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

“Well, it is not too late, father. When we have done with Greece, you can go in for amusement if you like.”

“I should never find time, Horace.”

“Oh, you could make time, father. You could spare three months in the year and be all the better for it. When you have once had a break, you will find how pleasant it is.”

Half an hour’s row and Horace said: “That is the Creole, father, lying in there near the farther point.”

“She doesn’t look as large as I expected, Horace, though her masts seem a great height.”

“She is heavily sparred for her length,” Tarleton said, “but she has great beam; besides she is rather low in the water now, and of course that makes the spars look big in proportion. She will be a bit higher by the time we get out. Fifty men consume a considerable weight of stores and water every week. You will be pleased with her, sir, when we get alongside. We all think she is as handsome a craft as we ever set eyes on. She will astonish the Turks, I warrant, when it comes to sailing.”

Another twenty minutes they were alongside. According to naval etiquette Horace mounted the ladder first, then Tarleton, and Mr. Beveridge followed. Martyn and Miller received him at the gangway, the former introducing the first officer and the surgeon to him.

“She is a fine-looking vessel,” Mr. Beveridge said, “and you have certainly done marvels with her, Captain Martyn, for my son wrote me that she had nothing but her lower masts in her when you took possession, and now she is wonderfully bright and clean, and these decks look almost too white to walk on.”

“I hope that we shall always keep her in equal order, sir. We have a capital crew, and no one could wish for a better craft under his feet.”

Mr. Beveridge was now conducted round the ship, and expressed himself highly gratified with everything.

“Is it your wish that we should make sail at once, sir?” Martyn asked. “We have been expecting some heavy luggage on board, but it has not arrived.”

“I changed my mind about it, and there is nothing coming, Captain Martyn. I am perfectly ready to start if you have everything on board.”

“There is nothing to wait for, sir; we are perfectly ready.”

They returned to the quarter-deck, and as Martyn gave the orders there was a general movement on the part of the crew. Some of the men clustered round the capstan, while others prepared to make sail, and Mr. Beveridge felt a keen sense of pleasure as he watched the active fellows at their work. In five minutes the sails were set, the anchor at the cat-head, and the Creole moving through the water under the light breeze off shore.

They had favourable winds across the Bay and down the coast of Portugal. Everything from the start had gone as smoothly as if the Creole had been six months in commission – officers and men were alike pleased with the ship; the provisions for the sailors were of the best quality; the duties were very light, for the sails had not required altering from the time they had been set, although each day the men practised for an hour at lowering and setting them, in order to accustom them to work smartly together.

There was half an hour’s cutlass drill, and for the rest of the day, beyond cleaning and polishing, there was nothing to be done. Mr. Beveridge spent the greater part of his time in a comfortable deck-chair on the quarter-deck, for there was no poop, the deck being flush from end to end. Horace attended to his duties as third officer regularly, and the nights were so warm and pleasant that the watches did not appear long to him. There was no stiffness in the cabin when they gathered to their meals, or in the evening, and Mr. Beveridge proved in no way a wet blanket on their fun, as the three officers had rather anticipated he would be. He talked but little, but was thoroughly amused at their yarns and jests, all of which were as strange to him as if he had lived in another world.

“You will certainly have to cut off our rations a bit, Mr. Beveridge,” Will Martyn said one day as they finished dinner. “We shall be getting as fat as porpoises if we go on like this. I can feel my togs filling out daily; and as for Tarleton, he will have to have all his things let out by the time we arrive in the Levant. For the credit of the ship I shall have to give orders for us to be supplied with the same rations as the men, and go in for luxuries only on Sundays. We are not accustomed to be tempted in this way at every meal. It is all very well for you who do not eat much more than a sparrow to have such nice things always put before you; but to us who have been accustomed to a steady diet of salt junk, except when we put into port and are able to get fresh meat for a change, these things are beyond our power of resistance.”

