CHAPTER VII
MITSOS DISARRANGES A HOUSE-ROOF
From Panitza to Gythium it was reckoned two days of twelve hours, or three of eight, but Mitsos, who set off about ten at night, got there within thirty hours of the time he started, thus arriving well before daybreak on the second morning; and at sundown that day, looking over the valley of Sparta from the hills leading up to the pass into the plain of Tripoli, he timed himself to be there two hours before sunrise, thus allowing plenty of time for Yanni and himself to get out of the town before the folk were awake. But for the present, as the moon was up, he pushed forward along the road, reserving his halt for the two dark hours after midnight. He had eaten but little that day, and his eyelids felt like the eyes of dolls, laden with weights that would drag them down; but knowing that if he slept he would gravely risk an over-sleeping, he paced up and down by the edge of the field where he had tethered Demetri's pony, eating a crust of bread, which he washed down with some rather sour wine he had got at Gythium. Now and then he would pause for a moment, but he felt physically incapable of keeping awake except by moving, and fearing to fall down and sleep if he stopped, he began tramping up and down without cessation. Luckily he had a pouch of tobacco and his pipe and tinder-box, and he smoked continuously.
But it was better to be moving than waiting, and when he judged that his pony—of which, like all wise men, he was more careful than of himself—had had sufficient rest, he set out again. He had wrapped his capote close round him, for the night was cold, and he was just beginning to feel that if he hoped to keep awake, he had better get down and trot by the pony's side, when the beast stumbled on a heap of stones, and in trying to recover itself stumbled again, and pitched forward right onto its knees, throwing Mitsos off.
Mitsos was unhurt and picked himself up quickly, but the poor brute was cut to the bone, and stood trembling with pain and terror as Mitsos examined it. For one moment the boy broke down.
"Oh, Holy Virgin!" he cried. "But what shall I do?" But the next moment he steadied himself, and paused to think. It was still four hours before daybreak, but by that time he and Yanni would have to be out of the town, and Tripoli was still a two-hours' ride distant. To get there in time with the pony was hopelessly out of the question, and to get there on his own legs seemed out of the question too, for he was as weary as a young man need ever hope to feel. But if there was a choice it lay there. Meanwhile, what to do with the beast? To leave it there, all cut, bleeding, and in pain, through the night, only to die on those bare hills, was a cruel thing, and Mitsos decided quickly. He led it very gently off the road among the trees, and with a strange feeling of tenderness, for that it had carried him gallantly, and done all it could do for him and Yanni, and had met death in the doing, kissed the white star on its down-dropped head. Then drawing his pistol, he put it to its ear, and, turning his eyes away, fired. The poor beast dropped like a log, and Mitsos, with a sob in his throat, looked not behind, but went back through the trees, and throwing away his coat, which only encumbered him, set his teeth and went jog-trotting to Tripoli.
How the next hours passed he scarcely knew. He felt so utterly tired and beaten that he was hardly conscious of himself, his very weariness probably dulled his powers of sensation, and all he knew was that as he pushed on with limbs dropping from fatigue, eyes aching for very weariness, and a hammering of the pulse in his temples, the trees by the road-side seemed to pass, of their own movement, by him like ghosts. Now and then he tripped over the uneven, stony road, and it scarce seemed worth while to make any effort to recover himself; and more than once he felt and knew, but only dimly, that his trousers were torn on the stones, and his knees were cut and bleeding. He thought of the pony which had fallen and cut itself, and felt vaguely envious of its fate.
Lower down the pass where the hills began to meld into the plain it grew warmer, and in a half dream of exhaustion for a moment he thought that a treeless hollow of the hills was the bay of Nauplia, lying cool and dark beneath the night. Nauplia, the bay, the white wall—it seemed that that time belonged to a boy called Mitsos, but not himself; a boy who had been happier than the kings of the earth, whereas he was a foot-sore, utterly beaten piece of consciousness, that would plod along the white ribbon of road forever.
Then suddenly as he thought the sky lightened and grew gray with dawn, and the next moment the day had broken with the swiftness of the South, and when the sun lifted itself above the hills to the east, it showed him Tripoli all shining in the dawn, still about a mile off.
