The position was sufficiently critical. The beacon fuel would be soaked, and the dry kindling in the centre, he thought, would be insufficient to start a blaze. Then he remembered a flask of spirits which Petrobey had told him to keep with him in case of emergency, and he ran across to fetch it from his hut. The clouds had lifted a little, though the downpour was still heavy; but, looking up, he still saw the outline of the beacon-hill a shade blacker than the sky, showing that it was clear, at any rate, of mists. He groped about the walls of the hut for some little time before finding the flask, and just as he put his hand on it the wind fell dead, the rain stopped as when a tap is turned back, and in the stillness he heard the sound of the footstep of some man unfamiliarly stumbling up the stony hill-side just below. At that he stopped, and then creeping cautiously to the entrance of the hut, peered out. He could see nothing; but the step still advanced, drawing nearer.
Who could it be? It was hardly possible, though still just possible, that this man was some Greek of the clan—yet such would surely have shouted to him—coming from Petrobey with a message, or it might be some benighted peasant; yet, again, for fear it might be a Turk he must needs go carefully, and with redoubled caution he crept out of the hut, still keeping in the shadow, and looked round the corner. Whether it was the rustle of his moving in the dead silence, or the faint shimmering of his white trousers in the darkness, that betrayed him, was only a thing for conjecture, but the next moment, from some fifty yards in front, he saw the flash of a gun, and a bullet sang viciously by him, cracking in half one of the upright posts which bound the sides of the hut together. Mitsos stood up, as he knew he was seen, and called out, cocking his pistol, yet seeing no one, "Speak, or I fire," and in answer he heard the sound of another charge being rammed home. At that he bolted back round the corner of the tent and waited. The steps advanced closer; clearly the man, whoever he was, finding that he did not fire, concluded that he had no arms—the truth, however, being that Mitsos, having seen nothing but the flash of the gun, thought it more prudent to wait until he had a more localized target. But presently the steps paused, and after a moment he heard them retreating with doubled quickness up the hill towards the pass. Then a solution flashed upon him—this could be no patriot, nor would a wandering peasant have fired at him; it could only be some Turk who had seen the Greek army advancing, had somehow eluded them, and was going hotfoot to Sparta with the news. He must be stopped at all costs, and next moment Mitsos was stretched in pursuit up the hill after him, keeping as much as possible in the cover of the trees. Clearly the man had missed his way in the darkness, and had come unexpectedly upon the Greek camp, and seeing some one there had fired.
In three minutes or so Mitsos' long legs had gained considerably on him, and he now saw him, though duskily, with his gun on his shoulder still making up the hill. Another minute saw them within about fifty yards of each other; but Mitsos had the advantage of position, for while he was running between scattered trees the other was in the open. He apparently recognized this, and changed his course towards the belt of wood; but then suddenly, seeing Mitsos so near, he halted and fired, and Mitsos felt the bullet just graze his arm. On that he ran forward, while the man still stayed reloading his piece, and sent a pistol bullet at him. The shot went wide, and Mitsos with a grunt of rage ran desperately on to close with him. But the other, while he was still some yards distant, finished loading, and his gun was already on the way to his shoulder, when Mitsos, partly in mere animal fury at the imminence of death, but in part with reasonable aim, took hold of his heavy pistol by the barrel and flung it with all his force in the Turk's face. He reeled for a moment, and, the blood, like the red of morning, streaming over his face in a torrent that blinded him, Mitsos was on him and had closed with him. When it came to mere physical strength the odds were vastly in his favor, and in a moment, in the blind gust of the fury of fighting, he wrested the man's gun from him and, without thinking of firing, had banged him over the head with the butt end. He fell with a sound of breaking, and Mitsos, still drunk and beside himself with the lust of slaughter, laughed loud and hit him again with his full force as he lay on the ground. There was a crack, and a spurt of something warm and thick came out in a jet against his trousers and over his hand. He paused only one moment to make sure that this was a Turk he had killed, and then without giving him another thought, or waiting to brush the clotted mess off his clothes, he ran down again to set about the beacon.
