Chapter VII (2)

And now the journey was over. Sylvia knew by the tone of Rakoff's voice that she and Michael must soon shift for themselves. She wondered if he meant to hint his surprise at their not having made an attempt to do so already, and she tried to recall any previous occasion when they would have been justified in supposing that they were intended to escape from the escort. She could not remember that Rakoff had ever before given an impression of expecting to be rid of them, and a fancy came into her head that perhaps he did not mean them to escape at all, that he had merely taken them along with him to wile away his time until he was bored with them. So insistent was the fancy that she looked up to see if any comitadjis were being despatched toward the Bulgarian lines, and when at that moment Rakoff did give some order to four of his men she decided that her instinct had not been at fault. Some of her apprehension must have betrayed itself in her face, for she saw Rakoff looking at her curiously, and to her first fancy succeeded another more instantly alarming that he would give orders for Michael and herself to be killed now. He might have chosen this way to gratify Ziska: no doubt it would be a very gratifying spectacle, and possibly something less passively diverting than a spectacle for that fierce doll. Sylvia was not really terrified by the prospect in her imagination; in a way, she was rather attracted to it. Her dramatic sense took hold of the scene, and she found herself composing a last duologue between Michael and herself. Presumably Rakoff would be gentleman enough to have them killed decently by a firing-party; he would not go farther toward gratifying Ziska than by allowing her to take a rifle with the rest. She decided that she should decline to let her eyes be bandaged; though she paused for a moment before the ironical pleasure of using her golden shawl to veil the approach to death. She should turn to Michael when they stood against a rock in the dawn, and when the rifles were leveled she should tell him that she had loved him since they had met at the masquerade in Redcliffe Hall and walked home through the fog of the Fulham Road to Mulberry Cottage. But had Mulberry Cottage ever existed?

At this moment Michael whispered to her a question so absurdly redolent of the problems of real life and yet so ridiculous somehow in present surroundings that all gloomy fancies floated away on laughter.

"Sylvia, it's quite obvious that he expects us to make a bolt for the Greek frontier as soon as possible. How much do you think I ought to tip each of these fellows?"

"I'm not very well versed in country-house manners," Sylvia laughed, "but I was always under the impression that one tipped the head gamekeeper and did not bother oneself about the local poachers."

"But it does seem wrong somehow to slip away in the darkness without a word of thanks," Michael said, with a smile. "I really can't help liking these ruffians."

At that moment Rakoff stepped forward into their conversation.

"I'm going to ride over to our lines presently," he announced. "You'd better come with me, and you'll not be much more than a few hundred meters from the Greek outposts. The Greek soldiers wear khaki. You won't be called upon to give any explanations."

Michael began to thank him, but the Bulgarian waved aside his words.

"You are included in the fulfilment of an obligation, _monsieur_, and being still in debt to _mademoiselle_, I should be embarrassed by any expression from her of gratitude. Come, it is time for supper."

Throughout the meal, which was eaten in a ruined chapel, Rakoff talked of his rose-gardens, and Sylvia fancied that he was trying to reproduce in her mind her first impression of him in order to make this last meal seem but the real conclusion of their long railway journey together. She wondered if Ziska knew that this was the last meal and if she approved of her leader's action in helping two enemies to escape. However, it was waste of time to speculate about Ziska's feelings: she had no feelings: she was nothing but a finely perfected instrument of destruction; and Sylvia nodded a casual good-night to her when supper was over, turning round to take a final glance at her bending over her rifle in the dim, tumble-down chapel as she might have looked back at some inanimate object which had momentarily caught her attention in a museum.

They rode downhill most of the way toward the Bulgarian lines, and about two hours after midnight saw the tents, like mushrooms, under the light of a hazy and decrescent moon.

"Here we bid one another farewell," said Rakoff, reining up.

In the humid stillness they sat pensive for a little while, listening to the ponies nuzzling for grass, tasting in the night the nearness of the sea, and straining for the shimmer of it upon the southern horizon.

"Merci, monsieur. Adieu," Michael said.

"_Merci, monsieur, vous avez été plus que gentil pour nous. Adieu_," Sylvia continued.

"_Enchanté_," the Bulgarian murmured: Michael and Sylvia dismounted. "Keep well south of those tents and the moon over your right shoulders. You are about three kilometers from the shore. The sentries should be easy enough to avoid. We are not yet at war with Greece."

