CHAPTER II
ECHOES OF 1821
OWING to certain circumstances, I was not living with my immediate family, but was under the care of my father’s uncle. He and I lived on one of those islands that rise high above the Sea of Marmora; and our near horizon was the Asiatic coast of Turkey, which stretched itself in the blue waters like a beautiful odalisk. We lived in an old huge house, which belonged to him, and was far away from any other habitation. The sea was in front, the mountains behind, and thick woodland on the other two sides.
From the time I could remember my uncle conversed with me as if I were grown-up, yet I felt that he held me in contempt because I was a girl and could not carry arms. Life contained nothing for him beyond the hope of waging warfare against the Turks.
He had been only a lad in 1821 when the Greeks had risen in desperation to throw off the Mussulman yoke. Enlisting among the first, he had fought during the entire nine years. Subsequently he fought in every one of the uprisings of Crete. When not fighting, he was back in Turkey, in his home, where he thought, studied, and sometimes wrote inflammatory articles for the Greek reviews.
At times he had tremendous physical suffering, mementoes of his many battles. On those days I did not see him. He possessed that noble and rare quality of being ashamed of his bodily ailments. But after my fifth birthday I was present on many days when mental anguish possessed him. On such days he would stride up and down his vast gloomy rooms, talking of the Greek race and of the yoke under which so large a part of it was living.
He would stand by the window and tell me about Crete, pointing, as if the island were visible from where he stood—and I believe that in spite of the distance, he actually saw it, for it was ever present in his mind, and he knew every corner of it.
“There it lies,” he would say, “lapped by the waves of the Mediterranean; but were the mighty sea to pass over it, it could not wash away the noble Cretan blood which drenches it. It is soaked with it, and it will be blood-soaked until the Mussulman yoke has been wrenched from it—or till there is no more Cretan blood to shed.”
Or he would cry out: “Don’t you hear the shrieks of the Cretan women as they leap into the foaming sea, holding fast to their hearts their little ones? Yes! they would rather meet their death in the merciless but clean sea, than fall, living, into the hands of the vile Turkish soldiery. Oh! my God—my Christian God—how can you permit it?”
He would bow his head on his arms and remain motionless, until the feeling which was choking him had passed. Then, in a subdued tone, he would resume:
“Crete! Crete! brave, indomitable Crete—always victorious, yet always handed back to the Turks by Christian Europe. My beautiful Crete, when shalt thou be free?”