In Greek Waters: A Story of the Grecian War of Independence

“There they go,” Martyn said, “steering straight in. One of them is making straight for the Capitan Pasha’s own ship. No doubt that is Kanaris himself. The other is making for that seventy-four that carries the flag of the Reala Bey. You can tell them by the variegated lamps along their yards. The Turks evidently have not caught sight of them yet or they would open fire. On such a dark night as this I don’t suppose they will make them out till they are close alongside.”

Kanaris, a man of the greatest calmness and courage, was himself at the helm of his craft. Running straight before the wind, he steered down upon the eighty-gun ship of the Capitan Pasha. Not until he was within a ship’s length was he observed, when a startled hail sounded from the deck of the Turkish ship. Steering straight on he ran his bowsprit through one of her port-holes. The sailors instantly threw some grapnels to retain her in her position, and then jumped into their boat lying alongside. As soon as they did so Kanaris fired his pistol into the train. The fire flashed along the deck, there were a series of sharp explosions, and then the flames ran aloft, the riggings and sails being soaked with turpentine; and Kanaris had scarcely stepped into his boat before the ship was in a mass of flames.

Lying to windward of the Turk the flames were blown on to her, and pouring in at the open port-holes at once set fire to a quantity of tents stowed on the lower deck, rushed up the hatches, and, mingling with the flames from the sails which had ignited the awning extending over the deck, ran up the rigging and spars of the man-of-war. The most terrible confusion instantly prevailed throughout the ship. The few boats alongside were sunk by the crowds who leapt into them. The crews of the ships lying round at once began to haul them farther away from the blazing vessel, and the boats that were lowered feared to approach it because of the falling spars and the flames that poured from the lower port-holes.

In addition to her crew, the soldiers on board, and the Pasha’s guests, were a great number of prisoners who had been brought off from the island to be taken to Constantinople, and the shrieks and cries as they were caught by the flames, or sprang overboard to evade them, were terrible. Kara Ali himself sprang from the ship into a boat that approached near enough for the purpose of saving him; but before it could put off a blazing spar fell on it, and the Capitan Pasha was so severely wounded that he died shortly after being carried on shore.

His loss was a severe one for the Turks, for he was their most skilful naval officer. A few of those who leapt overboard were picked up by boats, or swam to the other ships; but with these exceptions the whole of those on board the vessel perished. The other fire-ship had been less calmly and skilfully managed. In his haste and excitement the commander, after running her alongside the ship of the Reala Bey, fired the train and made off without attaching her to it, consequently the fire-ship drifted away without the flames communicating to the Turk, and burned out harmlessly.

As soon as it was seen that Kanaris had succeeded, a blue light was burned on board the schooner, and in twenty minutes the two boats rowed alongside. Not a shot had been fired at either, the Turks being too much occupied with the danger of fire to pay any attention to them. Kanaris was heartily congratulated on his success when he reached the schooner, which at once set sail and was back at Psara in the morning, where the news of the destruction of the Turkish man-of-war was received with the wildest enthusiasm.

The Turkish vessels, leaving a strong garrison on the island, sailed north a few days later. They were pursued by the Greek fleet, which, however, did not venture to interfere with them, although they stopped at two ports on the way, and finally anchored under the guns of the forts of the Dardanelles. The Misericordia took no part in harassing the Turkish fleet. Martyn had asked Mr. Beveridge’s opinion upon the subject, he himself being in favour of doing so.

“I think we could give the Greeks a lesson or two in this sort of thing, sir, and show them what can be done, even against a fleet, by a craft that means business.”

“I am sure you could do all that, Martyn, but I do not think we should be justified in running the slightest risk of loss of life among the men merely for that purpose. We could do no more than the Greeks do unless we were willing to expose ourselves more. You could not hope either to capture or sink one of the Turkish ships in the face of their whole fleet. I know you would give them a great deal of trouble, but more than that you could not do. When the Greeks show themselves willing to fight we will fight by their side, but not before.”

