CHAPTER V

SOME PICTURES AND A RECITATION

Curtis was confined to his room four days with the foot, which time he devoted assiduously to the method.

On the fifth day he was able, with the aid of a rustic crutch, to get down to the demarch's café. Michali assisted him as he hobbled down the stony street, his lame foot clumsily bundled in rags and swinging in the air. Lindbohm strode on ahead, instinctively making sword-like passes with the rattan cane. The latter's appearance had been much dignified by the assumption of a swashbuckling pair of yellow boots. He had been repeatedly offered a Cretan fez, but he clung with inexplicable affection to the shapeless and uneasy straw, still tethered to his buttonhole.

"Behold!" cried Michali, as they reached a turn in the street whence the view was unobstructed over the tops of the houses. "Yonder is the ravine where we came up, and there is the sea. You will hardly find a village in all Greece from which the sea is not visible."

The village, on this fragrant and dewy spring morning, was peaceful and idyllic. Curtis drew a long breath, and, closing his eyes, imagined himself in ancient Arkadia. On the balconies of the neatly whitewashed houses pots of basil and begonia had been set out, and formed green patches against the white. Here and there an almond tree in full bloom dispensed wide sweetness, or shook its snowy petals to the breeze. The site of the town was so uneven that it seemed possible to step from the threshold of some of the dwellings on to the red-tiled roofs of others. There was water everywhere. Sometimes it ran through wooden troughs and sometimes it darted down clear byways worn in the blue rock. They walked beside a wall, on which was an aqueduct, and they heard the water gurgling above their heads.

The wall was overgrown with vines and a long line of poppies had leaped atop. Slightly bowed by the wind they seemed stooping to drink. At the end of the wall the rivulet poured into a round stone basin, sunk into the ground for the convenience of animals. A plane tree waited patiently at the basin that the sheep and goats might drink in the shade. A wandering peddler with his donkey came down a tributary street. The animal was sandwiched between two boxes, each as large as himself. The street was so steep that he seemed to be walking on his front legs.

The demarch was standing in the door of his café. A single grape vine, spreading out on a frame, supported by two posts and the wall, made a canopy above his head. The leaves were new, and were as pale green as young frogs. Kyrios Nikolaki was an imposing figure, and doubtless felt his position in the community, combining as he did in one person the important functions of mayor, grocer, saloon keeper and banker. He stood now, with his hairy hands crossed over his semi-spherical stomach, watching the advent of his guests and smiling benignly. As Curtis glanced at the tall yellow boots, the voluminous breeches, the double-breasted vest with woolen balls for buttons, and the rakish fez, he thought for the first time since landing in Crete of his camera. That had gone down with the "Holy Mary." The demarch was clean-shaven, with the exception of his gray mustache, and his shirtsleeves were fresh from the iron. His cheeks were florid with good living, and he would have been a comely man save for the fact that his lower lids had fallen a little, disclosing a red and raw looking spot under each eye.

"Welcome! welcome!" he cried, as the party arrived. "How is Mr. Stork and the Lieutenant? And Kyr' Michali? And where is the Church this morning? Why did you not bring him along, that he might take a drink of cognac with the State?"

"I am very well," replied Curtis in Greek. "We did not bring the Church, because we did not see him."

Curtis had made great progress in Panayota's language. He had found the girl very willing to talk with him and not a little interested in his efforts to acquire fluency in her native tongue. He had also made this discovery, which pleased him greatly, that the Greek of these sturdy mountaineers was easier for him than that of Athens, as it possessed a more archaic flavor.

"Marvelous! marvelous!" shouted the demarch. "Your progress is wonderful. I observe it every day."

"Ah, this is comfortable," said Curtis, sitting on a bench with his back against the plane tree. "Are all the Cretan villages as pretty as this?"

"Some are much more beautiful," cried Michali. "That is, those which the Turks have not destroyed. But this village is not so easy for them to reach. You see how hard it is from the sea to come. And behold, we have all around us a circle of mountains."

"An enemy couldn't get in at all," said Lindbohm, casting an experienced eye about. He was striding nervously to and fro, fencing with an imaginary opponent.

"Yes, one way. There is, what you call it--a cut in the hill--"

"A ravine," suggested Curtis.

"Yes, I think so. A ravine, very deep and very crooked. But the shepherds watch him all the time."

The conversation did not progress rapidly, because Greek politeness demanded that Michali translate every word for the demarch, whose own remarks, moreover, it was necessary to turn into English.

"Would you like to see the inside of my store?" asked the latter, a lull in the conversation making him feel that he must do something for the entertainment of his guests. Michali had again described the shipwreck, the English had been denounced as barbarians, worse than the Turks, and the demarch had told a story of a famous battle in which thirty Cretans slew two hundred Mohammedans, on which occasion he himself had led the victorious party. There seemed to be nothing more to talk about.

