Sir John Constantine Part 25

"Man," said Captain Pomery, looking about him, "we must be a poor set of liars if we can't pitch a yarn on _this_ evidence!"

My father allowed himself to be persuaded, the more easily as the argument jumped with his impatience. Accordingly, we stood on for land, making no concealment; and the wind holding steady on our beam, and the sun dropping astern of us in a sky without a cloud, 'twas incredible how soon we began to make out the features of the land.

It rose like a s.h.i.+eld to a central boss, which trembled, as it were, into view and revealed itself a mountain peak, snowcapped and s.h.i.+ning, before ever the purple mist began to slip from the slopes below it and disclose their true verdure. No sail broke the expanse of sea between us and the sh.o.r.e; and, as we neared it, no scarp of cliff, no house or group of houses broke the island's green monotony.

From the water's edge to the high snow-line it might have been built of moss, so vivid its colour was, yet soft as velvet, and softer and still more vivid as we approached.

Within two miles of sh.o.r.e, and not long before dark, the wind (as Captain Pomery had promised) broke off and headed us, blowing cool and fresh off the land. I was hauling in the foresheet and belaying when a sudden waft of fragrance fetched me upright, with head thrown back and nostrils inhaling the breeze.

"Ay," said my father, at my elbow, "there is no scent on earth to compare with it. You smell the _macchia_, lad. Drink well your first draught of it, delicious as first love."

"But somewhere--at some time--I have smelt it before," said I.

"The same scent, only fainter. Why does it remind me of home?"

My father considered. "I will tell you," he said. "In the corridor at home, outside my bedroom door, stands a wardrobe, and in it hang the clothes I wore, near upon twenty years ago, in Corsica.

They keep the fragrance of the _macchia_ yet; and if, as a child, you ever opened that wardrobe, you recall it at this moment."

"Yes," said I, "that was the scent."

My father leaned and gazed at the island with dim eyes.

Still no sign of house or habitation greeted us as we worked by short tacks towards a deep bay which my father, after a prolonged consultation of the chart, decided to be that of Sagona. A sharp promontory ran out upon its northern side, and within the shelter of this Captain Pomery looked to find good anchorage. But the _Gauntlet_, after all her battering, lay so poorly to the wind that darkness overtook us a good mile from land, and before we weathered the point and cast anchor in a little bight within, the moon had risen. It showed us a steep sh.o.r.e near at hand, with many grey pinnacles of granite glimmering high over dark ma.s.ses of forest trees, and in the farthest angle of the bight its rays travelled in silver down the waters of a miniature creek.

The hawser ran out into five fathoms of water. We had lost our boat: but Billy Priske had spent his afternoon in fas.h.i.+oning a raft out of four empty casks and a dozen broken lengths of deck-planking; and on this, leaving the seamen on board, the rest of us pushed off for sh.o.r.e. For paddles we used a couple of spare oars.

The water, smooth as in a lake, gave us our choice to make a landing where we would. My father, however, who had taken command, chose to steer straight for the entrance of the little creek. There, between tall entrance rocks of granite, we pa.s.sed through it into the shadow of folding woods where the moon was lost to us. Sounding with our paddles, we found a good depth of water under the raft, lit a lantern, and pushed on, my father promising that we should discover a village or at least a hamlet at the creek-head.

"And you will find the inhabitants--your subjects, Prosper-- hospitable, too. Whatever the island may have been in Seneca's time, to deserve the abuse he heaped on it in exile, to-day the Corsicans keep more of the old cla.s.sical virtues than any nation known to me.

In vendetta they will slay one another, using the worst treachery; but a stranger may walk the length of the island unarmed--save against the Genoese--and find a meal at the poorest cottage, and a bed, however rough, whereon he may sleep untroubled by suspicion."

The raft grated and took ground on a shelving bank of sand, and Nat, who stood forward holding the lantern, made a motion to step on sh.o.r.e. My father restrained him.

"Prosper goes first."

I stepped on to the bank. My father, following, stooped, gathered a handful of the fine granite sand, and holding it in the lantern's light, let it run through his fingers.

"Hat off, lad! and salute your kingdom!"

"But where," said I, "be my subjects?"

It seemed, as we formed ourselves into marching order, that I was on the point to be answered. For above the bank we came to a causeway which our lanterns plainly showed us to be man's handiwork; and following it round the bend of a valley, where a stream sang its way down to the creek, came suddenly on a flat meadow swept by the pale light and rising to a gra.s.sy slope, where a score of whitewashed houses huddled around a tall belfry, all glimmering under the moon.

"In Corsica," repeated my father, leading the way across the meadow, "every householder is a host."

He halted at the base of the village street.

"It is curious, however, that the dogs have not heard us.

Their barking, as a rule, is something to remember."