They were indeed glad that they so decided, for on the evening before the Greeks set sail a boat arrived at Psara with six fugitives from Chios. They reported that the destruction of the Capitan Pasha’s ship with all on board had brought fresh misfortunes upon the Christians, for that the Mussulmans, infuriated by the details of the disaster, had fallen upon the Christians all over the island, even in the villages where hitherto there had been no trouble.

The second massacre was indeed far more fatal than the first, the women and children being, as before, spared as slaves, many thousands being carried away. Small craft from Psara hovered round the island and succeeded in taking off numbers of fugitives, while the schooner returned to her cruising grounds between the island and the mainland, or up the Gulf of Smyrna, where she captured and burnt large numbers of small craft laden with slaves. They had to make four trips to the islands to clear her crowded decks of the hapless Chiots.

The news of the massacres of Chios, which, unlike those committed by themselves, the Greeks spread sedulously over Europe, excited deep and general horror and indignation. The numbers of those killed or sold into slavery were never known. The estimates varied considerably, some putting them down at twenty thousand while others maintained that those figures could be doubled without exaggeration. It is probable, however, that they really exceeded thirty thousand.

The details of the terrible massacres, which they learnt from the women they rescued, aroused among the officers and crew of the Misericordia a far deeper feeling of enthusiasm for the cause of Greece than they had hitherto felt. Since they came out their interest in the cause had been steadily waning. The tales of wholesale and brutal massacre, the constant violation of the terms of surrender, the cowardice of the Greeks in action and their eagerness for plunder, the incessant disputes between the various parties, and the absence of any general attempt to concert measures for defence, had completely damped their sympathy for them; but the sight of these hundreds of women and children widowed and orphaned, and torn away from their native land and sold into slavery, set their blood boiling with indignation. The two Greeks took care to translate the narratives of the weeping women to the sailors, and these excited among them a passionate desire to punish the authors of these outrages; and had any of the craft they overhauled made an active resistance little mercy would have been shown to the Turks. As it was they were bundled headlong into their boats with many a hearty kick and cuff from the sailors, and the destruction of their vessels was effected with the alacrity and satisfaction of men performing an act of righteous retribution.

“The poor creatures seemed terribly cast down,” Martyn said one day at dinner as they sailed with the last batch of Chiots for Corfu. They had transported the three previous cargoes to the Ionian Islands, as the former ones had been most unwillingly received in the Greek ports, the authorities saying that they had no means of affording subsistence to the fugitives who were daily arriving. In the Ionian Islands committees had been formed, and these distributed money sent out from England for their support, while rations were issued to them by the British authorities of the islands.

“One can’t wonder at that,” Miller said. “Still, I must say that the women even at first don’t seem as delighted as one would expect at getting out of the hands of the Turks.”

“I am not so very sure, Miller, that they are delighted at all,” Macfarlane said quietly. “You think you are doing them the greatest service possible, but in my opinion it is more than doubtful whether they see it in the same light.”

“What! not thankful at being rescued from being sold as slaves to the Turks?”

“That sounds very terrible, and no doubt it would not be a pleasant lot for you, seeing that they would set you to work, and your life would be worse than a dog’s. But you have got to put yourself in the position of these unfortunate women and girls, and then you would see that you might think differently about it. To begin with, till now there has been no animosity between them and the Turks. It is admitted that the Turks have been gentle masters to Chios, and the people have been happy, contented, and prosperous. Their misfortunes have been brought upon them, not by the Turks, but by the Greeks, who came to the island contrary to their entreaties, plundered and ill used them, and then left them to the vengeance of the Turks. So if they have any preference for either, it will certainly not be for the Greeks.

