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

His hearers were highly tickled by this sentiment.

“When are they to be delivered up, Rhangos?”

“At mid-day to-morrow at Pales, the village halfway between the foot of the hills and the sea. Four men are to take them down to within a quarter of a mile of the village; then Demetri will go in and get the gold; then when he returns with it to the others the prisoners will be freed.”

“I should have thought the matter might have been arranged to-day,” one of the men said.

“So it might have been,” the klepht replied; “but I could not tell that. I thought that Demetri would not be able to go off to the ship this morning. He had six hours’ walking, and would not be there until two hours past midnight; then he would have to rest for an hour or two after he had seen them, and then six hours to walk back. It would have been too late to deliver them up before dark, and I should never think of sending them in the dark – their guards might fall into an ambush. As it was, Demetri found them in the village. They had not returned, as I thought they would do, on board their ship. He walked in, thinking the place was empty, when two of those sailors jumped out on him with cutlasses. Thinking that they were going to cut his throat he showed them the letter. They led him to the principal house in the village, and one went in while another held him fast outside. He heard a great talking and excitement in the house, and presently he was taken in. Then, as I told you, there was a great talk, and at last they agreed to pay the ransom. As soon as he got his answer he started on his way back, lay down for an hour or two in an empty cottage, and then came on here. We will stay where we are until to-morrow morning; then, Kornalis, you shall start with four men, and Demetri and the captives, and we will go on our way. We will deal another blow to Vriones, and then we will be off. We will fix on some place where you can join us after you have got the ransom.”

“It could not have happened better for us,” Horace said to his companion after he had translated the klepht’s story. “As it turned out, you see, my father got the note before he could say a word to the messenger. That was a capital move their pretending to hesitate about paying the ransom. If they had jumped at it this scoundrel is perfectly capable of raising his terms. As it is, he thinks he was clever enough to hit upon just the maximum sum that could be got for us. Well, it is all right now.”

“It will be all right when we are among the others, Horace; there is never any saying what may happen in this country. Some of the peasants these fellows have been robbing may fall on us, seeing we are but a small party. This Vriones with his bandits, who I daresay are just as bad as these fellows, may happen to meet us. No, we won’t calculate too confidently. Things have gone on very well so far. We will just hope they will go on to the end.”

Now that the affair was considered to be settled, but little attention was paid to the prisoners. Their cords were taken off, and they were permitted to move about, two men keeping an eye upon them, but not following them closely. They congratulated themselves that the sailors had withheld their fire, for undoubtedly their position would have been very different had some of the brigands been killed. So far from bearing any animosity now, the men chatted with them in a friendly manner, asked questions about their ship, and their encounters with the Turks.

“We would rather fight for the Greeks than the Turks,” one said: “but we follow our captains. There is neither pay nor plunder to be obtained with the Greeks; and as Odysseus and all the other chiefs play their own game, and think only of making money, why should poor devils like us be particular? All Albanian tribes have had their wars against each other as long as we or our fathers can remember. We know nothing about the Greece that they talk so much of now. There were the Morea and other provinces, and so there have always been so far as we know, and it is nothing to us whether they are ruled by Turks or by their own captains. As to religion, many of our tribes are Mussulmans, many are Christians. We do not see that it makes any difference.

“Everyone plunders when he gets a chance. Why should I want to cut a man’s throat because he is a Mussulman? His father was a Christian before him; my son may be a Mussulman after me. What does it matter? Since the fight at Petta many chiefs have gone over to the Turks, and if the Greeks win a battle most of them will go back again. The affair is nothing to us. On the mountains we hunt where we are most likely to get game. You like to hunt for amusement, and so you have come out here on a matter which does not at all concern you. We hunt to live, and don’t much care whether we take a sheep out of one flock or another.”

Horace smiled at the man’s avowal of the want of any principle whatever.