“I eat a great deal more than I did on shore,” Mr. Beveridge said. “I find, indeed, a wonderful improvement in my appetite. It was quite an infliction to Zaimes that I cared so little for the good things he provided me with. I can assure you I really begin to look for my meals now, and it is a pleasure for me to see you all eat with good healthy appetites, and I am sure that it must be a great gratification to the Greeks to see their efforts appreciated at last.”

“It is Tarleton I am thinking of principally, sir; as for Miller, nature made him square, and it would be no disadvantage if he became round; while as to the doctor, food is simply wasted on him, he will never do credit to your cooks. But Tarleton, with those dark eyes of his and his gentle sort of way, was what the ladies would consider an interesting youth, and he would, I am sure, forfeit the good opinion of the ladies altogether if he were to return looking like a mildly animated sausage.”

Tarleton joined in the laugh. “I do think I have gained a lot in weight the last week,” he said; “but we won’t always go on in this quiet sort of way. As for what Martyn says, I believe it is only jealousy on his part at seeing that my angles are filling out.”

On arriving at the Straits they put in at Ceuta and obtained a supply of fresh meat and vegetables. In the Mediterranean they fell in with dead calms and were a fortnight in getting to Gozo, where they again replenished their stock. They abstained from putting in either at Gibraltar or Malta in order to avoid being questioned as to the cargo and destination of the Creole.

“Now, sir,” Will Martyn said when they were within two days’ sail of Greece, “it is quite time to decide what port we shall make for, but we can’t decide that until we know how matters are going on. When we left England there were very conflicting accounts of the progress of the revolution, and whether Corinth, Patras, Nauplia, or Athens are in the hands of the Greeks or Turks. Well, I should say, sir, that our best plan would be to put in at Zante, where, as it is English, and therefore neutral ground, we shall learn all about the state of affairs, and may meet some of our own people or foreigners who have been fighting by the side of the Greeks. Half an hour’s talk with one of them would give us a better idea how everything stands than a week’s talk with Greeks.”

“I think that will be a very good plan,” Mr. Beveridge agreed. “Flying the English flag we might go in or out of any of the harbours as neutrals; but if by any chance it leaked out what our cargo is the Turks would probably consider themselves justified in laying hands on us.”

“At any rate it is well not to run the risk, Mr. Beveridge, as there is no object to be served by it. I will take the bearings of Zante and lay our course for it.”

There was, indeed, no spot where they were more likely to obtain accurate news of what was going on than Zante, lying as the island does at a short distance from the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth, upon which were three of the most important towns in Greece – Patras, Corinth, and Missolonghi. Here, too, the fugitives from the Morea, of either party, would naturally make their way.

It was the 8th of October when the Creole, flying the English flag at her peak, dropped anchor in the port. As soon as she did so a custom-house officer came on board.

“What ship is this?” he asked the first officer, who was on deck.

“This is the Creole, a private yacht belonging to Mr. Beveridge. The owner is below if you wish to see him.”

“You have no merchandise on board?”

“I tell you that it is a yacht,” Miller said. “An English gentleman doesn’t bring out merchandise for sale in his yacht. The captain will show you her papers.”

Will Martyn came on deck.

“This is the captain,” Miller said. “You had better address him.”

On hearing what was required Martyn took the officer below and showed him the ship’s papers.

“I see it is mentioned here that you were bound from England to Lisbon,” the officer observed.

“Yes. We did not put in there, as Mr. Beveridge was anxious to get into a warmer climate.”

“I see you are strongly armed,” the officer said when he came on to deck again, for after leaving Malta the eight twelve-pounders and the pivot-gun had been got up from the hold and mounted.

“Yes, we are armed, as you see. I imagine you would hardly recommend anyone to be cruising about in these waters without means of defence.”

“No, indeed,” the officer laughed. “The Greeks are pirates to the core. You would be all right with the Turks, although from your appearance I should not think they would ever get near enough to trouble you.”

Half an hour later Mr. Beveridge and Horace were rowed ashore. As, except at Ceuta, Horace had never set foot ashore out of England, he was much amused and interested by the varied population. Mingled with the native population of the island were Greeks from the mainland; Albanians in their white pleated petticoats, bristling with arms mounted in gold and silver; a few English soldiers walking about as unconcernedly as if in a garrison town at home; and sailors of several nationalities from ships in harbour.

