CHAPTER XIII

THE BRAVE THING TO DO

"Hark!" said Curtis, who was sitting in the door of the parsonage. "What's that?"

"I didn't hear anything," replied Michali.

"I did. I believe it was a gun. It was a faint throb in the air. There it goes again. There they go!"

No mistake was possible this time.

"They're coming through," said Michali, rising upon his elbow. "The Turks will be here pretty quick, now, I think."

"Hello," cried Curtis, "there comes the demarch. There he goes into that house. Now he comes out--there he goes into another--what's up, I wonder? Here he comes!"

Kyr' Nikolaki looked in at the door. His face was flabby with fatigue and his under lids had drooped perceptibly, enlarging the red pits beneath his eyes into semicircles.

"What is it? what is it?" asked Curtis, who had not clearly understood the few hurried words addressed by the demarch to Michali.

"They're nearly out of cartridges. They can't hold the pass over an hour longer. They're going to send the flocks and the women and children down to the sea. The village owns a lot of caiques there. Then the men will retreat last, fighting, shooting all the time."

"But what are you quarreling about?"

"O, nothing. Nothing at all."

It did not take the Ambellakians long to pack up. The most treasured belongings were thrown into blankets, which were rolled into bundles, and then, away for the ravine and the sea!

A mother dashed by the house with a babe under her left arm and a bundle over her right shoulder. Another dragged two frightened children along the stony street, clutching tight a tiny wrist with each hand. An aged couple doddered by, the man with feeble and palsied hand striving to support the woman, who clung to a frame containing two bridal wreaths. From amid the faded orange blossoms smiled the youthful eyes of a shy mountain girl and a stout _pallikari_--man's work lasts so much better than man himself.

The confusion grew to frenzy. A parrot-like chatter and screaming of women filled the air. A florid housewife stumbled and wheezed down the street, carrying a pair of long-handled coffee stew pans. She did not know what they were, but had seized them through force of habit. Another bore a cheap chromo, representing skin-clad hunters thrusting spears into a number of colossal polar bears. She fell and jabbed her knee through the picture, but picked up the frame and ran on with that. Scrips, or bags of pied and brightly-colored wool, of which two or more are to be found in every Cretan peasant's house, were hanging from the arms and shoulders of many of the fugitives.

At a burst of firing, seemingly more distinct and nearer than anything that had preceded it, an old woman stopped, and fumblingly extracted a silver mounted _eikon_ from her scrip. After kissing it and making the sign of the cross several times, she replaced it, and hurried on again. A babe was laughing and clutching with glee at the disheveled locks of its fleeing mother. A girl of six hugged to imminent suffocation a shapeless and wrinkled pup.

The demarch came in again, accompanied by Lindbohm and a stalwart mountaineer. The Swede had a gun in his left hand. In the grime of his powder-blackened face his eyes looked unnaturally blue. But they were no longer childlike. It was rather the blue of an angry sea.

"Panayota's taken," he said to Curtis.

"I know it."

"There's nothing to be done now except to rally the men and rescue her." The Swede did not talk like a man in despair. He seemed, on the contrary, exalted by a great resolve.

"We will get together and fall upon Kostakes like a thunderbolt. We'll not let him go far. And if he harms a hair of her head--" He doubled his ponderous fist and shook it. Then he whirled about briskly and gazed at Michali.

"We'll take you somehow," he said. "We'll be as careful as we can. They'll kill you if you stay here."

"I not go," replied Michali. "I have said it to the demarch. Take two strong men to carry me. They better be fighting. Leave a gun with me. When they find me I will kill two, three Turks. Ha! By God, I surprise them! So I die!"

"Come, no more of this foolishness," said Lindbohm. "I take him on my back, and the shepherd here take you," turning to Curtis.

But Curtis had been thinking very fast, and the bright image of his beautiful and high-spirited hostess in the hands of the Turks had sharpened his wits to an extraordinary degree.

"Look here, Lindbohm," he said, speaking very rapidly, "I'll stay here and look out for Panayota. They won't kill me, I'm a non-combatant, and the Turks won't be so apt to abuse the girl when there's a foreigner amongst them. Help me to the wine cave. I'll hide there till the right moment and then I'll give myself up."

Lindbohm saluted.

"I would not have asked it," he said, "but it is the brave thing to do. Ah, tell the officer you're a newspaper correspondent. That's the safest thing."

The firing had ceased entirely for several minutes. Now rapid footsteps were heard. Looking toward the door Curtis saw a Cretan shepherd fling by. He was running low to the ground, carrying his gun horizontally, like a man hunting--or being hunted. Another and another passed.

"We have five minutes now," said Lindbohm, holding out his arms to Michali. "They have given up the pass. Come! Must I take you, or will you come on my back?"

"I come," replied Michali, "to the wine cave."

Lindbohm kneeled by the divan and Michali put his arms about his neck. The Swede arose, wrenching from the Cretan's throat a groan that ended in a low, sharp shriek.

