“The prospect is certainly a pleasant one,” said Maurice indifferently. Few people realised—his wife least of all—the disgust with which he was filled by the necessity of constantly putting himself forward, of forcing his claims upon an unwilling, or at best uninterested, people.
“The place for you is the Hagiamavra Monastery,” went on Armitage eagerly,—“in the heart of the insurgents’ position, defensible against any unsupported rush. It’s a good way from the sea, that’s the worst of it, and the paths through the hills are simply beastly; but once up there, there you are. If you stayed down at Skandalo, you’d always be exposed to attack from the sea, either a bombardment or a Roumi landing. At the monastery—well, I suppose the Dreadnought’s guns could touch you, but nothing else that floats, and no Roumi force is likely to be able to force its way up in the face of opposition.”
“And what about provisions?”
“I can leave you a fair store, and then I’ll go off and forage. I think I can do better for you in that way than if I landed with part of the crew to help in the fighting. They were not engaged for war-service, you see, but anything like running a blockade will delight them.”
“I see.” Maurice saw more than Armitage intended, and guessed why he had given up his former plan of attaching himself through thick and thin to the party that included Zoe, but he did not say so. “I suppose you realise that you’re more than likely to lose the yacht?” he asked.
“Meaning that the Powers will sink her? Let ’em. She may as well leave her bones here as at the North Pole, though I hope she won’t do it till you’re well supplied. But about these guns and things. Waters has hit on an awfully neat dodge, and made use of it to keep the men from getting rusty while he was hanging about off Pentikosti. He has had canvas covers made for all the cases, with red braid on them—like the things you see old ladies with on their travels, you know—and initials stencilled on the tops,—most swagger luggage you ever saw. He’ll pad them up a little with waste, to disguise the shape and the sharp corners, and we’ll get them landed and up to the monastery as the ladies’ boxes.”
“Awfully neat!” said Maurice, laughing in spite of himself. “But what about the weight? And the case of a machine-gun must be a fair size, I should imagine.”
“Oh, don’t you know those things as big as a house, that some women lug about their ball-dresses in—all standing, so to speak? It can’t be bigger than that. And as to the weight—oh, we’ll stuff the insurgents about Byzantine robes, stiff with gold and jewels, and all that sort of thing, you know. They’ll take it as an awful compliment that the Princesses should have come prepared to hold a court.”
Maurice was hardly convinced, but Armitage was so fully persuaded of the feasibility of his plan that he offered no further objection. The yacht anchored off Skandalo that night, jealously scrutinised by fishing-boats, which drifted out of the darkness into the circle of her lights, asked a question or two, and faded into nothingness again, and with earliest daylight Armitage and Captain Waters went on shore to make judicious inquiries, lest the Roumis might, with unwonted energy, have occupied the little town. When they came off again, they brought with them one of the insurgent leaders, no other than Dr Afanasi Terminoff, who was exercising authority at Skandalo in the name of the Emathian Revolutionary Committee, the Roumi inhabitants having wisely effaced themselves on the invasion of the peninsula by a mixed multitude of patriots and refugees from Therma. It appeared that Professor Panagiotis had, as Armitage said, played up nobly. He had not been informed of the flight from Bashi Konak save by a note left to be delivered to him on the following morning, but on receiving it he had promptly waited upon the Prince of Dardania to inform him that Prince Theophanis and all his party had been laid low in the night with influenza, and would be unable to leave their rooms for some days. At the same time he had communicated with the insurgent headquarters,—by the historic method of fire-signals, Zoe suggested, but more probably by mere prosaic messages carried overland by returning delegates. The really ardent among these men had been stealing away from Bashi Konak one by one since the first news of the massacres at Therma, more anxious to take part in any fighting there might be than to consume additional time in theoretical negotiations, and their news travelled before them in some mysterious way.
The arrival of Prince Theophanis was expected, and Dr Terminoff had had time to prepare information and advice, with both of which he was overflowing. The state of things was not altogether propitious. The Hagiamavra peninsula was now affording standing-ground—accommodation it could hardly be called—for quite three times its ordinary population, even allowing for the expatriated Moslems. A certain proportion of the newcomers consisted of stalwart members of revolutionary bands from all parts of Emathia, who had obeyed the summons to concentrate for a great struggle, but the rest were a heterogeneous mob from Therma, among them a large number of men whose enthusiasm for freedom was of a wildly anarchistic character. These refugees were not amenable even to such limited authority as was possessed by the captains of bands over their followers, and led by any plausible talker among themselves who could gain their ear, they raided the houses and farms of the inhabitants in search of provisions, establishing a worse than Roumi tyranny in the peninsula. Some central authority, with sufficient power at its command to enforce its orders, was urgently needed, and it was equally necessary to devise some means of feeding not only the fighting men, but the troops of helpless women and children who had sought safety with them. Maurice and Wylie, as they listened, perceived that the task before them was much larger than they had anticipated, since it had not occurred to their minds that they would be called upon to combine the functions of a relief agency with those of a military dictatorship. To do this from a precarious foothold on the coast was obviously impossible, but Dr Terminoff was as anxious as Armitage to establish the whole party safely at the monastery. Besides the predatory hordes from Therma, who were spread over the lower hills immediately behind the town, there were the insurgent bands, hardly less truculent though better disciplined, occupying the heights in the interior, and only too likely to welcome an opportunity of returning to their wonted avocation of brigandage. Moreover, since the delegates who had accepted Maurice’s leadership at Bashi Konak had not had time to explain their action to their supporters, a strong republican spirit was prevalent, and might manifest itself in disagreeable ways.