In Greek Waters Part 48

"We began to expect them back at four, and as the hours went on I was in a regular stew. I did not like to land, and as I had only twenty men I was afraid of weakening her further, as we should have been in an awkward fix if a Turkish man-of-war had come along; however, at nine o'clock I sent Tarleton ash.o.r.e with five men to see if he could gather some news from the villagers, who had all come back again soon after the brigands had left. It was not till after eleven o'clock that he came off, with the news that the party had returned and had heard nothing of you.

"Next morning one of the boats came off with Mr. Beveridge. Half an hour before a Greek had come in and stated that he was one of the party bringing you down to the place agreed upon when they were suddenly fired upon from a wood. Two of the party fell dead and the rest ran and were hotly pursued for some distance. He was unable to say what had become of you, nor did he know who the men were who had attacked them, except that they were certainly Albanians. We held a council, and then I started off with Tarleton and ten men and Marco.

Mr. Beveridge wanted to go, but I persuaded him not to, for it was morally certain that we should not find you, and all we could hope for was to get some sort of clue, and if the Albanians were still in the neighbourhood Marco would have opened negotiations with them for a ransom. The man who had brought the news acted as guide. We found the bodies of his comrades who had been killed, but no signs of you, which was a comfort in one way. It was pretty evident that you had both been carried off.

"We had taken with us a dozen men from the village to which you were to have been sent, and we offered what to them must have been a big reward for news as to these Albanians. So after finding the bodies we sent them off in different directions, and went back to their village.

Late in the evening they straggled in. They had done their work well, spreading all over the country and getting hold of shepherds and charcoal-burners and wood-cutters; and they were able to tell us for certain that the Albanians had come over the range of hills between us and Thessaly. They had been doing a good deal of plundering and some murdering, had destroyed two small villages at the foot of the mountains, and had been seen soon after the hour at which you must have been captured making their way back. They a.s.sured us that the troops of Ali Pasha lay in the plain beyond the hills, and that, doubtless, the Albanians had taken you to him. We had a good long rest in the afternoon, and as I knew what a state of anxiety your father was in we started at once and got on board at four o'clock in the morning. We had a long talk over what was the best thing to be done, and resolved at any rate to sail out of the bay and round the Cape, and then keep along the coast until we were off Thessaly.

"As soon as it was daylight we weighed anchor. The wind was so light that it took us two days to get there, and half that time at least, I should say, the men were in the boats towing. Marco had volunteered to land and make his way to the Turkish camp to try to find out what had become of you. We landed him at night; he bought from some of the villagers a suit of their clothes, and in twenty-four hours came down again to the boat we had sent ash.o.r.e for him with the news that you had been sent to Constantinople; that you had been taken by an escort of cavalry down to the little port at the mouth of the river that flows in between Ossa and Olympus; that he had seen some of the soldiers who formed your escort, who told him that they had seen you go on board a Turkish brig-of-war with their officer and two of their comrades who had accompanied you.

"This was horrible news, and as the brig had got four days' start there was little chance of our catching her. For another three days we were almost becalmed. We had every st.i.tch of canvas set and yet most of the time we had not even steerage-way. The men behaved splendidly, and all the time, day and night, we had two boats out ahead towing; and on the fourth day we arrived off Tenedos. Then we got a breeze again, and soon afterwards picked up a fis.h.i.+ng-boat. From them we learned that the brig had lain becalmed two days off the town, that some of the people that we brought from Athens had gone out with little presents of fruit to you and had seen you.

"We anch.o.r.ed that night a short distance from the town, for there were no Turkish s.h.i.+ps of war there. At night a boat came off with a woman whom we had brought from Athens, and she told us that her husband, a discharged soldier, had gone to Constantinople to tell some of the people whom we brought from Athens that two of our officers had been captured, and to ask them to do what they could to save your lives. We did not think anything of it, though of course it was pleasant to see that some of the people were grateful, and Mr.

