"Were you of the army, I would have you whipped," he snarled.
"But I am of the navy just now," said Mitsos. "Yet if you will, come and whip me yourself. Or shall I call some three or four men to help you?"
He waited a moment, and then turned again. Kolocotrones itched to send a knife into him, but as Kanaris and Mitsos were just now the most popular pair in Greece, it was difficult to say exactly where such an action would end. For him, very likely, in the ooze of the harbor at Nauplia.
Mitsos had not gone a dozen paces when a buzzing murmur rose, which grew into a shout, and the pasty Panos rushed out and pointed to the wall above the northern gate of Nauplia. A white flag was flying there.
Kolocotrones saw it and slapped his thigh.
"It was ever so!" he cried. "I come, and they surrender."
Mitsos could not resist a parting shot.
"Not so," he cried; "you come, and the hungry are filled, and your pockets are heavy. Go, then, on the errand of mercy, and good luck to your bargains!"
Kolocotrones looked angrily round, but his popularity with his men being due to the fact that he so put himself on an equality with them, he found them laughing, as if the joke had been directed against one of them, not against their general. From all sides the men poured out of their tents to look at the flag, and Mitsos found himself in a crowd of these, to whom the news of the last fire-ship had only come when they arrived with Kolocotrones, and he was pulled this way and that and made to drink wine, and had to tell the story again, and yet again.
Presently after, Panos, also bearing the flag of truce, was sent up to conduct the Turks down to the council of chiefs. Kolocotrones was the chairman, and with him were Miaulis, admiral of the fleet, Poniropoulos, Hypsilantes, and Petrobey.