Lindbohm strode from the door, followed by the demarch and the shepherd, the last mentioned carrying Curtis.

Five or six shots, followed by a persistent fusillade, were heard.

"Now I think they come through," muttered Lindbohm, breaking into a run. Michali was breathing in tremulous, faint groans between set teeth. Then, mercifully, he fainted, and remained unconscious until the Swede, panting with exertion, bounded through the arbor into the dim café.

The demarch ran to his wine barrels, and, pulling an empty one around parallel with the wall, smashed in its end with the butt of a musket, using the weapon as though it were a battering ram. Michali was shoved into the barrel as tenderly as possible and the broken pieces were laid in beside him. Then they pushed the tun back into place, with the open end against the wall.

"And you?" said Lindbohm, turning to Curtis, who was sitting upon the table where the shepherd had dropped him.

"Save yourselves!" cried the American, pointing to the door. A shepherd, standing behind the platane tree, was aiming at something above him. He fired, and jerking the empty shell from his smoking piece, reloaded. Three Cretans darted to the rear of the café, trailing blue ropes of smoke from the muzzles of their guns. The man behind the tree started after them, but stopped at a crash of musketry and dropped his gun with a "ching" among the rocks. His legs broke at the knees as though some one had playfully jabbed them from behind. As he instinctively threw forward his arms to save himself from falling, his elbows collapsed and his hands fell flopping at the wrist, like penguin's wings. He was dead before his body reached the ground.

Lindbohm snatched his musket from the table and ran from the café, followed by the demarch and the shepherd. Curtis slipped into a corner, behind the huge oil crock. The sound of the firing continued, but no one came into the café. Ten minutes, twenty minutes passed. They seemed hours to the American. Occasionally he heard a sput, sput against the outside of the soft wall. Once a "ftha," like the hissing of a cat, was followed by a humming sound, as a bullet, slightly flattened by the sand, sang in through the open door.

It did not occur to him that these things were dangerous.

"I must see what they are doing," he said. "It's a good fight! It's a good fight!"

He slid around the smooth, cool crock and leaned out from his hiding place. He could see nothing but a strip of the open door and a huge vine, sturdy as the trunk of a tree. He jumped back just in time to save himself. The café was poured full of Turks, bringing Panayota and her father. An officer, young, slender and very handsome, dropped into a chair and laid his unsheathed sword before him on the table. The soldiers fell respectfully back, leaving the girl and the priest standing facing the officer. Ampates slunk in the background with Panayota's Cretan knife in his hand. It was he who had led the way to the women, by a round-about path.

A long conversation ensued, in which Kostakes spoke with insinuating sweetness, smiling continually and occasionally twirling the ends of his small, dark mustache. His intentions with reference to Panayota were honorable, he said. The priest began his reply in a pleading tone but ended with a fiery denunciation. Once or twice a soldier stepped threateningly towards him, but Kostakes waved the would-be murderer back with a slight gesture or an almost imperceptible movement of the head. Panayota was magnificent. She seemed at no moment to have any doubt of herself. She stood erect, pale, calm, contemptuous, until near the end of the interview when, with an incredibly quick movement, she snatched the sword from the table, and, turning the hilt towards her father, threw back her head and closed her eyes. The officer with a loud cry sprang to his feet, tipping over the table, and a soldier knocked the weapon harmlessly into the air. All the Turks in the room leaped upon Papa-Maleko, who fought like a cornered cat, wounding one, two, three of his assailants. The Turks did not dare shoot, for fear of killing their officer or the girl. Curtis came from his hiding place, crying hoarsely in English:

"Panayota! For God's sake! For God's sake! Panayota!" and then "Don't shoot! Don't shoot! You'll kill Panayota!"

But it was no part of Kostakes' plan to kill Panayota's father in her presence. A Turk, cooler than the rest, reaching over the heads of his comrades, dropped the butt of a rifle on the man's skull and he sank to the ground. Panayota fell on her knees beside him, fumbling in his hair and sobbing, "Papa! papa!"

The heart has a little vocabulary of its own, which it has spoken from the beginning of the world, the same for all peoples, unchanged in the confusion of tongues. Curtis was not noticed in the tumult until he had forced his way into the officer's very presence, where he stood, shaking his fist and shouting, still in his own tongue:

"This is a shame! Do you hear me? You're a scurvy blackguard to treat a girl in that way. If I had you alone about five minutes I'd show you what I think of you!"

Two or three soldiers sprang forward, and a petty officer half drew his sword, but Kostakes, astonished at hearing a language which he did not understand, but which he surmised to be either German or English, motioned them back.

"_Qui êtes vous, Monsieur, et que faites vous ici?_" he asked in the French which he had learned at the high school at Canea.

"_Je suis Américan, correspondant du--du--_ New York Age," replied Curtis.

"_Ah, charmé! charmé! Comment dites vous en Anglais?_ Welcome. _Je suis Kostakes, Capitaine de Cavalerie, à votre service!_"