Julian pressed his shoulders strongly against the door; it was solid enough. The sun, striking on his bare hand, was hot. The faces and necks and arms of the people below him were made of real flesh and blood. The tension, the anxiety in their eyes was genuine. He chased away the unreality. 'You have spoken,' he said, 'and I have accepted.' The woman named Angheliki Zapantiotis, who had hailed him as liberator, cast herself forward on to the step at his feet, as a stir and a movement, that audibly expressed itself in the shifting of feet and the releasing of contained breaths, ruffled through the crowd. He lifted his hand to enjoin silence, and spoke with his hand raised high above the figure of the woman crouching on the step. He told them that there could now be no going back, that, although the time of waiting might seem to them long and weary, they must have hopeful trust in him. He exacted from them trust, fidelity, and obedience. His voice rang sharply on the word, and his glance circled imperiously, challenging defiance. It encountered none. He told them that he would never give his sanction to violence save as a last resort. He became intoxicated with the unaccustomed wine of oratory. 'An island is our refuge; we are the garrison of a natural fortress, that we can hold against the assault of our enemies from the sea. We will never seek them out, we will be content to wait, restrained and patient, until they move with weapons in their hands against us. Let us swear that our only guilt of aggression shall be to preserve our coasts inviolate.' A deep and savage growl answered him as he paused. He was flushed with the spirit of adventure, the prerogative of youth. The force of youth moved so strongly within him that every man present felt himself strangely ready and equipped for the calls of the enterprise. A mysterious alchemy had taken place. They, untutored, unorganised, scarcely knowing what they wanted, much less how to obtain it, had offered him the formless material of their blind and chaotic rebellion, and he, having blown upon it with the fire of his breath, was welding it now to an obedient, tempered weapon in his hands. He had taken control. He might disappear and the curtains of silence close together behind his exit; Paul, watching, knew that these people would henceforward wait patiently, and with confidence, for his return. He dropped suddenly from his rhetoric into a lower key. 'In the meantime I lay upon you a charge of discretion. No one in Herakleion must get wind of this meeting; Father Paul and I will be silent, the rest lies with you. Until you hear of me again, I desire you to go peaceably about your ordinary occupations.' 'Better put that in,' he thought to himself.