“To the picked force, lord,” was the glib answer.
“To them first?” Gatso declared with much invocation of saints that it was so, but Zeko’s grip descended again on the back of his neck, and changed his tune. “To—to you, lord, at the monastery,” he gasped. “Oh, Holy Virgin, I shall be choked!”
“Let him go, Zeko,” said Maurice contemptuously. “You see what he has done,” he added to the other men. “Instead of delivering his message as he was told, he has spread it broadcast, and by drawing the garrisons from their posts, has brought about this defeat. What does he deserve?”
“Death, lord,” was the unanimous answer, and every man in the redoubt looked ready to execute the sentence. But Maurice waved them back.
“We have lost too many men to waste more,” he said. “You ought to be shot, Gatso, but take this rifle and see how many Roumis you can shoot instead.”
There was a murmur of discontent, and Gatso himself showed no particular gratitude; but he took the rifle and crawled to the loophole, while Maurice set himself to work along the line and see whether it was in immediate danger of being pierced at any other point. Everywhere he found his men confronted by the Roumis, and shots being exchanged at intervals. The enemy had already landed troops enough to outnumber his force twice over, and he was hopelessly cut off from his best men, who were all with Prince Romanos beyond the isthmus. A determined rush on the part of the Roumis must break the weak line. Perhaps they were waiting until night to make it, or perhaps they were planning to make a second landing at disaffected Skandalo, or in one of the smaller bays, and take him in the rear. He thought of Wylie lying sick at Ephestilo, of Eirene and Zoe and the other women practically defenceless at the monastery, and reflected bitterly that he could not depend on the guards at the various landing-places even to warn him of an attack unless he was in the immediate neighbourhood. “We must certainly have either Wylie’s Sikhs or some other force that we can trust, as a nucleus, before we can hope to turn these chaps into soldiers,” he said to himself, and then remembered that he was planning for a future which his short-lived sovereignty would now never see. There was just the chance that Prince Romanos, with his victorious force, might be keeping out of sight in the defiles, intending to make a rear attack, when darkness fell, on the Roumis who barred his way, in which case there would be more hope of the stubborn defence, contesting each inch of ground, on which they had relied, in the last resort, to awaken the tardy sympathy of Europe. But when he reached the right-hand extremity of his line, resting on the sea, a chorus of lamentation met him. The men not at the loopholes were gathered round a dripping form, which they were wrapping in their own clothes, and plying with coffee.
“The only one escaped!” they told Maurice, with awe. “He saw the Lord Romanos fall.”
“Tell me,” said Maurice, and the fugitive sat up. He was a Greek from the mainland, who had been foremost in pressing the claims of Prince Romanos, but now he saluted Maurice as Prince.
“You are left, lord,” he said. “The Lord Romanos is slain.”
“Tell me,” said Maurice again, while a groan broke from the listeners.