Psarians without use to them. It had caught only in the bowsprit, and was even then drifting harmlessly away to leeward; but at least it burned bravely and poured out dense volumes of smoke, which, coming down the wind, hid them from their victim. And half blinded and choked with it, yet grateful, they took up their oars and rowed away south till they were a safe distance from the anchored ships.

They did not stop till they were some half-mile from them, and then, panting and exhausted, they paused and looked back. The flames were well hold of the ship, and as they mounted and triumphed, they roared with a great hollow uproar of bellowing.

Kanaris stroked his beard complacently.

"Will that be enough for them to toast their bread by, little Mitsos?" he said. "I am thinking they will be toasting their souls in hell. Satan will see to their fuel now, I am thinking."

But Mitsos, tender-hearted, felt a certain pity through his exultation.

"Poor devils!" he said.

And that was their requiem.

But the pity passed, and the exultation remained. The stories of Greek fugitives, the monstrous sights he had himself seen at Elatina on the roads, throughout the breadth and length of his land, had become part of the lad's nature. Lust, rapacity, murder, crimes unspeakable had here their answer in the swirling flame and stream of smoke which stained the pearly beauty of that autumn morning. The wind had died down again; for scarcely an hour, with divine fitness, had it blown, and it seemed as if God had sent it just and solely for their deed. And they watched their deed, a sign of fire. From other ships boats had put off to try to rescue the doomed crew, yet as often as they got near the fierce heat of the flames drove them back. A pillar of murky flames swathed the masts, and even as they watched, one, eaten through at its base by the fire, tottered and fell flickering overboard, carrying with it a length of the charred bulwarks. Many leaped overboard, some with their clothes on fire, but few reached the boats; planks started from the deck, the bowsprit fell hissing into the sea, and before long the boards opened great hissing cracks to the air. Then the destruction reached the waterline. With a shrieking fizz the sea poured in, and in smoke and steam, midway between fire and water, she began to sink, bows first. The deck-beams jumped upward like children's jack-toys as the compressed air forced them, guns broke loose and slid down the inclined boards into the sea, and with a rending and bubbling she disappeared. Kanaris watched in silence, with the air of an artist contemplating his finished picture, and once again he fell on enthusiasm, which was rare with him.

"Thus perish the enemies of Christ!" he cried. Then, half ashamed of himself at this unwonted exhibition of feeling, "You and I did that, little Mitsos," he said. "Shall we get back to the Capsina? For it is finished."

Mitsos had been watching also in silence, with the thought that they were of the race who had taken Suleima, had dishonored Nikola's wife, burning like the ship he watched in his head, and as he took the first stroke with his oar, "God give them their portion in hell!" he cried.

Kanaris laughed.

"Do not trouble yourself," he said; "it is certain."

By the time they were close in to the promontory behind which they had left the Capsina, the stain of smoke had rolled away eastward, and now hung over the Troad. The little breeze there was was from the west, but hardly perceptible, and even if there had been any thought of pursuit from the Turks, they could not have sailed after them. But they must have been seen from the nearest ship, and while they were still about a hundred yards from the promontory, a sudden spurt of fire appeared at a port-hole of the ship which the Psarians had tried to destroy, and before the report of the gun reached them, the shot, fired horizontally, splashed like a great fish only two hundred yards from them, and with a whistle and buffet of wind, ricochetted over their heads and on to shore.

At that Kanaris laughed aloud, and Mitsos, standing up in the boat, waved his cap with a cheer of derision. Then bending to their oars again, they were soon behind the promontory.

They were received with shouts of triumph by the Capsina and the crew, and the unsuccessful Psarians joined in their welcome to the full extent of their heart and voice. Envy was dumb. Once had Mitsos, once had Kanaris destroyed a man-of-war; now the two had destroyed another together; and by the hands of the two not less than twenty-five hundred Turks had perished. Kanaris came up on the deck first, and the Capsina rushed at him with open arms, and kissed him hard on both cheeks. A moment after Mitsos followed.

She ran to him, then stopped, and for a moment her eyes dropped.

She paused perceptibly; and he, flushed with triumph, joy and the music of their welcome dancing in his eyes, stopped too. The color had been struck suddenly from her face, and burned only in two bright spots on her cheeks. But before he had time to wonder she recovered herself.

"Welcome, thrice welcome, little Mitsos!" she cried; and throwing her arms round his neck, and drawing his head down, she kissed him as she had kissed Kanaris. Her eyes were close to his; his short, crisp mustache brushed the curve below her under-lip; his breath was warm on her. And what it cost her to do that, and how cheap she held the cost, God knows.

They waited behind cover of the land till dark drew on, and then, since they were land-bound, they manned the boats and warped the Revenge round the promontory. The Turkish ships, all but one which now lay black and fish-haunted in the ooze of the channel, had weighed anchor again, but were moving only very slowly northward. Once free of the southern cape of Tenedos, the Greeks found a breeze in the open, and making a southwesterly course, sailed quietly all night, and in the morning found the Sophia waiting for them. Here Kanaris and the two Psarians left the Revenge to join their own ship, and once more Mitsos and the Capsina were alone.

