Julian abandoned the headland regretfully. For his own post he had chosen the Davenant house in the village. He calculated that Panaïoannou, unaware of the existence of a number of rifles on the island, would make his first and principal attempt upon the port, expecting there to encounter a hand to hand fight with a crowd diversely armed with knives, stones, pitchforks, and a few revolvers--a brief, bloody, desperate resistance, whose term could be but a matter of time, after which the village would fall into the hands of the invaders and the rebellion would be at an end. At most, Panaïoannou would argue, the fighting would be continued up into the main street of the village, the horizontal street that was its backbone, terminating at one end by the market-place above the port, and at the other by the Davenants' house; and ramifications of fighting--a couple of soldiers here and there pursuing a fleeing islander--up the sloping, narrow, stepped streets running between the houses, at right angles from the main street, up the hill. Julian sat with his rifle cocked across his knees in one of the window recesses of his own house, and grinned as he anticipated Panaïoannou's surprise. He did not want a massacre of the fat, well-meaning soldiers of Herakleion--the casino, he reflected, must be closed to-day, much to the annoyance of the gambling dagos; however, they would have excitement enough, of another kind, to console them--he did not want a massacre of the benevolent croupier-soldiers he had seen parading the _platia_ only two days before, but he wanted them taught that Aphros was a hornets' nest out of which they had better keep their fingers. He thought it extremely probable that after a first repulse they would refuse to renew the attack. They liked well enough defiling across the _platia_ on Independence Day, and recognising their friends amongst the admiring crowd, but he doubted whether they would appreciate being shot down in open boats by an enemy they could not even see. In the distance, from the windows of his own house, he heard firing, and from the advancing boats he could see spurts of smoke. He discerned a commotion in one boat; men got up and changed places, and the boat turned round and began to row in the opposite direction. Young Zapantiotis called to him from another window,-- 'You see them, Kyrie? Some one has been hit.' Julian laughed exultantly. On a table near him lay a crumpled handkerchief of Eve's, and a gardenia; he put the flower into his buttonhole. Behind all his practical plans and his excitement lay the memory of his few words with her in the passage; under the stress of her emotion she had revealed a depth and vehemence of truth that he hitherto scarcely dared to imagine. To-day would be given to him surely more than his fair share for any mortal man: a fight, and the most desirable of women! He rejoiced in his youth and his leaping blood. Yet he continued sorry for the kindly croupier-soldiers.