Sylvia & Michael Part 39

They had started to walk seaward along the bed of the ravine when the corporal ran back with an exclamation of contempt to where the dead officer was lying.

"If I ain't dippy!" he laughed. "Gee! I 'most forgot to see what was in his pockets."

He made up for the oversight by a thorough search and came back presently, smiling and slipping the holster of the officer's revolver on his own belt. Then he patted his own pockets, which were bulging with what he had found, and they walked forward in silence. The end of the ravine brought them to an exposed upland, which they crossed warily, flitting from stunted tree to stunted tree, because the moonlight was seeming too bright here for safety. The upland gave place to sandy dunes, the hollows of which were marshy and made the going difficult; but the night was breathless and not a leaf stirred in the oleander thickets to alarm their progress.

"Not much wind for sailing," Michael murmured.

"That's all right," said the corporal, whose name was Yanni Psaradelis.

"If we find a caique, we can wait for the wind."

Sylvia was puzzled by Rakoff's not having said a word about any river to cross at the frontier. She wondered if he had salved his loyalty thereby, counting upon their recapture, or if by chance they were to get away, throwing the blame on Providence. Yet had he time for such subtleties? It was hard to think he had, but by Yanni's account of the river it seemed improbable that they would ever have escaped without his help, and it was certainly strange that Rakoff, if his benevolence had been genuine, should not have warned them. And now actually the dunes were dipping to the sea; on a simultaneous impulse they ran down the last sandy slope and knelt upon the beach by the edge of the tide, scooping up the water as though it were of gold.

"Say, that's not the way to go escaping from the Voulgars," Yanni told them, reproachfully. "We got to go slow and keep out of sight."

The beach was very narrow and sloped rapidly up to low cliffs of sand continually broken by wide drifts and watercourses; but they were high enough to mask the moonlight if one kept close under their lee and one's footsteps were m.u.f.fled by the sand. They must have walked in this fashion for a couple of miles when Yanni stopped them with a gesture and, bending down, picked up the cork of a fishing-net and an old shoe.

"Guess there's folk around here," he whispered. "I'm going to see. You sit down and rest yourselves."

He walked on cautiously; the sandy cliffs apparently tumbled away to a flat country almost at once, for Yanni's figure lost the protection of their shadow and came into view like a gray ghost in the now completely clouded moonlight. Presumably they were standing near the edge of the marshy estuary of the river between Bulgaria and Greece.

"How will he explain himself to any of the enemy on guard?" Sylvia whispered.

"He must have had the countersign to get across earlier to-night,"

Michael replied.

"It's nearly five o'clock," she said. "We haven't got so very much longer before dawn."

They waited for ages, it seemed, before Yanni came back and told them that there was no likelihood of getting a caique on this side of the river, but that he should cross over in a boat and take the chance of finding one on the farther beach before his captain's absence was remarked. He should have to be careful because the Greek sentries would be men from his own regiment and his presence so far down the line might arouse suspicion.

"But if you find a caique, how are we going to get across the river to join you?" Michael asked.

"Say, give me twenty dollars," Yanni answered, after a minute's thought.

"The fish-mens won't do nothing for me unless I show them the money first. I'll say two British peoples want to go Thaso. We can give them more when we're on the sea to go Samothraki. They'd be afraid to go Samothraki at first. You must go back to where we come down to the sea.

Got me? Hide in the bushes all day, and before the fe?????, what is it, before the moon is beginning to-morrow night, come right down to the beach and strike one match; then wait till you see me, but not till after the moon is beginning. If I don't come to-morrow, go back and hide and come right down the next night till the moon is beginning. And if I don't come the next night--" He stopped. "Sure, Yanni will be dead."

Michael gave him five sovereigns; he walked quickly away, and the fugitives turned on their traces in the sand.

"Do you feel any doubt about him?" Sylvia whispered, after a spell of silence.

"About his honesty? Not the least. If he can come, he will come."

"That's what I think."

They found by their old footprints the gap in the cliffs through which they had first descended, and took the precaution of scrambling back farther along so that there should remain only the marks of their descent. In the first oleander thicket they hid themselves by lying flat on the marshy ground; so tired were they that they both fell asleep until they were awakened by morning and a drench of rain.

"One feels more secluded and safe somehow in such weather," said Sylvia, with an attempt at optimism.

"Yes, and we've got a box of Turkish-delight," said Michael.

"Turkish-delight?" she repeated, in astonishment.

"Yes; one of Rakoff's men gave it to me about a week ago, and I kept it with a vague notion of its bringing us luck or something. Besides, another thing in the rain's favor is that it serves as a kind of bath."

"A very complete bath I should say," laughed Sylvia.

They ate Turkish-delight at intervals during that long day, when for not a single moment did the rain cease to fall. Sylvia told Michael about the Earl's Court Exhibition and Mabel Bannerman.

