"Oh, quick, down with you," said Mitsos. "I think there is but one man who can go like that; but it is best. Ah, I thought so; show him we can run, too."
And in two minutes Nicholas, with a face as welcome as morning, was with them.
[CHAPTER VIII]
THE MESSAGE OF FIRE
The Greek camp which was being formed here, nestled airily on the unfrequented side of Taygetus, was square, half of it lying on each side of a rattling stream (loud at this time from the melting snows) which flowed down a steep ravine into the plain of Kalamata. It lay about five hundred yards below the site of the beacon, a conspicuous and stony plateau on the top of an isolated hill, separated on all sides by steep, narrow gullies from the main mass of the mountain. It was Nicholas who had chosen the spot, and chosen wisely, for while the camp itself lay concealed and sheltered from the northern winds, the top of the hill just above it, from which a man could run down in two minutes to headquarters, was an eyry for observation. On the north it commanded the Arcadian plain, the corner of which Mitsos and Yanni had just crossed; on the west, the whole valley of Messenia, with its capital, Kalamata, lay unfurled like a map; and directly under it to the south wound the Langarda pass over Taygetus from Messenia to Sparta.
The camp was walled with a robust barrier of brushwood and peopled with small huts, built on a framework of poles, between which were interwoven branches of fir and heather, and roofed with reeds or furze. In the centre, just on the right of the stream, stood the hut shared by Petrobey and Nicholas, built in exactly the same manner as the others, and only distinguished by a blue-and-white flag which floated over it, bearing prophetically the cross of Greece risen above the crescent of Turkey. Towards the top of the enclosure had stood a belt of pines, most of which had been felled for building purposes, one here and there only having been left to give support to a structure of much more solid and weather-proof workmanship. It was divided inside into two chambers, in one of which were stored powder and ammunition; in the other the rifles and swords. Additional protection was given to the powder-magazine by a coat of felt which was nailed on above the boards of its roof.
The camp was all alive and humming like a hive of bees when the three arrived, for a train of mules from the district round which Yanni and Mitsos had made their first journey had just come in, bringing the secret grindings of the mills from Kalyvia and Tsimova. This was the first consignment of powder which had arrived, and Petrobey was superintending its stowage in the magazine. Elsewhere the thin blue smoke of wood fires, over which men were cooking their coffee for breakfast, rose up straight into the air, and the flicking and flashing of axes in the morning sun showed others still at work on pine-felling. During the last two nights many parties of the clan and the patriots from the villages round had been arriving with their arms and provisions, and a herd of sheep and goats were browsing on the scrub-clad sides of the ravine below the camp. Already there were not fewer than two hundred men there, and before three days Petrobey hoped that the whole depot, consisting of eight hundred men with arms and ammunition, would be assembled. Farther along the sides of the mountain there were three similar camps, and thus the total number of men who would march down from Taygetus onto Kalamata would be a tale of over three thousand. These were all drawn from Laconia, Argolis, and the south of Arcadia, and the number would be raised to close on five thousand by additions from the populous Messenian plain. The patriots in the north of Greece would, at the beacon-signal, rise simultaneously in Achaia as soon as the camps all contained their complement of men.
In the camp discipline and organization were thoroughly ordered and carried out. A body of the younger and more active were stationed on the top of the hill with instructions to report at once any movement they might observe in the country round, and to stop vi et armis any Turk who was seen going up the pass from Messenia into Sparta, for fear of news being taken to Tripoli of the assembling of the patriots. This danger, however, was inconsiderable. All the camps were nestled away from view in hollows of the unvisited mountain-sides, and the only circumstance of suspicion was that within a few days many Greeks had left their villages with laden mules, and with their flocks. Even this was not unusual at the spring-time of the year, for it was common, when April opened up the hills, to drive the flocks higher up to the juicier mountain pasture, where the shepherds would spend weeks at a time cutting down pines and burning them for charcoal. But this flight of Petrobey and Nicholas and the escape of Yanni might easily have become a signal of warning to the Turks, and until all was ready it was most important that no communication of alarm should pass from Kalamata to Tripoli. For the last few weeks the fortification of Tripoli had been undergoing repair, and it was evidently expected that if a rising took place the first attack would be directed there; or at any rate the Turks thought it was safer to have some fortress in a fairly central position, where the families of their countrymen scattered about the country could take refuge from local disturbances.