That day it seemed that the sun and the elements joined in their audacious success. Great white clouds, light and rainless, made a splendid procession on the blue overhead, and their shadows, purple in the sea, raced over the blue below. The Revenge danced gayly like a prancing horse, playing and coquetting with the waves, and they in turn threw wreaths of laughing spray at her, which she dashed aside. Under the light wind their full sails were easily carried, and once again an irresistible lightness of heart, bred of success, and health, and sea, as in the first days together, possessed the Capsina. That bad moment in the morning had passed; and, with a woman's variable mood, she fell into the other extreme. Nothing mattered; she loved Mitsos, and he did not love her; here was the case stated. In any case he liked her; he gave her shadow for substance; so she would play with the shadow as a child plays.

After their midday dinner they sat on deck, and Mitsos again told over the adventure of the day before.

"And it was odd," he said, "that when I saw the ship blazing, when, in fact, I saw that that was accomplished for which I had come, I was suddenly sorry. Now, Capsina, you are a woman, and understand things men do not. Why did I feel sorry?"

"Because you are a very queer kind of a lad."

Mitsos reflected.

"No, I don't think I am," he said; "indeed, it seems to me that I am just like others. As for Kanaris, he stroked his beard and said they had gone to hell."

"So they had."

Mitsos smiled, and looked at Michael, who had flopped himself down on deck, with his back to them.

"No doubt; but you are not telling me what I asked. Oh, great, wise Michael, come here. May I pull him by the tail, Capsina?"

"Certainly, and he may bite you."

"I think not. Oh, Michael, do not lick my face. You know Suleima washes my face sometimes, Capsina. That is only when she has cut my hair, and the little bits are everywhere, and the most part down my neck. But though it is kind of her, I had sooner go to the barber's for it. What can we do next when we get back to Nauplia?"

"You want another cruise?"

"Surely. Are there not more ships in the Gulf of Corinth? Indeed, I think those were of the best weeks in my life."

"That is not a bad idea, little Mitsos," she responded. "Whether there are Turkish ships in the gulf I do not know, but we might make ourselves very useful there. There is Galaxidi, for instance; we ought to have a naval station there."

"Galaxidi?" said Mitsos. "I know what is in your mind."

"What, then, is in my mind?"

"The baby Sophia you left there," said he. "Indeed, Capsina, you should have been a mother. For Suleima said you had a way with babies."

"I should have married Christos," she asked, "and been a fish-wife of Hydra? Indeed, little Mitsos, I knew not in how high esteem you held me."

And she got up from where she sat, and made him a great flouncing mock curtsey.

"Yet you are right," she continued, "I had the baby Sophia in my mind among many other things" – and she thought to herself how it was there she had learned of Suleima – "but for that reason I would not go. It is of the ship-station I am thinking. Once we have a station there, how foolish become the Turkish forts at Lepanto. Nor should it be long before we take Lepanto itself. Yet, oh, Mitsos, sometimes even in the heat and glory of it all, there is nothing I would love so well as to go quietly home and live in peace again, for of late I have had no peace; I have had no moments of my own."

"They could not be better spent," said Mitsos.

"If that is so, God will take account of them. But sometimes my heart is a child; it cries out for toys and playfellows and silly games of play, knowing that its house and its food are secure, or rather not needing to know it, and wanting only to be amused. But I doubt the toys are broken, and the playfellows are all grown up."

And she stopped abruptly.

"But that is not often," she continued after a moment. "There are other things, are there not? – and I am grown up, too – glory; red vengeance; the sharing in a great work. No, I would not sacrifice a minute of these for all the games of play. Also I think that I and the silliest boy in Greece played more in one week, that first week of our voyage, than is given to most. See, it is nearly sunset; what of the evening?"

Mitsos got up and went forward. The Sophia was bowling along a mile to port, running, like them, straight before the wind and keeping the pace. On the starboard bow Scyros had just risen low and dim above the sea, but the horizon was sailless. The sun was near setting; and a golden haze, curtain above curtain of thinnest gauze, stretched across the western heaven. The sea seemed molten with light. High overhead swung a slip of crescent moon, still ashy and colorless. Above the sun stretched a thin line of crimson-carded fleeces of cloud; the wind was soft and steady. He went back to the girl and sat down again.

"It will be very fair weather," he said, and she answered not, but through her head his voice went ringing on and on persistently, like an endless echo, saying the words again and again.

They stopped at Hydra a day, both to give the news and learn it. Nauplia was still blockaded; not a shot had been fired on either side. The Turkish garrison it was supposed were still not without hope that help would come; the Greeks, equally confident it would not, made no effort to storm the place, but waited till famine should do their work for them, and indeed the end could not be far off. Kolocotrones was not there; it was the earnest prayer of all the Greeks that he would be absent when the town fell, for otherwise it would be but little spoil that fell outside the brass helmet. And Christos Capsas, the once betrothed of the Capsina, who, with others like him, stopped at home at Hydra nominally to defend the place in case the Turks made a descent on it, spat on the ground.

"He is a dirty, greedy ruffian," he said.

