The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence

"There, that is finished," he said, at last. "You won't go fishing to-night, will you? The wind is too strong."

"It may go down at sunset," said Mitsos; "but there are enough fish for to-night and to-morrow night, unless this hot weather turns them. But I put them in the cellar in water, and I expect they will keep."

They walked back together, but as soon as they got onto the road they saw that three mules were standing opposite the house. Constantine quickened his pace.

"Nicholas must have come," he said. "He was ever quicker than a man could expect. Come, Mitsos."

The veranda was full of boxes and rugs, and the two went through into the house. A man was sitting on a low chair by the window. As they came in he got up.

"Well, Constantine," he said, "how is all with you? I have just come. And Mitsos, little Mitsos is growing still. I will give you a hundred piastres when you are as tall as your father. It is the devil's own day, Constantine, and I am full inside and out of this gritty wind. Man is not a hen that he should sit all day in the dust. May I have a bath at once? Mitsos, we made a bath together. The mule men will help you to fill it."

He laid his hand on Mitsos' shoulder.

"You look fitter than a mountain hawk," he said. "Get me plenty of water, and give me ten minutes of scouring, and then we will talk together while I dress."

Mitsos left the room, and Constantine turned to his brother-in-law. "Well?" he asked.

"He is a fine boy," said Nicholas; "I must see if he can be trusted."

"A Turk would trust him," said his father, eagerly.

"Ha! we shall not require that. But in the face of fear?"

Constantine laughed.

"He does not know what fear is."

"Then he has that to learn," said Nicholas, "for the bravest men learn that best. No one can be brave until he has known the cold fear clutching at the stomach. However, we shall see."

Nicholas was dressed like Constantine, in Albanian costume, with a woollen cloak thrown over one shoulder, a red embroidered jacket, cut very low and open, showing the shirt, a long fustanella and white leggings, tied with tasselled ends. He was tall and spare, and his face seemed the face of a man of forty who had lived very hard, or of a man of fifty who had lived very carefully. In reality he was nearly sixty. He was clean shaven and very pale in complexion, as one who had never lived an out-door life; but you might have been led to reject such a conclusion, if you remarked the wonderful clearness and freshness of his skin. His eyes looked out from deep under a broad bar which crossed his forehead from temple to temple; they were large and dark gray in color, and gathered additional depth from his thick black eyebrows. His nose was finely chiselled, tending to aquiline, with thin, curved nostrils, which seemed never still, but expanded and contracted with the movement of the nostrils of some well-bred horse snuffing some disquieting thing. His mouth was ascetically thin-lipped, but firm and clean cut. His hair, still thick and growing low on his forehead and long behind, was barely touched with gray above the temples. His head was set very straight and upright on a rather long neck, supported on two well-drilled shoulders. In height he could not have been less than six feet three, and his slightness of make made him appear almost gigantic.

"I have travelled from Corinth to-day," he continued, "and there is much to tell you. At last the Club of Patriots have put the Morea entirely into my hands. I have leave to use the funds as I think fit, and it is I who shall say the word for the vintage of the Turks to begin. Are there men here whom you can trust, or are they all mule-folk and chatterers?"

"The main are mule-folk," said Constantine.

"The mule-folk can be useful," remarked Nicholas; "but the man who travels with a mule to show the way goes a short journey. They follow where they are led, but some one has to lead. But is there not a priest here – Father Andréa, I think – with a trumpet for a voice? I should like to see him. As far as I remember, he talked too much, yet you would not call him a chatterer."

"He curses the Turk in the name of God three times a day," said Constantine. "It is a vow."

"And little harm will the Turk suffer from that. Better that he should learn to bless them, or best to keep a still tongue. Well, little Mitsos, is the bath ready? You will excuse me, Constantine, but I am an uneasy man when I am dirty. Come to my room in ten minutes, Mitsos, and tell me of yourself."

"There is little to tell," said Mitsos.

"We will hope, then, that it is all good. By the way, Constantine, I have brought some wine with me. Mitsos will drop it into the fountain, for it must be tepid. Tepid wine saps a man's self-respect, and if a man, or a boy either, doesn't respect himself, Mitsos, nobody will ever respect him."