Mitsos stopped dead. He was too late. During the day it would be impossible for him to get into the governor's house, and during the day, some time before the blessed night fell again, the soldiers from Panitza would be there; Petrobey would have escaped, trusting to his getting to Tripoli first; and Yanni would be.… Who was Yanni? Oh, a boy he had travelled with once; they had had a fine time, and he believed he had promised to come and get him out of Tripoli.…
Then suddenly with a sob he beat his hands together.
"Oh, Yanni, Yanni!" he cried; "little Yanni!"
There had been a white frost during the night, and the fields were all stiff and glistening. He had just enongh sense to strike off the road and lie down under the shade of a tree, sheltered from the sun and untouched by the frost, and there rolled over on his side, and next moment was sleeping deep and dreamlessly like a child tired with play. There he lay without moving, one arm shielding his face from the light, and when he woke it was past mid-day, the blessed gift of sleep had restored him body and mind, the trouble in his brain had run down like the tainted water of a spate, leaving it clear and lucent, and the strength had come back to his limbs.
He sat there some quarter of an hour longer, thinking intently. He had no self-reproach to interpose itself between him and his quest; the accident had been purely out of his own control, and he had done what would have seemed to himself impossible if he had not done it. Then he took stock of the position; and the position was that the soldiers might be expected at any time after four that afternoon; and as it would not be dark till six, there was nothing to do but go on to Tripoli and wait, watching the road from Sparta. If they came before dark he determined to make an attempt to get in, desperate though it might be, for when once they had given their report to Mehemet Salik, there would be no more Yanni.
So he went on and ate at a Greek khan within the town, and then strolled back to the square and examined the house again. Once the door opened, and he went quickly down a side street for fear the porter, who had seen him before, might recognize him; then he took another look at the wall by which he hoped to get access to the house. Under the influence of food and sleep the spirit of his courage had revived, and about two o'clock he went back again down the street leading into the Sparta read, and sitting down a little distance from it, kept his eyes fixed on the point where it vanished round the first hill-side. Three o'clock passed, four and five, and thin white clouds in the west began to be tinged with rose, and Mitsos' heart tapped quicker; in another hour it would be dark, and time for his attempt. He sat on there till nearly six, and the darkness began to fall in layers over the sky, and the colors to fade out of things; then giving one last look np the road, he turned and went into the town again.
When he arrived at the square the little oil-lamps at the corners were already lit, and the figures of men seemed like shadows. He turned down the street where the low wall stood, but found to his annoyance that only a few paces down was a café, which had been empty during the day, but was now beginning to fill with guests—for the most part Turkish soldiers; and he was obliged to wait. But these had apparently only come in for a glass of mastic before dinner, and in a quarter of an hour there were only left there the café-keeper, who seemed to be dozing over his glass, and an old Greek countryman in fustanella dress. Mitsos, who had stationed himself some hundred yards off, drew a deep breath, and stole noiselessly back in the shadow of the wall.
By standing on a heap of rubbish which lay there he could get his fingers on the top of the wall, and slipping off his shoes, so that his toes might more easily make use of the crevices between the stones, he worked himself slowly up, and in a moment was crouching on the top. Then came the easier but the more dangerous task, for as he crept along the roof of the house where Yanni was his figure would be silhouetted against the sky; but the roof was not more than four feet above the top of the lower garden wall, and bending over it he raised himself up and wriggled snake-wise along the edge. Yanni's room, in front of which stood the pillar by which he meant to climb down into the balcony, was the second room from the end, and, judging the distance as well as he could, he glided along for about nine feet, and then began to make his way slowly down the roof. He had calculated the distance well, and when he was about halfway down, the tiled roof, which was but lightly built over laths, and was not constructed to bear the weight of superincumbent giants, suddenly creaked beneath him, and next moment gave way, and with a crash fit to wake the dead he was precipitated with a shower of tiles right into Yanni's room, and within a few feet of where Yanni was sitting, with his arms tied behind him.
Mitsos did not think whether he was hurt or not, but picked himself up and showed himself to Yanni. Yanni gave one wild gasp of astonishment.
