Among the many queer characters they met at Ieros, none was more quaint than a Mr. M'Andrew, who appeared on the scene in a very smart, rakish little motor yacht with two masts and a gay awning, very reminiscent of the River Thames. Sometimes he appeared flying the Greek flag, and bringing the rubicund military governor of Mytilene to "protest" against the British having done "this" or "that"; with a cheery "Au revoir, Messieurs; à Constantinople!" when he left the ship. At other times he flew the red ensign, and took Captain Macfarlane and the Commander for—as far as the gun-room knew—pleasant little sea trips. Generally he flew no flag at all, and had a most motley crew of picturesque brigands with him.
Occasionally the yacht used to lie alongside the Achates, and once or twice the Sub tempted Mr. M'Andrew down into the gun-room to take a glass of iced soda-water, of which he seemed excessively fond. He never touched alcohol.
He looked like a retired bank-manager who possibly devoted his leisure to teaching in a Sunday or "ragged" school; he was broad and plump, and perhaps fifty years of age—a most placid-looking individual who always wore an old, but not shabby, blue suit, across the ample waistcoat of which stretched a very thick gold watch and chain. He talked very simply—as if talking was mere waste of breath—and his conversation was chiefly about soda-water and the places he remembered where you could buy it cheapest. He always carried a bunch of raisins in one of his side-pockets, and ate them deliberately, one at a time, whenever he was not smoking a very old briar pipe. The Sub used to ask him to dinner or lunch, but he would refuse. "No, thank you; I never have meals; I just go on munching raisins, and have some bread occasionally."
Rumour had told the Honourable Mess that he was really a daring pirate, and led forays against the Turks in the little bays on the mainland—over against Mytilene—though never a word could they get from him about his adventures—about anything, in fact, except soda-water, the merits of dried raisins, and the unfortunate family troubles of his crew.
There was one old man who used to sit on the top of the deck-house all day long without saying a word to a soul—a shrunken old Greek with very sharp features and black eyes which seemed to blaze from their deep sockets in the most startling way. When you first saw him he looked a poor, withered, feeble old "dodderer", in spite of the Winchester rifle he always gripped across his knees, and the two filled bandoliers of cartridges round his waist and shoulders; but when he turned to look at you the fierceness of his eyes gave him a most extraordinary appearance. Mr. M'Andrew used to take him down a loaf of bread—provided by the gun-room—pat him on the shoulder, and say a few words to him. "Poor old man!" Mr. M'Andrew told them, "poor old man; he's rather miserable. You see, he and his three sons kept a flock of sheep on some little island near the coast, and the Turks came along, killed his sons and the sheep, and tried to kill him, but he managed to escape. He knew of a crack in a rock, where he hid by day—for three days—crawling out at night to suck the grass and eat berries and leaves, until the Turks gave up looking for him and went away—thought he must be dead. I just happened to be going past there yesterday, saw him wave, and brought him along. He won't be really happy again until he's killed a Turk for each of his sons; he thinks I'll give him the chance soon, so won't leave me."
"But shall you?" the Honourable Mess cried with one accord.
"This really is not at all bad soda-water," Mr. M'Andrew went on in his slow, deliberate way. "I remember when I was in Mexico—no, it reminds me of some I got at Haiti during the revolution, the one of 1901. As I was saying, most of my crew have had a good deal of family trouble one way or the other. There's that little lad who cleans the brasswork. He's the only one left of a family of twelve—father, mother, brothers, and sisters. He hid in the roof when the Turks cut the throats of the others one night. He came along here—no, I don't know how—and wants me to let him have a rifle. Oh, those other chaps; nice, gentle-looking fellows, aren't they? They can't bear the Turks—more or less for the same reason! Some of their relatives have been killed by them, or they've been driven away from the mainland and have nothing left of farms, or shops, or flocks, wives or children. They just come along to me, and I lend them some old rifles I just happen to have."
"Have they had a chance of using them?" the snotties asked. "Most of them say they have killed a Turk or two; tell me so when they come first. And I expect they have," went on Mr. M'Andrew in his placid voice, feeling in his pocket for another raisin, and fumbling with the fob of his gold watch-chain.
The China Doll, in fact all the gun-room officers, spent a good deal of time watching him moving about among the fierce, black-eyed ruffians, who sat about the deck of the smart little motor-yacht with their bandoliers across their shoulders, their rifles (which Mr. M'Andrew just happened to have lent them) gripped firmly in their hands. They cleaned these interminably, and Mr. M'Andrew walked about and spoke a few words to each, just as you could picture him walking about the boys in his Ragged School in Glasgow, distributing raisins and bread to them just as he might have done to his boys.
One day the motor-yacht towed in a clumsy, old, local trading schooner, and anchored her abreast the Achates. She turned out to be a Turkish trading ship which had been becalmed off some Greek village. The Greeks captured her, and had killed at least one of her crew, for his body still lay on the deck, just at the break of the poop.