The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence

by E. F. Benson

All the cattle, all the arms, the mules and horses brought to the camp, were put under the disposal of Petrobey. As he was the head of the clan of Mavromichales, of whom the camp was chiefly composed, Nicholas had felt it better that he should have absolute supremacy in all matters, and, as he had said to Priketes, all that he asked for himself was the right to serve. Petrobey was loath to take advantage of his generosity, and only did so on condition that Nicholas would promise to give him advice and counsel on all points, dissent from him freely and promptly where his judgment did not coincide with his own, and at the wish of his men be willing himself to take over the sole command. Meantime, would he take in charge the outposts and messenger corps of the camp, on which devolved the duty of watching the roads and of carrying news from one camp to another?

Nicholas's company had been relieved at the watch on the beacon-station when the two boys arrived, and the three went together to Petrobey. He was busy with the unlading of the powder-carrying mules when they came up, but as they drew near he saw them and ran towards them.

"Now the Blessed Virgin be praised," he cried, "that you have come! We expected you earlier. How was it you did not come before? Ah, Yanni, but your father has wearied for you! Is it a long bill we have with Mehemet? Oh, admirable little Mitsos, the Holy Father reward you for bringing him safe. We will breakfast together when I have finished this job. Get you to my tent with Nicholas."

The unlading of the powder was an operation in which, so Petrobey thought, no caution would be superfluous. It arrived in big mule panniers, covered over with charcoal or some country produce, and the panniers were taken off and carried singly by men barefoot into the magazine. Here others were stationed, whose duty it was to take off the stuff under which the powder was concealed and empty it into small skin bottles, which could be carried by a man, and held more than the ordinary powder-flasks. There were eight hundred of these, one for each man in the camp, and when they were full the remainder were to be stored in light wooden boxes of handier shapes than the panniers for transport on the ammunition mules.

All day fresh bands of men in eights and tens from the Maina country arrived in camp, and news was passed from the other stations along the mountain-side that they, too, were filling rapidly. Among others fifty men had joined the patriots from Nauplia and the plain of Argos, one of whom was Father Andréa, an incarnated vengeance more than priest, and another was Mitsos' father. Mitsos himself, however, was to remain in the camp of the Mavromichales, acting as aide-de-camp to Nicholas, but otherwise the disposition of the men was strictly geographical, since Petrobey's experience told him that men who have known each other fight best side by side. Each camp was organized on the pattern of the Mavromichales, and the captains of each had voluntarily put themselves under the supreme command of Petrobey, for the dissensions which subsequently broke out in the army had not yet appeared. Moreover, the Hetairist Club, since the flight of Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, had given express orders that the direction of affairs in the south was to be in the hands of some local chieftain, suggesting for that office either Petrobey or Nicholas.

A week passed, and the camps were all nearly full, and Petrobey waited impatiently for the completion of his preparations. Partly by extreme caution, and partly by good luck, there had as yet been no collision with the Turks, and apparently no uneasiness felt in Kalamata. A report had come in a couple of days before that two Turkish ships of war had been ordered there for the defence of the town, and to carry off the Turkish inhabitants in case of an outbreak; but, though the bay was carefully watched by those on the beacon-point, no sign of them had been seen. But about mid-day on the 2d of April a scout from the beacon came into the camp, saying that a small band of Turks, twelve in number, under arms, and followed by a train of baggage-mules, were coming up the pass from Kalamata. Petrobey's answer was short and decisive: "Stop them!" and some twenty men were sent out to reinforce the outpost at the beacon. From the camp nothing could be seen of the road, but a dozen more men were told off to hold themselves in readiness. Then after a long pause, in which each man's eyes sought the eyes of his fellow in a fever of expectation, shots were heard, and in half an hour's time the message came back to Petrobey and Nicholas, who were at dinner, that they had been stopped.

Then Petrobey rose, and his gray eye was fire.

"At last, at last!" he cried. "Oh, Nicholas, the vintage is ripe!"

He waited no longer. Yanni, who was his aide-de-camp, was despatched at top speed to the next station, with orders that an hour before sunset the army was to start on its march to Kalamata, and all the afternoon the stir of going was shrill. The clan were half wild with excitement and eagerness; but all were absolutely in control, and went about their duties methodically and in perfect order, and the work of lading and marshalling the ammunition and baggage-mules was finished by four o'clock. Meanwhile another party had carried up to the top of the hill the fuel for the beacon, which Petrobey had arranged was to be the signal, not only across to the hill above Bassae, but to the patriots collected lower down in the villages of the Messenian plain. Mitsos, who was charged with the lighting of it, was to let loose the tongue of fire which should shout the word all over Greece as soon as dark fell, and then follow straight down the hill-side after the main body. The whole disposition of the force round Kalamata, and the routes by which, converging as they went, they were to march there, had been already arranged, and by five o'clock the clan set out, spreading themselves in open order over the hill-side, the mules alone following the road of the pass, so as to prevent any one leaving the town by other mountain-paths over Taygetus.

As soon as the clan had started, Mitsos, left to himself, ate his supper, and sat down to wait till the darkness of the birthnight of Greece should fall. It had been a hot, sultry day, with a heavy air, and he had packed up and sent on with the mules a heavy woollen cloak, which Nicholas had given him to replace the one he had left behind in his race to Tripoli, and was dressed only in his linen trousers, shirt, and open Albanian jacket. The still air hung like a blanket on the mountain-side, but he saw that clouds had gathered on the top of Taygetus and were moving down westward in the direction of the camp. But they remained as yet high, and though before sunset they had stretched right over from the mountain-top behind to the peak of Ithome in the west, a gray floor of mottled marble, flushed here and there, where they were thinner, with the reflected fire of an angry sunset, the northern heaven was still clear, and his beacon-point close above him stood out black and sharp-cut. Long before dark fell he had already been up to the beacon, in order to arrange the brushwood and firing most handily; the lighter and drier wood he put on the windward side, so that such breeze as there was might drive the flames inward against the larger bushes, which would take the flame less easily. He also tore a quantity of dry moss from the sides of a couple of plane-trees, which grew to the leeward of the hill, and made a core of this within the brushwood, adding a train, in the manner of a fuse, leading outward to where he would apply the light. He had just finished this to his satisfaction, and was about to return to the camp to fetch up the burning lumps of charcoal which he had fed during the afternoon, and which in this wind that had sprung up would soon kindle the moss into flame, when a few large raindrops fell splashing on the ground, and he hurriedly covered the dry, tinder-like furze with thick branches of pine, in order to keep it protected; then for a few moments the rain ceased again, but Mitsos, looking up, saw that the clouds had grown black and swollen with an imminent downpour, and that the storm might break any minute. His next thought was for the burning charcoal below, and he ran quickly down the hill-side in order to carry it under cover of the ammunition magazine; but before he had gone fifty yards the storm broke in a sheet of hissing rain, driven a little aslant in the wind—but for heaviness a shower of lead. However, in hopes of saving the charcoal, he ran on, and raking about in the embers of his fire, already turning to a black slush under the volleying rain, he found a lump of charcoal not yet extinguished. Then sheltering it in his cap, he nursed it tenderly, and carried it into the ammunition magazine. There he sat for half an hour, and from it managed to kindle a few more lumps, while the noise of the rain continued as of musketry on the resounding roof. Then looking out he saw that night had come, heavy and lowering.