He laughed, and spurred away in the direction of the Bulgarian tents; Michael and Sylvia walked silently toward freedom across a broken country where the dwarfed trees, like the dwarfed Bulgarians themselves, seemed fit only for savage hours and pathetically out of keeping with this tranquil night. They had walked for about half an hour when, from the cover of a belt of squat pines, they saw ahead of them two figures easily recognizable as Greek soldiers.

"Shall we hail them?" Sylvia whispered.

"No, we'll keep them in view. I'm sure we haven't crossed the frontier yet. We'll slip across in their wake. They'd be worse than useless to us if we're not on the right side of the frontier."

The Greeks disappeared over the brow of a small hill; when Sylvia and Michael reached the top they saw that they had entered what looked like a guard-house at the foot of the slope on the farther side.

"Perhaps we've crossed the frontier without knowing it," Michael suggested.

Sylvia thought it was imprudent to make any attempt to find out for certain; but he was obstinately determined to explore and she had to wait in a torment of anxiety while he worked his way downhill and took the risk of peeping through a loophole at the back of the building. Presently he came back, crawling up the hill on all-fours until he was beside her again.

"Most extraordinary thing," he declared. "Our friend Rakoff is in there with two or three Bulgarian officers. The fellows we saw _were_ Greeks--one is an officer, the other is a corporal. The officer is pointing out various spots on a large map. Of course one says 'traitor' at first, but traitors don't go attended by corporals. I can't make it out. However, it's clear that we're still in Bulgaria."

"Oh, do let's get on and leave it behind us," Sylvia pleaded, nervously.

But Michael argued the advisableness of waiting until the Greeks came out and of using them as guides to their own territory.

"But if they're traitors they won't welcome us," she objected.

"Oh, they can't be traitors. It must be some military business that they're transacting."

In the end they decided to wait; after about an hour the Greeks emerged, passing once more the belt of pines where Sylvia and Michael were waiting in concealment. They allowed the visitors to get a long enough lead, and then followed them, hurrying up inclines while they were covered, and lying down on the summits to watch their guides' direction. They had been moving like this for some time and were waiting above the steep bank of a ravine, the stony bed of which the Greeks were crossing, when suddenly the corporal leaped on the back of the officer, who fell in a heap. The corporal rose, looked down at the prostrate form a moment, then knelt beside him and began to perform some laborious operation, which was invisible to the watchers. At last he stood upright, and with outspread fingers flung a malediction at the body, kicking it contemptuously; then, with a gesture of despair to the sky, he collapsed against a boulder and began to weep loudly.

Sylvia had seen enough violence in the last month to accept the murder of one Greek officer as a mere incident on such a night; but somehow she was conscious of a force of passion behind the corporal's action that lifted it far above her recent experience of bloodshed. She paused to see if Michael was going to think the same, unwilling to let her emotion run away with her now in such a way as to deprive them of making use of the deed for their own purpose. Michael lay on the brow of the cliff, gazing in perplexity at the man below, whose form shook with sobs in the gray moonlight and whose victim seemed already nothing more important than one of the stones in the rocky bed of the ravine.

"I'm hanged if I know what to do," Michael whispered at last.

"Personally," Sylvia whispered back, "it's almost worth while to spend the rest of our life in a Bulgarian prison-camp, if we can only find out first the meaning of this murder."

"Yes, I was rather coming to that conclusion," he agreed.

"Don't think me absurd," she went on, hurriedly. "But I've got a quite definite fancy that he's going to play an important part in our escape. Would you mind if I went down and spoke to him?"

"No, I'll go," Michael said. "You don't know Greek."

"Do you?" she retorted.

"No. But he might be alarmed and attack you."

"He'll be less likely to attack a gentle female voice," Sylvia argued; and before Michael could say another word she began to slide down the side of the gully, repeating very quickly, "Don't make a noise; we're English," laughing at herself for the probable uselessness of the explanation, and yet all the time laughing with an inward conviction that there was nothing to fear from the encounter.

The corporal jumped up and held high his bayonet, which was gleaming black with moonlit blood.

"English?" he repeated, doubtfully, in a nasal voice.

"Yes, English prisoners escaped from the Bulgarians," Sylvia panted as she reached him.

"That's all right," said the corporal. "You got nothing to be frightened of. I'm an American citizen from New York City."

Sylvia called to Michael to come down, whereupon the corporal took hold of her wrist and reminded her that they were still in Bulgaria.

"Don't you start hollering so loud," he said, severely.

She apologized, and presently Michael reached them.

"Wal, mister," said the Greek, "I guess you saw me kill that dog. Come and look at him."

He turned the dead man's face to the moon. On the forehead, on the chin, and on each cheek the flesh had been sliced away to form [Greek: P].