"Oh, dear Mitsos," he said, "you have not come too soon. Quick, cut this rope!"
He whipped out his knife, and had hardly cut the rope when they heard a key grate in the lock, and Mitsos, taking one step to behind the door, sprang out like a wildcat on Yanni's keeper—who lived next door, and had not unnaturally come in to see what had happened—and threw him to the ground, while Yanni without a second's hesitation bound a thick scarf round his mouth by way of a gag.
"Now the rope," said Mitsos, and they tied his arms to his sides and his legs together, and looked at each other a moment.
"There is the porter!" said Yanni; "he will be here. Shut the door, Mitsos, and lock it inside."
Next they moved the bedstead and all the furniture they could against the door, and barred the windows, and Yanni gave an additional twist to the scarf that bound the Turk's mouth.
"There is not much time," said Mitsos; and pulling the table out of the heap of furniture they had piled at the door, he climbed onto it, and with one vigorons effort brought down all the tiles which were lying loosely between the hole his entrance had made and the outside wall. From the table he could easily spring up onto the top of the wall, and lying along it reached down two great hands to Yanni. Yanni grasped them, and with much kicking and struggling, not having Mitsos' inches, he got himself on the top.
Mitsos turned to him with a suppressed bubble of laughter.
"Eh, Yanni," he whispered, "but it was truth you said when you told me you would grow very fat. Come quickly. Ah, but there's the porter at the door—one outside and one inside, and we two on the roof."
The descent was easily accomplished; by good luck the street was empty; and waiting a moment for Mitsos to pat on his shoes again, the two ran as hard as they could down it, away from the square, keeping in the shadow of the walls. From the end of it a cross street led out to the western gate of the town, and drawing near cautiously they saw it had been already shut, and a sentry was standing by it.
Once again Yanni's wit, wedded to Mitsos' strength, was to stand them in good stead.
"Mitsos," he whispered, "he will open the gate for you, for it has been market-day. Go, then, down the road, and I will follow in the shadow of the wall. Then, when he opens the gate to you, hold him very fast, and I will take the key from him and run through. And oh, cousin—but we must be quick."
Mitsos did not quite understand the object of taking the key, but, walking straight on, he asked to be let out.
"From the market?" asked the sentry.
"Surely, and going home to Thana," said Mitsos, naming a village near.
The man took out the key, unbarred and unbolted the door, and the moment the lock was turned Mitsos grasped him tightly round the arms from behind. The sentry was but a little man, and his struggles in Mitsos' grasp were of the faintest; and when Mitsos, with a brilliant smile, whispered, "You scream, I kill!" enforcing his fragmentary Turkish with a precautionary nudge of the elbow, he was as silent as the grave. In the mean time Yanni had passed them, and taking the key from the lock fitted it into the outside of the gate and said, hurriedly, to Mitsos:
"Quick, cousin! throw him away!"
Mitsos, still smiling kindly, lifted the Turk off his feet, and, with a mighty swing, threw him, as Yanni suggested, onto the road, where he fell, pitiably, in a heap, and, once free from Mitsos, called, in a lamentable voice, for Mohammed the Prophet. Next moment Yanni had shut the gate, locked it, and thrown the key away into the bushes that lined the road.
The two looked at each other for a moment, and then Mitsos broke into a roar of good, wholesome laughter, as unlike as possible to the exhibition to which he had treated Yanni after the affair of the powder-mill. Yanni joined in, and for a few seconds they stood there shaking and helpless. Mitsos recovered himself first.
"Oh, Yanni!" he cried, "but I could laugh till morning were there not other things to do! Come away; there will be no sleep for us this night. No, we keep to the road at present and go westward. Come, we will talk afterwards."