“I was a schoolmaster,” one of the lieutenants of the band, who was stretched at full length smoking and listening to the conversation, remarked. “I know about the old time, but I don’t know anything of this Greece you speak of. Where was it? What did it do? It was just then as it is now. There were a number of little tribes under their own captains. Athens, and Corinth, and Sparta, and Argos, and Thebes, and the rest of them always fighting against each other just as our Albanian clans do; not even ready to put aside their own quarrels to fight against an invader. Pooh! There never was a Greece, and I neither know nor care whether there ever will be. Why should we throw away our lives for a dream?”

“Yes; but at any rate the Greeks have a common language, which shows they are one people.”

“Families fall out more than strangers,” the man replied with a laugh. “You English and the Americans have a common language, and yet you have been fighting against each other, and they refuse to remain one nation with you. These things signify no more than the smoke of my pipe. A Christian’s money, and a Christian’s goods and cattle, are worth just as much to me as a Turk’s; and my captain, who pays me, is more to me than either Mavrocordatos or the Sultan. I daresay that English milord is a worthy man, though he must be a fool, and yet the wine I shall buy out of my share of his money will be just as good as if it had grown in my father’s vineyard.”

Horace laughed. He was not skilled in argument, even had he any inclination to indulge in it at the present time; and he sauntered off and sat down by the doctor, who, not being able to talk with the Greeks, found the time hang heavy on hand. Horace repeated to him his conversation with the two brigands.

“I own I did not know how to answer the last fellow, doctor.”

“There is no answer to be made, Horace. To argue, men must have a common ground to start from. There is no common ground between you and him. His argument is the argument of the materialist everywhere, whether he is Briton, Frenchman, or Greek. To a man who has neither religion nor principles there remains only self-interest, and from that point of view there is no gainsaying the arguments of that Albanian scamp any more than it would have been of use for a lowland merchant carried off by Highland caterans to urge upon them that their conduct was contrary to the laws both of morality and political economy. They would have said that they knew nothing about either, and cared less, and that unless his goodwife or fellow citizens put their hands in their pockets and sent the ransom they demanded, his head would be despatched to them in a hamper with small delay. He certainly had you on the hip with what he said about ancient Greece, for a more quarrelsome, cantankerous, waspish set of little communities the world never saw, unless it were the cities of Italy in the middle ages, which at any rate were of a respectable size, which was, by the way, the only respectable thing about them. Religion and principle and patriotism are the three things that keep men and nations straight, and neither the Greek nor Italian communities had the least glimmering of an idea of either of them, except a love for their own petty states may be called patriotism.”

“A good deal like your Highland clansmen, I should say, doctor,” Horace laughed. “The head of the clan was a much greater man in the eyes of his followers than the King of Scotland.”

“That is so, Horace; and the consequence was, that while there was peace and order and prosperity in the lowlands, the Highlands scarcely made a step forward until the clans were pretty well broken up after Culloden. It was a sore business at the time, but no one can doubt that it did good in the long run. And now, lad, I think that I will just take a sleep. It was not many hours we got of it last night, and you see most of these fellows have set us an example.”

The next morning they started at daybreak. The main body of the band had moved off hours before, leaving the Lieutenant Kornalis, Demetri, and four of the men. Three hours’ walking took them out of the mountains. There was little talking. The Greeks would have preferred going with their leader to plunder another village, for although the booty taken was supposed to be all handed over to the chief for fair distribution, there were few who did not conceal some trinket or money as their own special share of the plunder. They were but a mile or two beyond the hills, when, from a wood skirting the road, four or five shots rang out.

Two of the Greeks fell; the rest, throwing away their guns, fled at the top of their speed. Before the prisoners had time to recover from their surprise a number of men rushed out, and with the butts of their muskets and pistols struck them to the ground. When they recovered their senses a group of men were standing round them, while at some little distance they could hear the sound of firing, showing that the pursuit of their late captors was being closely maintained. By this time they had become sufficiently accustomed to the various costumes to know that they had now fallen into the hands of men of one of the Albanian tribes, probably Mussulmans acting as irregulars with the Turkish army, engaged upon a raiding expedition. One of them asked Horace a question, but the dialect was so different to that of the Greeks of Athens and the Morea that he was unable to understand it. Presently the men who had gone in pursuit returned, and the whole party set off to the north, placing their prisoners in their midst, and warning them by pointing significantly to their knives and pistols that they had better keep up with them.

