CHAPTER XL

A TROUBLED MIND

"Pity! Pity!" whined the lepers, exposing their hideousness with all the skill of subtle and experienced merchants. They were all there by the roadside leading into Canea, and had commenced business for the day. Curtis stared at them, unable to remove his eyes from the dreadful spectacle.

Lindbohm, fumbling nervously in his pockets, with averted face, and producing two or three coppers, tossed them to the afflicted group.

"Come, away," he said, pulling Curtis along. "I cannot bear to look at them."

The Turk had been telling them of the leper colony, and they were not totally unprepared for this sight; yet the reality far exceeded the description.

"But you should see those who are not able to come down here and beg," exclaimed the Major; "these are comparatively well yet, you know."

"I hope I may never see them," said Lindbohm. "I hope I may never see these again."

The Swede bore the Turk no ill-will for the enforced detainment. It had not lasted for long, and the Major had shown his guests every attention, and had explained again and again that he had carried Lindbohm off to save his life.

"But those who are no longer able to beg," asked the Lieutenant, "do they starve?"

"O no, indeed! They are living monuments to the tender-heartedness of my august master, the Sultan. Each of the lepers is furnished one loaf of bread a day."

"O, I see," said Lindbohm.

Curtis took no part in the conversation. He did not even hear what the others were saying, but walked on beside them with his eyes fixed upon the ground, like a man in a trance. Every now and then he ejaculated "Good God!" with the accent on the "good."

At last he stopped so abruptly that the Turk, who was directly behind, nearly knocked him over.

"I say!" said Curtis, whirling around and choking a stream of fluent apologies with a vehement question:

"Do people who are not lepers ever go into that village? To see their friends, you know, or to stop over night, or anything of that sort?"

"Impossible. You have seen the disease. Do you think any one would run the risk of catching it?"

Curtis strode on and became again immersed in thought, vaguely hearing the Major's explanation of the fact that nearly all the lepers of Crete were Greeks.

At each side of the gate of Canea stood an English marine, in red jacket and cork helmet. A business-like "Halt!" woke Curtis from his abstraction.

"I am Peter Lindbohm, Lieutenant of cavalry in the Swedish army," said Lindbohm in English, pulling an immense portfolio from the breast pocket of the Prince Albert. "Here is my card."

One of the marines took the proffered pasteboard, glanced at it solemnly, and saluted.

"And here's mine," said Curtis. "I'm an American. And this gentleman is a Turkish officer. We were coming across the country on foot, and he said we were in danger of being massacred, so he took us to his house and kept us there till the English landed, and here--here's my passport, too, if you can manage to read it. It's been in the water."

"What do you want to do now, sir?"

"We have friends inside," replied Lindbohm, "and we wish to find out whether they are safe or not. We wish to go in."

"Very sorry, gentlemen, but we 'ave strict horders to admit no one for the present."

"But we two are not Turks--nor Cretans. I am a Swede, and my friend here is an American."

"Very sorry, gentlemen----"

"But this may be a matter of life and death! A Christian lady, the betrothed of this young gentleman, is in the hands of the Turks----"

"Very sorry, gentlemen. Move away from the gate, please."

Lindbohm was too good a soldier not to know what that meant. So they went to a house near by, belonging to a friend of the Major, and waited two whole days, during the most of which time the Swede and the American had the place to themselves, for the Major and his friend were arrested and carried off before the end of the first day. They went repeatedly to the gate, demanding admittance, and were refused as often by the sentinels, until the third morning, when they were greeted with a smile and a "Hit's hall right now, gentlemen; you may henter--'im givin' hup 'is sword, which will be restored to 'im at 'eadquarters."

Lindbohm raised his hand in military salute to his red bandanna and passed under the ancient archway. Curtis handed over the simitar and followed.

"D'yever see two such guys?" asked one red jacket of the other. "Never'n me loife. But the tall one's a soldier, all right. D'ye see 'im s'loot?"

Now, had two men attired as were Curtis and Lindbohm at that moment entered any other town in the world, their grotesque appearance would have excited attention, not to say jeers, and a crowd of small boys would have been following at their heels. The gray Prince Albert was wrinkled and faded, and so badly shrunken that it caused Lindbohm's arms to fall a trifle akimbo. Altogether, it was a garment very inharmonious with the tall yellow boots into which his trousers were tucked, and the gaudy handkerchief which, twisted about his brow, did service for a hat. He had picked up a slender stick, which took the place of the bamboo cane, and with which he occasionally warded off an imaginary thrust, as he strode up the street, looking eagerly about him. Curtis' once natty business suit had been torn in several places. He also wore Cretan boots, and his costume was completed by a Turkish fez provided by the hospitable Major, who had managed, in addition, to afford his two guests a bath, and an opportunity to shave.

