"How quickly you did that," he said. "Will you fill my pipe, too? I am so glad we are going together, cousin."
"I, too. It is good to hunt in couples. It is a halving of the cold and the tiredness, and a doubling of all that is pleasant. This is Turkish tobacco, Mitsos, and it is better than ours. Father never smokes. So when a Turk sends him a present of tobacco it is good for me. Have you ever smoked the Turkish?"
Mitsos started, and a flush spread under the brown of his cheek.
"Yes, the other day only. I found it very good. Tell me more of the journey."
"Old clothes, even very old clothes," said Yanni, "like poor peasants," and his Mavromichales's nose went in the air. "Old mules, and very slow-going; but a pistol each, new pistols with two mouths that speak like the lightning. Father gives us one each. On the mules a load of stupid oranges and a couple of blankets each. Come to the other side of the house, cousin; we can see our first day's journey from there."
Panitza stood high on the scrub-covered slope leading up to the pine forests and the naked crags of Taygetus. Sixteen miles to the north rose the spearhead of the range, Mount Elias, sheathed in snow for a couple of thousand feet down, and cut against the intense blue of the sky with the keenness and edge of steel. From Panitza their path lay for five or six miles along the upward slope, and where it struck the ridge they could see the huddled roofs of a village, which Yanni said was Kalyvia, where they delivered their first message. From there the track crossed a pass and went down the other side towards the sea. It was rough, cold going on the heights, and it would be a full day's journey to get down to Platsa, where they would sleep. After that they would travel chiefly by night, and sleep when and where they could, avoiding as far as possible all villages but those where they were charged with messages. "Oh, it will be very good," said Yanni. Mitsos' thoughts went aching back to the bay of Nauplia; but he agreed. Besides, he would go to Nauplia again soon.
It had been an immense relief to him that he was not going alone, though in that moment when Nicholas had told him that the time was come he had made his self-surrender absolute, and would have taken upon him any outrageous task which might have been imposed. But the four days of travelling alone from Nauplia had been like a sick man's dream. He had set off at daybreak, and taking the same path by which Nicholas had come the evening before, he reached in an hour the little bay where he had fished, and sat down under the clump of rushes where they had sat together, looking at the well-known places with the eyes of a dog that comes back to a deserted house which has once been home. In the sand he could see the footprints made by his own bare feet as he came up from the water, and close beside them the print of Suleima's little pointed shoes. They had overlooked two or three small fish, which were lying still fresh and clean after the cool night, where they had emptied the creel to count their spoils, and by them was the dottle of the pipe he had smoked. And at the sight of these little things the child within him cried out against his fate. Nothing in the world seemed of appreciable account except the need of Suleima. Yet it was no less impossible to go back: even as he said to himself that he would return, he knew that Nicholas's gray, questioning eyes were unfaceable. He was hedged in by impossibilities on every side. And then because there was something more than the child within him, some stuff out of which real men are made, he got up, and mounting again went on his way. All that day and the next days his heart-sickness rode him like a night-hag, and it was but a heavy-souled lad who trudged so bravely into Panitza cracking his whip. But to be among people again, and men who received him cousin-fashion—for in those days the tie of blood was a warm reality—had an extraordinary sweetness for him, for he felt lonely and sick for home; above all, to find that for the present he would be with Yanni, a boy of his own age, who took for granted that they were going to have the best of hours together, and only knew one side of things, and that the cheerful side, was surpassingly pleasant. Again, because he was beginning to be a man, the confidence placed in him made him feel self-reliant, and because he was still a boy the unknown adventurous days in front of him were very tonic to the spirit. And so it was, that when they set out early next morning, Petrobey, looking after them, said to Demetri that Nicholas was a very wise man; and Mitsos whacked his mule gayly over the rump, and whistled the "Song of the Vine-diggers" with more than cheerfulness of lip, and took the road with an open heart.