Accidents of an antiquary's life

by D. G. Hogarth

I took to myself, therefore, a helper, whom I had met at Athens eager for the front, and we went up together to Thessaly with all speed. At Volo we found good cheer and great clamour for war, and in every open space Reservists marshalled, who, if ever they had known soldier craft, had forgotten it. At Velestino, too, all was fair, and men gathered thick about us with cheers for England, who, as report said, had just checkmated a German plan to block Piraeus. But before we sighted the minarets of Larissa (it is the one Greek town whose mean outline is still ennobled by their slender dignity), a northerly gale swept down, and rain began. Chilled to the bone and spattered with filth of unpaved streets, we came to the only hotel to find no lying room, even in a passage way. Our servant went out to seek some decent lodging, but in vain; and just at dark we took refuge in a wretched peasants’ inn, where two soldiers were bribed to set free a single room for the three of us. Bugs were making their laboured but hopeful way over the floor towards the beds, and, lifting the coverlets, we found myriads already gathered in clusters on the mattresses. But if they waited there, they were cheated: for we spread sheets of rubber, knowing their distaste of its smell, and veiling our faces and hands, lay on the floor in our clothes. In the morning a Larissean, fearful who might be billeted on him, was glad to offer us a house far from soldiers’ quarters, and we made ourselves comfortable enough in two empty but wholesome rooms.

There were some sixteen thousand soldiers in Larissa at that time, and during a fortnight I saw no man drunk and no common woman ply for hire. It was the Greek warrior’s simple joy to stroll the streets, his little finger locked in a comrade’s, and to sing in not unmusical harmony. Yet if he was a peaceable soldier, he was a lawless one. Once I heard a colonel reprove a strolling group which would have passed him without any gesture of salute. “Who are we that we are bidden to do such things?” said one, as the group moved on. When a battalion was being inspected before marching to the front, I watched man after man break rank to chat at ease with the bystanders, while the general was passing down the lines, and heard them laugh at his reproof. Peitharcheia, discipline,—what is that to a free-born Greek, whose birthright is to think for himself, and for you? It is said that the officer who, some weeks later, was ordered to blow up the Peneius bridge behind the retreating army exclaimed, “Am I a Vandal?” and the Turks found the bridge unhurt.

All here cried, “To Constantinople!” and mingled mutiny with their prayers. The King, they said, would not declare war because his Russian Queen had been forbidden by the Tsar. But if he would not, the voluntaries would. All southern Macedonia was waiting a sign to fall on the Turks, and in the space of a night the way would be clear to Salonica and beyond. If we went up to the outposts we should see in what heart were the Greeks and in what fear the Turks.

So on the second day we set out for the Malúna pass above Elassóna. At Tirnovo the carriage seemed already to have passed out of Greece, so Turkish looked the little town with its shaded bazar and mosques and baths. At Ligária, where some two hundred kilted men were dancing before their tents in the morning sun and chanting war-songs, we were set on Hungarian cavalry horses, and escorted up the pass, with Olympus swelling grandly on the right. Two blockhouses and two batteries faced each other on the summit, and far below lay Turkish Elassóna, a dark patch within a white ring of tents. The officers (one red bearded, unlike a Greek), who had been watching this ring grow wider day by day, held more sober talk than we had heard in Larissa. “They are many more than we,” said they, “and our beginning will perhaps be hard.” “But,” added the younger of the two, who was sweeping the Haliacmon valley with his glass, “all there wait to join us, and the end will be easy.”

I asked safe conduct to the Turkish blockhouse, and was passed over the line. Two colleagues, or rivals, of whom we had heard nothing since their better-horsed carriage had overtaken us before Tírnovo, proved to be already seated in the little room, and plying the Albanian major with questions through a Greek interpreter. The latest come is ever most honoured by Turkish courtesy, and at sight of me the major made room on the divan at his side. I seated myself, and greeted him in my sorry Turkish. Overjoyed to be done with the Greek, the Albanian lapsed into his proper military speech, and sent for coffee. But the others took it ill, growled that we were now too many, swung out of the hut, and, when my visit was over, took me to task for having come between them and their news. Meanwhile the major had fenced with my inquiries about the Elassóna troops, and I had parried his about the muzzling of Moslems in Crete, and we parted as good friends as we had met, and about as wise. The officers of the kilted men at Ligária invited us to their midday meal, where was not overmuch to eat, but plenty of rough wine and the cheerful company of some French journalists, halting on their way to the crest. King George’s health was drunk “if he allows us to make war,” and then that of “all Powers who love Greece.” Great Britain was the favourite of the hour, and the proposer of the toast breathed a fervent hope that “English guns were hungering for Russian meat.” As a Briton who spoke Greek I was put up to reply, and I trust I bore the French love of Russia in mind; but I cannot say now what exactly may have passed, and have only a confused memory of driving away amid cheers, and becoming very drowsy on the Larissa road.