“Eh! man,” the doctor said; “but it is dreadful. Just as we thought that everything was settled, and that in another couple of hours we should be with our own people, here we are in the hands of a pack of villains even worse than the others.”

“You said that we should not shout until we were out of the wood, doctor, and you have turned out a true prophet; but at present I am thinking more of my head than of anything else, I am sure I have got a couple of lumps on it as big as eggs.”

“It shows the folly of man,” the doctor said philosophically. “What good could they expect to get from knocking us down? We were neither fighting nor running away. We had not our wits about us, lad, or we should have just taken to our heels.”

“I expect they would have caught us if we had. We have neither of us had much walking lately, and those fellows are always climbing among their mountains. Do you think it is of any use trying to make them understand that if they will take us a few miles farther they will find three hundred pounds waiting for them?”

“You might try, Horace; but I don’t think that it will be of any use. I expect they are just skirting along at the foot of the hills to see what they can pick up. There are not above thirty of them, and they would not like to go far out upon the plains; besides, I don’t know that it would turn out well. If they were to go on in a body, Martyn would as likely as not fire at them, and then they would think that we had led them into an ambush, and shoot us without waiting to ask any question. Still, you can try if you like; we might be sorry afterwards if we didn’t.”

But when Horace tried to speak to the men he was threatened roughly, and he lapsed into silence. For three hours they ascended a great range of hills running east and west. When they gained the crest they could see stretched away far in front of them a flat and fertile country.

“The plains of Thessaly,” the doctor said; “the fairest and richest portion of the Greece of old. There is little chance of its forming part of the Greece of the future, at least not until a complete overthrow of the Turkish Empire. If Greece attains her independence the frontier line will be somewhere along the crest of these hills, for Thessaly, although there was some slight trouble there at first, has not joined the movement. There are no mountains and fortresses where they can take refuge, and a troop of Turkish cavalry could scour the whole country. There is where we are bound for, I expect;” and he pointed to a large clump of white tents far out on the plain. “I expect that is the camp of the Pasha of the province. I suppose he is going to operate on this side when the main force advances to the west.”

It took them another four hours’ walking before they approached the camp. When within a short distance of it their captors turned off and entered a village where numbers of their countrymen were sitting in the shade smoking or dozing. The band went on until they reached the principal house in the village, and four of them entering took their prisoners into a room where a tall old chief was sitting on a divan. They talked for some minutes, evidently explaining the circumstances of their capture. When they had done, the chief asked the prisoners in Greek who they were.

“We are Englishmen,” Horace replied; “we belong to a ship lying off a village whose name I don’t know. We had landed to buy fruit and vegetables, and then we were suddenly seized and carried away to the mountains by some Greek brigands led by a fellow named Rhangos. We had arranged for a ransom and were on our way under a guard to the village where the money was to be paid when your band put the Greeks to flight and made us prisoners.”

“How much ransom was to be paid?” the Albanian asked.

“Three hundred pounds, and if you will send us there now our friends will be glad to pay it to your people. I tried to explain that to them on the way, but they would not listen to me.”

“They are fools,” the chief said decidedly; “and besides, they don’t speak Greek. It is too late now. I must take you to the Pasha, who will deal with you as he chooses.” Then rising, and followed by a group of his officers and the prisoners in charge of four men, he walked across to the Turkish camp.

“They are a picturesque-looking set of cut-throats,” Macfarlane said.

“That they are. People at home would stare to see them with their white kilted petticoats and gaudy sashes, with their pistols inlaid with silver, and their embroidered jackets and white shirt sleeves. Well, what are we to say if we are asked about the ship?”

