"It was Mustapha Pasha," continued Michali, speaking rapidly despite his unfamiliarity with English. His fists were clenched, and he jerked out the words by nervously smiting the air, as though beating on an invisible table.
"He had come with very many Turks to Retimo. He kills, he burns. The women, and the small children, they cannot climb over the hills and sleep on the rocks. They take asylum in the monastery of Arkadia, on south side of Mt. Ida. The old men go, too. Mustapha, he puts cannon on mountains, all around and fires down from above. By and by, he beats down the walls, and his army rush into the court. He say 'Yield.' The women, the old men, the friars, they say 'No, we die!' and they shoot from the windows. O, they kill very many Turks. Then Mustapha bring in his cannon, and he commence shoot at walls of building. Pretty soon he will make a hole. Father Gabriel, the Hegoumenos, he see this. He shout through the roar of the cannon: 'Shall we die, my children, or shall we yield?' They say all together 'We shall die!'"
Lindbohm was striding up and down before the speaker. The demarch still held the rattan cane, but the Lieutenant was making home thrusts with his closed fist.
"Father Gabriel he stretch out his arms. They all fall on their knees, the women, the children, the old men. The Hegoumenos blesses them; he say, 'Father, into thy hands I commit these souls!' Then he goes down cellar. They know where he gone. The women hug their babies tight and begin to sing the hymn of liberty, and the men join in. They are all looking to the sky and chanting—" and Michali sang:
"From the bones of the Greeks upspringing,
Who died that we might be free,
And the strength of thy strong youth bringing—
Hail, Liberty, Hail to thee!
"Every moment a bullet comes through and kills somebody, but they know nothing, now, except the song 'Hail, Liberty.' Then the wall falls and in rush the Turks and begin to kill, when 'boom' the powder magazine roars like one gun, and all are dead—Greeks, Turks, all dead—ah! all dead together!—two hundred Turks!"
But the demarch, not understanding all this, was unable to enter fully into the enthusiasm of the others. He was anxious to continue with his picture gallery.
"This," he said, "is the Lordos Beeron, who, being descended from the ancient Greeks, came over to this country to fight for his native land."
Curtis, despite his enthusiasm for Byron, did not rise. He had seen that woodcut before, in Athens. It represented the youthful poet wearing a brass cavalry helmet with a sublime plume. This is the Byron honored among the uneducated classes in Greece, who know him as soldier and not as poet. With nodding plume and warlike eye he frowns terribly down from the dingy walls of a thousand khans and wayside inns. In this apotheosis he no longer holds high converse with Shelley and Tom Moore; he hobnobs with Ypsilanti, Botsares and Admiral Miaoules.
"This," continued Kyr' Nikolaki, "is the most beautiful woman in the world. I have never found any one who knew her name, but all agree that she is a Greek—probably a Sphakiote."