The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence. Benson Edward Frederic
through a narrow channel, both sides of which were shoal water, not sufficiently deep to allow the boat to pass. But he had the light from his own house and that from the café opposite to steer by, and he knew that he could run in when they were in a line. As he neared the shore he could see it was impossible to bring the boat round sharply enough, and while there was yet time he beat out again for a quarter of a mile and approached it more directly. This time he was successful, and the boat skimmed past the tumbled water on each side – and as he passed he saw sharp-toothed rocks foaming and gnashing at him – safe into the smoother water of his anchorage. Constantine was waiting up for him, and when his tall figure appeared in the doorway, he looked up with relief.
"Mitsos, you shouldn't sail on nights like these," he said; "the best seamen in the world might not be able to handle a boat in such a squall. How did you get in?"
"It's easy enough when you get the lights from the house and the café in a line," said Mitsos; "besides, I was six miles out in the bay when the squall came down."
"Six miles out? You have not been long getting back," said his father, marvelling at the lad's knowledge.
Mitsos walked to the door to close it, turning his back on Constantine.
"No, there was a fine wind to sail on," he said, and whistled the vine-diggers' song beneath his breath.
Constantine did not ask any more questions, and Mitsos went to make himself some hot coffee and get out of his wet clothes, for he was drenched from head to foot.
Two days after this the ordinary wine had cleared completely, and it was racked into fresh casks, for if it stood too long on the lees in contact with the skins and stalks it would become bitter. The crust itself Constantine removed from all the barrels and put into the still for the making of spirits. This only required one man to look after, and on the day Mitsos went to Epidaurus to get the resin he employed himself with it.
The apparatus was of the simplest. He placed all the crusts from the barrels in a big iron pot, under which he lit a slow charcoal fire; into a hole in the lid of this, which screwed on to the body, he inserted a bent iron pipe, on to which he screwed another pipe made in spirals. A big wooden tub filled with water, through the bottom of which passed a third pipe fitting at one end into the spirals which lay in the water, and communicating at the other with the glazed jar into which the spirit was to be stored, completed the apparatus. The fire drove off the alcohol from the fermented crust in a vapor, which distilled itself into spirit as it passed through the tube that lay in the cold water, and dripped out at the farther end into the jar.
He finished the day's work by soon after five, and, having business in Nauplia, set off there at once; so that Mitsos, returning a little later from Epidaurus with the resin, found him out, and, without waiting to get any food, he set off again at once down to the bay.
It was drawing near that moment when all the beauty of the day in sea, land, and sky is gathered into the ten minutes of sunset. The sun, declining to its setting, was dropping slowly above a low pass in the hills, shining with an exceeding clearness, and it was still half an hour above the horizon when Mitsos got into the boat. The land-breeze was blowing temperate and firm, and his boat dipped to it gently, and glided steadily on the outward tack. Between him and the Argive hills hung a palpable haze of thinnest blue; but the whole plain slept in a garment of gold, woven by the level rays. The surface of the water, unruffled under the shadow of the land, was green and burnished like a plate of patinated bronze, and the ripple from the bows broke creamily and flowed out behind the boat in long, feather-like lines. As the sun neared its setting, the golden mist grew more intense in color, and the higher slopes of the mountains turned pink behind their veil of blue. The sky was cloudless from rim to rim, except where, low in the west, there floated a few thin skeins of vapor, visible against the incredible blue only because they were touched with red. Just as Mitsos neared the wall on his second tack the sun's edge was cut by the ragged outline of the mountain, and in ten minutes more it would have set.
She, the nameless, ineffable she – and Mitsos never questioned that this was the sweet singer – was leaning on the edge of the wall looking seawards. She saw Mitsos sitting in the stern of his boat, and guessed at once – for few boats passed so close – that it was he who had sung the second verse of the vineyard song two nights ago, and that it was his boat which passed close under the wall last night, when the other women of the harem were there with her. She had not known till she saw him that she wished to see the owner of that half-formed boyish voice, which had come so pleasantly out of the darkness; and now, when she did see him, she looked long. He, too, was looking, and her eyes made a bridge over the golden air that lay between them and brought them close together.
The boat drew nearer, and she dropped her eyes and began playing with a spray of roses that trailed along the top of the wall. She picked a couple of buds, smelled them, and then very softly she began the first verse of the vine-diggers' song.
The boat had got under shelter of the wall, and drifted windlessly near. Mitsos was still looking at her; her eyes were still cast down. She sang the first verse through, and the first two lines of the second verse, and then apparently she recollected no more, for she stopped, and from the boat Mitsos sang very softly the two lines that followed. Still, without looking up, she sang them after him; he finished the verse, and she sang the whole through.
From the bay the sun had set, but the mountains on the east glowed rosier and rosier every moment. All that Mitsos saw was a girl's slender figure wrapped in a loose white cloak, with a gold band round the waist – a hand that held two rosebuds, a face veiled up to the eyes, eyes down-dropped, and eyelashes that swept the cheek.
"There is a third verse," he said.
Then she looked up, and her eyes smiled at him, and they were as black as shadows beneath the moon.
"I will learn that another night," she said, softly, "if it be you will teach me; and this is for your teaching. Go, now; others are coming."
Half carelessly she threw into the boat the roses she had picked, and turned away.
Mitsos waited a moment longer, and then, hearing voices in the garden behind the wall, rowed quickly away. His thoughts were a song; his mind, one sweet secret frenzy, that made the heart quick and the eye bright. All the common details of life were seen and taken in by him but dimly, as sounds come dimly to a sleeper, and are but the material out of which he weaves a golden vision; for the first splendor of love, hackneyed as a theme, but as an experience from generation to generation ever new, was dawning on him.
Maria was married next morning, and Mitsos went without emotion to the wedding. The bride and bridegroom appeared to him to be admirably suited to each other.
About four o'clock that afternoon the lad was just about to set off down to the shore when his father appeared.
"We'll finish with the wine this evening," he said. "Come and begin at once, Mitsos."
Mitsos paused a moment.
"I was just going sailing," he said. "Cannot it wait till to-morrow?"
"No; it had better be finished now. Besides, you can sail afterwards. Come, it won't take a couple of hours."
"Uncle Nicholas told me to sail every day," he began.
"And to obey me, Mitsos."
Mitsos stood for a moment irresolute, but soon his habit of obedience reasserted itself.
"Yes, father," he said; "I am sorry. I will come."
The casks in which the first fermentation had taken place had been thoroughly scoured with boiling water, which had quite got rid of the sour-smelling fermented stuff, and they were to rack the cleared resinated wine back into them. They filled each cask again three-quarters full, and into the remaining space they poured a portion of the fine wine, dividing it equally among all. To Mitsos the process seemed insufferably long and tedious. The sun had set before the casks were filled, and it was dark before the work was over. Never before, it seemed to him, had the taps dribbled so dispiritingly. His father now and then addressed some remark to him, which he barely answered, and after a time they both lapsed into silence. Mitsos knew that he was behaving badly, and he thought he could not help it. Perhaps she was there; perhaps – bewildering thought – she