For two hours they jogged on as fast as Yanni could, for a month of living in the confinement of a house and garden "has made a hole," as he said, "in my bellows; and as for the fat of me, why, Mitsos, it's a thing of shame." But there was no wind in him for more than the running, and it was in silence they climbed the steep road into the mountains between Tripoli and the plain of Megalopolis. These were cut in half by a small valley lying between the two rows of hills, with a sharp descent into it from each side, going down into which Yanni recovered his wind a little. Ou the edgo of the yalley, as Mitsos knew, stood a small khan, the keeper of which was his father's friend, and as a light still shone in the window he and Yanni entered to rest awhile and get provisions for the morning. Anastasis was glad to see him, and asked him what he was doing there and at that time; and Mitsos, knowing his man, told him in a few words the story of the escape, and begged him, if there was pursuit from Tripoli, to say that they had just passed, going to Megalopolis. "For you see," put in Yanni, observing that their host's wits were not of the quickest, "we are not going to Megalopolis, and it will be a fine gain of time to us if they seek us there."
After an interval this appeared to Anastasis to be a most admirable joke, and for five minutes more, as he was cutting them bread and meat, he kept bursting out into a chuckle of delight, and turned to Mitsos, saying, "Then they'll find you not at Megalopolis. Eh, who would have thought it?"
But Mitsos hurried Yanni off again. They had not probably more than half an hour's start, "though it will take them not a little time to clear a way into your room," said Mitsos; and though, through the steepness of the ascent, a horse could go no quicker than a man, there was no time to waste, and they struck off the road a little southward, straight in the direction of Taygetus. All night they went, sometimes walking, but more often running, and when morning dawned they found themselves on the lower foot-hills of Taygetus, but still a day's journey from their rendezvous. But Yanni declared he could go no farther for the present. His eyes were full of sleep; his stomach was dust within him, and his legs were one ache. So Mitsos, after a five-minutes' climb to the top of a neighboring ridge, came back with the tidings that he could not discern man, beast, or village, and decreed that they should lie here all day and not start again till near sunset.
Then said Yanni: "It will be a long talk we shall have before sunset; but, Mitsos, if the day of judgment was breaking not one word could I say for myself till I have slept. Ah, but it is good to be with you again!"
And he turned over and was asleep at once,
Mitsos was not long in following his example, but he woke first, and, seeing by the sun that it was not much after mid-day, got up quietly, so as not to disturb Yanni, and went in search of water. This he found some quarter of a mile below and returned to Yanni, who had just awoke. They took their food down to the spring and ate there, and then, at Mitsos' suggestion, went back again to their first camping place, "for where there is a spring," he said, "there may be folk, and we want folk but little."
"And now," said Yanni, as they settled themselves again, "begin at the beginning, Mitsos, and tell me all."
"I went straight to Nauplia the first night," he said, "and arrived there very late—after midnight; then, next day, I went off."
"Next day?" asked Yanni. "Is that all you care about Suleima? Oh, tell me, how is Suleima?"
Mitsos frowned.
"Oh, never mind Suleima," he said. "She is my affair. Well, next day—"
But Yanni interrupted him.
"Did you not see Suleima?" he asked.
"No."
"Why did you not wait that night and see her?"
"Uncle Nicholas had other work for me to do."
Yanni looked at Mitsos a moment and then laid his hand on his shoulder.
"Mitsos, dear Mitsos!" he said. "Oh, I am so sorry! It was not that, you know, that made you go; it was the oath of the clan you swore to me. Mitsos, don't hate me for it. Surely there is no one like you."
Mitsos looked up, smiling.
"Nonsense, Yanni! Is a promise and an oath a thing to make and break? Besides, it seems to me it is pretty lucky I came when I did. What do you suppose I should be thinking now if I had got back to Panitza and found it was too late, for, in truth, I was not much too soon? _p279.jpg)
"'AH, BUT IT'S GOOD TO BE WITH YOU AGAIN!'"
What if I had come to Tripoli, as it were, to-night, instead of last night?"
"I will tell you afterwards what you would have found," said Yanni, suddenly looking angry. "Go on, little Mitsos."
Mitsos grinned.
"Little, who is little? I have a cousin smaller than I. Well, for my story."
And Mitsos told him of his journey, of his expedition to Patras and the monastery, and of the coming of the soldiers to Panitza.
"And for the rest," he concluded, "we shall have to ask Uncle Nicholas and your father. There are not many things in the world of which I am certain, Yanni, but one is that we shall find them safe and sound on Taygetus."