"[Greek: Prodotês]," explained the corporal. "Traitor in American. I'm an American citizen, but I'm a Greek man, too. I fought in the last war and was in Thessaloniki. I killed four Toiks and nine Voulgars in the last war. See here?" He pointed to the pale-blue ribbons on his chest. "I went to New York and was in a shoe-shine parlor. Then I learned the barber-shop. I was doing well. Then I come home and fought the Toiks. Then I fought the Voulgars. Then I went back to New York. Then last September come the mobilizing to fight them again. Yes, mister, I put my razor in my pocket and come over to Piræus. I didn't care for submarines. Hundreds of Greek mens come with me to fight the Voulgars. The Greek mens hate the Voulgars. But things is different this time. They was telling tales how our officers was chummy with the Voulgar officers. I didn't believe it. Not me. But it was true. With my own eyes I see this dog showing the plans of Rupel and other forts. With my own ears I heard this sunnavabitch telling the Voulgars the Greek mens wouldn't fight. My heart swelled up like a watermelon. My eyes was bursting and I cursed him inside of me, saying, 'I wish your brains for to become beans in your head.' But when we was alone I thought of what big mens the Greeks was in old times, and I said to him, '[Greek: kyrie lochage],' which is Mister Captain in American, 'what means this what we have done to-night?' And he says to me, 'It means the Greek men ain't going to fight for Venizelo, who is a Senegalese and [Greek: prodotês] of his country.' And he cursed the French and cursed the British and he said that the Voulgars must be let drive them into the sea. But I said nothing. I just spit. Then, after a bit, I said, [Greek: kyrie lochage], does the other officers think like you was?' And he says all Greek mens what is not traitors think like him, and if I tell him who is for Venizelo in our regiment I will be a sergeant good and quick. But I didn't say nothing: I am only spitting to myself. Then we come to this place, and my heart was bursting out of my body, and I killed him. Then I took my razor and marked his face for a [Greek: prodotês]."

The corporal threw up his arms to heaven in denunciation of the dead man. They asked him what he would do, and he told them that he should hide on his own native island of Samothrace until he could be an interpreter to an English ship at Mudros, or until Greece should turn upon the Bulgarians and free his soul from the stain of the captain's treachery.

"Can you help us get to Samothrace?" they asked.

"Yes, I can help you. But what you have seen to-night swear not to tell, for I am crying like a woman for my country; and other peoples and mens must not laugh at Hellas, because to-night this [Greek: skylaki], this dog, has had the moon for eats."

"And how shall we get to Samothrace?" they asked, when they had promised their silence.

"I will find a caique and you will hide by the sea where I show you. We cannot go back over the river to Greece. But how much can you pay for the caique? Fifty dollars? There are Greek fish-mens, sure, who was going to take us."

Michael at once agreed to the price.

"Then it will be easy," said the corporal, after he had calculated his own profit upon the transaction.

"And ten dollars for yourself," Michael added.

"I don't want nothing out of it for myself," the corporal declared, indignantly; but after a minute's hesitation he told them that he did not think it would be possible to hire the caique for less than sixty dollars, and looked sad when Michael did not try to contest the higher figure.

They had started to walk seaward along the bed of the ravine when the corporal ran back with an exclamation of contempt to where the dead officer was lying.

"If I ain't dippy!" he laughed. "Gee! I 'most forgot to see what was in his pockets."

He made up for the oversight by a thorough search and came back presently, smiling and slipping the holster of the officer's revolver on his own belt. Then he patted his own pockets, which were bulging with what he had found, and they walked forward in silence. The end of the ravine brought them to an exposed upland, which they crossed warily, flitting from stunted tree to stunted tree, because the moonlight was seeming too bright here for safety. The upland gave place to sandy dunes, the hollows of which were marshy and made the going difficult; but the night was breathless and not a leaf stirred in the oleander thickets to alarm their progress.

"Not much wind for sailing," Michael murmured.

"That's all right," said the corporal, whose name was Yanni Psaradelis. "If we find a caique, we can wait for the wind."

Sylvia was puzzled by Rakoff's not having said a word about any river to cross at the frontier. She wondered if he had salved his loyalty thereby, counting upon their recapture, or if by chance they were to get away, throwing the blame on Providence. Yet had he time for such subtleties? It was hard to think he had, but by Yanni's account of the river it seemed improbable that they would ever have escaped without his help, and it was certainly strange that Rakoff, if his benevolence had been genuine, should not have warned them. And now actually the dunes were dipping to the sea; on a simultaneous impulse they ran down the last sandy slope and knelt upon the beach by the edge of the tide, scooping up the water as though it were of gold.