He stepped up to the first house to knock. There was no door to knock upon. The building stood open, desolate. Our lanterns showed the gra.s.s growing on its threshold.

We tried the next and the next. The whole village lay dead, abandoned. We gathered in the street and shouted, raising our lanterns aloft. No voice answered us.

[1] Phosph.o.r.escence.

CHAPTER XIII.

HOW, WITHOUT FIGHTING, OUR ARMY WASTED BY ENCHANTMENT.

"ADRIAN. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. . . .

GONZALO. Here is everything advantageous to life.

ANTONIO. True: save means to live."

"CALIBAN. Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not."

_The Tempest_.

Upon a sudden thought my father hurried us towards the tall belfry.

It rose cold and white against the moon, at the end of a nettle-grown lane. A garth of ilex-oaks surrounded it; and beside it, more than half-hidden by the untrimmed trees, stood a ridiculously squat church. By instinct, or, rather, from a.s.sociation of ideas learnt in England, I glanced around this churchyard for its gravestones.

There were none. Yet for the second time within these few hours I was strangely reminded of home, where in an upper garret were stacked half a dozen age-begrimed paintings on panel, one of which on an idle day two years ago I had taken a fancy to scour with soap and water.

The painting represented a tall man, crowned and wearing Eastern armour, with a small slave in short jacket and baggy white breeches holding a white charger in readiness; all three figures awkwardly drawn and without knowledge of anatomy. For background my scouring had brought to light a group of buildings, and among them just such a church as this, with just such a belfry. Of architecture and its different styles I knew nothing; but, comparing the church before me with what I could recollect of the painting, I recognized every detail, from the cupola, high-set upon open arches, to the round, windowless apse in which the building ended.

My father, meanwhile, had taken a lantern and explored the interior.

"I know this place," he announced quietly, as he reappeared, after two or three minutes, in the ruinous doorway; "it is called Paomia.

We can bivouac in peace, and I doubt if by searching we could find a better spot."

We ate our supper of cold bacon and s.h.i.+p-bread, both slightly damaged by sea-water--but the wine solaced us, being excellent--and stretched ourselves to sleep under the ilex boughs, my father undertaking to stand sentry till daybreak. Nat and I protested against this, and offered ourselves; but he cut us short. He had his reasons, he said.

It must have been two or even three hours later that I awoke at the touch of his hand on my shoulder. I stared up through the boughs at the setting moon, and around me at my comrades asleep in the gra.s.ses.

He signed to me not to awake them, but to rise and follow him softly.

Pa.s.sing through the screen of ilex, we came to a gap in the stone wall of the garth, and through this, at the base of the hillside below the forest, to a second screen of cypress which opened suddenly upon a semicircle of turf; and here, bathed in the moon's rays that slanted over the cypress-tops, stood a small Doric temple of weather-stained marble, in proportions most delicate, a background for a dance of nymphs, a fit tiring-room for Diana and her train.

Its door--if ever it had possessed one--was gone, like every other door in this strange village. My father led the way up the white steps, halted on the threshold, and, standing aside lest he should block the moonlight, pointed within.

I stood at his shoulder and looked. The interior was empty, bare of all ornament. On the wall facing the door, and cut in plain letters a foot high, two words in Greek confronted me--

PHILOPATRI STEPHANOPOULOI.

"A tomb?" I asked.

"Yes, and a kinsman's; for the Stephanopouli were of blood the emperors did not disdain to mate with. In the last rally the Turks had much ado with them as leaders of the Moreote tribes around Maina, and north along Taygetus to Sparta. Yes, and there were some who revived the Spartan name in those days, maintaining the fight among the mountains until the Turks swarmed across from Crete, overran Maina and closed the struggle. Yet there was a man, Constantine Stephanopoulos, the grandfather of this Philopater, who would buy nothing at the price of slavery, but, collecting a thousand souls-- men, women, and children--escaped by s.h.i.+p from Porto Vitilo and sailed in search of a new home. At first he had thought of Sicily; but, finding no welcome there, he came (in the spring of 1675, I think) to Genoa, and obtained leave from the Genoese to choose a site in Corsica."

"And it was here he planted his colony?"

"In this very valley; but, mind you, at the price of swearing fealty to the Republic of Genoa--this and the repayment of a beggarly thousand piastres which the Republic had advanced to pay the captain of the s.h.i.+p which brought them, and to buy food and clothing.

Very generous treatment it seemed. Yet you have heard me say before now that liberty never stands in its worst peril until the hour of success; then too often men turn her sword against her. So these men of Lacedaemon, coming to an island where the rule of Genoa was a scourge to all except themselves, in grat.i.tude, or for their oath's sake, took sides with the oppressor. Therefore the Corsicans, who never forget an injury, turned upon them, drove them for shelter to Ajaccio, and laid their valley desolate; nor have the Genoese power to restore them.