“We must tell the truth, lad; I doubt not they have had news before now that the schooner is cruising about on the coast; and even if we were disposed to tell a lie, which we are not, they would guess where we had come from. No English merchantman would be likely to be anchored off the coast here to buy vegetables; and, indeed, there are very few British vessels of any sort in these waters now. You need not just tell them that the schooner is the craft that has been playing the mischief over on the other coast and robbed them of their Chiot slaves; nor is it precisely necessary to enter into that affair near Cyprus. We need simply say, if we are asked, that we are Englishmen in the naval service of Greece; I don’t expect they will ask many questions after that, or that we shall have any occasion to do much more talking.”

“You think they will hang us, doctor.”

“It may be hanging, Horace, or it may be shooting, and for my part I am not very particular which it is. Shooting is the quickest, but then hanging is more what I may call my family way of dying. I should say that as many as a score of my ancestors were one way or another strung up by the Stuarts on one miserable pretence or other, such as cattle-lifting, settling a grudge without bothering the law-courts, and trifles of that sort.”

Horace burst into a fit of laughter, which caused the Albanian chief to look round sharply and inquiringly.

“It is all right, old chap,” Macfarlane muttered in English; “we are just laughing while we can, and there is no contempt of court intended.”

The Pasha was in a tent considerably larger than those that surrounded it. The Albanian went in, leaving the prisoners in charge of their guard. In five minutes he came out and signed to them to follow him in. The Pasha was an elderly man with a snow-white beard. He looked at the prisoners with some interest.

“I hear that you are Englishmen,” he said in Greek.

“That is so, sir.”

“And that you are in the Greek service.”

“We were in the Greek service, but after being carried off by Greek brigands I do not know that we shall have any inclination to remain in it.”

“If you had been taken fighting against us I should have ordered you to be shot,” the Pasha said; “but as it is I do not know. Do you belong to that schooner with white sails that has been cruising off the coast some days?”

“We do,” Horace admitted.

“I am told,” the Pasha went on, “that she is the ship that did us much harm at Chios.”

“We were attacked, and we beat off the boats,” Horace said. “That is fair warfare. Our principal object has been to rescue people in danger or distress, whether Christian or Turk. We rescued numbers of Chiot slaves. And on the other hand we saved numbers of Turks at the surrender of the Acropolis at Athens, and conveyed them safely to Tenedos, where we landed them; and the governor there recognized our service to his countrymen, and came off to the ship and invited us on shore to dine with him.”

“Yes, I have heard about that,” the Pasha said. “We have all heard of the white schooner. She has been a dangerous enemy to us, and has done us more harm than the whole of the Greeks together; but after your humanity at Athens I cannot feel animosity against you. It was a noble deed and worthy of brave men. Thus it is that nations should fight, but the Greeks began by massacre, and have been false to the oaths they swore twenty times. How can you fight for men who have neither courage nor faith, and who are as cruel as they are cowardly?”

“There have been cruelties on both sides,” Horace said, “though I own that the Greeks began it; but in England we love freedom, and it is not long since we drove the French out of Egypt and preserved it for you. Our sympathies are with the Greeks, because they were oppressed. We have never killed a Turk save in fair fight, and the crews of every ship we have taken we have permitted to return to shore in their boats without injuring one of them.”

“This also I have heard,” the Pasha said, “and therefore I will do you no harm. I will send you to Constantinople, where the Sultan will decide upon your fate. He has given orders that all foreigners taken in arms against us shall at once be put to death for interfering in a matter in which they have no concern; but as you were not taken in arms I do not feel that the order applies to you, and will therefore take upon myself to send you to him.”

“I thank you, sir,” Horace said, “though I fear it will only be a reprieve.”

