“Maurice! You have sacrificed——” began Eirene, but she broke off and went indoors, closing her lips tightly. Zoe found her presently walking up and down the narrow inner room where her boy was still sleeping, with her hands clenched and her head thrown back.
“I might have known!” she cried. “Maurice always manages to defeat me somehow. I ought to have taken Constantine and come away by myself, without warning him,—it is the only way. He would have been so anxious about us that he would have been willing to do anything. To surrender without being forced to it! To submit our sacred rights to the choice of the people!”
“I suppose he thinks that it will be better for the Emathians if they can agree upon a ruler rather than have one forced upon them,” said Zoe.
“The Emathians! what do they signify? It is a matter of right, of my boy’s rights! But I have not sworn. I am not bound, and nothing shall ever make me submit to this iniquitous arrangement.”
Remonstrance was useless, and Zoe, with a vivid memory of old times, held her tongue. They continued their journey after a hasty meal, Prince Romanos and his servant being added to the party. The two were born mountaineers, and their experience proved most useful in getting the horses over the precipitous tracks which here, in Roumi territory, represented the good Dardanian roads. A guide, secured by Armitage, took charge of them from the inn to Pentikosti, and explained matters to various truculent-looking groups of highlanders, who appeared at awkward points and seemed quite capable of making themselves unpleasant. Thus, though exciting enough, the journey stopped short of providing actual adventure, and in the evening they rode down into Pentikosti, and found Armitage’s yacht, with her fires banked, awaiting them in the rude little harbour. A further distribution of palm-oil among the Roumi notables who came to do honour to Armitage secured a promise that in the minds of these worthy men the arrival of the strangers should be as though it had not been, and before nightfall the yacht had taken her passengers on board and was steaming down the coast.
The next morning the passengers presented rather a curious appearance, for Armitage, after a talk with his captain, had ransacked his yachting wardrobe and practically forced the other men to don his clothes. Prince Romanos looked like a masquerading pirate, and Wylie, so the rest told him, like a horse-marine; but the incongruity of riding-clothes on shipboard was sufficiently obvious, even without Armitage’s evident anxiety. Zoe and Eirene, entreated with becoming diffidence to make themselves look as “frilly” as they could, complied as far as the severe limitations of their campaigning luggage would allow, and wondered what was the use of trying to deceive the crew, who must know when and where, and probably also why, they had really come on board.
It was not until after two days and nights of continuous steaming that the true reason for the precaution became apparent. The yacht’s head was turned northwards again, and Armitage was up and down and everywhere, in a perfect fever of excitement, driving Captain Waters, whose attention was sufficiently demanded by the intricacy of the navigation, to the verge of frenzy. Suddenly he calmed down, and appeared among the rest with a look of pale determination, for which there seemed no particular reason.
“Man-of-war going to board us,” he explained to the ladies. “Just go on with what you are doing, please, as if there was nothing the matter. Don’t be frightened.”
“Why should we be frightened?” asked Zoe, astonished, but Eirene’s eyes were anxious. Together they moved to the rail, where Wylie was holding up little Constantine to look at the low, thick, two-funnelled vessel which was rushing swiftly towards them. The child shrieked with delight as the destroyer circled round and came to a halt, while a boat put off from its grey side. A pleasant English-speaking officer mounted the yacht’s ladder, and looked in astonishment at the group before him. He made himself very agreeable to Mrs and Miss Smith, the ladies to whom he was presented, and asked the necessary inquisitorial questions as politely as possible, accepting as altogether natural the avowed intention of Armitage to run into Therma and see what was really going on there. But he had a word to add as he took his leave.
“I see you have zat Apolis on board,” he said to Armitage. “You know he is incendiary, revolutionist? I have heard him talk in Paris.”