"Say, that's not the way to go escaping from the Voulgars," Yanni told them, reproachfully. "We got to go slow and keep out of sight."

The beach was very narrow and sloped rapidly up to low cliffs of sand continually broken by wide drifts and watercourses; but they were high enough to mask the moonlight if one kept close under their lee and one's footsteps were muffled by the sand. They must have walked in this fashion for a couple of miles when Yanni stopped them with a gesture and, bending down, picked up the cork of a fishing-net and an old shoe.

"Guess there's folk around here," he whispered. "I'm going to see. You sit down and rest yourselves."

He walked on cautiously; the sandy cliffs apparently tumbled away to a flat country almost at once, for Yanni's figure lost the protection of their shadow and came into view like a gray ghost in the now completely clouded moonlight. Presumably they were standing near the edge of the marshy estuary of the river between Bulgaria and Greece.

"How will he explain himself to any of the enemy on guard?" Sylvia whispered.

"He must have had the countersign to get across earlier to-night," Michael replied.

"It's nearly five o'clock," she said. "We haven't got so very much longer before dawn."

They waited for ages, it seemed, before Yanni came back and told them that there was no likelihood of getting a caique on this side of the river, but that he should cross over in a boat and take the chance of finding one on the farther beach before his captain's absence was remarked. He should have to be careful because the Greek sentries would be men from his own regiment and his presence so far down the line might arouse suspicion.

"But if you find a caique, how are we going to get across the river to join you?" Michael asked.

"Say, give me twenty dollars," Yanni answered, after a minute's thought. "The fish-mens won't do nothing for me unless I show them the money first. I'll say two British peoples want to go Thaso. We can give them more when we're on the sea to go Samothraki. They'd be afraid to go Samothraki at first. You must go back to where we come down to the sea. Got me? Hide in the bushes all day, and before the [Greek: pheggari], what is it, before the moon is beginning to-morrow night, come right down to the beach and strike one match; then wait till you see me, but not till after the moon is beginning. If I don't come to-morrow, go back and hide and come right down the next night till the moon is beginning. And if I don't come the next night--" He stopped. "Sure, Yanni will be dead."

Michael gave him five sovereigns; he walked quickly away, and the fugitives turned on their traces in the sand.

"Do you feel any doubt about him?" Sylvia whispered, after a spell of silence.

"About his honesty? Not the least. If he can come, he will come."

"That's what I think."

They found by their old footprints the gap in the cliffs through which they had first descended, and took the precaution of scrambling back farther along so that there should remain only the marks of their descent. In the first oleander thicket they hid themselves by lying flat on the marshy ground; so tired were they that they both fell asleep until they were awakened by morning and a drench of rain.

"One feels more secluded and safe somehow in such weather," said Sylvia, with an attempt at optimism.

"Yes, and we've got a box of Turkish-delight," said Michael.

"Turkish-delight?" she repeated, in astonishment.

"Yes; one of Rakoff's men gave it to me about a week ago, and I kept it with a vague notion of its bringing us luck or something. Besides, another thing in the rain's favor is that it serves as a kind of bath."

"A very complete bath I should say," laughed Sylvia.

They ate Turkish-delight at intervals during that long day, when for not a single moment did the rain cease to fall. Sylvia told Michael about the Earl's Court Exhibition and Mabel Bannerman.

"I remember a girl called Mabel who used to sell Turkish-delight there, but she had a stall of her own."

"So did my Mabel the year afterward," she said.

Soon they decided it must be the same Mabel. Sylvia thought what a good opening this was to tell Michael some of her more intimate experiences, but she dreaded that he would, in spite of himself, show his distaste for that early life of hers, and she could not bear the idea of creating such an atmosphere now--or in the future, she thought, with a sigh. Nevertheless, she did begin an apostrophe against the past, but he cut her short.

"The past? What does the past matter? Without a past, my dear Sylvia, you would have no present."

"And, after all," she thought, "he knows already I have a past."

Once their hands met by accident, and Michael withdrew his with a quickness that mortified her, so that she simulated a deep preoccupation in order to hide her chagrin, for she had outgrown her capacity to sting back with bitter words, and could only await the slow return of her composure before she could talk naturally again.

"But never mind, the adventure is drawing to a close," she told herself, "and he'll soon be rid of me."

Then he began to talk again about their damned relationship and to speculate upon the extent of Stella's surprise when she should hear about it.

"I think, you know, when I was young," Michael said, presently, "that I must have been rather like your husband. I'm sure I should have fallen in love with you and married you."

