The Capsina. An Historical Novel

His proposal was as follows: A mine should be laid in this rock, with a long fuse. As soon as this was done they should all descend the hill with silence and despatch, keeping on the two ridges that bounded this ravine, and getting as close as possible to the Turkish lines, wait.

"Then," continued Kostas, with admirable simplicity, "will nature and gunpowder work; for the rock will blow up with the gunpowder, and nature will lead the large pieces very swiftly down the ravine. One pebble brought a man from his tent; how many will be left when a mountain falls? We shall be in safety, for stones do not climb steep sides; and when the stones have passed, we will pass also."

Kostas looked round, and knowing the Mainats better than did Mitsos, found encouragement in their grunts, and the grunts were followed by grins.

"There will be broken heads," said Yanni, sententiously, "yet no man will break them. What does the great Mitsos say?"

Mitsos reached out a large, throttling hand.

"There will be a broken head," he remarked, "and I will have broken it. It is borne upon me that Uncle Kostas is the great one. When shall we start?"

"Surely as soon as may be, since Mitsos, in his wisdom, threw the rest of the bread away. We have first to bore a big hole in that rock; five men can do that, while we collect all the powder there is left. We shall need none, because we bolt hare-fashion, and there will not be time for fighting. Also the portion of rock to fall must be very great."

"Then let five men go out very silently now," said Mitsos, "and begin. Let some one watch on the wall, and when we have finished open the gate and come out very gently. Then we will set the fuse and go. Anastasi, collect the powder from each man's horn, and bring it out when it is collected. I go for the boring. Who is with me?"

Mitsos got up and went off with four other volunteers to drill the rock. They chose a place behind it, and away from the ravine, so that the loosened pieces might not fall and perhaps lead to extra vigilance on the part of the Turks. The rock was soft and crumbly, and though the night was a swelter of heat, a hole was drilled without very much labor. By the time it was ready the powder had come, and was carefully rammed in. Mitsos laid a long train of damp powder in sacking, making a fuse of about ten minutes' law, and when all was ready he whistled gently to the watcher on the wall. A moment afterwards the gate was put softly ajar, and the men filed out. He waited till the last had emerged, and then set a light to the train.

The night was not very dark, for although the moon was not yet risen, the diffused light of the stars made a clear gray twilight. But the two ridges of the ravine down which they climbed were rough with upstanding bowlders, and by going very cautiously and quietly, it was easily possible to approach the lines without being seen. Indeed, the greater fear was from the hearing, for the dry stones clanged and rang metallically under their feet, and as they began to get nearer the men took off their mountain shoes, so that their tread might be the more noiseless. Already the foremost were as far as they thought it safe to go, and in silence the others closed up till the shadow of each bowlder was a nest of expectant eyes. The air was still and windless; each man heard only the coming and going of his breath; above them was not a sound except that from time to time a bird piped with a flute-like note among the rocks. The strain grew tenser and yet more tense; now and then a murmur would come drowsily up from the Turkish lines, and the bird piped on. Mitsos was only conscious of one perplexing doubt: would the bird be killed or not?

Suddenly, with a roar and crash and windy buffet, that which they were waiting for came. The crash grew into a roar, which gathered volume and intolerable sound every moment, and in a great storm of dust the shattered rocks passed down the ravine, the smaller pieces leaping like spray from a torrent up the sides, the larger coiling and twisting together like the ropes of water in a cataract. They passed with a rush and roar down on to the Turkish lines below, and as the tumult went on its way there mingled with it the noises of ripped canvas, broken poles, and human cries. Close on the heels of this avalanche came the Mainats; from the tents near men were fleeing in fear of another shower of stone coming; the path of the rocks themselves lay through the lines as if cut by some portentous knife. None thought of stopping them; the lanes through the camp passed like blurs of light, and keeping to the edge of the path cut by the rocks, they reached the plain without a shot being fired at them. But they did not halt nor abate the pace. Though they carried muskets they were without powder, and but for their knives defenceless, and, without even waiting to fall into any sort of formation, they struck out over the plain towards the lower hills at the base of which the camp at Lerna stood.

