"Another, another!" he cried; "thank God, another shipful will feed the fish of the gulf!"
"Mitsos, oh, little Mitsos!" cried the girl, and she kissed him on the cheek and on the lips.
The next moment they had started asunder, knowing what they had done, and the Capsina, burning with an exulting shame, turned from him and, without a word, went to her cabin.
[CHAPTER IX]
During the four months of Mitsos's absence the progress of the war in the Peloponnese had been checked by a thousand petty and ill-timed jealousies on the part of the chiefs and primates, and more than ever it was becoming the work of the people. It had been agreed in the preceding autumn that the Peloponnesian senate instituted at Tripoli should be dissolved at the fall of that fortress, which took place in October, and that a national assembly, now that the war was a business in which the whole nation, north and south alike, had taken up arms, should direct the supreme conduct of affairs. But this suited very ill with the greed and selfish ambitions of many of the military leaders and primates. Their places in the Peloponnesian senate were assured, and having a voice in its transactions, and for the most part a singular unanimity of purpose, their object being to get as much plunder as possible, it was not at all their desire to be superseded in power by deputies chosen from the whole of Greece. But until the national assembly was formed all power was vested in them, and with a swift insight—cunning, to use no uglier word, rather than creditable—they passed a resolution that the deputies to the national assembly should be elected by themselves.
Now the prince Demetrius Hypsilantes, though weak and indecisive, and altogether incapable of initiative action, had, at any rate, in the Peloponnesian senate that power which an honest and upright man will always hold in an assembly where the ruling motive is personal greed. But his curiously infirm mind clutched, like a child with a bright toy, rather at the show of power than at power itself, and now that the development of the war, with the demand for a more representative assembly, threatened to deprive him of that, he threw in his lot with the primates and captains of the Morea, preferring to retain the presidency of the Peloponnesian senate, and to be a roi mort, rather than take a subordinate part in the national assembly. For it seemed certain that Prince Mavrogordatos, who had been appointed governor-general in northwest Greece, would be elected President of Greece, and this for more than one reason. In the first place, he had not as yet shown himself too patently unfit for the office, while Hypsilantes had; in the second place, the Peloponnesian senate was far too heavily faction-ridden to co-elect out of their own body except on the barest majority against other candidates singly; and, in the third, they unanimously preferred to have as a president a man who, it was understood, would go back to his command in north Greece, leaving them to their own control, which was just equivalent to no control at all.
This national assembly met at Epidaurus in January; it shouted itself hoarse over many high-sounding declarations, loud and empty as drums; it conferred titles and honors; it devised banners and legislative measures, all highly colored, it presented Kolocotrones, the old chieftain and leader of an enormous and disorganized band of brave and badly armed men, with a brass helmet and the title of commander-in-chief in the Morea, and congratulated itself on having put things on a firm and orderly basis. Furthermore, it resolved to take the fortress of Nauplia without loss of time, with the effect that in May the siege was still going on, without any prospect of a calculable termination. Mavrogordatos, elected President of Greece and confirmed in his command of the northwest province, went back to his duties, and engaged on a series of futile manoeuvres which, as he had no acquaintance of any kind with military matters, ended in a disastrous defeat at Petta. Hypsilantes chose a new aide-de-camp in place of Mitsos, who had departed without leave to the Gulf of Corinth with the Capsina; and Kolocotrones put on his brass helmet and went on small marauding expeditions, returning now and then to Nauplia to see how the siege had got on, as a man watches a pot over a slow fire. Such were the main results of the great council of Epidaurus, and thus passed the days from January to May; till May the Greek fleet was idle, though a dozen ships at double pay blockaded Nauplia by sea in order to prevent its relief by the Turkish fleet, which every one very well knew was still at Constantinople. On land the lower town was in the hands of the insurgents, who, however, made no attempt to take the fortress, but waited for nature, in the shape of starvation, to act unaided. Petrobey, disgusted at the appointment of Kolocotrones as commander-in-chief, retired with the growling Mainats into his own country to wait till, as he hoped, the voice of the people should recall him, or, if not, until some one should be appointed commander-in-chief whom he could with honor serve under. For Kolocotrones, so he openly said, had brought dishonor on Greece by his disgraceful trafficking with the besieged in Tripoli, and was no more than a brigand chief weighing the honor of the nation against piasters, and finding the piasters the worthier.
Suleima was busy to and fro in the veranda and garden of the house, one May afternoon, her hands full, as behooved a good housewife, with the woman's part. The littlest one, now seven months old, was tucked away in his cot for his mid-day sleep, under the angle of shadow cast by the corner of the veranda, and every now and then Suleima would pause in her work and let her eyes rest on him a moment. The child slept soundly, one creased little hand lay on the wicker side of the cradle, a pink little nose pointed absurdly to the roof.
"He is altogether quite adorable," said Suleima to herself, pausing to look, and with a smile of utter happiness went back to her work.