Beveridge made her a handsome present, which I will do her the justice to say she refused until he almost had to force it upon her. Knowing how bitter the Sultan is against foreigners in the Greek service, and that after the harm we had done he was not likely to be specially well disposed towards us, the thing seemed almost hopeless. The two Greeks volunteered if we would put them ash.o.r.e to the west of the straits to make their way to Constantinople, but as it did not seem to us that they could do any good that idea was given up.

"At last Tarleton proposed that we should disguise the schooner and go up ourselves. He admitted that the betting was a hundred to one against our being able to help you in any way, especially as it was almost certain you would have been hung a few hours after you got there. Still, if that had been put off, and you should be in a prison, there was just the possibility we might land at night, make our way to the prison, blow in the gate, get you out, and make our way across the country to some place where the boats would be waiting for us, and be on board before daylight. It was certainly a desperate undertaking, but as none of us could think of any other plan, we agreed it would be well to try it, so we sailed at once to Athens.

"We had a great debate whether it would not be better to buy some Turkish brig that had been brought in as a prize; but we finally agreed to stick to the schooner, for if we were discovered on the way, or if we did get you on board, we should have to sail, and we knew that nothing the Turks have got could outsail the schooner. We worked hard at Athens. We sent down the tall spars, got those clumsy poles up in their place, got up yards, and turned her into a brig. Then we bought a lot of old sails, and, as you see, turned her into as lubberly-looking a craft as you will meet even in these seas. Then we filled her up between decks with goods we bought out of some prizes brought in by the Hydriots, dirtied her decks, threw acid down her sides to take off the paint, took down the cabin fittings, as you see, and daubed over the woodwork with dirty paint. It was enough to make one cry to see the _Misericordia_ spoilt. It was like disguising a girl of fas.h.i.+on as a dirty gipsy.

"While we had been at this work the two Greeks had been on sh.o.r.e, and had gathered up eight men who spoke Turkish as well as Greek. The most intelligent we made captain, with two officers under him. We got the papers from a Turkish prize, a brig about the same size which had been captured by the Hydriots on her way from Rhodes to Constantinople.

Then it was agreed that your father should disguise himself as a Turk, a respectable land-owner of Rhodes, going as a pa.s.senger to Constantinople, with myself as his Nubian servant. That way we could stay on deck. When all was ready we started. The crew kept on deck till we got near the Dardanelles, and then stowed themselves away in the hold as you saw. We were stopped at the castle, but as the papers were all right there was no suspicion excited, and nothing happened till Iskos came down and told us a caique was coming alongside, and then a minute or two later we heard your voice."

CHAPTER XXII

ALL ENDS WELL

The hours pa.s.sed on. It was still a dead calm, and, as Martyn had thought likely, no visit was paid by the Turkish port officials, as the brig was lying a good mile below the usual anchorage, and would no doubt move up to the wharves as soon as she got the wind. Horace went to the main deck and gave a sketch of his adventures to Tom Burdett, who he knew would retail them to the crew.

"Well, Mr. Horace," the boatswain said, "you are certainly a good one at getting out of sc.r.a.pes."

"I had nothing to do with getting out of it, Tom; it was all done without any effort on my part."

"It was mighty well done, sir, and I would not have given them Turks credit for putting such a plan together. I always liked the chaps myself when I served with them as a young fellow in that Egyptian business under Abercrombie. Good-natured sort of coves they was, and wonderful good-tempered considering what shocking bad grub they had; but I never looked upon them as sharp. Still, there you are; you see, one never knows what a chap can do till he is pushed. Well, there is one thing, Mr. Horace, I don't care how many Turkish fugitives we may take on board this s.h.i.+p in future, they will be heartily welcome by every man Jack on board for the sake of what these fellows did for you. I wish I had known it when you first came on board. I should have liked to have given that young Turk a hearty shake of the hand, and the men would have given him as good a cheer as ever you heard come from fifty British sailors."

"It is just as well you didn't know, Tom, for if they had given a cheer together on deck it would have been heard from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, and everyone who heard it would have known that it never came from Turkish throats."