The vigilance of the Greeks was of another sort to that of the Turks, and knowing that they would run a most considerable risk, if they approached the camp without giving warning, of being shot, they halted some three hundred yards off, and Mitsos yelled aloud.

"From the citadel," he cried, "Greeks of Maina!"

A shout answered him; and now that they were beyond all reach of pursuit, they went the more quietly. The sentries at the first outpost had turned out in case of anything being wrong, but in a moment they were recognized and passed.

Petrobey met them.

"So Benjamin has come home," he said, kissing Yanni. "And oh, Mitsos, you have come to friends."

All that week the Turks in Argos and the Greeks at Lerna and on the mountains waited, the one for the Ottoman fleet to appear, the other for that which should certainly follow on its non-appearance. Already, so it was rumored, some of the Turkish cavalry horses had been killed to supply food for the men, and the Greeks heard it with a greedy quickening of the breath. One morning two ships appeared suddenly opposite Nauplia, and it was feared they were the first of the Turkish ships, but Mitsos announced they were the Revenge and the Sophia, though why they had come he knew not. The hills round were a line of Greek camps, waiting, like birds of prey, for the inevitable end. Down at Lerna the men were growling discontentedly at the waiting; the hot, foul air of the marshes smote them, but they swore they would smite in return. And thus in silent and hungry expectation the first week of August went by.

At length, on the morning of the 6th, the end came. When day broke it was to show the long bright lines of Albanian mercenaries who formed the advance-guard of Dramali's army, marching across the plain northward towards the guarded hills. From Lerna, lying low, they were only visible when they began to reach the foot-hills of the range towards Corinth, and by that time the cavalry had begun to leave the north gate of Argos. Instantly in the camp there was a sudden fierce outburst of joy and certain vengeance. The hills were guarded, the Turks in a trap; it only remained to go.

The hills between Argos and Corinth were rough and bowldersown. The main pass over them, called the Dervenaki, lay due north from Argos, and was that over which the Turks under Dramali had come. This, however, had now been occupied five days before by a large body of Greeks from the villages round – hardy men of the mountains, as leaderless as a pack of wolves, and fiercer. They had taken up a senseless position too near the plain and below the gorge through which the road passed, and which was narrow and easily held. The Albanians, therefore, the advance-guard of the force, seeing that the pass was occupied, turned westward towards the village of Nemea by another road, which joined the Dervenaki again, after a long détour, beyond the gorge. Kolocotrones with his son Panos and some eight thousand Greeks were in possession of Nemea, and news that the advance-guard, consisting of about a thousand Albanians, was approaching was brought him as he sat at breakfast in his brass helmet.

Now the Albanians were not Turks, but Greeks serving as mercenaries under the Sultan. Many of them had relations and friends among the Greeks, and a year ago, at the siege of Tripoli, a separate amnesty had been concluded with them, and they had not been prevented from going home. Moreover, they were excellent men of arms and poor. All these things Kolocotrones considered as he debated what to do. While he was still debating the first rank of them came in sight. He looked at them for a moment, and then turned to the scouts who had brought the news.

"May hell receive you!" he snarled. "They are Greeks."

They were Greeks; every one knew that. They were allowed to pass unmolested. They were also poor, and that Kolocotrones knew.

Besides the Dervenaki and the Nemean way to the west, two other possible roads led over the pass, both to the east. Of these one lay parallel with the Dervenaki, and only five or six hundred yards from it, till nearly the top of the pass. The roads then joined and, after running for some half-mile one on each side of a narrow, wedge-shaped hill, became one. Farther away, again to the east, lying in a long loop, was a third road. Both of these branched off from the Dervenaki before coming to the spot where the irregular Greeks on that pass were encamped. The road farthest away to the east was held by the English-speaking Niketas. He had with him two thousand men, including many Mainats.