"You couldn't have been in the least like him," she contradicted, angrily.

For a moment, so poignant in its revelation of a divine possibility as to stop her heart while it lasted, Sylvia fancied that he seemed disappointed at her abrupt disposal of the notion that he might have loved her. But even as the thought was born it died upon his offer of another piece of Turkish-delight and of his saying:

"I think it's time for the eighth piece each."

So that was the calculation he had been making, unless, indeed, their proximity and solitude through this long day in the face of danger had induced in him a sentimental desire to express an affection born of a conventional instinct to accord with favoring circumstance, bred of a kind of pity for a wasted situation. If that were so, she must be more than ever careful of her pride; and for the rest of the day she kept the conversation to politics, forcing it away from any topic that in the least concerned them personally.

A night of intense blackness and heavy rain succeeded that long day in the oleander thicket. Moonrise could not be expected by their reckoning much before three in the morning. The wet hours dragged so interminably that prudence was sacrificed to a longing for action; feeling that it was impossible to lie here any longer, sodden, hungry, and apprehensive, they decided to go down to the beach and strike the first match at midnight, and, notwithstanding the risk, to strike matches every half-hour. The first match evoked no response; but the plash of the little waves broke the monotony of the rain, and the sand, wet though it was, came as a relief after the slime in which they had been lying for eighteen hours. The second match gained no answering signal; neither did the third nor the fourth. They consoled themselves by whispering that Yanni had arranged his rescue for the hour before moonrise. The fifth and sixth matches flamed and went out in dreary ineffectiveness; so thick was the darkness over the sea it began to seem unimaginable for anything to happen out there. Suddenly Michael whispered that he could hear the clumping of oars, and struck the seventh match. There was silence; then the oars definitely grew louder; a faint whistle came over the water: the darkness before them became tremulous with a hint of life, and their straining eyes tried to fancy the outline of a boat standing off from the shore. Presently low voices were audible; then the noise of a falling plank and a hurried oath for some one's clumsiness; a little boat grounded, and Yanni jumped out.

"Quick!" he breathed. "I believe I heard footsteps coming right down to the shore."

They pushed off the boat; and when they were about twenty strokes from the beach, what seemed after so much whispering and stillness a demoniac shout rent the darkness inland. Yanni and the fishermen beside him pulled now without regard for the noise of the oars; they could hear the sound of people's sliding down the cliff; there were more shouts, and a rifle flashed.

"Those Voulgars," Yanni panted, "won't do nothing except holler. They can't see us."

Another rifle banged, and Sylvia was thrilled by the way their escape was conforming to the rules of the game; she reveled in the confused sounds of anger and pursuit on land.

"They don't know where we are," laughed Yanni.

But the noise of the fugitives scrambling on board the caique and the hoisting of the little boat brought round them a shower of bullets, the splash of which was heard above the rain. One of these broke a jar of wine, and every man aboard bent to the long oars, driving the perfumed caique deeper into the darkness.

"I had a funny time getting this caique," Yanni explained, when, with some difficulty, he had been dissuaded from firing his late captain's revolver at the country of Bulgaria, by this time at least two miles away. "I didn't have no difficulty to get across, but I had to walk half-way to Cavalla before I found the old fish-man who owns this caique. I told him two British peoples wanted him and he says, 'Are them Mr. B.'s fellows for Cavalla?' I didn't know who Mr. B. was, anyway, so I says, 'Sure, they're Mr. B.'s fellows,' but when we got off at dusk, he says his orders was for Porto Lagos and to let go the little boat when he could hear a bird calling. He didn't give a dern for no matches. Wal, Mr. B.'s fellows didn't answer from round about Lagos, and he said bad words, and how it was three days too soon, and who in hell did I think I was, anyway, telling him Mr. B.'s fellows was waiting? So I told him there was a mistake somewheres, and asked him what about taking you Thaso for twenty dollars. We talked for a bit and he said, 'Yes.' Now we got to make him go Samothraki."

At this point the captain of the caique, a brown and shriveled old man seeming all the more shriveled in the full-seated breeches of the Greek islander, joined them below for an argument with Yanni that sounded more than usually acrimonious and voluble. When it was finished, the captain had agreed, subject to a windy moonrise, to land them at Samothraki on payment of another ten pounds in gold. They went on deck and sat astern, for the rain was over now. A slim, rusty moon was creeping out of the sea and conjuring from the darkness forward the shadowy bulk of Thasos; presently, with isolated puffs that frilled the surface of the water like the wings of alighting birds, the wind began to blow; the long oars were shipped, and the crew set the curved mainsail that crouched in a defiant bow against whatever onslaught might prepare itself; from every mountain gorge in Thrace the northern blasts rushed down with life for the stagnant sea, and life for the dull, decrescent moon, which in a spray of stars they drove glittering up the sky.

