"You do not understand," he said, which was true enough.
Next day they set sail again for Nauplia; the blockading fleet was stationed outside the harbor, and, having anchored, the Capsina, with Kanaris and Mitsos, went off to the admiral's ship to make report. As the news spread from crew to crew, the shouting rose and redoubled, and Suleima, who had come down with the littlest one, on the news of their arrival, to the quay, could scarce get at Mitsos for the press, and for the time the two had to be content with letting their eyes seek and find each other from afar, saying that it was well with them. But the Capsina had gone back to her ship, and was alone.
[CHAPTER XVII]
The last days of the beleaguered town had begun, and it was only from fear of treachery—not, alas! unwarranted—on the part of the Greeks that the besieged still held out. The scenes at the capitulation of Navarin, not eighteen months old, the repetition of them at Athens, scarcely six months ago, had not encouraged the Turks to hope for honorable dealings with their enemies, or rather with the half-brigand chiefs, such as Kolocotrones and Poniropoulos, who commanded the forces. Hypsilantes, they had learned from the previous negotiations which were concluded by him and taken out of his hand by Kolocotrones, was no more than a cipher put first among other figures, and while there was still the faintest hope, they had determined not to surrender.
Since the beginning of December the stress of famine had set in; already all the horses had been killed for food, their bones boiled to make a thin and acrid broth, and the man who caught a couple of rats was reckoned fortunate. Children, wasted to skeletons, with the hollow eyes of old men, were found dead in the street; their fathers thanked Allah that their suffering was over. A soldier one day fell from sheer exhaustion as he was mounting the steep steps of the fortress, the Palamede, cutting his hand badly, and a comrade, coming up a minute or two later, found him sitting down and greedily licking up the blood which dripped from the wound. At length it was impossible to hold the Palamede any longer; those who had to go down to the lower town to fetch the diminished rations were too weak to remount the long ascent, and on the 11th of December it was abandoned, the gate between it and the lower town was closed, and the whole garrison quartered in the latter.
From the ships Miaulis had seen the lines of soldiers filing out on the evening of the 11th, and gave notice of it to Poniropoulos. The latter, seeing that no treasure was possibly to be obtained from there, notified the abandonment of the fort to Hypsilantes, who with infinite difficulty was hauled up over the parapeted wall which defended the steps, and, with a voice tremulous, not with emotion, but breathlessness, took possession of it in the name of the supreme government of the Greek republic. There was still a good deal of powder in the magazines, and this somewhat barren triumph was announced to the rest of the army by volleys of artillery. The top of the fortress was quite enveloped in smoke, and the effect, if not the cause, was exceedingly magnificent.
But the sound of the guns and the smoke of the firing carried too far. Kolocotrones, still encamped on the top of the Dervenaki, in the hope that the Turkish garrison of Nauplia would attempt to cut their way through the Greeks and escape to Corinth, was waiting there for the end, seeing that the most part of the treasure of Nauplia was exhausted in purchasing provisions, and that a fine harvest might be expected from the ransom of the Turks of rank who escaped. They must pass over the hills of the Dervenaki, and he would thus gain the honor of their capture, and also, what was the dearer to him, the money of their ransom. But repeated volleys from the Palamede, while no firing came from the lower town, could mean but one thing. Were the Turks opening fire on the Greeks, they would use the guns of the lower fortress at shorter range rather than those of the Palamede. Again no answer came from either side, the Burdjee or the fleet. Also his practised ear could distinguish even at that distance the hollow buffet of blank firing from the sharper noise of the discharge of shot or shell. So on went the brass helmet, and at the head of his eight thousand irregular but strangely efficient troops, he set out for the town. Certainly none could say that he spared himself. He marched on foot with the others, all smiles and bluff encouragement, going, with all his fifty years and gray head, with a foot as light as a boy's. He roared out strange and stimulating brigand songs one after the other, the men taking up the choruses; he sat with the rest under a desolating shower for dinner, and when the repeated rain put out the fire on which he was roasting a sheep for himself and his staff, he laughed, and cut off with his sword a great hunk of flesh more than half raw, and ate it as if it had been meat for a king. They had set off in such haste that they had forgotten to bring wine with them. It mattered not; rain-water, he said, was the best of drinks, and he washed down the raw lamb with a draught from a puddle among stones. Then when at the last a flask of spirits was produced, he would none of it; he had drunk his fill, let those who had not yet drunk have the brandy. Of what good were meat and drink but to fill the stomach? His own was full, and he licked his greasy fingers.
All this endeared him in a savage way to his men. Here at least was a man who was of themselves, made generalissimo of the Peloponnesian troops by the supreme council. Indeed, had he not been without a sense of honor where treasure was concerned, they could have had no better. Petrobey had shown himself weak at Tripoli; Hypsilantes had never been otherwise; Mavrogordatos was busy with his titles.
As his custom was, Kolocotrones came laughing and shouting into the Greek army with a joke and a slap on the back for his friends, an outburst of genuine affection for his son, Panos, total indifference to the cold faces of the Mainats, and an enormous appetite.