The Capsina: An Historical Novel

by E. F. Benson

"And once among the transports," remarked the Capsina, "it will be strange if an orange or an egg gets into Nauplia."

Mitsos laughed.

"I have pity for hungry folk," he said. "Listen, Capsina; there are guns from Nauplia."

Again and again, and all that afternoon, the heavy buffets of the guns boomed across the water; for the Turks in Nauplia, seeing that their fleet was even now at the entrance of the gulf, had opened fire on the Burdjee, where Hane and Manéthee were catching fish. Hane had determined not to fire back, for it was better to reserve himself for the Turkish fleet, especially since there were only two of them to work the guns, and so they sat at the angle farthest away from the town, dabbled their feet in the tepid water, and watched the balls, which for the most part went very wide, dip and ricochet in the bay.

For three days the two fleets manoeuvred idly just outside the gulf; the wind was fitfully light and variable, and for the most part a dead calm prevailed, and the Turks were as unable to pursue their way up the gulf as the Greeks to attack them on the open sea. But at the end of the third inactive day the breeze freshened, and a steadier and more lively air, unusual from this quarter in the summer, blew up the gulf. Had the capitan pasha taken advantage of this, risking therein but little—for the night was clear, and moonrise only an hour or two after sunset—he could have run a straight course before the wind and been at the entrance of Nauplia harbor by morning, exposed, indeed, to the fire of the Burdjee guns, had there been any one to work them, but protected by the guns of the fort. The whole Greek fleet, so far as he knew, except for one brig that had gone sidling up the coast, was some eight miles in his rear, and, with so strangely favorable a wind, his own vessels, though clumsy in the tack or in close sailing, would have run straight before it, and the way was open. Instead, he feared travelling by night; or, perhaps, with that sea-pack in his rear, he did not mean to sail at all, and hove to till morning, sending on, however, a slow-sailing Austrian merchantman in the service of the Sultan, laden with provisions, without escort, for he knew that all the Greek fleet, except that one sailing brig, as like as not on the rocks by this time, was behind him, and he proposed—or did not propose, he only knew—to catch up the merchantman in the morning. What he had not observed was that as night fell, and the breeze got up, the floundering brig straightened herself up like a man lame made miraculously whole, and followed his transport up the gulf.

Soon after moonrise the Austrian furled sail too, and Mitsos, who was on the watch, hove to also, and when morning dawned, red and windy, it showed him the Turkish fleet some eight miles off, the Austrian about three miles from the harbor at Nauplia, and the Revenge not more than a mile behind the Austrian.

The Capsina was on deck early, and she surveyed the position with vivid and smiling satisfaction.

"We will not fire," she said to Mitsos, "but we will take her complete. There go her sails up, and there her flag! Why, that is not a Turkish flag."

Mitsos looked at it a moment.

"Two eagles," he said, "and scraggy fowls. It is Austrian, and in the service of the Turk. That is enough, is it not?"