But Mustapha, remembering his former disaster in the defile of Krapi, hesitated, waited at Prosnero and in the Apokorona, while the Sphakiote chieftains craftily negotiated, and made their calculations on the amount of assistance they could get from Greece, the measure of concessions or personal advantages they could hope for as the price of submission, and prolonged the practical truce until the reaction from the effects of the late defeat began. Hadji Mikhali, with his Lakiotes, went back to Lakus and Theriso, entirely abandoned by the troops, and resumed his old policy of little and incessant raids to harass the Turkish commander and keep his own men from the despondency of inaction. The immediate salvation of the insurrection was, however, the arrival of Col. Coroneos, the ablest by far of the Greek chiefs, and the only one, it would seem, who was capable of adapting his plans to the kind of material he had to work with. He arrived too late either to prevent or assist in the battle of Vafé, and, seeing the danger the insurrection was in of dying of despondency and the dissidence of its chiefs, moved at once into the central provinces, and, collecting together such Cretans as he could find, surprised and cut off two small Turkish detachments, and with unimportant advantages reawakened the enthusiasm of the fickle and excitable islanders, gained for himself the prestige of victory, and rapidly recruited a considerable force. At the same time, slight advantages were won by Hadji Mikhali near Canéa, and by other chiefs in the eastern provinces, where an Ottoman detachment had been disastrously repulsed in an attempt to penetrate into the Lasithri district. Coroneos, with a small body of volunteers, established his headquarters at the old fortified convent of Arkadi, a building of Venetian construction of such size and strength as to be a fit depot of supplies and place of refuge as against anything less than a regular siege. From here he harassed the detachments which issued from Retimo, and kept alive the movement in the district between Sphakia and Mount Ida, and on several occasions menaced the city of Retimo, which is fortified by a low wall, almost unprovided with artillery. Mustapha, after nearly a month of indecision and negotiation, in which the Cretans showed a diplomatic ability and duplicity quite worthy the antique reputation of the race, found himself compelled to act against the new dangers which Coroneos had conjured for him. He moved with great rapidity from Episkopi, where he had made his headquarters in order that he might watch both the great passes into Sphakia, Krapi and Kallikrati, to Retimo, and thence to the attack of Arkadi, which had been left with a small detachment of volunteers and about one hundred and fifty Cretan combatants, including the priests. Besides these, there were about one thousand women and children, whom Coroneos had made every attempt to dissuade