The Capsina: An Historical Novel

by E. F. Benson

Dramali's cavalry had been divided into two parts, the larger of which formed the vanguard. Of these four hundred had passed through that valley of death, of the rest the red and fuller flowing stream gave account. Behind them had followed the first division of the infantry, some three thousand men, now scattered over the armed hillsides, and behind again the baggage mules and camels. Dramali himself rode with the second division of the cavalry, some three hundred yards behind, and the rear was brought up by the remainder of his foot-soldiers. He himself had been checked in the lower part of the pass by the congestion in front, and waited in vain to move again. Aides-de-camp were sent off to ascertain the cause of this contravention of his orders, but before any came back, the sight of the hill-sides, covered with flying men, brought him quicker and more eloquent message.

He paused a moment, then in nervous anger drove his spurs into his horse, and checked it again, biting the ends of his long mustache.

"Why do they not go forward?" he said. And again, "Why are they scattering?" Then, with a sudden spurt of anger, "Oh, the dogs!" he cried; "dogs, to be chased by dogs!" But the fire in his words was only ash.

He looked round on the calm, impassive faces of his staff, men for the most part without the bowels of either mercy or fear, who would meet death with as perfect an indifference as they would mete it out to others. The absolute nonchalance of their expression, their total disregard of what might happen to them, struck him into a childish kind of frenzy, for he was of different make.

"If we push on, we all die," he said, in a sort of squeal; "and if we turn back, what next?"

At that the officer near him turned his head aside, hiding a smile, but before Dramali had time to notice it a fresh movement of the Greeks from in front made up his mind for him. Those under Niketas, on the left of the pass, were seen pouring down off the hill on to the road, and almost before the Turks saw what was happening had cut his army in two, drawing themselves up just behind the baggage animals, hardly three hundred yards in front of the second division of the cavalry with whom Dramali rode. That was enough for the Serashier. Dearly as he loved his battery of silver saucepans, his embroidered armor, and all the appliances of a pasha, he loved one thing better, and that at least was left him; he was determined to save it as long as possible.

"Back to Argos!" he screamed. "Let the infantry open out; the cavalry will go first." And putting his spurs to his horse he fairly forced his way back, and not drawing bridle, rode through the scorched plains which he had passed that morning, and by twelve o'clock was back at Argos again.

On that afternoon and all the next day he remained there in a feverish stupor of inaction, crying aloud at one time that Allah was dead, and the world given over to the hands of the infidels, at another that the ships were already at Nauplia, and that he would march there. Then it would seem that the world only contained one thing of importance—and that a certain narghile of his with a stem studded with turquoise and moonstone—and that this had fallen into the hands of the Greeks. Let them send quickly and say that he would give an oke of gold for it, and two Greek slaves of his which had been taken at Kydonies: one was sixteen, and the other only fourteen; they were worth their weight in gold for their beauty only, and Constantine, the elder, made coffee as it could only be made in paradise. Let Constantine come at once and make him some coffee. Anyhow, Constantine and coffee were left him, and nothing else mattered.

Two days later the remnant of the Turkish force again started for Corinth. This time Dramali, who had abated a little his contempt for the Greek dogs, making up the complement in fearful haste, took the precaution to send forward an advance-guard during the night, who should find out if any of the passes were unoccupied. The Greeks under Niketas, who were in no hurry to engage the Turks again—for, since their escape was impossible, they could afford to wait—were still holding the pass which the Turks had attempted to cross two days before, and the reconnoitring party of Dramali found the road farther away to the east unoccupied. Niketas, when it was seen which way they were going, hastened across to secure a repetition of what had gone before, and making his way over the hills, again stopped the advance. But the road here was wider, lying between hills less easy to occupy, and the Turkish cavalry, by a brilliant charge, won their way through and escaped to Corinth, abandoning the remainder of the infantry and the rest of the baggage. On them the Greeks settled like a cloud of stinging insects, and that evening Constantine, the coffee-maker of paradise, exercised his functions in the house of his father, a refugee from Kydonies, who had taken service with Niketas.

Thus the great scheme came to an end, a pricked bubble, a melting of snow in summer. No ships had yet appeared off Nauplia, and Dramali's invincible army, which waited for them, had come and gone. The eager, hungry eyes of those besieged in Nauplia starved and watched in vain, and to the hungry mouths the food was scantier. Slowly and inevitably the cause of the people, in the hands no more of incompetent leaders, was gaining ground against the intolerable burden of those heartless and lustful masters, and link by link the chain of slavery was snapping and falling as the husks burst and fall from corn already mature and ripe.