"How gloriously everything hums and gurgles!" Sylvia shouted in Michael's ear. "When shall we get to Samothrace?"

He shrugged his shoulders and leaned over to Yanni, who told them that it might be about midday if the wind held like this.

For all Sylvia's exultation, the vision of enchanted space that seemed to forbid sleep on such a night soon faded from her consciousness, and she did not rouse herself from dreams until dawn was scattering its roses and violets to the wind.

"I simply can't shave," Michael declared, "but Samothrace is in sight."

The sun was rising in a fume of spindrift and fine gold when Sylvia scrambled forward into the bows. Huddled upon a coil of wet rope, she first saw Samothrace faintly relucent like an uncut sapphire, where already it towered upon the horizon, though there might be thirty thundering miles between.

"I'm glad we ended our adventure with this glorious sea race," shouted Michael, who had joined her in the bows. "Are you feeling quite all right?"

She nodded indignantly.

"See how gray the sky is now," he went on. "It's going to blow even harder, and they're shortening sail."

They looked aft to where the crew, whose imprecations were only visible, so loud was the drumming of the wind, were getting down the mainsail; and presently they were running east southeast under a small jib, with the wind roaring upon the port quarter and the waves champing at the taffrail. It did not strike either of them that there was any reason to be anxious until Yanni came forward with a frightened yellow face and said that the captain was praying to St. Nicholas in the cabin below.

"Samothraki bad place to go," Yanni told them, dismally. "Many fish-mens drowned there."

A particularly violent squall shrieked assent to his forebodings, and the helmsman, looking over his shoulder, crossed himself as the squall left them and tore ahead, decapitating the waves in its course so that the surface of the water, blown into an appearance of smoothness, resembled the powdery damascene of ice in a skater's track.

"It's terrible, ain't it?" Yanni moaned.

"Cheer up," Michael said. "I'm looking forward to your shaving me before lunch in your native island."

"We sha'n't never come Samothraki," Yanni said. "And I can't pray no more somehows since I went away to America. Else I'd go and pray along with the captain. Supposing I was to give a silver ship to the [Greek: panagia] in Teno, would you lend me the money for the workmens to do it?"

"I'll pay half," Michael volunteered. "A silver ship to Our Lady of Tenos," he explained to Sylvia.

"Gee!" Yanni shouted, more cheerfully. "I'm going to pray some right now. I guess when I get kneeling the trick'll come back to me. I did so much kneeling in New York to shine boots that I used to lie in bed on a Sunday. But this goddam storm's regular making my knees itch."

He hurried aft in a panic of religious devotion, whither Michael and Sylvia presently followed him in the hope of coffee. Every one on board except the helmsman was praying, and there was no signs of fire; even the sacred flame before St. Nicholas had gone out. The cabin was in a confusion of supplicating mariners prostrate amid onions, oranges, and cheese; the very cockroaches seemed to listen anxiously in the wild motion. The helmsman was not steering too well, or else the sea was growing wilder, for once or twice a stream of water poured down the companion and drenched the occupants, until at last the captain rushed on deck to curse the offender, calling down upon his head the pains of hell should they sink and he be drowned.

Michael and Sylvia found the most sheltered spot in the caique and ate some cheese. The terror of the crew had reacted upon their spirits; the groaning of the wind in the shrouds, the seething of the waves, and the frightened litany below quenched their exultation and silenced their laughter.

Yanni, more yellow than ever, came up and asked Michael if he would mind paying the captain now.

"He says he don't believe he can get into port, but if he can't, he's going to try and get around on the south side of Samothraki, only he'd like to have his money in case anything should happen."

Three hours tossed themselves free from time; and now in all its majesty and in all its menace the island rose dark before them, girdled with foam and crowned with snow above six thousand feet of chasms, gorges, cliffs, and forests.

"What a fearful lee shore!" Michael exclaimed, with a shudder.

"Yes, but what a sublime form!" Sylvia cried. "At any rate, to be wrecked on such a coast is not a mean death."