Lindbohm was quite voluble.

"Bear up, my friend," he said; "we shall surely find her. Remember that she was in a Turkish house, the very safest place she could be in."

Curtis continued to be silent and preoccupied, a condition which the Swede attributed to the fear that something had happened to Panayota, and that their long search would be rendered vain at the very end. Yet he could not understand the American's seeming listlessness, mingled with absorption and perplexity.

"He acts like a man who has been hit on the head with a musket butt," thought the Swede, glancing shrewdly at his companion. "Great heavens, can it be that he has a presentiment of evil?"

Then aloud:

"We must go straight to the military authorities--to the English. We will tell them all about Panayota, and if Kostakes has her yet they will yust make him give her right up--eh, my friend?"

"Ye-es," replied Curtis. "Yes, O yes; certainly."

The Turks whom they met looked sullen. The foreign troops were everywhere, marching in small bodies through the streets. If two or three Mohammedans stopped to talk together an English redcoat was sure to step up to them with:

"G'an now, move on!" Not much damage had been done to the part of the town through which they were now passing. There was a sprightly gossiping of bugles, hailing and replying from distant points, and the frequent clatter of shod hoofs as some orderly galloped across an intersecting street. And all the noise and bustle was threaded by a continual tune, not sung loudly, but insistently, like the motif of an opera.

The Cretans whom they met, whether jubilant or sad of face, seemed to be humming it--some joyously, others revengefully.

"Do you hear that?" cried Lindbohm, "Panayota will be singing the hymn of liberty herself to-day. We must make her sing it all through for us. I wish I could understand the words."

And he beat time with his cane as a tall Cretan strode by, humming very distinctly:

"We can tell you by the lightning Of your terrible swift brand, And we know you by the brightening When your proud eyes sweep the land!"

"Panayota will be singing that at this very moment, eh?" cried Lindbohm, laying his hand upon Curtis' shoulder; but the latter made no reply.

From the narrow street they passed into a place of smoldering ruins and roofless, ragged walls. Here a party of marines were at work, assisted by townspeople, throwing water on fires that were still burning, or in digging bodies out of the debris. A cart stood near, and an awestruck, silent throng lingered by, ready to identify the remains of possible relatives or friends. The air was full of powdered lime and smoke, and had a queer, pungent smell.

"Come on," said Lindbohm, "before they find a body. I don't like to see such things, and don't let this affect you, my friend. Panayota, you know, is in the Turkish quarter."

Lindbohm urged this cheering assurance with the insistent frequency of a man who is trying to water his own hopes.

On the edge of the ruined quarter was a pile of rubbish which had once been a cottage. Three of the walls had fallen down, but the one facing the street was still standing. A young and beautiful Cretan woman looked in through one of the holes where the windows had been, watching a man who was clearing away debris with a shovel and lifting blocks of stone to one side. The woman's face was drawn with agony, and she stared at the man, great eyed and silent, like a tortured dumb creature. Every time that he lifted a rock, she gave some sign of a fiercer wrench of pain, as when the executioner gives another twist to the rack; sometimes she thrust one hand against the window sill and swung part way around, as though about to fall; sometimes she clasped her hands to her heart and gasped for breath. Once she covered her eyes for a long time as though fearful of seeing the very thing she was waiting for. And when at last the man lifted a little charred body from the crumbled lime, she broke into a series of dreadful screams, shrieking "No! No! No!" until her voice died into a hoarse whisper. The husband tore off his jacket, wrapped it around the tiny body and came into the street, his own grief eclipsed by the greater solicitude for the young wife. And when the woman took the pitiful burden, rocking it on her heart and talking baby talk to it, he walked by her side, patted her disheveled hair, and tried to call her back from the brink of insanity with endearing terms. As they passed through the throng of waiting Cretans, every man removed his head-covering, hat, fez or handkerchief, and made the sign of the cross.

"Come away," said Lindbohm, choking, "the poor little baby."

"I want to get out of this damned place," shouted Curtis with sudden vehemence, shaking his fist. "It's a hell of horrors and I'm sick of it!"

"Courage, courage," said Lindbohm, "the more horrible it is the more haste we must make to find Panayota. Poor Panayota! She is no horror, eh, my friend?"

