The Capsina. E. F. Benson
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 my way of speaking; no man in this island takes offence at what I say, for he knows that would not help what he has his hand to—aye, and he would be like to get his nose pulled, which is of the more immediate consequence. Now tell me how many ships do you mean to victual and put into commission with your admirable notions?"
"Four, to begin with," said Economos.
"Four, to begin with, says he!" exclaimed Tombazes, in a lamentable treble voice. "And how many to end with, and with what will you be paying the crews? Man, do you think you will find enough to keep them in pipes and tobacco with what is in the treasury? Four, to begin with!—save us all!"
"The crews will average sixty men each," continued Economos, "and that will make two hundred and forty. Every year the treasury pays the wage of two hundred and fifty men. I deal with facts, you see."
"Come, then, let's have facts," cried Tombazes, "and surely I will help you. It's facts the man will be wanting. Why, you must have a fever or an ague in your blood! You want bleeding, man, I see it in your eye. Do you think we collect the taxes for a whole year together?"
"I suppose what there is in the treasury will last us a month."
"Well, say it lasts a month," said Tombazes. "What then? You will return here for more money. Much will you find when you have taken from the island just those men who pay the bulk of the taxes. I'm thinking that your admirable notion is even sillier, if we look into it, than it appeared on the surface. And even the look of it on the surface made me think you had been better for blood-letting."
"See, father, listen to me," said Economos, with sudden earnestness. "Have you heard what has happened? Surely you have not, or you would not speak thus. Do you know that Kalamata has been taken by the Greeks, that the beacons of liberty have flashed from one end of the country to another? A free people have stood in the meadows round Kalamata and sung the 'Te Deum' for that great and wonderful victory. Is that not a thing to make the blood tingle? In the north, Germanos, archbishop and primate, has raised the revolt. The monks of Megaspelaion are up in arms; Petrobey and they of Maina have come forth like a herd of hungry wolves."
Tombazes' eye flashed.
"It is fit that you should tell me all you have to say for their mad scheme. Go on, man, go on. Tell me all you know. I—I can judge better so."
Economos suspected the truth, that the primate was all tinder to the flame, and, with a certain acumen, did not let him see this, nor did he at present tax him with it. Instead, he spoke of the plans of the revolutionists—how that the Turks were flocking into Tripolitza, from which, when the time came, there would be no escape; how essential it was to the success of the war that Greece should be cut off from the headquarters of the Ottoman forces. This could not be done till the coasts were in the hands of the insurgents, and their ships prevented fresh arms and men being sent into the country. That was the part of the Greek ports and islands. Spetzas had already joined; in Psara soon would the standard of revolution be raised; was Hydra, the largest and best-manned, she who should be both arms and sinews of naval Greece, to stand neutral? Indeed, neutral she could not be. If she was not with the insurgents the Turks would soon make her into an advanced point from which they could the more easily reach the mainland. She would be garrisoned; her harbor would be a cluster of Turkish ships—would that be a pleasant thing for the Hydriots? Their only safety was in fighting. Greece was in arms—what matter to the Turks if Hydra had joined the insurgents or not? Would the mob of soldiers and sailors spare them? Would they leave the Hydriots their houses while they camped on the hillside? Would their women be spared because they were loyal? And the danger to Greece was thus doubled. The Turks would be holding an eyrie from which to swoop in the midst of the patriots. "Indeed," concluded Economos, returning from his somewhat rhetorical language to colloquialism, "we will have no wasps' nests in the seat of our trousers, if you please."
This was too much for Tombazes, and motioning back the crowd, who had begun to encroach again, he spoke low to the other.
"I shall surely burst unless I speak," he said. "Do you not see how I am with you? Man, you are blinder than the worms if you do not see that. But if you drop a word of that till I give you leave, I swear by the lance of St. George and the coffee-pot which he made whole, that I will kick you till my foot is sore and you are less like a man than a jelly-fish! That treasury notion of yours is absurd. That I stick to, and for the reasons I gave you. Give it up, I ask you, for the present. Mark you, and listen to me. I am a traitor in my camp for a good cause, and I can help you. If the primates and others are assured you are not going to touch the national treasury—for its safety, they think, means their safety from the Turk—half the opposition will be withdrawn. You must raise money another way. Moreover, you want five times as much as there is in the treasury. And what is the use of four ships? Eh, that was what I meant when I said your notion seemed to me the silliest thing I have ever heard. Did you not see that? Ah, well, God made the blind men also! There are at least thirty in the harbor, which are all capable of carrying guns and of outsailing those lubberly Turkish tubs. You must have them all. And you must not leave the women and children here defenceless. You must organize a body of men who will guard the harbor and the town. Luckily there is no landing except this side the island. Afterwards, of course, you will add the money in the treasury to what must be collected by levying a tax. Milk the treasury dry, man. The money will be stored in the Church of St. George, and I shall have the key. Now mark the result of our conversation. I have persuaded you, so I shall tell the primates, and you the people, not to touch the treasury—that alone will quiet my party considerably. Propose to the people to levy a tax on all the capital in the island, and submit that to the primates as the only condition on which the treasury will be untouched. The people will give willingly, the primates unwillingly, but the money will be the same. Fill your glass; shake hands with me, and I will go to my party. I drink to the freedom of Greece, and to you. Viva!"
For the next two or three days negotiations went on between the primates and the people, and often Tombazes had occasion to wear a mighty grave face, whereby he should cloak the merriness of his heart. The part he was playing, as he assured himself, was the only way of fighting for the good cause, for had he openly joined the revolutionist party, the confidence which