‘I will take him to the guardhouse and keep him,’ said Kortes; and the old priest murmured low, ‘God have mercy on him!’ Then, with a swift dart, Phroso sprang towards Kortes; her hands were clasped, her eyes prayed him to seek some ground of mercy, some pretext for a lighter sentence. She said not a word, but everyone of us read her eloquent prayer. Kortes looked round again; the faces about him were touched with a tenderness that they had not worn before; but the tenderness was for the advocate, no part of it reached the criminal. Kortes shook his head gravely. Phroso turned to the woman who had comforted her before, and hid her face. Constantine, seeing the last hope gone, swayed and fell into the arms of the man who, with Kortes, held him, uttering a long low moan of fear and despair, terrible to listen to, even from lips guilty as his. Thus was Constantine Stefanopoulos tried for his life in the yard of Vlacho’s inn in Neopalia. The trial ended, he was carried out into the street on his way to the prison, and we, one and all, in dead silence, followed. The yard was emptied, and the narrow street choked with the crowd which attended Kortes and his prisoner till the doors of the guardhouse closed on them.
Then, for the first time that day, Phroso’s eyes sought mine in a rapid glance, in which I read joy for my safety; but the glance fell as I answered it, and she turned away in confusion. Her avowal, forgotten for an instant in gladness, recurred to her mind and dyed her cheeks red. Averting my eyes from her, I looked down the slope of the street towards the sea. The thought of her and of nothing else was in my mind.
Ah, my island! My sweet capricious island!
A sudden uncontrollable exclamation burst from my lips and, raising my hand, I pointed to the harbour and the blue water beyond. Every head followed the direction of my outstretched finger; every pair of eyes was focussed on the object that held mine. A short breathless silence—a momentary wonder—then, shrill or deep, low in fear or loud in excitement, broke forth the cry:
‘The Governor! The Governor!’
For a gunboat was steaming slowly into the harbour of Neopalia, and the Turkish flag flew over her.
The sight wrought transformation. In a moment, as it seemed to me, the throng round me melted away. The street grew desolate, the houses on either side swallowed their eager occupants; Kortes alone, with his prisoner, knew nothing of the fresh event, only Phroso and Francesca stood their ground. Demetri was slinking hastily away. The old priest was making for his home. The shutters of dead Vlacho’s inn came down, and girls bustled to and fro, preparing food. I stood unwatched, unheeded, apparently forgotten; festival, tumult, trial, condemnation seemed passed like visions; the flag that flew from the gunboat brought back modern days, the prose of life, and ended the wild poetic drama that we had played and a second One-eyed Alexander might worthily have sung. How had the Governor come before his time, and why?
‘Denny!’ I cried aloud in inspiration and hope, and I ran as though the foul fiends whom Demetri had heard were behind me. Down the steep street and on to the jetty I ran. As I arrived there the gunboat also reached it, and, a moment later, Denny was shaking my hand till it felt like falling off, while from the deck of the boat Hogvardt and Watkins were waving wild congratulations.
Denny had jumped straight from deck to jetty; but now a gangway was thrust out, and I passed with him on to the deck, and presented myself, with a low bow, to a gentleman who stood there. He was a tall full-bodied man, apparently somewhat under fifty years old; his face was heavy and broad, in complexion dark and sallow; he wore a short black beard; his lips were full, his eyes acute and small. I did not like the look of him much; but he meant law and order and civilisation and an end to the wild ways of Neopalia. For this, as Denny whispered to me, was no less a man than the Governor himself, Mouraki Pasha. I bowed again yet lower; for I stood before a man of whom report had much to tell—something good, much bad, all interesting.