The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence. Benson Edward Frederic
taking off his shoes and trousers.
The net was some twenty-five yards long, and Mitsos, taking one end into his hand, stepped into the water at right angles to the shore. He waded out till the net was taut between them, and then Nicholas followed. As soon as the latter was some ten yards from land they both moved shorewards up the little bay, which lay in front of them, getting gradually nearer to each other as they approached the beach, till when they were within five or six yards of the land they were walking together, the net trailing in a great bagging oval behind them. The resistance of the water, the dragging of the lead along the bottom, and, it was to be hoped, the spoils enclosed made no small weight, and it was a quarter of an hour or so before they got it in. The moon had risen, and it was easy to see the silvery glitter of the fish as they lay fluttering in the dark meshes of the net. The flat, brown soles, however, required a more careful search, and the sound of their flapping, rather than the eye, led to their discovery.
They fished for an hour or two with only moderate success, until Mitsos proposed they should try a little farther down the coast, where shoals of a certain fish, as small as the whitebait, and as sweet, grazed the watery pastures. Here the depth was somewhat greater, and before going in Mitsos divested himself of his shirt, leaving it on the rocks, and went in completely naked. Nicholas, who had put himself entirely under his directions, waited in the shallower water near the shore till the boy had waded out to where the water covered him to the waist; then, as before, they moved in converging lines towards the shore.
They had approached to within about twenty yards of the beach, and within about five yards of each other, when Mitsos stopped and pointed back. The upper edge of the net, fitted at intervals with corks to keep it floating, was visible on the bright surface of the sea, trailing in an irregular oval. But inside this oval the moonlit water was strangely agitated and unquiet, quivering like a jarred metal-plate, and from moment to moment a little silvery speck would glitter on it.
"Look," he said to Nicholas, "the little fish are there. We must be as quick as we can. Sometimes if the shoal begins jumping they will all jump out."
And bending forward to get his whole weight into the work, he pushed forward towards the land.
The moonlight fell full on his body, dripping and glistening from the waist downwards with the salt water, and threw the straining muscles which line the spine, and those chords behind the shoulder-blade which painters love, into strong light and shadow, as he pulled against the weight of the dragging net. Already the water came only to his knees, and the catch was imminent, when suddenly from the net there came a rustle and a splash like myriad little pebbles being thrown into the sea, and he turned round just in time to see the whole shoal, which glistened like a silver sheet, rise and drop into the water outside.
"The little Turks," he said, angrily, "they are all gone."
"Better to pull the net in and look," said Nicholas; "a part only may have leaped."
Mitsos shook his head.
"When they go like that it is all of them," he said.
Mitsos was quite right. There was a stray fish or two still in the net, but so few that they were hardly worth picking out.
"That will do for to-night, won't it?" he said. "We have fished all the best places."
Nicholas assenting, he lay down and rolled over in the warm, dry sand once or twice, and then standing up brushed the wet stuff off his body. Then spreading the net out on the rocks higher up on the beach, Mitsos went off to fetch his shirt. Nicholas employed himself in picking up a few stray fish, and put them into the creel. Then rolling up the net they walked back to the boat.
CHAPTER III
THE STORY OF A BRIGAND
The wind, which had taken them straight across the bay, still blew freshening from the same quarter, and was dead against them. They would have to make two long tacks to get home – the first, right across to the island in the middle of the bay; the second, back again to the head of it; and as soon as they were well off on the outward tack, Mitsos went to the stern of the boat and sat down by Nicholas.
"It is time for the stories, is it not?" he said.
"Yes, we will have the stories now."
Nicholas paused a moment.
"Mitsos," he said, "I am going to tell you about a part of my life of which I have never spoken to you before, for, until now, I have only told you boys' stories to amuse a boy. But now I am going to tell you a story for a man. This all happened before you were born, twenty years ago, when I was a brigand."
Mitsos stared.
"A brigand, Uncle Nicholas? You?"
"Brigand, outlaw, klepht, whatever you like to call it. A man with a price set on his head – it is there now for you to take if you like – a man without any home but the mountains. Yet one may do worse than live in the mountains, Mitsos, and drink to the 'good bullet,' praying one might be killed rather than fall alive into the hands of the Turk. The first part of my story is like many other stories I have told you before; it is the second part, when I tell you why I was a brigand, that will be new to you – a story, as I have said, not for a boy, but for a man.
"I used to live then at Dimitzana, in Arcadia, and I became a brigand on the night that my wife died. Why and how that happened comes later. Well, there I was living in the mountains round Arcadia, sheltering and hiding for the most part of the day in the woods, but keeping near some mountain path, so that if a Turk or two or three came by I could – how shall I say it? – do business with them. For a month or two I was a-hunting alone, and then I was joined by other men from Dimitzana, who also had become outlaws. With them I went hunting on rather a larger scale – we used to take Turks and get ransoms for them. But never did we take or molest a Greek or lay hands on any woman, Greek or Turk. For the most part we were very fortunate, and all the time we lost but few men, and of those the heads of none fell into the hands of the Turks, for if one was wounded beyond healing we all went and kissed him and said good-bye; and then one cut his head off and buried it, so that the Turks should not dishonor him."
Nicholas paused a moment, and then laughed gently to himself.
"Never in my life shall I forget when we took Mohammed Bey – a fat-belly man, Mitsos, and a devil, with a paunch for two men and a woman's skin. To see him tied on his mule, crying out to Allah and Mohammed to rescue him and his dinner from the infidels, as if Mohammed had nothing better to do than look after such swine! I told him that he would only spend a day or two with us in the mountains until his friends ransomed him, adding that we would do our best to make him comfortable. But he wept tears of pure oil and said that Mohammed would avenge him, which, as yet, the Prophet has omitted to do. But there is one drawback to that sort of life, little Mitsos – one cannot keep clean. Sometimes, if one is travelling or being pursued, one has to go a whole day, or more, without water to drink, much less to wash in. Once, I remember, we had been all day without water, and could not find any when we stopped for the night; but there was a heavy dew, and, though it was a cold night, we all sat without our shirts for an hour, laying them on the ground until they were wet with dew, and then wrung them out into our mouths. Ah, horrible! horrible!"
Nicholas spat over the side of the boat at the thought, and then went on.
"For the most part we lived up in the mountains to the north of Arcadia, but somehow or other when summer came we all began to head southward again. We never spoke to each other of where we were going, for we all knew. And one evening, just before sunset, we were on the brow of a big wooded hill above Dimitzana and looked at our homes again. Homesickness and want of water – these were the two things which made me suffer, and I would drink the wringings of a shirt sooner than be sick for home.
"All next day we stopped there, sitting on that spur of wooded hill looking at home as if our eyes would start from our heads. Now one of us and then another would roll over, burying his face in his hands, and the rest of us would pretend not to notice. I cannot say for certain what the others did when they buried their faces like that; for myself I can only say that I sobbed – for some had wives there, and some children. And it hurts a man to sob unless he is a Turk, for Turks sob if the coffee is not to their taste.
"That