He and his wife, slovenly and shrill-voiced, wearing the Capsina's wedding-gift, the heirloom girdle, and misbecoming it strangely, were dining with the girl on her ship, and she, looking across at Mitsos, saw his nose turned rather scornfully in the air.

"Yet he is a brave man, Christos," said she. "Do you not think so? He runs risk cheerfully, anyhow."

"For the sake of fatness and riches," grumbled Christos.

The Capsina, who loathed Kolocotrones, suddenly found herself taking his part when Christos called him to account. She laughed, not very kindly.

"Yet you are not thin, Christos," she said, "and they say you are getting rich. Ah, well, God makes some to stay at home, and others to go abroad, and thus to each is his work allotted. Now of the island what news?"

"The news of Father Nikola, Father no longer. You have heard?"

"No," said the Capsina. "He is like the lemon: the older and nearer to ripeness it gets, the sourer it grows. He must be nearly ripe in my poor thought."

"Well, then, he has become the orange," said Christos. "I love him not, yet he is sour no longer."

And he told the story of the return of his wife.

The Capsina listened in silence.

"An old man like that," she said, "and she, you say, also old. Will you love and be loved when you are gray-headed, Mitsos? And the two old folks have gone off on the brig together! How absurd it is, and how – how splendid!"

"They go hand-in-hand," said Christos, "and when the boys laugh, they laugh too."

"Nikola laughing!" said the Capsina. "I did not think he knew how."

"Yes, with the open mouth," said Christos.

The Capsina leaned forward across the table.

"He loves this old woman, you say, as others love?" she asked. "His eye glows for her? He is hot and cold?"

"That is what one does when one loves," put in the experienced Mitsos. "How did you know, Capsina?"

She laughed.

"Have I sailed with you for weeks, and not seen the thought of Suleima with you? May not I look at you now and then? And she loves him, gray-headed, sour old Nikola? That is hardly less strange."

She looked across at the fat, white face of Christos's wife, at her slovenly habit and uncleanly hands.

"Yet there are many strange things in the world," she said. "Make Michael his dinner, will you, little Mitsos?"

Christos's wife stared with interest as Mitsos put gravy, bones, bread, and, lastly, a piece of meat in Michael's wooden bowl.

"It is not right!" she cried, shrilly; "you must not feed a dog like a Christian."

"I honor his name, cousin," said the Capsina, laughing.

"His name! That is as unsuited to a dog as his food."

"Therefore I honor him," said the Capsina; and the wife, making nothing of this, thought it more prudent to be silent; and Christos, equally puzzled, hushed her.

"You do not understand," he said, which was true enough.

Next day they set sail again for Nauplia; the blockading fleet was stationed outside the harbor, and, having anchored, the Capsina, with Kanaris and Mitsos, went off to the admiral's ship to make report. As the news spread from crew to crew, the shouting rose and redoubled, and Suleima, who had come down with the littlest one, on the news of their arrival, to the quay, could scarce get at Mitsos for the press, and for the time the two had to be content with letting their eyes seek and find each other from afar, saying that it was well with them. But the Capsina had gone back to her ship, and was alone.

CHAPTER XVII

The last days of the beleaguered town had begun, and it was only from fear of treachery – not, alas! unwarranted – on the part of the Greeks that the besieged still held out. The scenes at the capitulation of Navarin, not eighteen months old, the repetition of them at Athens, scarcely six months ago, had not encouraged the Turks to hope for honorable dealings with their enemies, or rather with the half-brigand chiefs, such as Kolocotrones and Poniropoulos, who commanded the forces. Hypsilantes, they had learned from the previous negotiations which were concluded by him and taken out of his hand by Kolocotrones, was no more than a cipher put first among other figures, and while there was still the faintest hope, they had determined not to surrender.

Since the beginning of December the stress of famine had set in; already all the horses had been killed for food, their bones boiled to make a thin and acrid broth, and the man who caught a couple of rats was reckoned fortunate. Children, wasted to skeletons, with the hollow eyes of old men, were found dead in the street; their fathers thanked Allah that their suffering was over. A soldier one day fell from sheer exhaustion as he was mounting the steep steps of the fortress, the Palamede, cutting his hand badly, and a comrade, coming up a minute or two later, found him sitting down and greedily licking up the blood which dripped from the wound. At length it was impossible to hold the Palamede any longer; those who had to go down to the lower town to fetch the diminished rations were too weak to remount the long ascent, and on the 11th of December it was abandoned, the gate between it and the lower town was closed, and the whole garrison quartered in the latter.

From the ships Miaulis had seen the lines of soldiers filing out on the evening of the 11th, and gave notice of it to Poniropoulos. The latter, seeing that no treasure was possibly to be obtained from there, notified the abandonment of the fort to Hypsilantes, who with infinite difficulty was hauled up over the parapeted wall which defended the steps, and, with a voice tremulous, not with emotion, but breathlessness, took possession of it in the name of the supreme government of the Greek republic. There was still a good deal of powder in the magazines, and this somewhat barren triumph was announced to the rest of the army by volleys of artillery. The top of the fortress was quite enveloped in smoke, and the effect, if not the cause, was exceedingly magnificent.