As he rode back through the rain and the bottomless quagmire, Prince Mavrocordato and Pietro Gamba sat waiting in his room at headquarters. They had been talking earnestly. The outlook was leaden. There had been as yet no news of the expected loan. The lustful eyes of foreign ministers were watching. Ulysses had seized the acropolis of Athens, and his agents were everywhere, seeking to undermine the provisional government. The Suliotes, whose chiefs swarmed in Missolonghi, had begun to demand money and preferment.
But these things, serious as they were, weighed less heavily upon Prince Mavrocordato’s mind than the health of the man he now awaited in that cheerless chamber.
“Another post would do as well,” the Greek said gloomily. “Higher ground, out of the marshes. He stays here only at risk to himself. Yet he will listen to no proposal of removal.”
“What does he say?” asked Gamba.
“That Missolonghi is the center of Western Greece, the focus-point of European observation. And he ends all discussion by the question: ‘If I abandoned this castle to the Turks, what would the partizans of Ulysses say?’”
Gamba was silent. Mavrocordato knit his bushy brows. He knew the answer only too well. And yet the safety of this single individual had come to mean everything. Without him Greece’s organization would be chaos, its armies, rabbles.
While he pondered, Gordon entered. He had thrown off his wet clothing below. The shepherd-dog crouched by the door, sprang up with a joyful whine as the new-comer dropped a hand on his head.
Pietro had a sudden vision of his sister as she placed upon him her last injunction—to guard this man’s life. He had done all he could. Yet to what avail? Watchfulness might ward steel and lead, but what could combat the unflagging toil, the hourly exposure, the stern denial of creature comfort? His eyes wandered around the damp walls hung with swords, carbines and pistols, to the rough mattress at one side, the spare meal laid waiting the occupant’s hasty leisure. In his mind ran the words with which Gordon had replied to one of his protests: “Here is a stake worth millions such as I am. While I can stand at all, I must stand here.” Gamba’s thought returned to what the prince was saying:
“Allow me at least to furnish this chamber for your lordship. A bed—”
“Our Suliotes spread their mats on the ground,” was the reply, “or on the dirt floor of their miserable huts. I am better couched than they.”