The advance-guard of the Turks preceded the main army by some half-hour. Dramali rode with the second body of cavalry, and when he saw the Albanians take the western road, which he knew was held by Kolocotrones, he burst into a torrent of Mussulman abuse. He had been betrayed, sold, bartered; these Albanians were in league with the Greeks. So he ordered an advance up the shortest and most direct road – namely, the Dervenaki. His scouts soon returned saying it was held by the Greeks, and Dramali turned eastward into the parallel road, which appeared to be untenanted. A low ridge divided the two, and as he crossed it he was seen by Niketas's outposts. He, without a moment's hesitation, divided his band into two parts. With one he crossed the road Dramali was taking, and took up a position near the top of the pass on the steep, wedge-shaped hill that separated it from the Dervenaki, and on the road itself, blocking it. To the others he gave orders to hang on the right flank of the Turks as they advanced northward. Of the Turks, now that the Albanians were separated from them, the greater part of the cavalry came first as an advance-guard; the most of the infantry followed. Between them marched an army of luggage-mules, with tents and all the appurtenances of Turkish warfare, mules and camels carrying embroidered clothes, gold-chased arms, money, women, and behind, again, the lesser part of the cavalry and the remainder of the infantry.

Meantime the men in camp at Lerna, more than half Mainats, had seen the road the Turks had taken, and were in pursuit. Now that it was seen that the Turks were in retreat, and had no thought of attempting the relief of Nauplia, since the fleet had not arrived, there was nothing to be gained by continuing to hold the Larissa; it was better to concentrate all forces on the hills over which the Turks had to pass, if so be that they passed. The cavalry they had seen had gone first. It was no time to think of prudence and security, and they dashed through Argos and its empty and silent streets and out to the right at the tail of the Ottoman forces, risking an attack as they crossed the plain. But Dramali had no longer any thought of attacking. Those doomed lines with their trains of baggage-beasts moved but slowly, and Petrobey reached the outlying foot-hills before the rear of the Turks had left the plain.

The pass on each side of which Niketas's troops were posted narrowed gradually as it went, and near the top where they waited it was just a road, flanked on the left side by the steep promontory of hill, on the other by a stream riotous only in the melting of the snows, but now a mere starved trickle of water. Beyond that was a corresponding hill, covered sparsely with pines, which grew up big among big bowlders of white limestone, lying like some petrified flock of gigantic sheep. The day had broken with a pitiless and naked sky, and as the sun rose higher it seemed that the world was a furnace eaten up with its own heat. Niketas himself with some hundred men had already taken up his position on the left side of the pass through which the Turks would come on the steep turtle-backed ridge dividing it from the Dervenaki. Another contingent was on the road itself, employed in heaping up a rough wall of stones across it to shelter themselves and delay the advance of the cavalry vanguard. On the right of the road were the remainder of Niketas's troops, some five hundred in number, dispersed among the pines and bowlders of the hill-side, which rose so sheerly that each man could see the road, as it were a stage from the rising tiers of theatre-seats, and shoot down on to it. Petrobey sent Yanni forward to find Niketas and ask him where he would wish the fresh troops from Lerna to be posted, and the answer came back that they were most needed in the road to help the building of the barricade and stop the first cavalry charges. Those already there were under Hypsilantes and the priest Dikaios; would Petrobey take council with them? It was possible also that a reinforcement would be needed on the right of the road; if so, let the Mainats be divided. He himself had sufficient men to hold the hill on the left, and it was all "damn fine." Finally he wished Petrobey good appetite for the feast; Mainats he knew were always hungry.

The Turks were still half an hour away, and Petrobey led his troops down on to the road from off the uneven ground of the hill, so that they should make more speed, and in ten minutes they reached the place where the rest were building the barricade. Here all set themselves to the work: some rolled down stones from the slopes into the valley, others fetched them from the bed of the stream, while those on the road carried them to the site of the growing wall and piled them up. Now and then a warning shout would come from the hill-side, and a rock would leap down, gathering speed, and rush across the road, split sometimes into a hundred fragments and useless, but for the most part – for the limestone was hard – a valuable building stone. Eight or ten men, like busy-limbed ants at work, would seize it and roll it up to the rising barricade, piling it on top if not too heavy, or using it to form part of a buttress. But their time was short and the wall was but an uneven ridge across the road and stream, four feet high or so in places, elsewhere only a heap of stones, when it was shouted from the outposts that the cavalry was approaching, and the men ceased from their work and, gathering up their arms, retreated to behind the improvised barricade and waited.

