“We lost everything we had taken,” one of the men said. “We had it all packed and ready to carry away, when those confounded sailors came. Some of us did start with our bundles, but they came so fast up to us that we had to throw everything away, and even then we had a lot of difficulty in keeping away from them. I expect they caught some. It was lucky we started off when we did; if we had waited till they landed very few would have got away.”
“Didn’t they shoot?” one of the guards asked.
“No, they never fired a shot. I don’t know whether they came ashore without powder, but from first to last they never fired.”
“They knew we had these two in our hands,” the guards said, “and they were afraid if they killed any of us we should take it out of our prisoners, and I think they were about right. Ah! here comes Rhangos. He had to take to a farmhouse before he had gone half a mile, and I suppose if any of them looked in they would have seen him feeding pigs or something of that sort, with his finery and arms hidden away.”
The klepht had now come up to the fire. He was a spare man, some fifty years old, with a keen hungry face.
“Are all here?” he asked briefly.
“We are six short of our number,” a man, who by his dress had evidently the rank of an officer among them, replied.
“Killed?”
“No, there was no firing; I expect those sailors ran them down.”