Mitsos followed him out of the room with his eyes, and then turned to his father.

"My hands are so dirty from that vine-digging," he whispered. "Do you think Uncle Nicholas saw?"

"He sees everything," said his father. "Wash, then, before you go up to his room."

Mitsos adored his uncle Nicholas with a unique devotion, for Nicholas was a finer make of man than any he had ever seen. He had been to foreign countries, a feat only attainable by sailing for weeks in big ships. He had been able to talk to some French sailors who had once been wrecked, within Mitsos' memory, on the coast near, and understand what they said, though no one in the place, not even the mayor, could do that; indeed the latter, before Nicholas had interpreted, roundly asserted that they spoke as sparrows speak. Then Uncle Nicholas was constantly going on mysterious journeys and turning up again when he was least expected, but always welcome; and he had a wonderfully low, soft voice, as unlike as possible to the discordant throats of the country folk; and he had long, muscular hands and pink nails. Also he could shoot wild pigeon when they were flying, whereas the utmost that the mayor's son, who was the acknowledged Nimrod of the neighborhood, could do, was to shoot them if they were walking about. Even then he could only hit them for certain if there were several of them together and he got very close. Also Uncle Nicholas was omniscient: he knew the names of all birds and plants; he could imitate a horse's neigh so well that a grazing beast would leave its fodder and come to his voice; and once when Mitsos was laid up with the fever he had picked some common-looking leaves from the hedge and boiled them in water, and given him the water to drink, the effect of which was that next morning he awoke quite well. Above all, Nicholas told the most enchanting stories about what he had seen at the ends of the earth.

So Mitsos washed his hands and went up to Nicholas's room, finding him already bathed and half dressed. His dusty clothes lay on the floor, and he pointed to them as Mitsos came in.

"I shall be here four days at the least," he said, "and I want these washed before I go away. The most important thing in the world is to be clean, Mitsos."

"Father Andréa says – " began the boy.

"Well, what does Father Andréa say?"

"He says that to love God and hate the devil – I think he means the Turk – is the most important thing."

"Well, Father Andréa is right. But you must remember that I am right too. Sit you in the window, Mitsos, and talk to me. What have you been doing since I was here?"

"Looking after the vines," said Mitsos, "since the reaping was over. And I go fishing very often, almost every night."

"Then to-morrow we will go together; to-night I have much to say to your father."

"Will you really come with me?" asked the boy. "And will you tell me some more stories?"

"Yes, I have a new set of stories, which you shall hear – I want to know what you will think of them. How old are you?"

"Eighteen, nineteen in November; and my mustache is coming."

Nicholas turned the boy's face round to the light.

"Yes, an owner's eye might detect something. Why do you want a mustache?"

"Because men have mustaches."

"And you want to be a man," said Nicholas; "but a man makes his mustache, not his mustache the man. But before we go down I have one thing to say to you, a thing you must never forget: if a Turk ever asks you if you know aught about me, where I am, or where I may be going, you must always say you know nothing. Say you have not set eyes on me for more than a year. Do you understand? That must be your answer and no other."

"I understand, just that I have not seen you for a year, and know nothing about you."

"Yes. Whatever happens, do you think you can always answer that and no more? I may as well tell you that if you answer more than that, if, when you are questioned – I do not say you will ever be questioned, but you may be – you tell them where I am, or whether I am expected here, or anything of the kind, you will perhaps be killing me as surely as if you shot me this moment with my own gun. Do you promise?"

"Of course, I promise," said Mitsos, with crisp, boyish petulance.

"And should they threaten to kill you if you do not tell them?"

"Why do you ask me?" he said. "I have made the promise."

Nicholas laid his hand on the boy's shoulder, and with a flashing eye – "And, by God, I believe you are one to keep it!" he said.

