CHAPTER XVIII

A DESERTED TOWN

An air of indescribable sadness hangs over a deserted town. Any one who has ever passed through a shepherd village, from which the inhabitants have gone for the summer, expecting to return again when the first snows of autumn drive them down from the mountains, has experienced this feeling. Here is the fountain, where the slender, merry maidens met at sundown, to gossip and fill their water jars; here is the café, where the old men gathered together under the platane tree and smoked and dreamed of the long ago; here is a secret nook, guarded by sweet poverty vines, where lovers held tryst in the fragrant twilight. But all is lonely, lonely.

The waters splash with a melancholy sound, the tables and chairs are gone from under the platane tree and the lovers--let us hope they are fled together. The spirit of loneliness dwells where man has been and is not--in a tenantless house, in the chamber of death, by the embers of a camp fire in a vast wilderness. As you follow the streets of a deserted town you hear nothing but the splash, splash of the waters of the fountain or the enquiring twitter of some little bird. Perhaps a cat, tamed more by solitude than by hunger, tiptoes to meet you, purring with diplomatic fervor. But these sounds do not break the silence, they are its foil, its background.

Galata was deserted because its inhabitants had fled two days before from the terrible Turk. Thanks to a timely warning, most of the people had succeeded in getting away, though an occasional corpse proved how narrow had been the escape of the entire population from sudden death.

Kostakes and his little troop now marched through an olive orchard, whose gnarled and venerable trunks had perhaps witnessed the cruelties of the only oppressors worse than the Turk--the haughty, treacherous and inhuman Venetians; they climbed a flight of steps cut in the natural rock and followed a street paved with cobblestones from the walls of partly ruined houses to the village square.

Here the men stacked arms and dispersed among the houses, looking for temporary quarters. Curtis could not help admiring the soldierly way in which everything was done. In ten minutes after their arrival the square looked like a little Indian village filled with wigwams of muskets, and sentries were pacing patiently up and down at all possible places of approach. This was evidently a town of considerable importance, as some of the houses facing the square were two-storied, and in one or two instances the projecting beams supporting the balconies were of carved marble. The fountain, too, that stood beneath a disheveled willow, whose roots drank at the overflowing waters, was of marble.

Three carven swans, the successive wonder of as many generations of unkempt children, swam full-breasted from a square pedestal, each hissing a clear, thin stream into a circular stone basin. An inscription informed posterity that the marble hero who sat atop of the inevitable column was Petros Nikolaides, former mayor of Galata,--an _euergetes_ of imperishable memory. Mr. Nikolaides, with white goggle eyes, looked over the house tops, the olives and cypresses and away to the distant purple hills. His chin was small and cloven with a deep dimple and one side of his drooping mustache had been stoned away twenty years ago by mischievous boys.

Panayota and her father were led to a respectable looking stone house facing the fountain and two sentries were stationed before the door.

"Ah, well," said Kostakes amiably to Curtis, "we shall be quite comfortable here, eh? Will you do me the honor to dine with me?"

"I shall be delighted," replied the American. "It is I who shall receive the honor."

"No, no! I protest, Monsieur. It's quite the other way. We'll have a table set here under this tree. Ah, we shall be very cozy. _Voilà_! I shall be able to offer you some fresh cheese. If there's anything left, trust to my rascals for finding it!"

A soldier was dragging a stuffed goat-skin from the door of a grocery. At a sign from Kostakes, he set it on end, and ripped open the top with his knife, disclosing the snowy contents.

"_Voilà_, Monsieur! And no doubt we shall be able to find you some excellent wine, though you must excuse me from joining you in that. Mohammedans do not drink wine."

Kostakes leaped lightly to the ground, and gave his horse to an orderly. Kostakes was a handsome young fellow, almost boyish, and yet with an insolent, aristocratic air. His features seemed to combine sensualism and cruelty with a certain refinement. His lips were too thick and too red, and his chin was square. It was evident at a glance that his under front teeth closed even with the uppers. His nose was his cruel, sensitive feature. It came down straight from his forehead, thin as a knifeblade, and the nostrils had a way of trembling when he talked. Curtis threw his good leg over the horse's mane, and sat, woman fashion, eyeing the Turk. He could not, somehow, reconcile this gentlemanly, smiling young officer with the nightmare that continually haunted him--Michali in the burning building, wounded and screaming vainly for help. There was a sort of ghostly relief in the reflection that the poor fellow must have been over his sufferings long ago. But to burn to death! Ugh! How long does it take a man to burn to death?

"Does your foot pain you?" asked Kostakes, with genuine solicitude. "If those barbarian Greeks had not shot my surgeon--very cruel people the Greeks, especially the Cretan Greeks. When you know them better you will find that they are not half-civilized."

"If you will let one of your men help me dismount," said Curtis, "I will take a wash. I am glad to see that dinner is so nearly ready. I assure you I am half famished."

"One of my soldiers, Monsieur! I would never permit such a thing. I will help you myself. So--so! Ah! How is the foot?"

The American placed the wounded member on the ground and attempted to bear his weight upon it. To his surprise, it seemed much better. But a happy thought, an inspiration, took possession of him. He seized the leg tightly with his hands above the knee and sank upon the edge of the water basin.

"I--I believe it's worse!" he groaned.

"Allah forbid!" cried the Turk. "It is from the long ride. When you have rested it will be better. Now let us wash and eat something--a soldier's frugal meal."

Curtis attacked the repast with the zest of a ravenous appetite. The salt cheese, the brown bread and the country wine seemed to him viands fit for the gods. The orderly brought several heads of long Italian lettuce, which he washed at the fountain and cut lengthwise. They ate it like asparagus or celery, dipping it in salt. The American thought it delicious, and rightly. He would never again be able to relish the pale, tasteless chips sold in America for lettuce at brigand prices. He saw that Panayota and her father were also eating.

"Sensible girl," thought Curtis; "means to keep her strength up. We'll outwit these Turks yet."

He touched glasses with Kostakes, who was disposed to be convivial, albeit in water.

"Do you know, Monsieur le Capitaine," Curtis said, "I cannot decide which is the greater sensation--the pleasure of eating or the pain of my foot. Do you think, if blood poisoning should set in, you have anybody here who could amputate it?"

"Now, Allah forbid!" cried the Turk again. "By day after to-morrow we shall reach a Mohammedan village, and there we shall find a doctor."