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
"No, I do not know him, but he is one of my unhappy race, whom this
brood of devils oppresses and treats as it would not treat a dog.
Mitsos," he said, with a gesture of fire, "swear that you will never
forget this! Look here, look here!" he cried. "Look how they have
made of him an offence to the light; look how they killed him by a
disgraceful death, and why? For no reason but because he was a Greek.
Look at his face; force yourself to look at it. The lips are purple;
the eyes, as dead as grapes, start from his head. He was killed like
a dog. If they catch you alone in such a place they will do the same
to you, to you whose only offence is, as this poor burden's has been,
that you are Greek. Look at his neck, swollen in his death struggle. Do
you know how the accursed men killed Katzantones and his brother? They
beat them to death with wooden hammers, sparing the head only, so that
they might live the longer. Katzantones was ill and weak, and cried out
with the pain; but Yorgi, as he lay on the ground, with arms and legs
and ankles and hands broken, and lying out of semblance of a man, only
laughed, and told them they could not kill a fly with such puny blows."
The boy suddenly turned away.
"Enough, enough!" he said. "I do not wish to look. It is too horrible.
Why do you make it more frightful to me?"
Nicholas did not seem to hear what he said, and went on, in a sort of
savage frenzy.
"Look, look, I tell you!" he cried, "and then swear in the name of God,
remembering also what I told you of my wife and child, that you will
have no pity on the race that has done this--on neither man, woman,
nor child; not even on the poor, weak women, for they are the mothers
of monsters who do these things. This is the work of the men they
bear--this and outrage and infamous lust, and the sins of the cities
which God destroyed."
He was silent a moment, and then spoke more calmly.
"So swear, Mitsos, in the name of God!"
And Mitsos, with quivering lips of horror, but suddenly steeled, looked
at the dead thing and swore.
"And now," said Nicholas, "take hold of the feet, and we will give it
what burial we can. Stay, wait a moment." He tore off a piece of the
man's tunic, and, dipping his finger in the blood that still was wet
on the shoulder, wrote in Turkish the word "Revenge," and fastened it
to the end of the rope which still dangled from the tree. Then he and
Mitsos took the body some yards distant into the copse that lined the
road, and tearing up brushwood gave it covering. On this they laid
stones until it was completely concealed and defended against the
preying creatures of the mountain.
Then Nicholas bared his head.
"God forgive him all his sins," he said, "and impute the double of them
to his murderers. Ah, God," he cried, and his voice rose to a yell,
"grant me that I may kill and kill and kill; and their souls I leave to
Thee, most Just and most Terrible!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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