“As to their being sold as slaves, I do not suppose they view it at all in the same way we do. They are not going to be sold to work in the fields, or anything of that sort, and the Turks treat their domestic slaves kindly. To one of these Chiot girls there is nothing very terrible in being a slave in the household of a rich Turk. You know that the Georgian and Circassian girls look forward to being sold to the Turks. They know that the life at Constantinople is vastly easier and more luxurious than that at home. I do not say for a moment that these women would not prefer a life of ease among their own people and friends. But what is the life before them now? – to have to work for their own living in the fields, or to go as servants among Greek and Italian families. A dark and uncertain future. I tell you, man, we think we are doing them a mighty service, but I doubt whether there is one of them that thinks so. The Chiots are celebrated for their docility and intelligence, and these women and children would fetch high prices in the market, and be purchased by wealthy Turks, and their lot would be an enviable one in comparison to that which awaits most of them.

“The word slavery is hateful to us, but it is not so many years since we were sending people out in hundreds to work as slaves in the plantations of Virginia. The word slavery in the East has not the same terror as it has with us, and I doubt if the feelings of a Chiot peasant girl on her way to be sold are not a good deal like those of a girl who goes up from a Scotch or English village to Edinburgh or London, to go into service in a grand family. She thinks she is going to better herself, to have fine clothes, and to live among fine people; and, as it turns out, maybe she is better off than she was before, maybe she is worse.”

“You are a most disagreeable man, Macfarlane,” Martyn said after a pause. “Here have we been thinking that we have been doing a good action, and you put us altogether out of conceit with ourselves.”

“We have been doing a good action,” the doctor said. “We have been acting according to our lights. To us it is an abominable thing that a Greek woman or child should be sold as a slave to the heathen Turk. I am only pointing out to you that from their point of view there is nothing so terrible in their lot, and that we have no reason to expect any very lively gratitude from them; and that, looking at the matter only from a material point of view, they are not likely to be benefited by the change. I know that, if I were a Greek woman, I would rather be a slave in the family of a rich Turk than working as a drudge, say, in the family of a Maltese shopkeeper, though, if I were a Scotch girl, I should certainly choose the other way.”

They all sat silent for a minute or two. The idea was a wholly new one to them, and they could not deny that, according to the point of view of these Chiot captives, it was a reasonable one. Mr. Beveridge was the first to speak.

“What you say has certainly given me a shock, doctor, but I cannot deny that there is some truth in it. Still, you know there is something beyond mere material advantages.”

“I do not deny it, sir, and, as I say, we, as Britons and Christians, feel that we are doing a good work. Still, we can hardly be surprised that these Chiots naturally view it differently. Their Christianity is, like that of all Eastern Christians, of a very debased form; and living so long among the Turks, they have no very great horror of Mohammedanism. You know, on the mainland, tens of thousands of the Albanians have become Mohammedans. We think that we are justified in inflicting what one cannot but see is, from the material point of view, a distinct injury to these people, because, as Christians, we feel it is for their moral advantage; but then, that is just the same feeling that caused the Spaniards to exterminate the natives of the West Indian Islands who declined to become Christians.”

“Oh, I say, doctor, that is too strong altogether,” Miller exclaimed indignantly.

“Well, prove it by argument,” the doctor replied calmly. “I am not saying that from our point of view we are not more than justified. I am simply explaining why these Chiots do not feel any extraordinary gratitude to us. We are benefiting them, if they did but know it. We are saving them, body and soul; but that is not the light in which they see it.”

“You are right, doctor,” Mr. Beveridge said. “And now you put it before us, I am really not surprised that these poor creatures do not feel any very lively gratitude. They are fond of ease and comfort, and have been accustomed to it, and to them the utter uncertainty of their life among strangers is not unreasonably more terrible than the prospects of an easy life as a favoured slave in a Turkish household. It is sad that it should be so; but it is human nature. Still, the consideration must not weigh with us in carrying out what we know to be a good work. We have saved in all more than three thousand souls from Turkish slavery, and can only trust that in the long run most of them will recognize the inestimable service we have rendered them.”

