Leaving Sir Frank Francis to pursue his dignified way alone, Wylie ran back to the village, only to see a considerable body of insurgents, armed with rifles hastily snatched up, half-way to the tower. They were approaching it from the back, whereas the Consuls and their forces, with the rescued garrison, were assembled in front of it, waiting for Sir Frank’s return to begin their march back to the sea, but a collision seemed inevitable. With a wild idea of flinging himself between the contending parties, Wylie ran towards the tower, hoping to intercept his followers before they could reach the front of the building. Sir Frank, in the natural exasperation induced by intercourse with these wretched insurgents, who were giving the consular body trouble so absurdly disproportionate to their importance, might call him a renegade Englishman, but he could not see the British flag fired upon by his own men. His intention was frustrated, however, by two of them, who rose up, as if by magic, from behind a bush, and laid violent hands upon him. Protest, command, entreat as he might, it was no use; they dragged him behind the bush and held him fast there, considerately choosing a position from which the tower and its assailants were clearly visible. To Wylie’s intense relief, the main body of his men halted at a ridge which commanded the whole side of the tower, and lay down behind it, covering the consular force with their rifles. Only three ran on, and Wylie saw that they carried ropes. Arrived at the back of the tower, one of them threw his rope over a sculptured gargoyle which projected from the building at about a third of its height, and wriggled up it, his companions holding the ends. The lower part of the masonry alone had been kept in good repair, and when he reached the gargoyle the climber had passed his greatest difficulty—the stretch of squared stones with the crevices well filled with mortar. Above it the stones were weather-worn, and the mortar of the Venetian builders was crumbling away from between them, so that he was able to find holes for his feet and hands. Wylie gathered from the remarks of the men who held him that the adventurer was a noted cliff-climber, and smiled, even in his disgust, at the reticence which had hitherto been maintained as to his profession. With such an auxiliary it would have been comparatively easy to storm the tower on a windy night, with the garrison in the proper state of exhaustion, induced by constant false alarms, but the man and his associates had alike kept their own counsel.
The approach of the insurgents to the tower had not passed unnoticed by the rear ranks of the consular force in the front, and when the three men ran forward warning shouts were raised, two or three officers stepping out and calling to them, evidently under the impression that they did not know the place was mined. As they took no notice, the commander of the Magnagrecian guard, who was the nearest, began to march his men round to the back. Instantly, to Wylie’s speechless horror, the insurgents lining the ridge fired a volley. He could hardly believe his eyes when he saw that they had fired into the air, and that the Magnagrecian detachment was untouched. But the bullets whistling overhead had alarmed the rest of the force, and the Magnagrecians were hastily recalled. No one seemed quite to know whether the volley had been an accident, an act of hostility or one of warning, and while the officers of various nationalities discussed the matter excitedly, a shout of triumph from the insurgents drew their attention to the top of the tower. The daring climber stood there, and the Roumi flag which had floated proudly from its staff was torn down and rent savagely into fragments. In its place the eagle of the Eastern Empire rose into view and blew out defiantly. So much they saw, then the climber seemed to throw himself headlong from the battlements, scrambling down the ruined masonry for dear life. Arrived at the gargoyle, he took a flying leap, regardless of safety, and as his feet touched the ground the building blew up. The time-worn walls, which had seen so many changes since their builders had first hoisted the standard of St Mark, ended their career under the flag of Free Emathia.
In the shock and amazement of this transformation scene, it was difficult to perceive what actually happened. The Consuls and their naval contingents declared that the insurgents lining the roofs of Ahmed Pasha, in the excitement of their triumph, opened fire upon the representatives of Europe. The insurgents, on the other hand, declared, and Wylie believed they spoke the truth, that it was not bullets that wounded several sailors at this juncture, but flying fragments of masonry, and that they had merely fired their rifles again into the air. However this might be, there was no doubt that the consular force, with marvellous celerity, took cover behind the ruins of Segreti, and that bullets were flying between it and Ahmed Pasha, rendering the position of those who found themselves on the broken ground stretching from one to the other unpleasant in the extreme. The insurgents lining the ridge behaved with a steadiness of which Wylie would have been proud in less exasperating circumstances. They separated into two parties, which took turns in running back and halting to cover each other’s retreat with the greatest precision, picking up Wylie and his two guards by the way, and tumbling proudly into Ahmed Pasha without the loss of a man, though one or two exhibited flesh-wounds. Even the climber and his two companions had somehow escaped from the wreck of the tower, and joined the rest.
