‘Is not Mouraki dead? Why need we fear? Shall we wait idle while our Lady is taken from us? To the shore, islanders! Where is fear since Mouraki is dead?’
His words lit a torch that blazed up furiously. In an instant they were aflame with the mad notion of attacking the soldiers and the gunboat. No voice was raised to point out the hopelessness of such an attempt, the certain death and the heavy penalties which must wait on it. The death-chant broke out again, mingled with exhortations to turn and march against the soldiers, and with encouragements to the tall fellow—Orestes they called him—to put himself at their head. He was not loth.
‘Let us go and get our guns and our knives,’ he cried, ‘and then to the shore!’
‘And this man?’ called half-a-dozen, pointing at me.
‘When we have driven out the soldiers we will deal with him,’ said Master Orestes. ‘If our Lady desires him for her husband, he shall wed her.’
A shout of approval greeted this arrangement, and they drew together into a sort of rude column, the women making a fringe to it. But I could not let them march on their own destruction without a word of warning. I sprang on to the raised step where Phroso had stood, just outside the door, and cried:
‘You fools! The guns of the ship will mow you down before you can touch a hair of the head of a single soldier.’
A deep derisive groan met my attempt at dissuasion.
‘On, on!’ they cried.