To the left of the road, and below the barricade, rose the wedge of hill on which Niketas's contingent was stationed. They were drawn up in five ranks of about two hundred men each, in open order, with a space of some thirty paces between the last three ranks, so that, owing to the steepness of the ground, each man commanded a view of the road and each rank could fire over the heads of those in front. The ground, however, was of a more gradual slope as it approached the road, and the first rank lay, sheltering themselves as far as possible, among the bowlders not twenty paces from the road itself; the second rank, five paces behind it, knelt; and the third stood. On the right of the road the hill was too rugged and uneven, being strewn with bowlders and sown with shrubs and trees, to allow of any formation, and was in fact one great ambuscade, the men being hidden by the trees and stones. Here and there a gun-barrel glistened in the sun, but a casual passer-by might have gone his way and never suspected the presence of men. A bend in the road, some two hundred yards below, concealed the barricade and its defenders from the Turks.

The vanguard of the Turks halted a moment, seeing that the hill to the left of the road was occupied, and then set forward again at a brisk trot, meaning perhaps to go under fire along the road commanded by Niketas and then, wheeling at the top of the pass, attack him, and thus enable the rest of the troops to march through the ravine while they were engaging its defenders, and reach the open ground which lay beyond. Just before the first ranks reached the bend in the road Niketas opened fire on them, but they did not wait to return it, and putting their horses into a canter swept round the bend.

At that the hill-side on their right flank blazed and bristled, and every shrub and stone seemed to burst into a flame of fire. On each side the Greeks, at short range, poured a storm of bullets into them; at each step another and another fell. Suddenly from in front the Mainats from between their barricades opened fire; retreat was impossible, for the whole of the cavalry were now advancing from behind; to stop meant one congestion of death, and they spurred savagely on. In a moment they were at the wall. Some leaped the lower parts of it, alighting, it seemed, in a hell of flame; others were checked by the higher portion, and their horses reared and wheeled into their own ranks; others passed through the stream-bed, or putting their horses at the wall of defenders as at a fence, found themselves faced by the rear rank of Mainats, who were waiting patiently higher up the road till they should have penetrated into their range.

Meantime the check given to the first division of the cavalry at the barricade had resulted in a congestion all down the advancing lines. The second division had closed up with the first, the third with the second, and on the heels of the cavalry came the infantry. Dramali, who was stationed in the rear still, almost on the plain of Argos, had ordered them to advance, at all costs, till they gained the top of the pass, whence they could intrench themselves on the open ground, and every moment added a crust to the congealment of destruction. The masses of those moving on from behind pushed the first rank forward and forward, all squeezed together, and pressing against the wall of barricade, as a river in flood presses against the arches of a bridge. At two or three points it had been entirely broken down, and through these – now free for a moment, now choked again with the bodies of horses and their riders – a few escaped through the first ranks of Mainats and into the road beyond, raked indeed by the other ranks, who held the pass higher up, but no longer exposed to the full threefold short range fire from Niketas, the barrier, and those in ambush on the left. Already the wall of dead and dying was heaped higher than the barricade that the Mainats had raised, and the horses of the Turks who forced their way through trampled on the bodies of the fallen. But pass they must, for they were forced forward, as by some hideous, slow-moving glacier, by a stream of dead and living. Here and there a dead horse carrying a dead rider was borne on upright and unable to fall because of those who pressed so closely on each side, the rider bowed forward over the neck of his horse or sprawling sideways across the knee of his fellow, the horse's head supported on the quarters of the beast in front or wedged between it and the next. More terrible even was some other brute, wounded and screaming, but unable to move except as it was moved and carried along for some seconds perhaps, till two or three of those in front forced their way through the breaches in the barricade of horses and riders and gave it space, so that it fell and was mercifully trampled out of pain and life.