An informal Assembly for mutual congratulation was, of course, the first thing to be thought of, the periods of the orators being pleasantly punctuated by the bullets which struck the houses round them. Nobody was concerned to apologise to Wylie, who had very skilfully been prevented, so the general opinion seemed to run, from making a regrettable exhibition of himself, and the seriousness of the situation was quite overborne by the gratifying reflection that Emathia was actually engaged in hostilities with the whole of envious Europe. But it was very speedily borne in upon the minds of the triumphant talkers that war with Europe did not merely mean exchanging long shots from cover with another force equally well protected. A shell came screaming and tearing overhead, without any innocuous warning this time, and exploded in the courtyard of one of the houses, from which rose a thick cloud of smoke. Other shells followed, one dropping almost in the midst of the Assembly, which broke up with unprecedented celerity, and Wylie seized the opportunity of the general consternation to resume his command. It was useless to try and retain Ahmed Pasha under the fire of the ships, but the fact had in it this compensation, that it would be equally impossible for the Powers to reestablish the Roumis in the place if they could be beguiled into destroying it. They would probably go on dropping shells as long as no sign of surrender appeared, and by sunset the place would be untenable for any self-respecting Moslems. The insurgents, confused and terrified by the sudden reversal of their fortunes, were willing enough to obey the man who proposed to deprive their enemies of any profit from it, and under Wylie’s orders the wounded were first conveyed out at the back of the village, and then such stores as remained. Lastly, the garrison left in small parties, keeping the now burning houses between themselves and Segreti, and taking care not to concentrate anywhere on the road, lest the ships should take a fancy to enlarge the area of their fire. Wylie was perhaps the only man present who realised that the brief attempt of the insurgents to obtain a footing on the mainland was now ended. They were driven back upon Karakula, and might be thankful if they were allowed to retain even that.
Though the insurgents’ love for the Powers could hardly be expected to have been increased by the events of the day, they were sufficiently frightened by this second bombardment and its results to become more amenable to discipline. Ahmed Pasha was now a heap of smoking ruins, and the shells began to fall into Karakula—apparently out of pure vindictiveness, since it was well within the line which the Admirals had laid down as the limit of the insurgents’ territory. The village itself was not capable of defence, as the houses had never been repaired since its first seizure, and it was commanded by the steep slope behind it, and therefore Wylie did not linger there. He posted his pickets from shore to shore of the isthmus, in case an attempt should be made by the Roumis to break through, and concentrated the rest of his force in a hollow well shielded from the fire of the warships, from which they could quickly reinforce any part of the line that might be threatened. From a high point of the ridge which formed the backbone of the peninsula he could obtain a view of the consular force sheltering behind Segreti, and he noted that the firing ceased as though at a signal, presumably when each ship had dropped a certain number of shells. A detachment of armed sailors was then thrown forward to examine the ruins and make sure that they were not occupied, and thereafter the Consuls, their guards and their rescued charges, embarked in safety. No attempt was made to cross the line and approach Karakula, for which Wylie was devoutly thankful, since his men, posted in an advantageous position, which the fire from the ships could not easily search out, would certainly have refused to withdraw without fighting, and could not have been dislodged without heavy loss.
Night fell at last, and leaving Prince Romanos in command on one shore of the isthmus, Wylie took up his post on the other, that nearest to Therma and Skandalo. It was here, if anywhere on the isthmus, that an attack would be made, and he had conceived a plan for drawing the assailants into a morass not far from the shore by means of a feigned retreat. He had everything in readiness to give them a warm reception, but with a sad lack of consideration they declined to come. Distrustful, owing to much bitter experience, of the wakefulness of his supporters, he watched through most of the night himself, and felt almost as if he had been cheated when it had passed uneventfully. The labours and trials of the last few days had left their mark upon him, and Prince Romanos started when they met.
“You are ill!” he said. “Or were you wounded yesterday after all?”
“This place is feverish,” said Wylie irritably. “I felt it in the night. I suppose I had no business to sleep out, but there wasn’t much choice. I must send for my quinine from the monastery, and then I daresay I shall shake it off.”
“Better rest for to-day,” suggested Prince Romanos; but Wylie was an impracticable patient, all the more determined to do all he could at once because he knew it was highly unlikely that he would be able to do it on the morrow. The new line of defence behind Karakula must be strengthened, and more use made of the marsh, so that it might appear to be the only unguarded spot, positively inviting an attack. This was a kind of warfare the insurgents could understand, and they entered heartily into the contrivances for concentrating a heavy fire on an imaginary force in difficulties. One man even volunteered to offer to act as guide to the Roumis, with the amiable intention of leading them into the trap, but the drawback to this scheme was that there were no Roumis to lead astray—not the slightest apparent intention on the part of Jalal-ud-din to profit from the advantage secured for him by the Powers yesterday. Still Wylie worked on, growing more ghastly in appearance as the hours passed, until Prince Romanos was summoned by a violent outcry from the trench which was being dug under his superintendence. Wylie had collapsed at last, and as he lay insensible in the sun, knives were being drawn above him. His own guards, and the other Slavs in the neighbourhood, declared that the Greeks had murdered him, and the Greeks were vehemently rebutting the accusation, crying out that the Slavs had brought it against them to conceal their own guilt. Prince Romanos patched up a hollow peace by sending for Dr Terminoff, who pronounced the illness to be entirely due to natural causes, and ordered the patient to be carried to the hospital. Before he arrived there, however, Wylie recovered consciousness sufficiently to murmur, “Ephestilo camp; not hospital—not monastery,” and the doctor consented unwillingly to do as he wished, sending word to Maurice of the change. Maurice hurried to Ephestilo as soon as the news reached him, and found his friend established in the chief house in the village, from which his guards had expelled the inhabitants on their own authority. Wylie could not lift his head from the rolled-up cloak which served as a pillow, but his eyes met Maurice’s anxiously.
“Hoped I should be—sensible—when you came,” he said with difficulty. “Don’t let—ladies—come here.”