CHAPTER XVII

RESCUING THE GARRISON OF ATHENS

“I TELL you what it is, Mr. Beveridge,” the governor said when the latter went up to call as usual upon his arrival at Corfu, “I quite begin to dread the appearance of that smart schooner of yours; during the last five weeks you have added a thousand mouths to my anxieties. What we are to do with all these poor creatures I have not the slightest idea. We can’t go on feeding them for ever; and what with the voluntary fugitives and those brought over to us, there are at present some forty or fifty thousand strangers in the islands, and of these something like half are absolutely dependent on us for the means of living.”

“It is a very difficult problem,” Mr. Beveridge said. “Of course, when the war is over the great proportion of them will return to their homes in Greece; but the fugitives from the Turkish islands and mainland are in a different position. Doubtless, when peace is made, there will be some arrangement by which those families which have men among them can also return to their homes without being molested; but those consisting only of women and children could not do so. Some of the women and girls can find employment in Greek families, and I suppose the rest will finally become absorbed as servants in the towns on the Adriatic.”

“I see nothing else for it, Mr. Beveridge; unless you choose to continue your good work, and transport them in batches across the Atlantic. I believe there is a great dearth of women in Canada and the United States.”

“You will have to set up schools and teach them English first, sir,” Mr. Beveridge laughed, “or they would not be welcomed there. When they can all speak our language I will think over your suggestion.”

“Do you think that Greece ever will be free, Mr. Beveridge?”

“I think so. Certainly I think so. These terrible massacres on both sides seem to render it absolutely impossible that they should return to their former relations. The Turks have not yet made their great effort, and I believe that when they do they will reconquer Greece. But I do not think they will hold it. The hatred between the races is now so bitter that they can never live together in peace; and I believe that the Greeks will continue their resistance so long that Europe at last will come to their assistance, and insist upon a frontier line being drawn. This terrible affair of Chios, dreadful as it is, will tend to that. The Christian feeling of Europe will become more and more excited until, if the governments hold back, the people will force them forward, and England and France at least will, if necessary, intervene by force. I believe that they would do so now were it not for jealousy of Russia. It is Russia who fomented this revolution for her own purposes, and it is solely the fear that she will reap the whole benefit of their action that causes England and France to look on this struggle with folded arms.”

“I fancy you are right, and that that will be the end of it,” the governor said. “I need not say how earnestly I wish the time would come. I can assure you I have a very anxious time of it. What with providing for all these people, what with preventing breaches of neutrality by the Greeks, and what with the calumnies and complaints that the Greeks scatter broadcast against us, I can assure you that my task is not an enviable one.”

“I can quite imagine that. The Greeks make it very hard for their well-wishers to assist them; indeed, if they were bent upon bringing obloquy upon their name they could hardly act otherwise than they are doing. The one man they have hitherto produced who goes his way regardless of intrigue and faction, fighting bravely for the country, is Constantine Kanaris, who has destroyed two Turkish ships with his own hand. A hundred of such men as he is, and Greece would have achieved her independence without foreign assistance; and yet, even in his own ship, he is unable to maintain even a shadow of what we should consider discipline. He himself acknowledged as much to me at Psara.”

“I hear you took him off after he had burned the Turkish war-vessel.”

“Yes; we were lying off the port and saw it. I am glad we were not nearer, for it was a terrible business. It is a barbarous war altogether.”

“Then why do you mix yourself up in it, Mr. Beveridge?”

“My mother was a Greek, and I have always lived in Greek thought rather than in English. I desire not only the independence but the regeneration of the Greeks. They have lost all the virtues of their ancestors save their intelligence; but once free they will, I hope and trust, recover their lost virtues and become, if not a great people – which they can hardly do, their numbers being comparatively so few – at least a worthy one.”

“I hope they may. They certainly have enthusiastic friends. Only a week or two since, a young fellow named Hastings, a lieutenant of our navy, came out. He has a fortune of some seven or eight thousand pounds, which he intends to devote to buying and fitting out a ship for their service. There are scores of English and French officers kicking their heels at Corinth, vainly asking for employment. And I hear they are organizing a corps, composed entirely of foreign officers, who will fight as private soldiers without pay, simply for the purpose of endeavouring to shame the Greeks into a feeling of patriotism.