"I have some very fine pictures inside," said the mayor. "Come, Lieutenant, Mr. Stork, Michali."

"Where are the pictures?" asked Curtis, when they had entered, hoping that his host possessed a collection of Byzantine, or perhaps Venetian, works of art. Kyr' Nikolaki glanced about the room and waved his hand majestically.

"They are hanging on the walls," he replied.

Borrowing Lindbohm's cane, he made the circuit of the room, pointing to the wretched prints that were hung high up, close to the ceiling.

"This," he explained, "is Marko Botsares, a famous Greek patriot of the war of independence. Have you ever heard of him?"

"Heard of him!" cried Curtis.

"At midnight in his guarded tent The Turk lay dreaming of the hour, When Greece, her knee in suppliance bent Should tremble at his power!"

"And this is Ali Pasha, with his head in the lap of his favorite wife," continued the mayor. "He lived at Janina. He was finally killed, as he deserved to be. He terrified Albania, Epirus and a part of Macedonia, but the Suliotes he could not terrify. Their women preferred to die rather than submit to Turks." Kyr' Nikolaki was reciting, after the manner of a lecturer, one of those glorious incidents in modern Greek history which all Greeks know by heart.

"Why do you go to Suli for an example of heroism?" cried Michali, springing to his feet, his eyes blazing with excitement. "He will tell you of the deeds of the brave Suliote women, and how they blew themselves up with their own powder, or danced, singing, over the edge of one cliff, to save their honor. Why shall he not tell rather of the convent of Arkadia?"

"Ah, certainly, certainly, tell them of Arkadia," cried the demarch, catching the name.

"It was Mustapha Pasha," continued Michali, speaking rapidly despite his unfamiliarity with English. His fists were clenched, and he jerked out the words by nervously smiting the air, as though beating on an invisible table.

"He had come with very many Turks to Retimo. He kills, he burns. The women, and the small children, they cannot climb over the hills and sleep on the rocks. They take asylum in the monastery of Arkadia, on south side of Mt. Ida. The old men go, too. Mustapha, he puts cannon on mountains, all around and fires down from above. By and by, he beats down the walls, and his army rush into the court. He say 'Yield.' The women, the old men, the friars, they say 'No, we die!' and they shoot from the windows. O, they kill very many Turks. Then Mustapha bring in his cannon, and he commence shoot at walls of building. Pretty soon he will make a hole. Father Gabriel, the Hegoumenos, he see this. He shout through the roar of the cannon: 'Shall we die, my children, or shall we yield?' They say all together 'We shall die!'"

Lindbohm was striding up and down before the speaker. The demarch still held the rattan cane, but the Lieutenant was making home thrusts with his closed fist.

"Father Gabriel he stretch out his arms. They all fall on their knees, the women, the children, the old men. The Hegoumenos blesses them; he say, 'Father, into thy hands I commit these souls!' Then he goes down cellar. They know where he gone. The women hug their babies tight and begin to sing the hymn of liberty, and the men join in. They are all looking to the sky and chanting--" and Michali sang:

"From the bones of the Greeks upspringing, Who died that we might be free, And the strength of thy strong youth bringing-- Hail, Liberty, Hail to thee!

"Every moment a bullet comes through and kills somebody, but they know nothing, now, except the song 'Hail, Liberty.' Then the wall falls and in rush the Turks and begin to kill, when 'boom' the powder magazine roars like one gun, and all are dead--Greeks, Turks, all dead--ah! all dead together!--two hundred Turks!"

But the demarch, not understanding all this, was unable to enter fully into the enthusiasm of the others. He was anxious to continue with his picture gallery.

"This," he said, "is the Lordos Beeron, who, being descended from the ancient Greeks, came over to this country to fight for his native land."

Curtis, despite his enthusiasm for Byron, did not rise. He had seen that woodcut before, in Athens. It represented the youthful poet wearing a brass cavalry helmet with a sublime plume. This is the Byron honored among the uneducated classes in Greece, who know him as soldier and not as poet. With nodding plume and warlike eye he frowns terribly down from the dingy walls of a thousand _khans_ and wayside inns. In this apotheosis he no longer holds high converse with Shelley and Tom Moore; he hobnobs with Ypsilanti, Botsares and Admiral Miaoules.

"This," continued Kyr' Nikolaki, "is the most beautiful woman in the world. I have never found any one who knew her name, but all agree that she is a Greek--probably a Sphakiote."

Lindbohm and Michali gazed earnestly at the cheap engraving, but no name was visible. Curtis arose, and, placing his hand on the mayor's shoulder, hopped across the room.

"An American actress, by Jove!" he exclaimed. "She's a beauty, indeed, but she's an American, old man." And in Greek to the mayor: "She's an American--ah--I can't think of the word for 'actor.' Michali, tell him her picture is to be found in every nook and cranny of the civilized globe. I can't say 'nook' and 'cranny' in Greek."