An hour passed. He went out into the village, where life was beginning to flow once more into the street and market-place; the villagers came out to look at their broken windows, and their chipped houses; they were all laughing and in high good-humour, pointing proudly to the damage, and laughing like children to see that in the school-house, which faced the sea and in which the remaining Greek officials were still imprisoned, nearly all the windows were broken. Julian, shaking off the people, men and women, who were trying to kiss his hands or his clothes, appeared briefly in the class-room to reassure the occupants. They were all huddled into a corner, behind a barricade of desks and benches. The one guard who had been left with them had spent his time inventing terrible stories for their distress. The wooden wall opposite the windows was pocked in two or three places by bullets.
As Julian came out again into the market-place he saw old Tsigaridis riding down on his great white mule from the direction of the hills, accompanied by two runners on foot. He waited while the mule picked its way carefully and delicately down the stepped path that led from the other side of the market-place up into the interior of the island.
'They are beaten off, Tsantilas.'
'No imprudences,' said the grave old man, and recommended to the people, who came crowding round his mule, to keep within the shelter of their houses.
'But, Tsantilas, we have the boats within our sight; they cannot return without our knowledge in ample time to seek shelter.'
'There is one boat for which we cannot account—the motor-boat—it is swift and may yet take us by surprise,' Tsigaridis replied pessimistically.
He dismounted from his mule, and walked up the street with Julian by his side, while the people, crestfallen, dispersed with lagging footsteps to their respective doorways. The motor-launch, it would appear, had been heard in the far distance, 'over there,' said Tsigaridis, extending his left arm; the pickets upon the eastern coasts of the island had distinctly heard the echo of its engines—it was, fortunately, old and noisy—but early in the morning the sound had ceased, and since then had not once been renewed. Tsigaridis inferred that the launch was lying somewhere in concealment amongst the tiny islands, from where it would emerge, unexpectedly and in an unexpected place, to attack.
'It must carry at least fifty men,' he added.
Julian revelled in the news. A motor-launch with such a crew would provide worthier game than little cockleshell rowing-boats. Panaïoannou himself might be of the party. Julian saw the general already as his prisoner.