The wound on his arm was but slight, though it bled profusely and smarted like a burn, and only stopping to tear off a piece from his shirt-sleeve, which he bound tightly round it, tying the knot with his teeth and his right hand, he again put the charcoal, which was burning well, into his cap, and with the flask of brandy set off for the top of the hill. The rain had come on again, hissing down in torrents, and Mitsos, knowing that the fear of failure strode faster every moment, tore the cover of boughs off from the core of moss and furze, but found to his dismay it was quite damp and would not light. It was necessary to get a flame somehow; the spirits and the moss would do the rest if once he could get that; and to get a flame, he must have something dry, though it were but a twig. There was no time to waste; already a big raindrop had made an ominous black spot on the middle of the glowing charcoal, and meantime everything was getting rapidly wetter. In a moment of hopelessness he clutched at his hair despairingly; the thing seemed an impossibility.
Then suddenly an idea struck him, and, tearing off his jacket, he removed his shirt, which had been kept quite dry, and kneeling down with his back bare to the cold, scourging rain put the two lumps of charcoal in the folds of it and blew on them. For a couple of seconds the linen smouldered only, but then—and no Angel Gabriel would have been a gladder sight to him—a little tongue of flame shot up. Mitsos took the brandy bottle, and with the utmost care shook out a few drops onto the edge of the flame. These it licked up, burning brighter, and soon the whole of the back of the shirt took the fire. He crammed it under the thick core of moss and brushwood, and feeding them plentifully with brandy coaxed the flame into the driest part of the stuff. Now and then a little spark would go running like some fiery insect through the fibres, leaving a gray path of ash behind, only to perish when it reached the damper stuff, and once even the flame seemed to die down altogether; but meantime it had penetrated into the centre of the pile, and suddenly a yellow blade of smoky fire leaped out and licked the dripping branches of fir outside. These only fumed and cracked, and Mitsos pulled them off, for they were but choking the flames; and, running down to the edge of the wood, he tore up great handfuls of undergrowth, which had been partially protected from the rain by the trees, and threw them on. Then the fire began to take hold in earnest, and through the thick volumes of stinging smoke, which were streaming away westward, shot lurid gleams of flame. Now and then with a great crash and puff of vapor some thicker branch of timber would split and break, throwing out a cloud of ignited fragments, or again there would rise up a hissing and simmering of damp leaves, like the sound of a great stewing over a hot fire. The place where he had first lit the beacon was all consumed, and only a heap of white frothy ash, every now and then flushing red again with half-consumed particles as some breeze fanned it, remained, and from the fir branches which Mitsos had taken off ten minutes ago, but now replaced, as every moment the hold of the fire grew steadier, there were bursting little fan-shaped bouquets of flame.
Meantime, with the skin of his chest down to the band of his trousers reddened and scorched by the heat, his back cold and dripping, and lashed with the heavy whisp of rain which had so belabored him in those first few moments of struggle between fire and water, his hair tangled and steaming with heat and shower, his eyes blackened and burned with the firing, Mitsos worked like a man struggling for life; now pushing a half-burned branch back into the fire; now lifting a new bundle of fuel (as much as he could carry in both arms), which pricked and scratched the scorched and bleeding skin of his chest; now glancing northward to see whether Bassae had answered him. With the savage frenzy of his haste, the excitement of the deed, and the fury and madness of the blood he had shed dancing in his black eyes, he looked more like some ancient Greek spirit of the mountains than the lover of Suleima and the boy who was so tender for Yanni.
In ten minutes more the rain had stopped, but Mitsos still labored on until the heat of the beacon was so great that he could scarcely approach to throw on the fresh fuel. The flames leaped higher and higher, and the wind dropping a shower of red-hot pieces of half-burned leaves and bark was continually carried upward, peopling the night with fiery sparks and falling round him in blackened particles, or floating away a feathery white ash like motes in a sunbeam. And as he stood there, grimy and panting, scorched and chilled, throwing new bundles of fuel onto the furnace, and seeing them smoke and fizz and then break out flaring, the glory and the splendor of the deeds he was helping in burst in upon him with one blinding flash that banished other memories, and for the moment even Suleima was but the shadow of a shadow. The beacon he had kindled seemed to illuminate the depths of his soul, and he saw by its light the cruelty and accursed lusts of the hated race and the greatness of the freedom that was coming. Then, blackened and burned and sodden and drenched, he sat down for a few moments to the north of the beacon to get his breath and scoured the night. Was that a star burning so low on the horizon? Surely it was too red for a star, and on such a night what stars could pierce the clouds? Besides, was not that a mountain which stood up dimly behind it? Then presently after it grew and glowed; it was no star, but the fiery mouth of message shouting north and south. Bessae had answered.
