The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of IndependenceBenson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
History
The Vintage: A Romance of the Greek War of Independence
Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
Greece -- History -- War of Independence, 1821-1829 -- Fiction
"It is then good that I came," he said. "I suppose this Turk next door
is your keeper. Oh, Yanni, but we shall have bitter dealings with him
before you get out of this. I shall stop here to-night--there is a room
I may use next this--and you inside and I outside must just examine the
lie of things. I will go out now, round to the stables to see if the
horses are properly cared for, and before I come back I will have gone
round the outside of this place and seen what is beyond these walls.
And you look about inside."
Mitsos returned in about an hour. "It wasn't good," he said, "but it
might have been worse." From the square it was impossible to get into
the place, except through the gate, and equally impossible to get out.
To the right of the gate stood the corner house of the square, and
next to it a row of houses opening out on the street leading from the
square, and there was no getting in that way. On the left the long wall
of the back of the house looked out blankly into another corresponding
street running into the square, but farther down things were not
hopeless; for the house next Mehemet's stood back from the street in
the middle of its garden, and was enclosed by an eight-foot wall. "None
so high," quoth Mitsos, "but that a bigger man than you could get up."
Standing on the top of the wall, it would be possible to get onto the
roof of the block of buildings in which they were, and from there down
onto the balcony, which was covered in and supported by pillars, one of
which stood in front of Yanni's door. "And where a man has come, there
may two go," said Mitsos, in conclusion; "so do not look as if the
marrow had left your bones; Yanni."
"It's all very good for you," said Yanni, mournfully; "but here am
I cooped up like a tame hen for a month, or it may be more, in this
devil-kennel place, with a garden to walk in and an orange to suck. Eh,
Mitsos, but it will be a gay life for me sitting here in this scented
town. A fat-bellied, slow-footed cousin will you find when you come for
me. I doubt not I shall be sitting cross-legged on the floor with a
narghilé, and a string of beads, and a flower in my hair."
"Oh, you'll soon get fit again on the mountains," said Mitsos,
cheerfully. "I expect it will be quick going when I come to fetch you
out of this."
Yanni nodded his head towards the Turk's room next door.
"Some night when you come tramping on the roof overhead," he said,
"will he not wake and pluck you by the two heels as you come down onto
the balcony?"
Mitsos grinned.
"There will be fine doings that night," he said. "If only you looked
into the street we could arrange that you should be at the window every
night, and I could whistle you a signal; but here, bad luck to it! I
could whistle till my lips were in rags and you would not hear. I shall
have to come in myself."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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