“I cannot say,” the pasha replied gravely. “The Sultan strikes hard when he wishes to give a lesson. You see, his people were massacred wholesale by the Greeks, and at Chios he taught them that he could retaliate; but he is not cruel by choice. He is unswerving when his mind is made up. Whether he will make an exception in your case or not is more than I can say. I can only send you to him, and hope that he will be as merciful in your case as I would be had I the power.”

Then he ordered one of his officers to take charge of the prisoners, to see that they had a comfortable tent and were well cared for, and that none molested them. Four soldiers were to be always on guard at the tent, and to answer for the safety of the prisoners with their lives. In a short time they were placed in a tent among those allotted to the officers, and four sentries were placed round it. After sunset two soldiers brought large trays with meat, vegetables, and sweets from the pasha’s own table, and also a bottle of raki.

“The Turk is a gentleman, Horace,” the doctor said as, after having finished dinner, he mixed himself some spirits and water. “I am not saying, mind you, that I would not have mightily preferred a bottle of good whisky; but I am bound to say that when one has once got accustomed to it, raki has its virtues. It is an insinuating spirit, cool and mild to the taste, and dangerous to one who is not accustomed to it. What do you think of it, Horace?”

“I don’t care for it, but then I don’t care for any spirits,” Horace said; “but I thoroughly agree with you that the pasha is a good fellow, only I wish he could have seen his way to have let us go. The Sultan is a terrible personage, and the way he has hung up hostages at Constantinople has been awful. If he has made up his mind that he will deter foreigners from entering the Greek service by showing no mercy to those who fall into his hands, I have no very great hope that he will make any exception in our case.”

CHAPTER XX

AT CONSTANTINOPLE

UPON the following morning horses were brought round and they were ordered to mount. An officer with twelve Turkish troopers took charge of them. The pasha came out from his tent.

“I am sending a letter to the Porte saying what I know of the doings of your ship, and of the service you rendered by saving our countrymen at Athens. I have also given directions that the vessel conveying you shall touch at Tenedos, and have written to the governor there asking him also to send on a letter in your favour.”

After an hour’s riding they reached the town of Larissa, and then followed the river on which it stands down to the sea.

“What a lovely country!” Horace exclaimed as he looked at the mountains to the right and left.

“We are travelling on classical ground,” the doctor replied. “This is the vale of Tempe, that hill to the right is Mount Ossa, that to the left is Mount Olympus.”

“They are grand,” Horace said, “though I should certainly enjoy them more under other circumstances. Fancy that being the hill that Jove used to sit on. It would be a grand place to climb, wouldn’t it?”

“I should be quite content to look at it comfortably from the deck of the schooner, Horace, and should have no desire whatever to scale it.”

“Where is the schooner now, do you think, doctor?”

“Where we left her. They would wait at the village where they expected us to be handed over to them till late in the afternoon, and then most likely march back to the shore. This morning they will be trying to get news of us. It is possible that one of the Greeks has taken down the news of our capture by the Turks, in hopes of getting a reward. He would not know whether we were killed or captured – they bolted too fast for that; but if a fellow does take news of the fight he will probably offer to show the spot. Martyn will take out a strong party, and when he finds the bodies of the two Greeks and no signs of us, he will arrive at the conclusion that we have been carried off. The Greeks probably recognized the men who attacked them as being a band of Albanians. The white petticoats alone would tell them that; and as the Christian Albanians would certainly not be likely to be plundering on this side at the present time, they will be sure they are Mohammedans either raiding on their own account or acting with the Turkish forces in Thessaly.

“No doubt they will offer a reward for news of us, and will probably learn from some peasant or other that a party of Albanians crossed the range into Thessaly about mid-day. Then when they hear that the pasha’s force was lying in the plain, not far from the foot of the hills, they will arrive at the truth that we were taken there. What their next step will be I cannot say, but I should fancy they will sail round the promontory and try and open communication with some small village, and get someone to visit the camp and try and pick up news of what has become of us. It must be days before they can do all this, and by the time they find we have been put on board ship we shall be at Constantinople.