As soon as it was dark the anchor was weighed, and the vessel drifted down with the current, a boat towing ahead so as to give her steerage-way, while the rest of the crew set to work to unbend her sails.

"You are not going to put up her own sails, are you, Captain Martyn?"

Horace asked, for as soon as it got dusk Martyn had removed the stain from his skin, and exchanged the Nubian attire for his uniform.

"No, Horace, the white sails would tell their tale at once. We got two suits at Athens, one that miserable lot you saw on us to-day, the other we had cut up to fit us as we are sparred now. They are not very clean, but that won't affect her sailing, and though I don't mean to say she will walk along as she would under her proper canvas, I fancy she is likely to sail as fast as anything we shall meet. I shall only get her foresail, a jib, and that square top-sail on her, as we want to go along as slowly as possible. I want to manage to anchor below Gallipoli after sunset; or if I can't manage that I shall anchor a mile or two this side of the town, so as not to be visited by any of the port officers. Then when it gets quite dark we will get up all sail and run down the straits. It is against the rules to pa.s.s through at night, and if the forts catch sight of us no doubt they will send a few shots after us, but we must risk that. It is not easy to hit a moving mark when it is so dark that you can scarcely see her outline.

There are half a dozen of their s.h.i.+ps-of-war lying abreast of the forts. We must keep as far as we dare over on the other sh.o.r.e. I am not afraid of the s.h.i.+ps. We shall be a mile away before the crews wake up and load, but I expect they keep a pretty sharp look-out in the forts, though most likely their attention is chiefly directed below them."

It took a couple of hours' work to unbend all the sails and bend on fresh ones. Horace spent the evening in the cabin chatting with his father, and when the others came down at ten o'clock for a gla.s.s of grog he heard that the boat had been run up and housed, and that the brig was now under easy sail.

"There is very little wind," Martyn said, "but there is enough to give steerage-way. I shall not count you in for duty until to-morrow."

"Oh, I am ready to take my watch as usual. I have been living a very lazy life for the last three weeks, and shall be very glad to be on duty again."

"I shall get the guns up the first thing in the morning, Miller. We will throw a tarpaulin over them when we get into the narrow part of the straits."

"Will you have the pivot-gun up too?"

"Yes, I think so; if we have to fight, we may as well fight as hard as we can. When we get it mounted we can put a few barrels along each side of it, cover the whole over with a sailcloth, and stow one of the gigs at the top of all. No one would have a suspicion that there was a gun there then, and if we wanted to use it we could clear it in a minute."

"The Turkish custom-house officers will stare in the morning when they see the brig gone," Miller said, "and will wonder what has become of her."

"If they think of her at all, Miller, they will think she has got up sail at daylight and gone up the Bosphorus on her way to Varna or one of the Black Sea ports."

"It would require a good deal more breeze than there is now."

"Yes, I did not think of that. Well, then, perhaps they will suppose that we made a try to go up to the anchorage as soon as the day began to break, but simply drifted back. You see another half a mile astern would take us round that point there and out of sight of them.

However, we don't care much what they think. They are not likely to be interested enough in the matter to bother themselves about it one way or the other, and certainly not likely to do the only thing that would be of any consequence to us, I mean send down a messenger to Gallipoli telling them to overhaul us if we came down the straits. Now, then, the watch on deck; the others turn in. I am sure, Mr. Beveridge, you will be all the better for a quiet night's rest. You have certainly not slept much for the last month, and you have been getting thinner and thinner daily, while you have also long arrears in the way of food to make up. It has been quite pitiful to see the faces of the Greeks as you sent away plate after plate untouched."

"I shall soon be myself again, Martyn, and even one good night's rest will, I am sure, do wonders for me."

"We have been getting quite uneasy about your father," Miller said as he and Horace went up on deck for the middle watch.

"Yes, he looks sadly broken down, Miller. Directly he had taken off that beard I was quite shocked; he looks years older."

