Mitsos, meantime, had gone across to Kanaris's ship, where they were busy with repairs. The squalls had blown themselves out, and sky and sea were a sheet of stars and stars reflected. The work was to go on all night, and he had to pick his way carefully between planks and hurrying workmen, doing the jobs by the light of resin flares. The resin flares brought the fishing into his mind—the fishing those dear nights on the bay, and the moonlight wooing and winning of Suleima. How strange that Suleima should be of the same sex as this fine, magnificent Capsina—Suleima with all her bravery and heroism at the fall of Tripoli, woman to her backbone, and the Capsina, admirable and lovable as she was, no more capable of being loved by him than would have been a tigress. Yet she had sobbed over the little crying child—that was more difficult still to understand. And Mitsos, being unlearned in the unprofitable art of analysis, frowned over the problem, and thought not at all that she was of a complicated nature, and then felt that this was the key to the whole situation, but said to himself that she was very hard to understand.
He found Kanaris dressing the wounds of the lad who had been crucified. Healing and wholesome blood ran in his veins, for though they had been dressed roughly, only with oil and bandages, they showed no sign of fester or poisoning. The lad was still weak and suffering, but when he saw Mitsos coming in at the cabin door his face flushed and he sat up in bed with a livelier movement than he had yet shown, and looked up at him with the eyes of a dog.
"I would rise if I could," he said, "and kiss your hands or your feet, for indeed I owe you what I can never repay."
Mitsos smiled.
"Then we will not talk of that," he said, and sat himself down by the bed. "How goes it? Why, you look alive again now. In a few days, if you will, you will be going Turk-shooting with the rest of us. Ah, but the devils, the devils!" he cried, as he saw the cruel wounds in the hands; "but before God, lad, we have done something already to revenge you and Him they blasphemed, and we will do more. How do they call you?"
The boy was sitting with teeth tight clinched to prevent his crying out at the painful dressing of the wounds, but at this he looked up suddenly, seeming to forget the hurt.
"Christos is my name," he said. "That is why they crucified me. Oh, Mitsos, do you know what they said? They looked at me—you know how Turks can look when they play with flesh and blood—when I told them my name, and one said, 'Then we will see if you can die patiently as that God of yours did.'"
The lad laughed suddenly, and his eyes blazed.
"And though I wince," he said, "and could cry like a woman at this little pain, yet, before God, I could have laughed then when they nailed me to the cross, and set me up above the altar. I cannot tell you what strange joy was in my heart. Was it not curious? Those infidel men crucified me because my name was Christos. Surely they could have had no better reason."
Kanaris had finished the dressing of the wounds, and the boy thanked him, and went on: