Sylvia & Michael Part 38

"Merci, monsieur. Adieu," Michael said.

"_Merci, monsieur, vous avez ete plus que gentil pour nous. Adieu_,"

Sylvia continued.

"_Enchante_," the Bulgarian murmured: Michael and Sylvia dismounted.

"Keep well south of those tents and the moon over your right shoulders.

You are about three kilometers from the sh.o.r.e. The sentries should be easy enough to avoid. We are not yet at war with Greece."

He laughed, and spurred away in the direction of the Bulgarian tents; Michael and Sylvia walked silently toward freedom across a broken country where the dwarfed trees, like the dwarfed Bulgarians themselves, seemed fit only for savage hours and pathetically out of keeping with this tranquil night. They had walked for about half an hour when, from the cover of a belt of squat pines, they saw ahead of them two figures easily recognizable as Greek soldiers.

"Shall we hail them?" Sylvia whispered.

"No, we'll keep them in view. I'm sure we haven't crossed the frontier yet. We'll slip across in their wake. They'd be worse than useless to us if we're not on the right side of the frontier."

The Greeks disappeared over the brow of a small hill; when Sylvia and Michael reached the top they saw that they had entered what looked like a guard-house at the foot of the slope on the farther side.

"Perhaps we've crossed the frontier without knowing it," Michael suggested.

Sylvia thought it was imprudent to make any attempt to find out for certain; but he was obstinately determined to explore and she had to wait in a torment of anxiety while he worked his way downhill and took the risk of peeping through a loophole at the back of the building.

Presently he came back, crawling up the hill on all-fours until he was beside her again.

"Most extraordinary thing," he declared. "Our friend Rakoff is in there with two or three Bulgarian officers. The fellows we saw _were_ Greeks--one is an officer, the other is a corporal. The officer is pointing out various spots on a large map. Of course one says 'traitor'

at first, but traitors don't go attended by corporals. I can't make it out. However, it's clear that we're still in Bulgaria."

"Oh, do let's get on and leave it behind us," Sylvia pleaded, nervously.

But Michael argued the advisableness of waiting until the Greeks came out and of using them as guides to their own territory.

"But if they're traitors they won't welcome us," she objected.

"Oh, they can't be traitors. It must be some military business that they're transacting."

In the end they decided to wait; after about an hour the Greeks emerged, pa.s.sing once more the belt of pines where Sylvia and Michael were waiting in concealment. They allowed the visitors to get a long enough lead, and then followed them, hurrying up inclines while they were covered, and lying down on the summits to watch their guides' direction.

They had been moving like this for some time and were waiting above the steep bank of a ravine, the stony bed of which the Greeks were crossing, when suddenly the corporal leaped on the back of the officer, who fell in a heap. The corporal rose, looked down at the prostrate form a moment, then knelt beside him and began to perform some laborious operation, which was invisible to the watchers. At last he stood upright, and with outspread fingers flung a malediction at the body, kicking it contemptuously; then, with a gesture of despair to the sky, he collapsed against a boulder and began to weep loudly.

Sylvia had seen enough violence in the last month to accept the murder of one Greek officer as a mere incident on such a night; but somehow she was conscious of a force of pa.s.sion behind the corporal's action that lifted it far above her recent experience of bloodshed. She paused to see if Michael was going to think the same, unwilling to let her emotion run away with her now in such a way as to deprive them of making use of the deed for their own purpose. Michael lay on the brow of the cliff, gazing in perplexity at the man below, whose form shook with sobs in the gray moonlight and whose victim seemed already nothing more important than one of the stones in the rocky bed of the ravine.

"I'm hanged if I know what to do," Michael whispered at last.

"Personally," Sylvia whispered back, "it's almost worth while to spend the rest of our life in a Bulgarian prison-camp, if we can only find out first the meaning of this murder."

"Yes, I was rather coming to that conclusion," he agreed.

"Don't think me absurd," she went on, hurriedly. "But I've got a quite definite fancy that he's going to play an important part in our escape.

Would you mind if I went down and spoke to him?"

"No, I'll go," Michael said. "You don't know Greek."

"Do you?" she retorted.

"No. But he might be alarmed and attack you."