For five deadly minutes they pressed on hopelessly and gallantly, while the leaden hail hissed from either flank and from in front into the congested horsemen; but at the end the Turks broke and fled in all directions, some up the hill where Niketas's troops, still untouched and unattacked, were stationed, others up the hill-side opposite, which still spurted and blazed with muskets. There every bush was an armed man, every stone a red flower of flame. But the rush could not be stopped any more than a rush even of cattle or sheep can be withstood by armed men. The Turks fled, scattering in all directions, northward for the most part towards Corinth, where they would find safety, and the Greeks troubled not to pursue, but shot as a man shoots at driven deer. Almost simultaneously with the breaking of the troops, those of the cavalry who had passed the first ranks of the Mainats who guarded the wall, once of stones, but now a heap of men and horses, succeeded, in spite of the steady fire of the rear ranks and with the cool courage of desperation, in clearing some sort of passage round by the stream-bed, which was now fuller than it had been, but red and with a froth of blood, and through this some four hundred of the cavalry passed. They drove the Mainats from the barricade with much slaughter, forcing them up the two hill-sides which bounded the ravine, and charging forward passed the other ranks without sustaining heavy loss, and made their way into the open ground, reaching Corinth that night.

Dramali's cavalry had been divided into two parts, the larger of which formed the vanguard. Of these four hundred had passed through that valley of death, of the rest the red and fuller flowing stream gave account. Behind them had followed the first division of the infantry, some three thousand men, now scattered over the armed hillsides, and behind again the baggage mules and camels. Dramali himself rode with the second division of the cavalry, some three hundred yards behind, and the rear was brought up by the remainder of his foot-soldiers. He himself had been checked in the lower part of the pass by the congestion in front, and waited in vain to move again. Aides-de-camp were sent off to ascertain the cause of this contravention of his orders, but before any came back, the sight of the hill-sides, covered with flying men, brought him quicker and more eloquent message.

He paused a moment, then in nervous anger drove his spurs into his horse, and checked it again, biting the ends of his long mustache.

"Why do they not go forward?" he said. And again, "Why are they scattering?" Then, with a sudden spurt of anger, "Oh, the dogs!" he cried; "dogs, to be chased by dogs!" But the fire in his words was only ash.

He looked round on the calm, impassive faces of his staff, men for the most part without the bowels of either mercy or fear, who would meet death with as perfect an indifference as they would mete it out to others. The absolute nonchalance of their expression, their total disregard of what might happen to them, struck him into a childish kind of frenzy, for he was of different make.

"If we push on, we all die," he said, in a sort of squeal; "and if we turn back, what next?"

At that the officer near him turned his head aside, hiding a smile, but before Dramali had time to notice it a fresh movement of the Greeks from in front made up his mind for him. Those under Niketas, on the left of the pass, were seen pouring down off the hill on to the road, and almost before the Turks saw what was happening had cut his army in two, drawing themselves up just behind the baggage animals, hardly three hundred yards in front of the second division of the cavalry with whom Dramali rode. That was enough for the Serashier. Dearly as he loved his battery of silver saucepans, his embroidered armor, and all the appliances of a pasha, he loved one thing better, and that at least was left him; he was determined to save it as long as possible.

"Back to Argos!" he screamed. "Let the infantry open out; the cavalry will go first." And putting his spurs to his horse he fairly forced his way back, and not drawing bridle, rode through the scorched plains which he had passed that morning, and by twelve o'clock was back at Argos again.

On that afternoon and all the next day he remained there in a feverish stupor of inaction, crying aloud at one time that Allah was dead, and the world given over to the hands of the infidels, at another that the ships were already at Nauplia, and that he would march there. Then it would seem that the world only contained one thing of importance – and that a certain narghile of his with a stem studded with turquoise and moonstone – and that this had fallen into the hands of the Greeks. Let them send quickly and say that he would give an oke of gold for it, and two Greek slaves of his which had been taken at Kydonies: one was sixteen, and the other only fourteen; they were worth their weight in gold for their beauty only, and Constantine, the elder, made coffee as it could only be made in paradise. Let Constantine come at once and make him some coffee. Anyhow, Constantine and coffee were left him, and nothing else mattered.