It remained to see how the case stood at the western end of the Cambunian lines; and on the following day we were trundling over the road to Tríkkala, with blockhouses, now Greek, now Turkish, always in sight on the crests to north. Except for a tedious ferry over Peneius and a noontide halt at the khan of Zarkos, near the scene of the only stout stand the Greeks would make on the frontier in the weeks to come, there was nothing to vary the monotony of a long drive between low hills and marshy plain. But the prospect of Pindus, one unbroken wall of snow, relieved the last hours. Tríkkala, with its spacious square and imposing houses, promised better quarters than eventually we found in a tiny, dubious chamber, and we chose to pass much of our night in talking to one Greek officer or another. The five thousand men who were waiting here showed less rawness in their mien than the army of Larissa, and seemed better equipped for a coming war: but an officer anticipated all criticism by saying that Greece had no use for regulars. She was freed by guerilla fighters of the hills, and would conquer by the same. Forbearing to object that the campaign might take place chiefly in the open Thessalian plain, I asked an artilleryman if there were many of his service who could speak Turkish? “Not I, for one,” he answered scornfully, “but our guns there can say what a Turk will understand.” I hope they could, for probably they are in Turkey now.

From Kalabaka five kilted men were sent next day to escort us on a long march to the outposts above Diskáta. They were true soldiers of the hillman kind, lean, long-stepping, untiring, to whom the admirable Greek schools had given intelligence and interests little like those of our Highlanders. We talked, for example, as we strode together, about the Emperor Hadrian. The way lay under the Metéora rocks, and halting below the chief monastery, we summoned with loud shouts the “fishers of men.” But their windlass remained still, and the kilted men, growing impatient, began to fire upwards. One or two bullets skimmed the prior’s tiles, and a monk appeared at an opening to ask our pleasure. We called to him to let down the net, but pleading that his fellows were all at meat, he offered us no more than the cranky ladders of a perilous chain, which swayed in the wind against the overhanging cliff. We had neither stomach nor head for such escalade; but two of the soldiers dared it, and, once aloft, soon had the windlass manned and the net lowered. The rope had plainly seen many and better days, but up we must go. We lay down together in the meshes, which were gathered and hooked above; the rope strained, the net tightened, and we slowly rose, locked in an inextricable embrace, like a pair of bagged ferrets, spun, bumped the cliff, spun again for an eternity, till gaffed and drawn into the entry, we realised that we yet breathed.

The monks bade us coldly welcome, though we gave them time to finish meat while we looked at the dark church, whose only interest lies in its age, and climbed to the rounded summit of the rock, where fed eleven snow-white sheep and one coal-black, in memory, I suppose, of the apostolic Twelve. The keys of the Treasury were said to be with the Bishop elsewhere; but I suspect we might have been shown the precious things had it not been for the presence of our kilted guards, who treated the fathers with scant respect, and were evidently feared. The Prior bemoaned the coming war, complaining that no one would turn kaloyer now; he had but five monks all told. But the Bursar was a better patriot, who would breathe fire and slaughter, if the men of Athens did not make war. Where was Constantine tarrying who should lead the Greeks? Ah! who knew? he asked darkly.

The day was far spent when we saw the blockhouses at last, Greek to right, and Turk to left, on a low ridge. The way had lain through a wild and ill-tracked country, where were a few Vlach villages, of evil fame for past raiding and present brigandage; and from the frontier we looked north over a yet more savage prospect. Diskáta lay hidden by a shoulder of the hill, and nothing but a rough mule path came up from it. There were no such proofs of Turkish assembly visible from this point, as we had seen from Malúna, and the half dozen infantrymen who squatted on the Turkish side of the line were tatterdemalions. The Haliacmon basin lay in deep purple shadow, and beyond it a tumbled sea of mountain waves, swelling to west and north, broke here and there in snows: on the other hand the bastions of Pindus rose against the sunset out of a blue-grey mist, which hid their roots and all the plain. But such beauties had lost any charm they may ever have had for our hosts, the two Greek officers in charge of the blockhouse. It was very lonely, they said, and how long would they be left there? One who had been on the hills fourteen months showed himself a more doubtful prophet even than the men of Malúna. Would Macedonia indeed rise? If not, could the thin Greek line hold the Malakás pass, and how should he alone stem the unknown flood which might well up from Diskáta? Small blame to him for his doubts, with that five hour march over rough paths and unbridged streams to his nearest support!

The two were as lavish of good cheer as glad of our coming, and one kept the caraffe of raki replenished and the wine flowing free, while the other took his turn to patrol. After which surfeit, fevered already by our long tramp, we had broken sleep in a clean, cold soldier’s room, and were up and about in good time to watch the first blush of day on the Pindus snows, and begin the tramp to Kalabáka again. We went back to Larissa by railway, and at the junction of Velestino I spied, to my surprise, a banker of my former acquaintance in Alexandria. I asked him what he did in this far province? “Business,” he said, “in Kalabáka—some men to see there.” The men, though I knew it not, were those voluntaries who would raid over the frontier some weeks later and compel war; and it was this banker, as kindly and brave a man as I have known, who financed that fatal venture of fanatic Hellenism. The following evils broke his heart, it was said, and he died not many months later.