"He'll be less likely to attack a gentle female voice," Sylvia argued; and before Michael could say another word she began to slide down the side of the gully, repeating very quickly, "Don't make a noise; we're English," laughing at herself for the probable uselessness of the explanation, and yet all the time laughing with an inward conviction that there was nothing to fear from the encounter.

The corporal jumped up and held high his bayonet, which was gleaming black with moonlit blood.

"English?" he repeated, doubtfully, in a nasal voice.

"Yes, English prisoners escaped from the Bulgarians," Sylvia panted as she reached him.

"That's all right," said the corporal. "You got nothing to be frightened of. I'm an American citizen from New York City."

Sylvia called to Michael to come down, whereupon the corporal took hold of her wrist and reminded her that they were still in Bulgaria.

"Don't you start hollering so loud," he said, severely.

She apologized, and presently Michael reached them.

"Wal, mister," said the Greek, "I guess you saw me kill that dog. Come and look at him."

He turned the dead man's face to the moon. On the forehead, on the chin, and on each cheek the flesh had been sliced away to form ?.

"???d?t??," explained the corporal. "Traitor in American. I'm an American citizen, but I'm a Greek man, too. I fought in the last war and was in Thessaloniki. I killed four Toiks and nine Voulgars in the last war. See here?" He pointed to the pale-blue ribbons on his chest.

"I went to New York and was in a shoe-shine parlor. Then I learned the barber-shop. I was doing well. Then I come home and fought the Toiks.

Then I fought the Voulgars. Then I went back to New York. Then last September come the mobilizing to fight them again. Yes, mister, I put my razor in my pocket and come over to Piraeus. I didn't care for submarines. Hundreds of Greek mens come with me to fight the Voulgars.

The Greek mens hate the Voulgars. But things is different this time.

They was telling tales how our officers was chummy with the Voulgar officers. I didn't believe it. Not me. But it was true. With my own eyes I see this dog showing the plans of Rupel and other forts. With my own ears I heard this sunnavab.i.t.c.h telling the Voulgars the Greek mens wouldn't fight. My heart swelled up like a watermelon. My eyes was bursting and I cursed him inside of me, saying, 'I wish your brains for to become beans in your head.' But when we was alone I thought of what big mens the Greeks was in old times, and I said to him, '????e ???a?e,'

which is Mister Captain in American, 'what means this what we have done to-night?' And he says to me, 'It means the Greek men ain't going to fight for Venizelo, who is a Senegalese and p??d?t?? of his country.'

And he cursed the French and cursed the British and he said that the Voulgars must be let drive them into the sea. But I said nothing. I just spit. Then, after a bit, I said, ????e ???a?e, does the other officers think like you was?' And he says all Greek mens what is not traitors think like him, and if I tell him who is for Venizelo in our regiment I will be a sergeant good and quick. But I didn't say nothing: I am only spitting to myself. Then we come to this place, and my heart was bursting out of my body, and I killed him. Then I took my razor and marked his face for a p??d?t??."

The corporal threw up his arms to heaven in denunciation of the dead man. They asked him what he would do, and he told them that he should hide on his own native island of Samothrace until he could be an interpreter to an English ship at Mudros, or until Greece should turn upon the Bulgarians and free his soul from the stain of the captain's treachery.

"Can you help us get to Samothrace?" they asked.

"Yes, I can help you. But what you have seen to-night swear not to tell, for I am crying like a woman for my country; and other peoples and mens must not laugh at h.e.l.las, because to-night this skylaki s??????, this dog, has had the moon for eats."

"And how shall we get to Samothrace?" they asked, when they had promised their silence.

"I will find a caique and you will hide by the sea where I show you. We cannot go back over the river to Greece. But how much can you pay for the caique? Fifty dollars? There are Greek fish-mens, sure, who was going to take us."

Michael at once agreed to the price.

"Then it will be easy," said the corporal, after he had calculated his own profit upon the transaction.

"And ten dollars for yourself," Michael added.

"I don't want nothing out of it for myself," the corporal declared, indignantly; but after a minute's hesitation he told them that he did not think it would be possible to hire the caique for less than sixty dollars, and looked sad when Michael did not try to contest the higher figure.