The sirocco blew itself out during the night, and a light north wind had taken its place when day dawned. A smell extraordinarily clean was in the air, and the whole sky was brisk with the sparkling air of the south. Northwards from Nauplia the sharp mountainous outlines of the Argive hills were cut out clear against the pale cobalt of the heavens, glowing pink in the sunrise, and all their glens and hollows were brimmed with bluest shadow. To the west, a furlong away, the waters of the bay gleamed with a transparent, aqueous tint; you would have said that two skies had been melted together to make the sea. Beyond, the hills over which the Turkish road to Tripoli wound like a climbing, yellow snake, lay still in darkness. The lower slopes were covered with pines; above, the bare, gray stone climbed up, shoulder by shoulder, to meet the sky. By degrees, as the sun rose higher, the light struck first the tops, and flowed caressingly down from peak to spur, and spur to slope, till it reached the lower rounded hills at the base, and then flashed across the bay and the plain of Argos. There it caught first the tawny fortress walls of the citadel which kept guard over the town, then the town itself which clustered round its base, until suddenly from Constantine's house the sun swung over the rim of the hills to the northeast, and the whole plain leaped from shadow into light.

There had been a heavy dew during the night, and the close-reaped cornfields were a loom of gossamer webs, hanging pearly and iridescent between the stubble-stalks, and in the vineyards the upper surface of the broad, strong leaves was wet and shining, as if with a fresh coat of indescribable green. In that first moment of light and heat all the odors of flowering plants, grafted on the wholesome smell of moist earth, which had been hanging as if asleep close to the ground all night, rose and dispersed themselves in the air. A breath of wind shook the web of sweet smell out of the mimosa trees that grew at the gate of Constantine's garden, and sent it spreading and shifting like the gossamers in the fields on to the veranda, and in at the open windows. The border of wild thyme by the porch trembled like a row of fine steel springs as the wind passed over it, and gave out its offering of incense to the morning. A sparrow lit on a spray of rose and flew off again, scattering dew-drops and petals. The world smiled, breathed deep, and awoke.

During the morning Mitsos was chiefly employed in making coffee, for many of the leading Greeks, to whom the secret of the imminent uprising was known, came from Nauplia to see Nicholas, and to each must be offered a cup of Turkish coffee. Nicholas sat in the veranda with his narghilé, which he smoked without intermission, and he appeared to be giving instructions to his visitors. Among the first to come was Father Andréa, whom he treated with great respect. When he rose to go, Nicholas accompanied him as far as the back gate, which led into a field path towards his house, and Mitsos, who was washing cups at the fountain screened behind bushes, heard them go by talking.

As they parted he heard Nicholas say, "Above all, be silent. We shall want you to talk later, and to talk then with the full voice. At present a word overheard might ruin everything, and the devil himself scarcely knows when he is being overheard. Even now Mitsos, whom you never noticed, but whom I noticed, knows all I say to you. Mitsos, come here."

Mitsos came, cup in hand, flushed and angry.

"You are not fair to me, Uncle Nicholas," he said. "I was not listening. I could not help hearing."

"No, little one, I am not blaming you," said Nicholas; "I only wanted Father Andréa to see. That is an instance to hand, father; please let there not be more. And here is my offering to the Christ and to my patron saint for having brought me here safely."

Nicholas was punctual to his promise to Mitsos, and soon after sunset they went off together to where the boat was lying. Mitsos carried a couple of big pewter ladles, a bag full of resin, a wicker creel for the fish, and two spears, while Nicholas walked on a little ahead with the net wound round his shoulders. They were to begin the evening's work with the spears, and later when the moon was up to sail across the far side of the bay, where they would use the sweep-net in the shallow water, where the bottom was sandy and shelving. But the nearer shore of the bay was rocky, descending rapidly into deep water, and was no place for netting. Nicholas, however, got into the boat in order to arrange the net and dispose the lead in what he considered a more satisfactory manner, leaving the boy to do the spearing alone.

Mitsos took off his linen trousers, fastening his shirt round his waist with a leather belt. He then slung the creel and the bag round his neck, and putting a half handful of resin into the ladle, set light to it, took the spear in his right hand, and rolling up his sleeves to the shoulder, stepped into the sea. He held the flare close to the surface, so that its light showed clearly on the bottom of the shallow water, a luminous lure for the fish. The spear he held ready to bring down if he saw anything.

