CHAPTER VI

The prize was divided equally between the two ships, as it had been agreed that all taken on this cruise, by whichever ship captured, should be shared in common, after one-half had been appropriated to the fund for the war, out of which the wages of the crew were paid. Evidently the spoils from Elatina had been carried on this ship, for they found many embroidered Greek dresses, several vestments, presumably from the desecrated church, and a considerable sum of money, packed in hampers. The _Revenge_ had hardly suffered at all in the encounter, but a hole had been stove high in the bows of the _Sophia_, some five yards of bulwark had been knocked into match-wood, and the round-house was a sieve. They had also lost eight men killed, and from both ships some thirty wounded. Under these circumstances it was best to put in at Galaxidi for repairs, and, as the crew would not now be sufficient for the handling of the ship in case of a further engagement, for the raising of a few recruits. Kanaris himself had a graze on the wrist from a musket-shot as they were getting to close quarters, but the hours had been sweet to him, and his cold gray eyes were as of some wild beast hungry for more.

The Capsina examined the gear and sailing of the prize with scornful wonder. "A good hole for rats to die in," was all her comment. But there were half a dozen serviceable guns and a quantity of ammunition, the latter of which they divided between the two brigs. She would have liked to remove the guns also, for, apart from their use, she felt it would be a pleasant and bitter thing to make them turn traitors to their former owners, but there was no tackling apparatus fit for such weights, and they had to be left. But as she had no notion of letting them again fall into the hands of the Turks, she set fire to the ship before leaving it, and saw it drift away southeastward, a sign of fire, with its crew of death, its captain still dangling from the foremast and swinging out from right to left beyond the bulwarks as the ship rolled. There was a gun loose in the deck battery, and they could hear it crashing and charging from side to side as the unruddered vessel dipped and staggered to the waves, with flames ever mounting higher. Then another squall of impenetrable rain swept across the sea, and they saw her no more.

The Capsina had intended to escort Kanaris as far as Galaxidi, on the chance of other Turkish ships being about, but when they came near and saw that the coast was clear, she turned off into the bay where they had fought that morning to see if there was anything left of either of the other two ships worth picking up. But she found that both had sunk, one in deep water, the other in not more than fifteen fathoms, and through the singular clear water they could see her lying on her side, black and dead, while the quick fishes played and poised above and round her. The sight had a curious fascination for the girl, and, after putting about, she lay to for an hour under shelter of the land, while she rowed out again to the spot and leaned over the side of the boat, feeding ravenously on the sight, angry if a flaw of wind disturbed the clearness of it. But to Mitsos, though his heart could be savage, the poor ship seemed a pitiful thing, and he wondered at the fierceness of the girl.

They reached Galaxidi before the evening and the land-breeze fell, and the Capsina, who had cousins there, went ashore with the baby, intending to leave it there, for, indeed, on the brig they had but little time or fit temper for a child that should have been still lying at its mother's breast. She heard from her friends of a young mother who would perhaps take charge of it, for her own child, a baby of three days old, had suddenly died, and the Capsina herself took it there, nursing it with a singular tenderness, and jealous of all hands that touched it.

"See," she said to the mother, "I have brought you this to care for. I am told that your own baby has died. It seems like a gift of God to you, does it not? Yet it is no gift," she added, suddenly; "the child is to be mine. But I will pay you well."

The young woman, no more, indeed, than a girl, came forward from where she had been sitting, and looked at the baby for a moment with dull, lustreless eyes.

Then suddenly the mother's love, widowed of its young, leaped into her face.

"Ah, give it to me," she cried, quickly. "Give it me," and a moment afterwards the baby was at her breast.

The Capsina stared for a little space in wonder and amazement, then her face softened and she sat down by the girl.

"What is your name?" she asked.

"Catherine Vlastos," and her voice caught in her throat; "but Constantine Vlastos, my husband, is dead, and the little one is dead."

Again the Capsina waited without words.

"Tell me," she said, at length, "what is it you feel? How is it that you want the child? It is nothing to you."

"Nothing?" and the girl laughed from pure happiness. "It is nothing less than life."

"You will take it for me?"

"Take it for you!" Then, as the baby stirred and laid a fat little objectless hand on her breast: "You are the Capsina," she said, "and a great lady. They tell me you have taken three Turkish ships. Oh, that is a fine thing, but I would not change places with you."

Sophia rose from her seat, and walked up and down the room.

"You loved your husband?" she said, at length. "Was that why you loved your baby, and why you love this baby?"

"I don't know. How should I know?"

Sophia stopped in her walk.

"And I love the baby, too," she said, "and I know not how or why. Perhaps only because it was so little and helpless, for, indeed, I do not like children. I don't want to leave it here. Yet I must, I suppose. Will you promise to keep it very safe for me? Call it Sophia, that is my name; and, indeed, it has a wise little face. I must go. Perhaps I shall call here again in a few weeks. Let me kiss it. So--I leave money with you, and will arrange for you to be supplied with more."

She turned to the door, but before she was well out of the house she came back again and looked at the baby once more.

