“It’s a little sudden,” said Maurice, almost apologetically. “Last night the food was the only trouble.”
“Yes, and might have been so still if Christodoridi had happened to carry a piece of paper and a pencil instead of sending a verbal message. You would have realised, if he didn’t, that his beautiful halted convoy must be a trap. But it’s no good crying over wasted casualties. I’ll stay here while you go back and settle things with Terminoff and the rest. When you are ready, we must send a flag of truce, I suppose.”
“To suggest what?”
Wylie looked up at him with approval. “You see, as I do, that it’s all up,” he said, “but we’ll keep a stiff upper lip. Offer to surrender as prisoners of war. The Roumis will probably accept, without for a moment intending to keep the terms, but if we are once recognised as belligerents, the Admirals must for very shame interfere if anything in the way of a massacre is attempted. Let Terminoff go as envoy, and tell him to communicate with the Admirals if he can, so as to get their guarantee for the terms.”
“Do you think they’ll give it? You imagine that there’s some faint chance still?” asked Maurice incredulously.
Wylie shook his head. “They won’t give it. But we preserve our high moral attitude. Not that it’ll do much good to you and me, but it may save the lives of some of those wretched refugees, and it may be of some future service to the Emathian cause.”
“Of which you have no reason to think kindly. Wylie, I won’t insult you by asking you to forgive me for dragging you into this, but I will say that if I had guessed how the Powers would behave, and the Christians, I should have thought my own life was enough to throw away.”
“Can’t be helped,” said Wylie. “Luck’s been against us all through. Well, ‘whirligig of time,’ don’t you know? A hundred years hence they may be worshipping you and me with haloes on in every village of a free Emathia.”
“As martyrs?” said Maurice lightly as he turned away, but his mouth set firmly when he had taken the path to the monastery. “No martyrdom for you, if I can help it!” he said, addressing in his thoughts the distant Wylie. “Eirene owes me something, and she may as well pay it in this way as any other. And pay it she shall.”
Arrived at the monastery, he summoned Dr Terminoff and the other insurgent leaders to a council. He had thought that by this time he knew the men with whom he had to deal, but it came upon him with a shock that he was mistaken. Dr Terminoff, hitherto so obliging, so ready to listen to reason, refused definitely to become the bearer of the offer of surrender. He explained his position frankly.