“I should think, father, the proper thing would be to call upon the English officer in command here and invite him to dinner. We shall get a general idea of the state of things from him.”

Asking a soldier, they found that the small detachment there was under the command of Captain O’Grady, whose house, at the entrance to the barrack, was pointed out to them. The officer was in, and on Mr. Beveridge sending in his card they were at once shown in.

“I am the owner of a schooner-yacht, the Creole, that dropped anchor an hour ago,” Mr. Beveridge said. “I know very little about the etiquette of these things, but it seemed to me the proper thing was to call at once upon His Majesty’s representative here.”

“A very right and proper thing to do, Mr. Beveridge. I have been wondering what that craft could be, and where she had come from. If it hadn’t been for the flag and the tidiness of her I should have put her down as a Greek pirate, though they don’t often rig up their crafts as schooners.”

“She has been something like a pirate in her time,” Mr. Beveridge said, “for she was a slaver, captured and sent home as a prize. I bought her at Plymouth and fitted her out.”

“And a mighty nice way of spending money too, Mr. Beveridge. She is the biggest thing in the way of yachts I ever saw. I don’t at all see why a gentleman shouldn’t buy a big ship and cruise about the world in her if he can afford it.”

“Well, Captain O’Grady, I won’t occupy your time now, but shall be glad if you will come off and dine with me at six o’clock to-day. I have come straight from England, and have heard nothing as to how matters stand out here. If you will bring any of your officers off with you I shall be very glad to see them.”

“I have only two here. Mr. Lester, my lieutenant, will be on duty, and I have no doubt that Plunket will be very glad to come off with me if he has no special engagement, which is not likely, for it is a mighty dull life here, I can tell you, and it is glad I shall be when the order comes to rejoin the regiment at Corfu.”

Mr. Beveridge and Horace walked about for some time, and then returned on board. They met their two Greeks in the town shopping, and told them that there would be guests at dinner. They met also Will Martyn and Tarleton, who had come ashore a short time after them, Miller remaining on board in charge; a good many of the men were also ashore.

“I have warned them solemnly,” Martyn said, “against drink and quarrels, but I am afraid that to-night and to-morrow night we shall have a good many of them coming off noisy. Wine is cheap, and as they haven’t set foot ashore for five weeks it is not in the nature of an English sailor to resist temptation. I don’t care much as long as they don’t get into rows with the Greeks. I have told them the boats will be ashore at nine o’clock to fetch them, and that any who are not down there by that hour will have their allowance of grog stopped for a fortnight.”

It had been arranged with Captain O’Grady that the boat should be at the steps for him at a quarter to six. Horace went in charge of it, and brought off the two officers.

“You have comfortable quarters here, indeed,” Captain O’Grady said when Mr. Beveridge had introduced his officers to him and his companion. “Sure I would like nothing better than to travel about in a craft like this. It is like taking a floating palace about with you.” But if the officers were surprised at the fittings of the cabin they were still more so at the excellence of the dinner. Up to the time the dessert was placed on the table they chatted as to the incidents of the voyage; but when the wine had gone round Mr. Beveridge began questioning them.

“Of course you hear everything that goes on on the mainland, Captain O’Grady.”

“Everything, do you say? It is well content I would be if that was all I heard; but the thundering lies that are told by those Greek rapscallions are enough to take one’s breath away. To hear them talk you would not think that such valiant men had ever lived since the days of Noah; and yet, with the exception of a little skirmish, all that they have done is to starve out those unfortunate heathens the Turks, and then after they have surrendered on promise of good treatment, to murder them in cold blood with their women and children.”

“I hope that there has not been much of that,” Mr. Beveridge said gravely.

