The Capsina: An Historical Novel

by E. F. Benson

"Let them run," said Mitsos, "for I could ever run faster than a Turk," and he vaulted clean and lithe over the boat's side, and pulled her in through the shallow water to the shore. "Eh, Capsina," he added, "but it won't do to let those boats stop there, else the men will be embarking to their ships again when we chase them, and sail off with our prizes. Dimitri, see that as soon as we have gone all boats are taken away from the shore and tied up to the Revenge or the Sophia."

"So shall it be," said Dimitri. Then: "Oh, most beloved little Mitsos, cannot I come with you?" he asked; "for I should dearly like to hunt the turbaned pigs through the forest."

Mitsos shook his head.

"It is the Capsina's order," he said, "and we must not leave the ships without good garrison. But," and his eyes twinkled, "when I am after some fat brute, who trips in the brushwood, and calls on the prophet who shall be very slow to help, I will think of you, Dimitri. Meantime you have your hands full. Board the Turkish ships, one by one, with three-quarters of the men from the Sophia and Revenge together, for they have no boats, and cannot reach us, and make ready supper, for I doubt we shall get no dinner to-day, except only food for joy. They will not have left more than half a dozen men on each ship."

"And those half dozen?" asked Dimitri, completing the question with a look.

"Yes, it must be so," said Mitsos. "And now off with you!"

The second boatload and the third came racing to land, and using for greater expedition the deserted Turkish boat to disembark the men, in less than half an hour the whole contingent, some four hundred and fifty, were ranged ready to start. Mitsos had in vain endeavored to persuade the Capsina not to come with them; they would have a run fit to make a man burst, he said, up the hills, and at the end God knew what rough-and-tumble fighting. But the girl, breeched like a man, and carrying musket and pistol, scornfully refused to be left behind, and, indeed, she seemed fit for any work. Mitsos looked at her with candid admiration as she trotted briskly along up the slope from the beach by his side, and:

"It is like being with Yanni again," he said. "When the lad found his legs too short for the pace, why, he would lean on me, so," and he drew the Capsina's arm within his own, and bade her give him of her weight. And the Capsina, flushed and panting a little, did as he told her.

Mitsos had been intrusted with the ordering of this raid of the raiders, and he called a halt as they got to the edge of the pine-wood, and repeated his instructions. The men were to form a long open file on each side of the path leading up the hill, so that should the Turks have turned and scattered through the woods on the signal of recall they might not slip past them. Fifty men were to stop there on patrol at the edge of the wood so as to intercept any who might have passed the advanced body, who, if they marched through the pine-wood which extended to within a mile of Vilia without encountering the enemy, were to form again on the open ground.

"And this, too," said Mitsos, in conclusion, with a voice of most joyful conviction: "the Turks are certainly a work of the devil. Therefore, it is entirely our business to hate them and to kill them. This is the last raid of these men. God has willed it so, and has made them short of leg and the more easily overtaken, short of arm and the easier to deal with at close quarters. Therefore"—and he raised his voice—"open out right and left as I gave the order."