It was a scene which Rembrandt would have painted with the hand of love. The moon was not yet risen, but in the clear starlight the edges of the serrated hills were sharply etched against the sky, and the water of the bay, just curdled by the wind, lay vast and sombre across to the farther shore. The light from the resin-flare vaguely showed the lines of the boat in which Nicholas was preparing the net, but all was dim except Mitsos' figure and a few feet of glittering, flame-scribbled water round him. The highest light was cast on his brown down-bent face and on his left arm bared to the shoulder, which stood out as clear-cut as a cameo against the darkness behind, and as he moved, the water, which lapped about his knees, was stirred into fire-crested ripples. The sea was slightly phosphorescent, and his trail was palely luminous like the Milky Way. Now and again, with a sudden splendid motion, down went the poised spear with a splashing cluck into the sea, and he would draw it up again, sometimes with a red mullet, sometimes with a thin brill flapping and struggling on the point. More rarely he missed his aim, and looked up at Nicholas smiling and showing his white teeth.

At the end of half an hour the latter had finished his fresh leading of the net, and as a stiffer breeze had awoke, ruffling the surface of the water and making it difficult to see the fish distinctly, they started to sail across the bay. Mitsos waded out to the boat, trousers and shoes in hand, set the big brown sail, and giving a vigorous shove or two with the oar sent the boat round so that it caught the wind. In a moment it heeled over without stirring, and then the whisper of its moving came sibilantly from the forefoot, and gathering speed it glided on across the dark water.

Nicholas had taken the rudder, and Mitsos sat down beside him.

"Eight mullet and a dozen other fish," he said. "That is no bad catch for half an hour. Put her head for under that point, Uncle Nicholas. Do you see it? There is a house with a light burning a little above it."

"I see. It will take nearly an hour with this wind. Well, what is it?"

"Will you tell me some of the new stories, Uncle Nicholas?"

"No, we will keep the stories for when we go home. It will take us twice as long to get back against this wind. They are long stories."

For nearly an hour they sailed on in comparative silence; the wind had freshened, and from over the hills towards Tripoli there came blinking flashes of summer lightning. The lamp in the house above the point to which they were steering had been put out, but in the half-darkness of the summer night the promontory itself was clearly visible. Towards the east the hills were blocked out with a strange intensity of blackness, for the moon was on the point of rising behind them, and the deep velvet blue of the zenith had turned to dove-color.

"Now for our fishing, Mitsos," said Nicholas, as they drew near to the shore. "Can we run the boat in behind the promontory?"

"Yes, there is four feet of water right up to the land. Just there the shore is steep. I will take in the sail."

"There is no need. As soon as we pass the corner it will be dead calm."

Nicholas put the helm hard to port as soon as they were opposite the little point; next moment the sail flapped like a wounded bird against the mast, and they ran up to the rocks. Mitsos jumped out and tied the boat up.

They lifted the net on shore, and made their way round the wooded headland to the little bays which they were to fish. Here the shore was sandy and shelving, and sprinkled with clumps of succulent seaweed which grew up from the rocks below, a favorite feeding ground, as Mitsos knew, for mullet and sole. Nicholas had put on Constantine's long fishing-boots, reaching up to his hips, before he left the boat, Mitsos, as before, merely taking off his shoes and trousers.

The net was some twenty-five yards long, and Mitsos, taking one end into his hand, stepped into the water at right angles to the shore. He waded out till the net was taut between them, and then Nicholas followed. As soon as the latter was some ten yards from land they both moved shorewards up the little bay, which lay in front of them, getting gradually nearer to each other as they approached the beach, till when they were within five or six yards of the land they were walking together, the net trailing in a great bagging oval behind them. The resistance of the water, the dragging of the lead along the bottom, and, it was to be hoped, the spoils enclosed made no small weight, and it was a quarter of an hour or so before they got it in. The moon had risen, and it was easy to see the silvery glitter of the fish as they lay fluttering in the dark meshes of the net. The flat, brown soles, however, required a more careful search, and the sound of their flapping, rather than the eye, led to their discovery.