"We have been really anxious about him. He would turn up three or four times during the night watches and walk the deck for an hour or two talking to one or other of us as if he could not stop alone in his cabin. Neither Martyn nor I ever had the slightest idea of finding you were alive when we got here, and still less of getting you out. But when Tarleton proposed disguising the schooner and coming up, he caught at the idea so eagerly that we fell in with it at once. It seemed to us both rather a mad sort of business, but we should not have cared what it was so that it would but rouse him up; for from the time when we first got word that you had been taken to the Turks, till Tarleton made that proposal at Tenedos, he had scarcely spoken a word.

He cheered up for an hour or two when Marco brought news that at any rate you had not been killed at Ali Pasha's camp, but had been sent on to Constantinople; but that lasted for a very short time, for he soon saw that so far from improving your chances, it had lessened them. Ali might have taken a handsome sum for your ransom, or your guards might have been bribed; anyhow, there would have been a much better chance of getting you away from his camp than from a prison in Constantinople.

"Of course we did all we could to cheer him, and, I am afraid, told some awful crammers as to the easy job it would be to get you out.

Still, the plan did do him good. It gave him something to think about, as at Athens we were constantly thinking of something or other that he could go ash.o.r.e and see about. Since we sailed from there he has been in a sort of fever, walking restlessly about the deck, going down to the cabin and coming up again twenty times every hour, worrying about the wind, and complaining at the boat's loss of speed. He took to Tarleton most, because he was nearest your age, I think. He talked to him several times about you as a child, and seemed specially unhappy because he had seen so little of you up to the time when he bought you that first craft you had. The two Greeks were terribly concerned about him. They are two fine fellows those. They were as gentle as women.

Well, it has been an anxious time for us all. Even the men have felt for him, and it was quite curious to see how silent the s.h.i.+p became when he was on deck. They seemed to speak almost in whispers, and I have not heard a laugh forward from the hour that you and the doctor were missed. I was glad he was taken with you, for he is a good fellow, and it was a comfort to know that you were together."

"It was a great pull," Horace agreed. "He was just the same all the time as he is on board, quiet and slow in his talk, but with an occasional gleam of humour. It has been rather hard on him, too, because, from the day we first landed, there has always been someone with us who could speak Greek, and it is very slow for a man sitting listening to talk that he can't understand, waiting for bits to be translated to him. Still, he never showed that he minded."

"Yes, that must have been very annoying," Miller agreed, "especially when the talk was about matters that concerned his life. It makes you feel so helpless and baby-like to have everything managed for you and to be able to do nothing yourself. I don't think he took kindly to that Turkish dress. He slipped away and changed it before he had been on board five minutes, while you kept yours on till you turned in for a nap two hours ago."

"I was comfortable enough, and never gave the clothes a thought after I had worn them an hour or two," Horace laughed. "Of course one felt very baggy about the legs, and I certainly should not like to go aloft in the things. No wonder the Turks are such clumsy sailors with their legs in bags like that; but I did notice that the doctor never seemed to move about naturally. I expect if he could have talked away as I did he would not have thought of them so much. The wind is heading us a bit."

"Yes, it is;" and Miller gave the orders for the sheets and braces to be hauled aft.

"I should not be surprised if it is in the south by morning."

"That would be all the better, for then we could choose our own time for getting off Gallipoli. We must get up all our sail when it is daylight and make a show of doing our best; but when one is tacking backwards and forwards one can always manage either to keep a little off the wind or so close into it as pretty well to deaden one's way through the water."

Horace turned in at four o'clock, and an hour and a half later heard a trampling of feet on deck, and knew that the watch was making sail.

When he went up at eight o'clock the wind was blowing briskly from the south-east, and the schooner was making a long leg out from the land.

He was now able to see the set of the sails that had been bent on the evening before. The lower sails were of the same size as the schooner's original suit, and fitted her well. The upper sails contained less than half the canvas of her old ones, but her spread was sufficient to lay her over well and to send her through the water at an encouraging rate of speed.

"She is not going along so badly, is she, Horace?" Martyn asked.