“It depends upon what you call much of it. At the very lowest estimate there have been thirty thousand murdered in cold blood since the troubles began; and some accounts put it much higher. There has not been a single exception; nowhere have they spared a Mussulman. The poor beggars of farmers and villagers were killed; man, woman, and child, in hundreds of villages the whole of them were destroyed without resistance; and it has been the same in all the large towns. The Greeks began the work at Kalamata, which surrendered under a solemn promise of their lives to the Turks; but every soul was slain. And so it has been all along. In the district of Laconia there were fifteen thousand Mussulmans, and of these two-thirds at least were slain. At Missolonghi there are not twenty Turks alive.

“At Navarino every soul was murdered. Tripolitza surrendered only a week ago, and I saw by a letter from Colonel Raybonde, a French officer, who commanded the Greek artillery during the siege, that forty-eight hours after they entered the city they collected about two thousand persons, principally women and children, and drove them up a ravine and murdered them there; and altogether eight thousand Mussulmans were killed during the sack. I have heard of massacres till I am sick of listening to the stories; and though at the beginning I hoped that the Greeks would drive the old Turks out, faith I have come to think that if I were to hear that the whole race were utterly exterminated I should feel more comfortable in my mind than I have been for some time. Not content with murdering the poor creatures, in many cases the villains tortured them first. I have heard fellows who came over here boast of it. One Albanian ruffian who told me that he had done this, told me, sir, as if it were a thing to be proud of. I had the satisfaction of taking him by the scruff of his neck and the tail of his white petticoat and chucking him off the pier into the sea. When he scrambled out I offered him the satisfaction of a gentleman, seeing that he was a chief who thought no small beer of himself. There was a deal of difficulty in explaining to him how the thing was managed in a civilized country, and I never felt more satisfaction in my life than I did next morning when I put a bullet into the scoundrel’s body.”

A wet blanket seemed suddenly to fall over the party in the cabin as Captain O’Grady was speaking. Horace saw that Miller, who was sitting opposite to him, was undergoing an internal convulsion in restraining himself from bursting into a laugh; and Will Martyn, who was facing Mr. Beveridge at the bottom of the table, looked so preternaturally grave that Horace felt that he too was struggling to repress a smile. The doctor nodded, as if to signify that it was exactly what he had expected. Mr. Beveridge looked deeply concerned.

“I have heard something of this in England, Captain O’Grady, though of course the Greek agents there suppress all news that would tell against their countrymen, but I did not think it was as bad as this. Yet although I do not for a moment attempt to defend such atrocities, you must remember how long the Greeks have been oppressed by the Turks. A people who have been in slavery for hundreds of years to strangers, aliens in blood and in religion, and themselves in a very primitive state of civilization, except in the cities, would be almost certain in the first rising against their oppressors to commit horrible excesses. The same thing happened, although, happily, on a much smaller scale, in your own country, Captain O’Grady, in ’98, and that without a hundredth part of the excuse that the Greeks had.”

“True for you, Mr. Beveridge,” Captain O’Grady admitted. “There’s no denying that you have turned the tables on me there. It is mighty difficult, as you say, to hold a savage peasantry in hand.”

“It was the same thing in the French Revolution. That again was practically a revolt of slaves, and they behaved like fiends; and the number of persons murdered – men of their own race and religion, remember – was at least as great as that of those who have been massacred here. The revolt called the Jacquerie, in the middle ages, was equally ferocious, and the number of victims would probably have been as great had not the revolt been nipped in the bud. I regret deeply the conduct of the Greeks; but I think it was only what was to be expected from a people naturally fierce and revengeful under the circumstances.”

“Maybe you are right, Mr. Beveridge, though I did not look at it in that light before.”

“And who are their leaders now?”

