Suppose he tried it!
No! No! Oh, no! It was brave men who feared nothing who did such things, not little terrified boys.
Then a very curious thing happened.
Pavlo did not feel as though he were making up his mind to anything, but quite suddenly he unwound a thin knitted belt which he wore round his waist, and held it between his teeth, then he crawled noiselessly out of the hole and looked around him with a look in his eyes which no one had ever seen in them before.
Had he been in a street in Athens, the man who stood there would have been simply a villainous looking peasant, and he, Pavlo, a small boy half dead with fright. But now, on this calm Poros hillside, the man became a Turk, a Turk of 1821 armed to the teeth with yatagan[25] and scimitar, and he, the little terrified boy, was a brave patriot of the times of the Revolution, ready to do or die.
“Let us pretend,” had its uses; and Pavlo had not lived a week in vain with the Four of the Red House.
He crept closer, closer still. His body was not brave at all; in fact it was shaking and trembling in every limb, and the cold sweat trickled down his face; but at that moment his heart was very brave, and because the heart is greater than the body, there was a sudden lightning spring forward, and two desperate little hands clutched the shepherd’s bare ankles and pulled backwards, pulled strongly, and swiftly.
There was a helpless grasp at the empty air, a howl of dismay, and a loud thud as the tall man’s body fell flat, face down, on the ground.
Pavlo with an excited, triumphant little shout rushed forward, and caught hold of one outstretched arm which he pulled back with a jerk, but already the shepherd was groaning, swearing, and moving, and how could Pavlo hold the hand he had already seized, and manage to reach the other one also?
“Children!” he screamed aloud, not knowing whether they could hear him or not, below in the cave. “Children! Come quick! I have got him!”