The Capsina. An Historical Novel. Benson Edward Frederic
and the meeting of the two was very cordial; you would have said they took the same side. Christos dwelt with extreme complacency on the expedition of the Capsina – it was like the clan, he said, to take the lead in adventure – and Tombazes, though officially he had bound himself to deprecate it, gave a halting lip-service only to the cause of the primates.
"And the men of the island, you say," says he, with a dancing eye, "are resolved to follow this – this most imprudent and ill-advised example set them by the Capsina? Man, do they realize what it means? Do they not know that the Turks will descend on those they leave behind – their women and their children?"
"Yet the women would have them go," said Christos.
"The more senseless they. Yet women are ever so. For what will happen to them? Are the Turks so chivalrous? And will Turks make kind parents to the children who will be fatherless?"
"Yet the children are sailing sticks and branches in the harbor, and throwing stones at them. 'This,' they say to one another, 'we will do to the Turks.'"
"By the Virgin, they are true Greeks, then!" shouted Tombazes, lustily, forgetting himself for a moment but his voice ringing true. Then with impatience: "What does it matter what the children do?" he asked. "It is a new thing to take counsel of the children before we act."
"Yet you asked me of the children," said Christos, smiling, "and, as you said, father, they are true Greeks."
Tombazes sat down, and motioned Christos to take a seat.
"You, then, are on the side of the women and the children," he said, "or rather, if you look at it aright, against them; for sure is it that you give them over to the Turks to treat – to treat as Turks treat women and children. Your son Christos a servant in the harem – have you thought of that?"
"I am on the side of the Capsina," said Christos.
Tombazes looked furtively round, as if to see that none other was there, walked slowly to the window, and came back again with quicker step. Twice he began to speak, twice stopped, but at the last he could contain himself no longer.
"And so, by all the saints, am I!" he cried. "See, Christos, I trust you, and this must not be known nor guessed. For sure I would, if I followed my desire, sail after that splendid girl – yes, swim to wherever she may go – with the Greek flag over me. Man, but my heart burned when I saw that. The cross above the crescent, and soon no crescent at all. Thus shall it be. But I and the others, and you, too, are put over these people, and we must make them consider what will follow. Nothing must be done wildly; because we are aflame with this wonderful, prophetic flag, tinder to that spark, we must not act as if the thing was done, as if the moment we take up arms, down go the Turks like the walls of Jericho; and in this, Christos, I am speaking with all the sincerity God gave me. No enthusiasm, no sudden rising will do the work; the fight will be long and bitter, and if a new and glorious thing is to spring up, it will be watered with tears and with blood – with tears of the fatherless and widow, and blood of the fathers. Tell me yourself, you are the father of a family, with a stake in peace; what are you meaning to do?"
"The Capsina has lent me the Hydra, which was to have sailed to Syria to-day with stuff for the Turkish governor. The stuff she has thrown overboard, and I sail to-morrow for Nauplia, where I shall get orders."
"She threw the Turk's stuff overboard? I would it had been Turks! Great is the Capsina!" and the primate capered barbarously up the room and down again. "And now I will go down to the people," said he. "You and I have a secret, Christos; but I wonder how long the devil will give me strength to keep it."
Down on the quay matters had fared more briskly than among the primates. A member and delegate of the Revolutionist Club, by name Economos, had landed with the ships from Spetzas, and had been preaching revolt and revenge to willing ears. Even before the departure of the Capsina, whose sails were now a gull on the horizon, he had begun enlisting volunteers, and before Tombazes reached the harbor, he was already at the head of an armed band, including several ship-captains, and was rapidly earning a cheap popularity by addressing the mob as "citizens of Greece."
Tombazes, who, for his ruddy face and burly heartiness, was popular with the people, made his way through to where the crowd was thickest, and instantly interrupted the man's speeches.
"Now what is this all about?" he cried, good-humoredly, pushing his way in. "What is all this disturbance? It is all most irregular. Ha, Dimitri, you should be driving out the sheep instead of wasting time on the quay, for all the world like a quacking goose that can't lay an egg! You, too, Anastasi, now you are a less idiot than some, tell me what this is about, and who is that holding a flag which I do not remember to have seen before?"
He made his way through the people up to Economos.
"Now, my good fellow," he said, "just stop preaching for a moment. We primates have a good deal of preaching to do, and so we have much sympathy for those who listen. Who are you, where do you come from, what's your business, and what's your name, and what are you talking about? Oh, you silly folk!" he cried, aloud, as a discontented murmur rose up. "You are all going to have fair play – that is why I am here. But just let me learn what it is all about. Melesinas, don't brandish your knife in that foolish way, or you will be cutting your own oaf's hand off!"
Economos paused, and realizing that there was nothing to be gained by insolence, seeing that this man was a friend evidently of the people, stepped down from the table on which he was standing.
"My name is Antonios Economos," he said. "I am an emissary from the Club of Patriots in Greece, and I am here to raise the revolt in Hydra against the Turk."
"That is all very well," said Tombazes. "You want ships and support, and for ships you want men, and for men money. Has the Club of Patriots supplied you with that?"
"The treasury – the national treasury!" shouted several voices.
Tombazes looked up quickly, and, springing forward with an agility which in a man of his bulk bordered on the miraculous, seized hold of a big fellow whom he had seen shouting and shook him till his teeth rattled in his head.
"Another word," he cried, "and I pop you into the harbor. You too, George, I saw you shouting too. If I tell your wife it will be but little supper you get. I am ready for you all, five under one arm and six under the other. Oh, I will teach you to interrupt when I am talking to another. Get back with you from the table, all of you, all of you. And you there, Yanni, bring me wine and two glasses, this gentleman and I have to talk together, and chairs – two chairs; and the sooner the rest of you silly quacking folk clear away, the fewer there will be for me to put into the sea, and that will save trouble for us all: for me, in getting hot on so warm a day, for there are fat lubbers among you; and for you, in having to change your clothes."
The crowd edged a little back, more good-humored than resentful, for they were accustomed to be treated like children by Tombazes, and the island knew him familiarly as "The Nurse." He was their doctor, a practitioner of heroic simples, sun and sea being the staple of his prescriptions, their spiritual consoler, herein also employing the less morbid remedies. He could sail a boat against the best of their seamen, and he had again and again, as they all knew, taken the side of the people against the greedy and grabbing primates. The wine and the chairs were brought, and he and Economos sat down, clinked glasses, and settled down to talk.
"You will have found dry work in all that talking," said Tombazes, "unless you are very fond of your own voice. Good wine is the gift of God, and this is not bad. Now I heard what that man shouted, and so did you. Now tell me straight, for this it will save trouble. Was it you who suggested that they should get the money from the treasury, or they?"
Economos, who had been playing the noisy demagogue all morning, and was quite prepared to play it again, if advisable, determined for the present to talk soberly.
"They suggested it," he said, dryly. "I'm willing also to tell you that it struck me as an admirable notion."
"Did it so?" said Tombazes, musingly. "Then you are more easily pleased than most men, for your idea of the admirable seems to me the silliest thing I have ever heard tell of. And as I am older than you, and a man of experience, it is likely I have run against many silly things in this world. Now, man, sit down; this is