They came into the public square, where the shells from the "Hazard" had fallen thickest, for here the Bashi Bazouks had fired on the British soldiers, and yonder, rising precipitously to a height of thirty feet, was the fortified stronghold from which the Turkish guard had poured a rain of bullets upon the town. English sentries were now pacing to and fro up there. But the chief attraction was a sort of booth in the center of the square, for all the world like a Punch and Judy booth, and in it were hanging by the neck seven figures with black caps over their heads, with their hands bound behind them and their feet tied together.

"By George, they've been hanging the ringleaders, hanging them higher than Haman!" cried Lindbohm.

Curtis could not realize that those were the bodies of human beings, there was something so theatrical about their appearance; they hung so neatly in a row, and the heads all lolled one way, like heads of Brownies in an advertisement.

"Maybe they have hanged them in effigy," he suggested.

Lindbohm laughed.

"Might as well be now," he replied. "But let us ask the guard where we will find the commandant. Then we shall learn something about Kostakes and Panayota."

"You go," said Curtis; "I'll wait for you here." He shrank from the ingenuous explanation that Panayota was his betrothed. The very thought made him shudder.

"I can't tell him," he muttered, as he watched Lindbohm forcing his way through the throng. "I must get away from him some way. By Jove, I'll run off and leave him, if I can't do any better. Good God, what an escape I've had!"

"Hi!" shouted Lindbohm, so that every soul in the square turned and looked at him. He was standing on tiptoe and Curtis could see the ruddy face with its red bandanna halo floating on a sea of heads. "Hi!" called the Swede again, waving his stick in air. "Come here, quick! I've found Kostakes."

"Now, what the devil do I want of Kostakes?" muttered Curtis, plunging reluctantly into the press. When he had reached Lindbohm's side, the Swede gripped him by the arm and pointed a long finger at one of the pantomimists in the Punch and Judy booth.

A board hung, suspended from the neck of each, with a name and crime inscribed thereon in Turkish and English. Curtis read:

KOSTAKES EFFENDI. Captain of Bashi Bazouks, Murder and Arson.

"It is hard for a soldier to die thus," said the Swede sadly. "But a soldier who disgraces his calling, deserves such a death. Well, my friend," turning to Curtis, "half our work has been done for us, eh? Now the rest will be easy. Is it not so?"

Curtis could not take his eyes from the hooded form before him, nor move from the spot where he stood. As long as he stared at the head, covered with its black cloth, he was impressed with a sense of unreality; so might a row of wax inquisitors be shown in the Eden Musee at New York. And that pitiful, limp tilting of the head was not at all suggestive of Kostakes, who was ever wont to hold his neck stiff and stand upright with a certain jaunty insolence. But when Curtis' eyes traveled downward, the unreality vanished. The long row of buttons, the dark blue trousers tucked into the tops of the highly polished boots, the spurs, the backward bulging of the thick calf of the leg--all these things brought back to him a flood of reminiscences. He remembered the fight at Ambellaki, and the long ride across country. He could see those very legs clasping the side of a horse, and he wondered once more how their owner managed to keep the boots so spotless. Then he saw Panayota again, the most splendid creature he had ever seen, denouncing the Turk for the murder of her father, and he felt once more the old thrill of admiration and chivalrous purpose. Ah! She had touched the Turk, she had made him wince, brave girl, despite those insolent eyes, and that square, protruding under jaw. Any one could see that by the way in which he stopped twirling the end of the little black mustache and began nibbling it. The long chase after Kostakes, with those turbulent Cretans, the night in the square when Curtis had fired point blank at him and missed him--all these things passed through his mind like scenes on a moving panorama, as he gaped at those dark blue breeches and the well-polished boots with their long spurs; but when he raised his eyes again to the black-hooded head, tipped to one side like a man with a stiff neck, the whole incident seemed ended; this life in Crete, became a fantastic dream and took on the unreality of those faceless puppets, hanging all in a row, gently oscillating in the breeze.

"Move on!" said a stern voice, sharply.

"They mean us," said Lindbohm, pulling Curtis away, "it seems they allow no loitering here. Well, the next thing is to see the commandant and make some inquiries about Panayota, eh?"

"Lindbohm!" cried Curtis, pettishly, "I don't want to go to the commandant. See here, old man, there's something I want to tell you. Something I must tell you. I can't stand this any longer."

They had passed the crowd and were alone now. The Swede stopped and looked steadily at his companion. Curtis glanced up furtively. There was nothing but inquiry in those brave, honest blue eyes.

"I say, old man," he stammered, "don't you think we ought to go and get some hats and things before we go to the commandant? I don't want to offend you, but you--but we look like the very devil!"