"Yes, it is very curious," she said, "that I should care for it at all. Well, good-bye."

Mitsos, meantime, had gone across to Kanaris's ship, where they were busy with repairs. The squalls had blown themselves out, and sky and sea were a sheet of stars and stars reflected. The work was to go on all night, and he had to pick his way carefully between planks and hurrying workmen, doing the jobs by the light of resin flares. The resin flares brought the fishing into his mind--the fishing those dear nights on the bay, and the moonlight wooing and winning of Suleima. How strange that Suleima should be of the same sex as this fine, magnificent Capsina--Suleima with all her bravery and heroism at the fall of Tripoli, woman to her backbone, and the Capsina, admirable and lovable as she was, no more capable of being loved by him than would have been a tigress. Yet she had sobbed over the little crying child--that was more difficult still to understand. And Mitsos, being unlearned in the unprofitable art of analysis, frowned over the problem, and thought not at all that she was of a complicated nature, and then felt that this was the key to the whole situation, but said to himself that she was very hard to understand.

He found Kanaris dressing the wounds of the lad who had been crucified. Healing and wholesome blood ran in his veins, for though they had been dressed roughly, only with oil and bandages, they showed no sign of fester or poisoning. The lad was still weak and suffering, but when he saw Mitsos coming in at the cabin door his face flushed and he sat up in bed with a livelier movement than he had yet shown, and looked up at him with the eyes of a dog.

"I would rise if I could," he said, "and kiss your hands or your feet, for indeed I owe you what I can never repay."

Mitsos smiled.

"Then we will not talk of that," he said, and sat himself down by the bed. "How goes it? Why, you look alive again now. In a few days, if you will, you will be going Turk-shooting with the rest of us. Ah, but the devils, the devils!" he cried, as he saw the cruel wounds in the hands; "but before God, lad, we have done something already to revenge you and Him they blasphemed, and we will do more. How do they call you?"

The boy was sitting with teeth tight clinched to prevent his crying out at the painful dressing of the wounds, but at this he looked up suddenly, seeming to forget the hurt.

"Christos is my name," he said. "That is why they crucified me. Oh, Mitsos, do you know what they said? They looked at me--you know how Turks can look when they play with flesh and blood--when I told them my name, and one said, 'Then we will see if you can die patiently as that God of yours did.'"

The lad laughed suddenly, and his eyes blazed.

"And though I wince," he said, "and could cry like a woman at this little pain, yet, before God, I could have laughed then when they nailed me to the cross, and set me up above the altar. I cannot tell you what strange joy was in my heart. Was it not curious? Those infidel men crucified me because my name was Christos. Surely they could have had no better reason."

Kanaris had finished the dressing of the wounds, and the boy thanked him, and went on:

"So I did not struggle nor cry at all; indeed, I did not want to. Then soon after, it was not long I think, hanging as I did, the blood seemed to sing and grow heavy in my ears, and my head dropped; once or twice I raised it, to take breath, but before long I grew unconscious, supposing at the end that I was dying, and glorying in it, for I knew that the Greeks would come again and find me there, and the thought that I should be found thus, with head drooped like the wooden Christ, was sweet to me. And they came--you came--" and the lad broke off, smiling at the two.

Mitsos's throat seemed to him small and burning, and he choked in trying to speak. So for answer he rose and kissed the boy on the forehead, and was silent till again he had possession of his voice.

"Christos," he said, and involuntarily, with a curious confusion of thought, he crossed himself--"Christos, it is even as you say. For it seems to me that somehow that was a great honor, that which they did to you, though to them only a blasphemous cruelty."

Mitsos paused a moment, and all the dimly understood superstitious beliefs of his upbringing and his people surged into his mind. The half-pagan teaching which suspected spirits in the wind, and saw gods and fairies in the forest, strangely blended with a child-like faith which had never conceived it possible to doubt the truths of his creed, combined to turn this boy into something more than human, to endow him with the attributes of a type. He knelt down by the bed, strangely moved.

"It is I," he said, "who should kiss your hands, for have you not suffered, died almost on the cross, where wicked men nailed you for being called by His name?"

Mitsos was trembling with some mysterious excitement; and his words were so unlike anything that Kanaris had suspected could come from him, that the latter was startled. His own emotions had been far more deeply stirred than he either liked or would have confessed, and to see Mitsos possessed by the same hysterical affection frightened him. He laid his hand on his shoulder.

"Get up, little Mitsos," he said; "you don't know what you are saying. See, the Capsina has gone on shore; you will have supper with us. We will have it all together here, as I have finished the doctoring. You feel you can eat to-night?" he said, turning to the boy.

Christos smiled.

"Surely, but you and Mitsos must feed me," and he looked with comic contempt at his bandaged hands.

"That is good," said Kanaris, and, clapping his hands, he told the cabin-boy to bring in supper for the three.

Mitsos's serene sense soon came back to him, and he wondered half-shamedly at himself, and thought of his previous excursion into the kingdom of hysterics, which he had made after the fight at the