"I remember a girl called Mabel who used to sell Turkish-delight there, but she had a stall of her own."

"So did my Mabel the year afterward," she said.

Soon they decided it must be the same Mabel. Sylvia thought what a good opening this was to tell Michael some of her more intimate experiences, but she dreaded that he would, in spite of himself, show his distaste for that early life of hers, and she could not bear the idea of creating such an atmosphere now--or in the future, she thought, with a sigh.

Nevertheless, she did begin an apostrophe against the past, but he cut her short.

"The past? What does the past matter? Without a past, my dear Sylvia, you would have no present."

"And, after all," she thought, "he knows already I have a past."

Once their hands met by accident, and Michael withdrew his with a quickness that mortified her, so that she simulated a deep preoccupation in order to hide her chagrin, for she had outgrown her capacity to sting back with bitter words, and could only await the slow return of her composure before she could talk naturally again.

"But never mind, the adventure is drawing to a close," she told herself, "and he'll soon be rid of me."

Then he began to talk again about their d.a.m.ned relationship and to speculate upon the extent of Stella's surprise when she should hear about it.

"I think, you know, when I was young," Michael said, presently, "that I must have been rather like your husband. I'm sure I should have fallen in love with you and married you."

"You couldn't have been in the least like him," she contradicted, angrily.

For a moment, so poignant in its revelation of a divine possibility as to stop her heart while it lasted, Sylvia fancied that he seemed disappointed at her abrupt disposal of the notion that he might have loved her. But even as the thought was born it died upon his offer of another piece of Turkish-delight and of his saying:

"I think it's time for the eighth piece each."

So that was the calculation he had been making, unless, indeed, their proximity and solitude through this long day in the face of danger had induced in him a sentimental desire to express an affection born of a conventional instinct to accord with favoring circ.u.mstance, bred of a kind of pity for a wasted situation. If that were so, she must be more than ever careful of her pride; and for the rest of the day she kept the conversation to politics, forcing it away from any topic that in the least concerned them personally.

A night of intense blackness and heavy rain succeeded that long day in the oleander thicket. Moonrise could not be expected by their reckoning much before three in the morning. The wet hours dragged so interminably that prudence was sacrificed to a longing for action; feeling that it was impossible to lie here any longer, sodden, hungry, and apprehensive, they decided to go down to the beach and strike the first match at midnight, and, notwithstanding the risk, to strike matches every half-hour. The first match evoked no response; but the plash of the little waves broke the monotony of the rain, and the sand, wet though it was, came as a relief after the slime in which they had been lying for eighteen hours. The second match gained no answering signal; neither did the third nor the fourth. They consoled themselves by whispering that Yanni had arranged his rescue for the hour before moonrise. The fifth and sixth matches flamed and went out in dreary ineffectiveness; so thick was the darkness over the sea it began to seem unimaginable for anything to happen out there. Suddenly Michael whispered that he could hear the clumping of oars, and struck the seventh match. There was silence; then the oars definitely grew louder; a faint whistle came over the water: the darkness before them became tremulous with a hint of life, and their straining eyes tried to fancy the outline of a boat standing off from the sh.o.r.e. Presently low voices were audible; then the noise of a falling plank and a hurried oath for some one's clumsiness; a little boat grounded, and Yanni jumped out.

"Quick!" he breathed. "I believe I heard footsteps coming right down to the sh.o.r.e."

They pushed off the boat; and when they were about twenty strokes from the beach, what seemed after so much whispering and stillness a demoniac shout rent the darkness inland. Yanni and the fishermen beside him pulled now without regard for the noise of the oars; they could hear the sound of people's sliding down the cliff; there were more shouts, and a rifle flashed.

"Those Voulgars," Yanni panted, "won't do nothing except holler. They can't see us."

Another rifle banged, and Sylvia was thrilled by the way their escape was conforming to the rules of the game; she reveled in the confused sounds of anger and pursuit on land.

"They don't know where we are," laughed Yanni.

But the noise of the fugitives scrambling on board the caique and the hoisting of the little boat brought round them a shower of bullets, the splash of which was heard above the rain. One of these broke a jar of wine, and every man aboard bent to the long oars, driving the perfumed caique deeper into the darkness.

"I had a funny time getting this caique," Yanni explained, when, with some difficulty, he had been dissuaded from firing his late captain's revolver at the country of Bulgaria, by this time at least two miles away. "I didn't have no difficulty to get across, but I had to walk half-way to Cavalla before I found the old fish-man who owns this caique. I told him two British peoples wanted him and he says, 'Are them Mr. B.'s fellows for Cavalla?' I didn't know who Mr. B. was, anyway, so I says, 'Sure, they're Mr. B.'s fellows,' but when we got off at dusk, he says his orders was for Porto Lagos and to let go the little boat when he could hear a bird calling. He didn't give a dern for no matches.