“Where are you thinking of sailing now? If you have no fixed plans, I should advise you to go round to Athens. They say the Turkish garrison is at the last extremity. I have had a message from the consulate there, asking me to send a British ship of war round to insist upon the conditions of surrender being observed; but unfortunately the insane rage for retrenchment at home has so diminished the strength of our fleet that we haven’t a single ship in these waters at a time like this. I hear that the French consul has also sent urgently asking for ships of war. At any rate, your influence might do something.”

“I fear not,” Mr. Beveridge said gravely. “However, my men and guns might have some weight, and at any rate I will go round at once and do my best. If possible, I am even more anxious to save Turks from massacre by Greeks, than Greeks from massacre by Turks.”

“I can understand that,” the governor said cordially. “Well, I wish you every good fortune, Mr. Beveridge; but I say honestly that I do not wish to see your saucy schooner again unless she comes in with empty decks. Give them a turn at Malta next time, my dear sir, and I shall feel really grateful towards you.”

Four days after leaving Corfu the schooner dropped anchor in the port of Athens. Learning from the first boat that put off to them that the capitulation of the Turks was to be signed on the following morning, Mr. Beveridge determined to land at once, in order that he might see as many of the leading officials as possible, and urge upon them the necessity of preventing any repetition of the breaches of faith which had brought such disgrace to the Greek name.

“I shall take Zaimes with me,” he said to Martyn, “and should I see any signs of an intention upon the part of the populace to commence a massacre of the Turks I will send him off instantly. In that case, Captain Martyn, you will at once land the whole of the crew fully armed, with the exception, say, of five men, and march them to the British consulate in Athens. You know where it is. Take a Greek flag with you, for two reasons; in the first place, if you were to go without it the Greeks would spread the report that the crew of an English ship of war had landed; and in the second place, it may quieten and appease the mob if they see that we are in the service of Greece.”

“Very well, sir, I will carry out your instructions. I don’t think that rascally mob will venture to interfere with us.”

“I hope not, Martyn; but at any rate we must risk that. Any other message I may have to send off to you I shall send by an ordinary messenger; but if you are wanted, I shall trust no one but Zaimes.”

Late in the evening a Greek came off with a letter. All would, Mr. Beveridge hoped, be well. The Turks had agreed to surrender their arms, and the Greeks had bound themselves to convey them to Asia Minor in neutral ships. By the terms of capitulation the Turks were to be allowed to retain one-half of their money and jewels, and one-half of their movable property.

“I have every hope that the treaty will be respected,” Mr. Beveridge wrote. “I am happy to say that the Bishop of Athens, who is a man of high character, and President of the Areopagus, has insisted upon all the civil and military authorities taking a most solemn oath to observe strictly the terms of capitulation, and so far to redeem the good faith of the nation, which has been so deeply stained by the violation of so many previous treaties.”

The next morning the Mussulmans marched out from the Acropolis. Out of the 1150 remaining only 180 were men capable of bearing arms, so stoutly and obstinately had they defended the place, yielding only when the last drop of water in the cisterns was exhausted. They were housed in some extensive buildings in the town. Three days passed quietly. Two ephors, who had been ordered by the Greek government to hasten the embarkation of the Turks, took no steps whatever to do so. On the morning of the fourth day, Horace, who had been twice on shore to see his father, saw a boat rowing off to the ship. He turned a glass upon it and exclaimed:

“There is Zaimes on board that boat, Captain Martyn. I am sure my father would not send him on board unless there is trouble in the town.”

Martyn did not wait for the boat to arrive, but instantly mustered and armed the crew, and the boats were in the water by the time Zaimes arrived alongside. He handed a note to Martyn; it contained only the words:

“Land instantly, they are murdering the Turks.”

With a hearty execration upon the Greeks, Martyn ordered the men to take their places in the boats, and gave his final orders to Tarleton, who was to remain in charge.