"Quite enough," said the Capsina. "After her!"
It was the swallows to the raven. In a quarter of an hour the Austrian was barely a hundred yards ahead, and Mitsos rather ostentatiously walked forward and took the tarpaulin covering off the very business-like nine-inch gun on the port bow. The bright brass winked pleasantly, with a suggestion of fire, in the sun, and was clearly visible from the deck of the Austrian. He proceeded to sight the gun leisurely to amidships of the chase and just above the water-line, but before he had finished, down came her flag, and her sails followed. The two went aboard and were most cordially received by the captain, a beautiful man with long whiskers and ringleted hair, who spoke no Greek and understood as little. He pointed inquiringly to his own flag, and Mitsos, in reply, merely pointed his finger backward to the Turkish fleet on the horizon and forward to Nauplia. At that the jaw of the beautiful man dropped a little, and he again pointed to the Turkish fleet, and, in eloquent pantomime, washed his hands and tapped his breast, as if to introduce to them the honorable heart which resided there. But again Mitsos shook his head, for if a vessel detaches itself from a fleet, it is not unreasonable to suppose that it has had, or even still has, some connection with that fleet. Then the beautiful man broke into passionate expostulation in an unknown and guttural tongue, and, as further progress could not be made in this conversation, the matter was cut short, and a party of the sailors from the Revenge came on board armed to the teeth, while Mitsos, the Capsina, and the reluctant captain returned to the Revenge.
Then occurred one of those things which brand the character of a man and his ancestors eternally, and his children with an inherited shame. The capitan pasha, who had just given orders to proceed up the gulf, saw from afar the capture of his merchantman, and supposing that another Greek fleet was waiting for him in ambush ahead, without even sending on a detachment to reconnoitre, put about and beat out of the gulf. From that hour the fate of Nauplia was sealed.
[CHAPTER XVI]
The sum of Greek energy, like that of Turkey, had now for many weeks been entirely centred round Nauplia. The Sultan had seen months ago that to command Nauplia and hold it an open port was an iron hand on the Peloponnese, and by degrees the Greeks had learned so too. The town had now been blockaded for four months; irregular but efficient troops had guarded all the passes of communication between Nauplia and Corinth; and now, when the Turkish navy turned back out of the gulf after its abortive effort and disgraceful abandonment of the town, Miaulis did not pursue, but took his fleet up the gulf, so that, should the faint-hearted Turk return, he would find the entrance to Nauplia shut and locked by the whole Greek squadron. There Kanaris joined the Capsina again, and, as both she and Mitsos, as well as he, preferred to cruise after the retiring fleet, in the hope of doing some wayside damage to them, to remaining inactive at Nauplia, they obtained leave to follow. The rest, however, supposing that the fall of the town was inevitable, and justly desiring that they who had prevented the fleet coming to its rescue should share in the spoil, remained in the gulf out of shot of the Turkish guns in the fort, and waited for the end.
So once again the Revenge and the Sophia started on the Turkish trail in the eastern sea. The Ottoman fleet had passed outside Hydra, giving it a wide berth, for they feared another stinging nest of wasps, and the day after the two Greek ships passed close under its lee, so as to cut off a corner from the path taken by the enemy's fleet, for, having left Hydra, their course was certainly to Constantinople. To the Capsina the island seemed remote and distant from her life, external to it. A lounging lad had come between her and it, and to her he loomed gigantic and larger than life. Yet though he was all her nearer field of vision, she knew him further than all, and when she thought of it an incommunicable loneliness was the food of her heart.
The day after passing Hydra the Turkish fleet, huddled together like a flock of sheep and guarded by its great clumsy men-of-war, which sailed in a half circle, with brigs and schooners as vanguard, again came into sight, advancing slowly northward, evidently heading, as they expected, for Constantinople. Kanaris landed at his native island, Psara, and there bought a couple of rickety and hardly seaworthy caiques. They were good enough, however, for the purpose for which he wanted them, and after spending half a day there purchasing the necessary oil and fuel for a fire-ship they went northward again after the Turks, and caught them up only when they were clear of the archipelago. The two Greek brigs kept well out of range of the big Turkish guns, for their own were but light in comparison, and they would have to come perilously close to the big men-of-war to fire with effect.
Day after day the wind was so light a breath that it would have been impossible to approach with the fire-ships, except very slowly, whereas speed was almost an essential to success; moreover, in the open seas, two caiques coming up from two rakish-looking brigs might have attracted the attention even of the indolently minded. So they waited, keeping out to the west of the Turks, till they should approach the northern group of islands outside the Hellespont. There, with the shelter of the land near, and the probability of squally winds from the high ground of the Troad, a favorable opportunity might offer. Mitsos and Kanaris were to sail the one; the other was intrusted to two Psarian sailors, who professed to know their use.
That month of attendance-dancing on the Turks was strangely pleasant to the Capsina. Since her interview with Suleima her self-control had begun to be a habit with her, a sort of crust over the fire of her passion, which, so to speak, would bear the weight of daily and hourly sociability with Mitsos. For days she had fed herself on a diet of wisdom, taking the dose, like a sick man, in pills and capsules; tasteless it seemed, and useless, yet the course was operative. He, now that the Capsina was a friend of the family, spoke often of his wife to the girl, and by degrees such talk was less bitter to her in the hearing. She had faced the inevitable, and in a manner accepted it, and though the sight of the lad and the touch of him was no less keenly dear, though all that he was held an incomparable charm for her, she knew now that what was so much to her was nothing to him. He, for his part, was in his customary exuberance of boyishness, and she, with a control not less heroical, showed a lightness and naturalness which could not but deceive him, so normal was the manner of her intercourse with him.