"So you have come," and she looked up. "Ah, it is day already," and she quenched an oil-lamp that was burning by her. "I was going to send for you and more men when day broke, for it was no good coming at night. I only stayed because I could not go away. Send for more men from our ship, little Mitsos, and you, Kanaris, from yours, for we must make speed, leaving only a few there and a few on the shore, who will send word if the Turks are seen. And let those on board be in readiness to sail at a moment. Ah!" she went on, with a sudden lifting of her hands indescribably piteous, "we should have come straight through Lepanto and chanced everything. Then, perhaps, we might have saved the place. This," and she clasped her hands together and then threw them apart--"this was the house from which my father took his bride. Ah, ah!"--and she took up her axe and fell to hewing at the beam again, like a thing possessed. It was no time to waste words, and as soon as the fresh contingents came, some with axes, others with ship's cutlasses and capstan-bars, or anything that would help clear the wreckage, Mitsos and Kanaris went off and began searching the houses for those who might still be alive. They found that the massacre had taken place and been done with thoroughness before the burning began, and the devil's work had been carried out coolly and systematically. At the end of the street leading up out of the village towards the mountain there had evidently been some sort of combined stand made by the villagers, for there the corpses lay thick; and higher up on the path lay others who had run for their lives, only to be shot down by those infernal marksmen as they climbed the steep hill-side. But an hour's search was rewarded by Mitsos finding one man who still breathed, but who died not half an hour after; and farther on, in the front room of a house, he discovered a woman lying dead, while on her breast lay a baby, alive and seemingly unhurt, who pulled at its mother's dress crying for food. Then he turned and searched the houses opposite on the other side of the street, but found nothing that lived, and so came back to the church, which stood with doors open, and being built of stone throughout, the Turks had not attempted to fire. To make the search thorough, though not expecting to find any one there, he entered, and then stopped with a quick-drawn gasp. No pillage had been done there, the place was orderly and quiet; a row of little silver lamps untouched and lighted hung across the church above the low altar-screen; a big brass candlestick stood on the left, filled with the great festa tapers, still burning. Only from the great wooden crucifix which stood above the altar the carved Christ had been removed, and in its place, fastened hand and foot by nails and bound there by a rope, was the figure of a young man, naked.