As soon as the clan had started, Mitsos, left to himself, ate his supper, and sat down to wait till the darkness of the birthnight of Greece should fall. It had been a hot, sultry day, with a heavy air, and he had packed up and sent on with the mules a heavy woollen cloak, which Nicholas had given him to replace the one he had left behind in his race to Tripoli, and was dressed only in his linen trousers, shirt, and open Albanian jacket. The still air hung like a blanket on the mountain-side, but he saw that clouds had gathered on the top of Taygetus and were moving down westward in the direction of the camp. But they remained as yet high, and though before sunset they had stretched right over from the mountain-top behind to the peak of Ithome in the west, a gray floor of mottled marble, flushed here and there, where they were thinner, with the reflected fire of an angry sunset, the northern heaven was still clear, and his beacon-point close above him stood out black and sharp-cut. Long before dark fell he had already been up to the beacon, in order to arrange the brushwood and firing most handily; the lighter and drier wood he put on the windward side, so that such breeze as there was might drive the flames inward against the larger bushes, which would take the flame less easily. He also tore a quantity of dry moss from the sides of a couple of plane-trees, which grew to the leeward of the hill, and made a core of this within the brushwood, adding a train, in the manner of a fuse, leading outward to where he would apply the light. He had just finished this to his satisfaction, and was about to return to the camp to fetch up the burning lumps of charcoal which he had fed during the afternoon, and which in this wind that had sprung up would soon kindle the moss into flame, when a few large raindrops fell splashing on the ground, and he hurriedly covered the dry, tinder-like furze with thick branches of pine, in order to keep it protected; then for a few moments the rain ceased again, but Mitsos, looking up, saw that the clouds had grown black and swollen with an imminent downpour, and that the storm might break any minute. His next thought was for the burning charcoal below, and he ran quickly down the hill-side in order to carry it under cover of the ammunition magazine; but before he had gone fifty yards the storm broke in a sheet of hissing rain, driven a little aslant in the wind--but for heaviness a shower of lead. However, in hopes of saving the charcoal, he ran on, and raking about in the embers of his fire, already turning to a black slush under the volleying rain, he found a lump of charcoal not yet extinguished. Then sheltering it in his cap, he nursed it tenderly, and carried it into the ammunition magazine. There he sat for half an hour, and from it managed to kindle a few more lumps, while the noise of the rain continued as of musketry on the resounding roof. Then looking out he saw that night had come, heavy and lowering.