They fished for an hour or two with only moderate success, until Mitsos proposed they should try a little farther down the coast, where shoals of a certain fish, as small as the whitebait, and as sweet, grazed the watery pastures. Here the depth was somewhat greater, and before going in Mitsos divested himself of his shirt, leaving it on the rocks, and went in completely naked. Nicholas, who had put himself entirely under his directions, waited in the shallower water near the shore till the boy had waded out to where the water covered him to the waist; then, as before, they moved in converging lines towards the shore.

They had approached to within about twenty yards of the beach, and within about five yards of each other, when Mitsos stopped and pointed back. The upper edge of the net, fitted at intervals with corks to keep it floating, was visible on the bright surface of the sea, trailing in an irregular oval. But inside this oval the moonlit water was strangely agitated and unquiet, quivering like a jarred metal-plate, and from moment to moment a little silvery speck would glitter on it.

"Look," he said to Nicholas, "the little fish are there. We must be as quick as we can. Sometimes if the shoal begins jumping they will all jump out."

And bending forward to get his whole weight into the work, he pushed forward towards the land.

The moonlight fell full on his body, dripping and glistening from the waist downwards with the salt water, and threw the straining muscles which line the spine, and those chords behind the shoulder-blade which painters love, into strong light and shadow, as he pulled against the weight of the dragging net. Already the water came only to his knees, and the catch was imminent, when suddenly from the net there came a rustle and a splash like myriad little pebbles being thrown into the sea, and he turned round just in time to see the whole shoal, which glistened like a silver sheet, rise and drop into the water outside.

"The little Turks," he said, angrily, "they are all gone."

"Better to pull the net in and look," said Nicholas; "a part only may have leaped."

Mitsos shook his head.

"When they go like that it is all of them," he said.

Mitsos was quite right. There was a stray fish or two still in the net, but so few that they were hardly worth picking out.

"That will do for to-night, won't it?" he said. "We have fished all the best places."

Nicholas assenting, he lay down and rolled over in the warm, dry sand once or twice, and then standing up brushed the wet stuff off his body. Then spreading the net out on the rocks higher up on the beach, Mitsos went off to fetch his shirt. Nicholas employed himself in picking up a few stray fish, and put them into the creel. Then rolling up the net they walked back to the boat.

CHAPTER III

THE STORY OF A BRIGAND

The wind, which had taken them straight across the bay, still blew freshening from the same quarter, and was dead against them. They would have to make two long tacks to get home – the first, right across to the island in the middle of the bay; the second, back again to the head of it; and as soon as they were well off on the outward tack, Mitsos went to the stern of the boat and sat down by Nicholas.

"It is time for the stories, is it not?" he said.

"Yes, we will have the stories now."

Nicholas paused a moment.

"Mitsos," he said, "I am going to tell you about a part of my life of which I have never spoken to you before, for, until now, I have only told you boys' stories to amuse a boy. But now I am going to tell you a story for a man. This all happened before you were born, twenty years ago, when I was a brigand."

Mitsos stared.

"A brigand, Uncle Nicholas? You?"

"Brigand, outlaw, klepht, whatever you like to call it. A man with a price set on his head – it is there now for you to take if you like – a man without any home but the mountains. Yet one may do worse than live in the mountains, Mitsos, and drink to the 'good bullet,' praying one might be killed rather than fall alive into the hands of the Turk. The first part of my story is like many other stories I have told you before; it is the second part, when I tell you why I was a brigand, that will be new to you – a story, as I have said, not for a boy, but for a man.

"I used to live then at Dimitzana, in Arcadia, and I became a brigand on the night that my wife died. Why and how that happened comes later. Well, there I was living in the mountains round Arcadia, sheltering and hiding for the most part of the day in the woods, but keeping near some mountain path, so that if a Turk or two or three came by I could – how shall I say it? – do business with them. For a month or two I was a-hunting alone, and then I was joined by other men from Dimitzana, who also had become outlaws. With them I went hunting on rather a larger scale – we used to take Turks and get ransoms for them. But never did we take or molest a Greek or lay hands on any woman, Greek or Turk. For the most part we were very fortunate, and all the time we lost but few men, and of those the heads of none fell into the hands of the Turks, for if one was wounded beyond healing we all went and kissed him and said good-bye; and then one cut his head off and buried it, so that the Turks should not dishonor him."