The Capsina: An Historical Novel

by E. F. Benson

So the terms were accepted, and Hypsilantes parted in a dignified manner from the Turk, and the latter went back to the citadel.

Poniropoulos, with hands itching for the touch of gold, took prompt and characteristic measures. He went straight to the nearest baker's, bought the whole of the bread he had in stock, staying only to haggle over a few piasters in the total, and not caring even to go back to his quarters for his own beast, hired a mule and hurried up the path with plying stick to the citadel. The baker, Anastasi, Mitsos's friend, stood for a moment wondering what was in the wind, when the solution struck him; and being a man born with two eyes wide open, saw that there was large profit to be made here, but no reason why the "Belly," as they called Poniropoulos, should be monopolist therein; and running out, he conferred with other bakers in the town, and it was unanimously and merrily agreed that all bread sold directly and indirectly to the "Belly" should be at just three times the price of the bread sold to others, and that if this did not satisfy him, why, he might make bread himself, and be damned to him.

The news spread rapidly—it could hardly have failed to spread—for before an hour was up the camp presented the dignified spectacle of various captains and primates bargaining and arguing over wine and olives with the shop folk, and literally racing each other to the citadel, where they sold their produce at starvation rates, laughing to themselves that Kolocotrones at any rate was out of it. Mitsos, who was buying fish in the market for himself, was pointing out to the shopman the impropriety of selling stale fish to a man with a nose, when the primate Caralambes came in to buy all the fish, he could find. And Mitsos, grinning evilly:

"This is a fish I would have bought," he said, "but it is not so fresh. We make you a present of it. You will get five piasters for it above, for the use of the church."

Kolocotrones returned after a few days, and entirely approved of the terms. Hypsilantes was engaged in his usual finicking and dilatory manner upon hiring ships for the embarkation of the Turks, according to treaty, but Kolocotrones told him that he need trouble himself no more about that, as he himself would see to it. But it was thus that he saw to it: Three ships which had been already engaged he dismissed with a certain compensation, saying that they would not be needed, and turned from the hiring of ships to the more immediate and lucrative pursuit of selling provisions to the half-starved garrison. The ships could be hired afterwards, and then there was a penny to be turned in the matter of passage-money.

The longer this traffic went on the better were both sides pleased. For the Turks, every day brought the arrival of relief forces nearer, and every day the captains reaped a golden harvest. There would be time, so thought Kolocotrones, to see about getting the ships when the new army drew nearer, and in any case the treaty of capitulation held, for the Turks, when the ships were ready, were bound to deliver over the fortress, their arms, and two-thirds of their movable property. And again the captains licked their lips.

Meantime the end of Rhamazan had come, and Kanaris, who with the Capsina had joined the Greek fleet in the eastern sea, had paid the Turks a visit which should cause them always to remember Rhamazan, 1822. The Greek fleet under the Admiral Miaulis had encountered the enemy off Chios, and the latter had retreated to the Gulf of Smyrna. There they had engaged the Greek in a desultory and ineffectual cannonade for a day or two, the Greeks not venturing in under the guns of the fort which protected the fleet, and the Turks not caring to sail out and give battle in earnest. Eventually the Greeks retreated to Psara, and the Turks again anchored off Chios, some six miles from the entrance to the Gulf of Smyrna.

All the last day of Rhamazan gala preparations went forward on board the ships for the solemn celebration of Bairam, and before night fell watchers were stationed on the main-tops of all the fleet to look for the first appearance of the new moon, which was the beginning of the feast. As the sun went down lines of bright-colored lanterns designed with their light the rigging of all the ships, the more conspicuous and the most bedecked being the eighty-gun ship of the captain, Pasha Kara Ali, who entertained for the feast the chief officers of the fleet. The deck was a house of Syrian tents and awnings, and troops of dancing-girls were in waiting to amuse the guests. As a salute to the end of the Rhamazan, ten minutes before sunset all the guns of the fleet volleyed again and again, till the air was thick with the smoke of the firing. Then, as the last echo died away, for a space there was silence, while all waited for the word. Suddenly, from the mast-heads, it was cried, "The moon, the moon of Bairam!" and the jubilant cry, wailing and mournful to western ears, was taken up by every throat. On board the flag-ship of Kara Ali all waited, standing at their places at the tables till the word was cried, and at that they reclined themselves, and the feast began.

Now many had noticed, but none had thought it noticeable, that all day there had lain close to the entrance of the Gulf of Smyrna, as if unable to get in, two small Greek ships. As soon as dusk fell and their movements were obscured, they changed their course. They carried, each of them, a cargo of brushwood soaked with turpentine, and their sails were steeped with the same. Kanaris, a straw in his mouth, for he could not with safety smoke on a fire-ship, commanded one, and Albanian Hydiot the other. The wind held fair, and Kanaris went straight for the ship of Kara Ali, and favored by the land-breeze blowing freshly off the coast, towards which the bows of the ship were pointing, ran his bowsprit straight through a port as near the bows as possible, set light to his ship with his own hands, and jumped into a boat that was towed behind. In a moment the flames leaped, licking from stem to stern of his caique, and driven by the wind, mounted like a flicked whiplash up the sails and in at the open ports. The awning on the quarter-deck caught fire, and being dry from the exposure to the hot sun all day, burned like timber. And Kanaris, having exchanged the straw for a pipe, rowed back to a safe distance, and watched the destruction of the ship with his habitual calm.

"It will burn nicely now," he said.