The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence

by E. F. Benson

Nicholas dressed himself quickly, but then stopped for a moment irresolute. Then—

"Take the horse on," he said to the servant. "I will go on foot awhile."

Mitsos meantime was walking quickly along the road back towards Argos. He would scarcely acknowledge to himself how very much he disliked the thought of taking that bridle-path through the woods, for the recollection he retained of that end of rope dangling from the tree, with the fragment of tunic fluttering in the breeze, and that heap of white stones glimmering among the bushes, was too vivid for his liking. Even his pony would have been companionable; but his pony, as he hoped, was near home by this time.

Once or twice he thought he heard movements and whispered rustlings in the bushes, which made his heart beat rather quicker than its wont. Ordinarily he would not have noticed such things, but the scene at the crossroad still twanged some string of horror within him.

However, the road must be trod, and keeping his eyes steadily averted—for like his race he held ghosts in accredited horror—he marched with a show of courage past the spot, and began making his way down the rough bridle-path.

Thin skeins of clouds had risen from the sea, and the moon was travelling swiftly through them, casting only a diffused and aqueous light; but the path, with the glimmering white stones of its cobbling, showed clearly enough, and there was no fear of his missing his way. But about a couple of hundred yards down the path he heard a noise which made his heart spring suddenly into his throat and stay there poised for a moment, giving a little cracking sound at each beat. The sound needed not interpretation; two men, if not three, were running down the main road he had just left. Instantly he had left the path, and striking into the bushes at the side moved quickly up the hill again, hoping to turn them off the scent. But as they came nearer he stopped, still crouching in the bushes, and though he was, as he knew, very indifferently concealed, he dared not go farther among the trees for fear that the sound of his steps crackling among the dry brushwood should lead them to him, and, remembering Nicholas's lessons in the art of keeping still, he waited. His pursuers, if pursuers they were, seemed to go the more slowly as they turned into the path he had just left, and soon he caught sight of them through the tree trunks. There were two of them, and he saw they were Turks. As they came nearer he could hear them speaking together in low tones, and then one ran off down the path, in order, so he supposed, to see whether he was still on ahead.

Mitsos drew a long breath; there was only one to be reckoned with now, and stealing out of the bush where he had been crouching, he moved as quietly as he could farther into cover. But a twig cracking with a sharp report under his foot revealed his hiding, and the man who had waited in the path shouted out to the other. The next moment they were in pursuit.

As he pushed through the trees that seemed to stretch out fingers to clutch him, Mitsos felt in his belt for the knife he always carried with him, but to his wondering dismay found it had gone. Never in his life could he remember being without it; but this was no season to waste time, and knowing that his only chance lay in running he plunged along through the bushes in order to get back to the path and match his speed against theirs. But his pursuers were close behind him, and in jumping, or trying to jump, a small thicket which closed his path, he caught his foot and fell.

Then came cold fear with a clutch. Before he had time to recover himself they had seized him. Once he let out with his right hand at the face of one of the men, who just avoided the blow, and then both wrists were seized. They whipped a cord round his legs, tied his hands behind his back, and carried him off straight to the tree from which the end of the rope and its ghastly legend were still hanging.

A third Turk was sitting there on the ground in the shadow smoking, and as the others came up he said a word to them in Turkish which Mitsos did not understand. Then one of his captors turned to him, and speaking in Greek, "Tell us where Nicholas Vidalis is," he said, "and we will let you go."