Yanni pulled up a handful of sweet-smelling thyme and buried his face in it for a moment.
"Ah, but it is good to be on the hills again, Mitsos," he said, "and to be with you. I shall not forget the Mother of God. My story is very short; I am glad it has not been longer."
"Tell me," said Mitsos,
"Well, for a week, or perhaps a fortnight, I ate and slept, and one day was like another. I saw Mehemet Salik not more than once or twice, and he used always to ask me if I was comfortable and had all that I wished for. It is true that I wished for the hills and for you, but they were things which he would not have given me, so I always said I wanted nothing. Then for another week or so he would come and see me oftener, and asked me abont my father and the clan, and whether Nicholas had been seen there again. And I, yon may be sure, always told him that the clan were good men and quiet livers, who worked hard in the fields, and thanked God every day that their masters, the Turks, were kind and just to them. That, it seems, was a mistake, for he smiled—these Turks know not how to laugh, Mitsos, not with an open mouth—and said it was very interesting to hear that from one of the clan themselves. And about Nicholas, I said I had seen him when I was little."
"You were never otherwise," remarked Mitsos.
"Oh, cousin," said Yanni, "but your mother bore a silly loon. Am I not to go on with my story, then?"
"Go on, big Yanni," said Mitsos.
"And so it went till but five or six days ago. And then on one morning," said Yanni, suddenly flushing with anger, "he came in looking white and cunning, with an evil face. The Turk who was my guardian followed him—he is a good man, Mitsos, save that he comes of the accursed race—and Mehemet said to me, 'So the clan are good men and quiet, and they thank their God that they have such kind masters, And you, Yanni, who are of the clan, you think they do wisely?'
"I don't think I answered him, for it seemed to me he wished for no answer. And at that his anger suddenly flared up, and he said, 'Answer me, you dog, or I will have your hide flayed off you.' And I noticed it as curious, Mitsos, that his face grew white as he got angry, whereas when a proper man is angry his face is as a sunset. But he did not give me time to answer, for he went on, 'You are dogs, though you are handsome dogs, you Greeks. But it is necessary to tie dogs up sometimes. Thank God you have such a kind master, Yanni, and let your hands be tied behind you quietly.'
"'Why should you do this?' I asked.
"'Be wise,' he said; 'I do not threaten twice.'
"So as there was none to help me, I let it be done."
Mitsos gave a great gulp.
"Oh, Yanni, by a cross-legged Turk!" he said.
"What was I to do? Would it have helped me to fight, and afterwards to be beaten? But Mehemet, I saw, was more at his ease when it was done, and drew his chair a little closer.
"'We shall soon teach you to be quiet and obedient like the rest of your clan,' he said. 'And now for what I came to say. You will soon see Nicholas again, for I have sent for him and for your father. If they come, well and good; I do not really care whether they come or not—for barking dogs hurt nobody. However, they have been barking too loud, And if they do not come, my little Yanni, we shall have to think what to do with you. I have not decided yet'—and the devil came closer fo me, Mitsos, and looked at me as a man looks at the fowls and sheep in the market. 'Perhaps there will be a rope for that big brown neck of yours; and yet I do not know, for you are a handsome boy, and I should like te see you about the house, perhaps to hand the rose-water after dinner. Let us see, we would dress you in a blue waistcoat with silver braid, and a red kaftan, I think, and red leggings, with yellow shoes; but I think we would give you no knife or pistol in your belt, for I fancy you have a temper of your own. It is a pity that a handsome boy like you should be so fierce. Perhaps we might even arrange that you were fitted to attend on the women-folk, In any case you will be mine—you will belong to your good, kind masters.'"
Yanni's voice had risen, and he spoke quickly, with a red-hot anger vibrating and growing.
"He said it to me!" he cried, rising to his feet. "To me—free-born of the clan, who have never had any dealings with the accursed race, except to spit at them as they went by! And I—I sat there and said nothing, but for this reason, Mitsos, that I remembered the oath of the clan you had sworn, and I believed, as I believe that the holy Mother of God hears me, that you would come, be it soon or late, and that he should eat his words with a sauce of death to them—the black curse of her who mocked at Christ upon him!"