“Faith they are all leaders. One day one hears one man’s name mentioned, that is hard enough to crack one’s jaw; the next day he is upset and another has taken his place. Every dirty little chief of brigands sets himself up as a leader, and as they are about the only chaps who understand anything about fighting they come to the front. If they only spent a twentieth part of the time in preparing for war which they do in quarrelling among themselves as to their share of the spoil, it seems to me they would make a much better fight than they are likely to do. There is a fellow called Odysseus, which is their way of pronouncing Ulysses; he used to command the Mohammedan Albanians under Ali Pasha. Now he has turned round, and fights against his old master. He is one of the chief of them. Then there are Kolokotronis and Mavrocordatos. I should say they are the two principal men just at present. Then there is a chap called Prince Demetrius Hypsilantes. He is the brother of a fellow who got up the rising up in the north of the Danube, and pretends to be the head of all the Greeks. Demetrius says he is invested by his brother with a sort of viceroyalty over Greece, and wants to have it all his own way. Then there are the Greek bishops and priests. They are pretty well against all the rest, and want to keep the peasantry under their thumb. Then there are the primates; they have got a big lot of power.”

“Do you mean archbishops?” Captain Martyn asked.

“Not a bit of it. The primates are a sort of half-and-half officers. They are supposed to be chosen by the people of their own district, and of course they are always the big-wigs; the chaps with most power and influence. Once chosen they became Turkish officers, collected the taxes, and were each accountable for the money and for the doings of their district. Nicely they ground the people down and feathered their own nests. Naturally, when the Turks went they became the local leaders. The people had no one else to look to but them and the priests. In the Morea these two classes have all the power in their hands. North of that we don’t hear much of the primates. I don’t think they had any of them there. It’s the Albanians, and the Klephts, that is the brigands, and some of the fighting clans, such as the Suliots and the bands of armatoli, which are a sort of village militia, who are the backbone of the rising.

“All the chiefs are jealous of each other, and if one fellow proposes a plan all the others differ from him; or if there is one of the big leaders there, and his plan is adopted, the others either march away to their homes or do what they can to prevent it from succeeding. The great thing with all the chiefs is to get spoil. The people are different; they really want to fight the Turks and to win their freedom; and it is because they see that not one of their leaders is honest, that their jealousies keep them from any common actions, and that they will not unite to form any central government, that the people have no confidence in them, but just follow one man until they get disgusted with him, and then go off to join another.

“Everything is wasted. The spoil they have taken has been enormous; but the people are little the better for it; it is all divided among the chiefs, and not a penny of it has gone to form a fund for defence. They have captured enormous quantities of ammunition, but they have fired it away like children, just to please themselves with the noise. At one place I was told by an Englishman who was there that the two million cartridges they captured were all wasted in what they called rejoicings in the course of three days. What they want is a big man – a fellow who will begin by hanging a hundred politicians, as many chiefs, bishops, and primates; who would organize first a government and then an army; and would insist that every halfpenny taken as spoil from the Turks should be paid into the public treasury. Then, sir, I believe that the Greeks would polish off these sleepy Turks in no time, with the advantage they have in knowing every foot of the mountains, in being as active as goats, and in possessing the idea that they are fighting for freedom. Mind I don’t say that the Turks will beat them even as they are. The Turkish pashas are as incapable as the Greek leaders. Their soldiers are good, but as the Greeks have no regular army, and no idea of standing up to fight fair, the Turks can’t get at them, and the Greeks can move about quickly and fall upon them at their own time; and besides they will bring them to a standstill by starvation. They don’t care about attacking the Turkish troops, but they are down like a pack of wolves on a baggage train, and if the Turks venture any distance from the sea-coast they will be harassed out of their lives.”

“Have the Turks still the command of the sea? There the Greeks ought to be their match anyhow.”

“Yes, the Turks still send their store-ships escorted by their men-of-war frigates and corvettes. The Greeks hover round them and among them, but they take care to keep pretty well out of range of the Turkish guns, and their only idea of fighting seems to be to launch fire-ships at them. A man-of-war was burnt while at anchor a short time back by Knaris, who is the best sailor the Greeks have got. Still, at present the Turks are so far masters of the sea that they take their convoys where they like and can revictual their fortresses whenever they have the energy to do so. On the other hand, the Greeks scour the seas in all directions, and not a single merchant ship flying the Turkish flag dare show her nose outside the Dardanelles.”

“Is the cruelty all on one side?” Horace asked.