Yanni explained that the only port of the island lay on this side of the low-lying promontory that ran out to sea on their starboard bow. In order to make this, the captain would have to beat up to windward first, which with the present fury of the gale and so lofty a coast was impossible. The captain evidently came to the same conclusion, though at first it looked as if he had changed his mind too late to avoid running the caique ashore before he could gain the southerly lee of the island. Sylvia held her breath when the mast lost itself against the darkness of land and breathed again when anon it stood out clear against the sky. Yet so frail seemed the caique in relation to the vast bulk before them that it was incredible this haunt of Titans should not exact another sacrifice.

"I think, as we get nearer, that the mast shows itself less often against the sky," Sylvia shouted to Michael.

"About equal, I think," he shouted back.

Certainly the caique still labored on, and it might be that, after all, they would clear the promontory and gain shelter.

"Do you know what I'm thinking of?" Michael yelled.

She shook her head, blinking in the spray.

"The Round Pond!" he yelled again.

"I can't imagine that even the Round Pond's really calm at present," she shouted back.

Suddenly astern there was a cry of despair that rose high above the howling of the wind; the tiller had broken, and immediately the prow of the caique, swerving away from the sky, drove straight for the shore. Two men leaped forward to cut the ropes of the jib, which flapped madly aloft; then it gave itself to the wind and danced before them till it was no more than a gull's wing against dark and mighty Samothrace.

The caique rocked alarmingly until the oars steadied her; the strength of the rowers endured long enough to clear the promontory, but, unfortunately, the expected shelter on the other side proved to be an illusion, and, though a new tiller had been provided by this time, it was impossible for the exhausted men to do their part. The caique began to ship water, so heavily, indeed, that the captain gave orders to run her ashore where the sand of a narrow cove glimmered between huge towers of rock. The beaching would have been effected safely had it not been for a sunken reef that ripped out the bottom of the caique, which crumpled up and shrieked her horror like a live, sentient thing. Sylvia found herself, after she had rolled in a dizzy switchback from the summit of one wave to another, clinging head downward to a slippery ledge of rock, her fingers in a mush of sea-anemones, her feet wedged in a crevice; then another wave lifted her off and she was swept over and over in green somersaults of foam, until there came a blow as from a hammer, a loud roaring, and silence.

When Sylvia recovered consciousness she was lying on a sandy slope with Michael's arms round her.

"Was I drowned?" she asked; then common sense added itself to mere consciousness and she began to laugh. "I don't mean actually, but nearly?"

"No, I think you hit your head rather a thump on the beach. You've only been lying here about twenty minutes."

"And Yanni and the captain and the crew?"

"They all got safely ashore. Rather cut about, of course, but nothing serious. Yanni and the captain are arguing whether Our Lady of Tenos or St. Nicholas is responsible for saving our lives. The others are making a fire."

She tried to sit up; but her head was going round, and she fell back.

"Keep quiet," Michael told her. "We're in a narrow, sandy cove from which a gorge runs up into the heart of the mountains. There's a convenient cave higher up full of dried grass--a goatherd's, I suppose--and when the fire's alight the others are going to scramble across somehow to the village and send a guide for us to-morrow. There won't be time before dark to-night. Do you mind being left for a few minutes?"

She smiled her contentment, and, closing her eyes, listened to the echoes of human speech among the rocks above, and to the beating of the surf below.

Presently Yanni and Michael appeared in order to carry her up to the cave; but she found herself easily able to walk with the help of an arm, and Michael told Yanni to hurry off to the village.

Sylvia and he were soon left alone on the parapet of smoke-blackened earth in front of the cave, whence they watched the sailors toiling up the gorge in search of a track over the mountain. Then they took off nearly all their clothes and wandered about in overcoats, breaking off boughs of juniper to feed the fire for their drying.

"Nothing to eat but cheese," Michael laughed. "Our diet since we left Rakoff has always run to excess of one article. Still, cheese is more nutritious than Turkish-delight, and there's plenty of water in that theatrical cascade. The wind is dropping; though in any case we shouldn't feel it here."

Shortly before sunset the gorge echoed with liquid tinklings, and an aged goatherd appeared with his flock of brown sheep and tawny goats, which with the help of a wild-eyed boy he penned in another big cave on the opposite side. Then he joined Sylvia and Michael at their fire and gave them an unintelligible, but obviously cordial, salutation, after which he entered what was evidently his dwelling-place and came out with bottles of wine and fresh cheese. He did not seem in any way surprised by their presence in his solitude, and when darkness fell he and the boy piped ancient tunes in the firelight until they all lay down on heaps of dry grass. Sylvia remained awake for a long while in a harmony of distant waves and falling water and of sudden restless tinklings from the penned flock. In the morning the old man gave them milk and made them a stately farewell; he and his goats and his boy disappeared up the gorge for the day's pasturage in a jangling tintinnabulation that became fainter and fainter, until the last and most melodious bells tinkled at rare intervals far away in the dim heart of the mountain.