"Steady, Yanni!" said Mitsos, locking up at his blazing eyes. "Sit down and tell the rest."
"What, Mitsos," cried Yanni, "are you a block of stone or a log, you who are of blood with us?"
"You know I am not. But Mehemet Salik is not on this hill-side. "Tell me the rest. If he was here he should never more return to the bestialities of his daily life."
Yanni sat down again.
"Even so. Then day after day he would come in all white and cursing as before, and say, 'The time is drawing near, my little Yanni, They will be here to-morrow or the next day,' as it might be. And yesterday morning he said, 'They will be here tonight.' And I—for I never doubted you, Mitsos—I thought to myself, 'Then I shall not be here to-night'; and as for them, I knew that they would never sit in the house of a Turk. And—and that is all, I think."
There was a short silence, and Yanni stretched out his hand to Mitsos:
"So to you, dearest of all," he said, "I owe my life—once at the mill, and now, once again, life and honor and freedom. Yet is the debt no burden to me, because I love you. But still I would it were the other way. I have no skill of speech, Mitsos, but I know certainly that gladly would I give my eye or my right hand for you, and this is no figure of talk only."
Mitsos took the hand held out to him and shut it between his, looking at Yanni with a serious mouth, but a smile in his dark eyes.
"God send me tears for water and salt for bread," he said, again quoting the oath of the clan, "if I fail you in your need, or love not those who love you and hate not those who hate you."
The sun was already declining to the western hills, and presently after they went down to the spring to eat and drink before they began the tramp through the night. Neither of them had been over this ground before, but it was likely that they would soon come into same path leading from the Arcadian plain to one or other of the villages near the Langarda pass; in any case, even though there were a night's plunging through the heather undergrowth before them, it could scarcely be more than a twelve-hours' journey. Thus, starting at six, they would be at the place by dawn; and, after stowing the remains of their provisions in their pockets, they began the ascent.
Upward they went out of the day into the sunset, and throngh the sunset into moonrise, and from moonrise into the declining of the moon. The air, warm below, soon grew colder, and their breath, as they walked, hung frostily in the still night. Now and then a whiff of some sweet-smelling shrub streamed across them, or again a roosting pigeon, with a bold noise of its uprising, started still sleepy from its perch in among the whispers of the fir, or a hawk, more cautious, slid into the air. To Yanni, born on the mountain and bred in the open, the spell of the sounds and scents that wander along the hill-side at night was unutterably sweet, and sweet the comradeship of the incomparable cousin. In Mitsos, too, the feeling towards the friend he had saved from death, and worse than death, was father to a very tender affection, for it was a gentle heart that beat so boldly at the hint of danger, and the sweetness of self-sacrifice made him most content. The child within him spoke to his spirit of Suleima, but the boy found his wants fulfilled in the comradeship of Yanni, and made answer with talk of brave adventures done in part and more to do.
Abont midnight they halted, and already they could see the heights no long distance above them, dappled with snow, and Mitsos, observing this, knew that they had come as high as they had need to go, for the beacon-ground, he remembered, was itself just below the line where the fresh snow lay. They had, an hour before, struck a sort of sheep-track which led in the right direction, but they found that here it went still upward, and leaving it to climb by itself, they struck off to the right, after eating the remains of their food, to follow the contour of the mountain through tracts of pines and open places, and across the scolding streams that rattled down from the snows above, and round deep-cut ravines that broadened ont into the larger valleys. By degrees the stars paled at the approach of day, and the dark velvet-blue of the Southern night brightened to dove-color; a few birds awoke in the bushes with sleepy, half-tuned twitterings, and then the sun, great and bold, looked up over the rim of the mountain.
"Look, it is day," said Yanni. "Are we nearly there?"
"Yes," said Mitsos, "there is the beacon-hill, And who is that?"
Swittly down the hill-side towards them came a great man, leaping and running like a boy.
"Oh, quick, down with you," satd Mitsos. "I think there is but one man who can go like that; but it is best. Ah, I thought so; show him we can run, too."
And in two minutes Nicholas, with a face as welcome as morning, was with them.