The cove and the gorge were still in deep shadow; but on the slopes above toward the east bright sunlight was hanging the trees with emeralds beneath a blue sky, and seaward the halcyon had lulled the waves for her azure nesting.

"Can't we get up into the sunlight?" Michael proposed.

For all the sparkling airs above them, it was chilly enough down here, and they were glad to scramble up through thickets of holm-oak, arbutus, and aromatic scrub to a grassy peak in the sun's eye. Here not even the buzzing of an insect broke the warm, wintry peace of the South, and it was hard to think that the restless continent of Asia was lapped by that tender and placid sea below. The dark, blue wavy line of Imbros and the dove-gray bulk of Lemnos were the only islands in sight, though, like lines of cloud upon the horizon, they could fancy the cliffs of Gallipoli and hear, so breathless was the calm, the faint grumbling of the guns.

"It was in Samothrace they set up the Winged Victory," Michael said. Then suddenly he turned to Sylvia and took her hand. "My dear, when I dragged you up the beach yesterday I thought you were dead, and I cursed myself for a coward because I had let you die without telling you. Sylvia, this adventure of ours, need it ever stop?"

"Everything comes to an end," she sighed.

"Except one thing--and that sets all the rest going again."

"What is your magic key?"

"Sylvia, I'm afraid to ask you to marry me, but will you?"

She stared at him; then she saw his eyes, and for a long while she was crying in his arms with happiness.

"My dear, my dear, you've lost your yellow shawl in the wreck."

"The mermaids can have it," she murmured. "I shall wrap up the rest of my memories in you."

Then she stopped in sudden affright.

"But, Michael, how can I marry you? I haven't told you anything really about myself."

"Foolish one, you've told me everything that matters in these two months of the most perfect companionship possible for human beings."

"Companionship?" she echoed, looking at him fiercely. "And cousinship, eh?"

"No, no, my dear, you can't frighten me any longer," he laughed. "Surely, telling things belongs to the companionship of a life together--love has no words except when one is still very young and eloquent."

"But, Michael," she went on, "all these nine years of mystical speculation, are they going to end in the commonplace of marriage?"

"It won't be commonplace, and besides, the war isn't over yet, and after the war there will be an empty world to fill with all we have learned. Ah, how poor old Guy would have loved to fill it with his Spanish castles."

"It seems wrong for us two up here to be so happy," Sylvia sighed.

"This is just a halcyon day, but there will soon be stormy days again."

"You mean you'll go back now to--" She stopped in a desperate apprehension. "But, of course, we can't live forever in these days of war between a blue sky and a blue sea. Yet, somehow, oh, my dearest and dearest, I don't believe I shall lose _you_."

Like birds calling to one another, in the green thickets far away two bells tinkled their monotone; and a small gray craft flying the white ensign glided over the charmed sea toward Samothrace.

THE END

* * * * *

BOOKS BY

BASIL KING

_THE CITY OF COMRADES

ABRAHAM'S BOSOM

THE HIGH HEART

THE LIFTED VEIL

THE INNER SHRINE

THE WILD OLIVE

THE STREET CALLED STRAIGHT

THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS

THE WAY HOME

THE LETTER OF THE CONTRACT

IN THE GARDEN OF CHARITY

THE STEPS OF HONOR

LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER_

HARPER & BROTHERS NEW YORK [ESTABLISHED 1817] LONDON

* * * * *

BOOKS BY

ZANE GREY

THE U. P. TRAIL

THE DESERT OF WHEAT

WILDFIRE

THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT

RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE

DESERT GOLD

THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS

THE LONE STAR RANGER

THE RAINBOW TRAIL

THE BORDER LEGION

KEN WARD IN THE JUNGLE

THE YOUNG LION HUNTER

THE YOUNG FORESTER

THE YOUNG PITCHER

HARPER & BROTHERS

NEW YORK [ESTABLISHED 1817] LONDON

* * * * *

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

when she was presented to Madema=>when she was presented to Madame

the last hour than in all the year that had gone by since=>the last hour than in all the years that had gone by since

The Austrains are advancing more rapidly=>The Austrians are advancing more rapidly

even the envelop that Hazlewood had given to her=>even the envelope that Hazlewood had given to her

will be delighted to drink a cockataila with him=>will be delighted to drink a cockatail with him

The French spelling & punctuation have not been corrected.

* * * * *