The Autobiography of a Journalist Volume II Part 1

The Autobiography of a Journalist.

Volume II.

by William James Stillman.

CHAPTER XX

CONSULAR LIFE IN CRETE

Cholera was raging all over the Levant, and there was no direct communication with any Turkish port without pa.s.sing through quarantine. In the uncertainty as to getting to my new post by any route, I decided to leave my wife and boy at Rome, with a newcomer,--our Lisa, then two or three months old,--and go on an exploring excursion. Providing myself with a photographic apparatus, I took steamer at Civita Vecchia for Peiraeus. Arrived at Athens I found that no regular communication with any Turkish port was possible, and that the steamers to Crete had been withdrawn, though there had not been, either at that or at any previous time, a case of cholera in Crete; but such was the panic prevailing in Greece that absolute non-intercourse with the island and the Turkish empire had been insisted on by the population. People thought I might get a chance at Syra to run over by a sailing-boat, so I went to Syra. But no boat would go to Crete, because the quarantine on the return was not merely rigorous but merciless, and exaggerate to an incredible severity. No boat or steamer was admitted to enter the port coming from any Turkish or Egyptian port, though with a perfectly clean bill of health, and all ships must make their quarantine at the uninhabited island of Delos. Such was the panic that no one would venture to carry provisions to that island while there was a ship in quarantine, and during the fortnight I waited at Syra an English steamer without pa.s.sengers, and with a clean bill of health, having finished her term, was condemned to make another term of two weeks, because a steamer had come in with refugees from Alexandria, and had anch.o.r.ed in the same roadstead. Mr. Lloyd, the English consul, protested and insisted on the steamer being released, and the people threatened to burn his house over his head if he persisted; but, as he did persist, the ship was finally permitted to communicate with Syra, but not to enter the harbor, and was obliged to leave without discharging or taking cargo, after being a month in quarantine.

At last an English gentleman named Rogers, who lived at Syra, an ex-officer of the English army, offered to carry me over to Canea on his yacht of twelve tons, and take the consequences. I found the consulate, like the position in Rome, deserted, the late consul having been a Confederate who had gone home to enlist, I suppose, for he had been gone a long time, and the archives did not exist. There was nothing to take over but a flag, which the vice-consul, a Smyrniote Greek, and an honest one, as I was glad to find, but who knew nothing of the business of a consul, had been hoisting on all fete days for two or three years, waiting for a consul to come. I was received with great festivity by my proteges, the family of the vice-consul, and with great ceremony by the pasha, a renegade Greek, educated in medicine by the Sultana Valide, and in the enjoyment of her high protection; an unscrupulous scoundrel, who had grafted on his Greek duplicity all the worst traits of the Turk. As, with the exception of the Italian consul, Sig. Colucci, not one of the persons with whom I acted or came in contact in my official residence survives, unless it may be the commander of the a.s.surance, an English gunboat, of whose subsequent career I know nothing, I shall treat them all without reserve.

The Pasha, Ismael, I at once found, considered it his policy to provoke a conflict with any new consul, and either break him in or buy him over; and the occasion for a trial of strength was not long coming. The night patrol attempted to arrest the son of the vice-consul in his house, in which I had been temporarily residing while the house which I took was being put in order, and over which the flag floated. I at once demanded an apology, and a punishment for the _mulazim_ in command of the patrol. The pasha refused it, and I appealed to Constantinople. The Porte ordered testimony to be taken concerning the affair, and the pasha took that of the mulazim and the policeman on oath, and then that of my witnesses without the oath, the object being, of course, to protest against their evidence on the ground that they would not swear to it. I immediately had their evidence retaken on oath and sent on to Constantinople with the rest.

The Porte decided in my favor, and ordered the apology to be made by the mulazim. As the affair went on with much detail of correspondence between the _konak_ and the consulate for some weeks, it had attracted the general attention of our little public, and the final defeat of the pasha was a mortification to him which he made every effort to conceal. He denied for several weeks having received any decision from the Porte, in the hope, probably, that he would tire me out; but as I had nothing to do, and the affair amused me, I stuck to him as tenaciously as he to his denials, and he had to give in. It was a very small affair, but the antagonism so inaugurated had a strong effect on the Cretans, who found in me an enemy of their tyrant.

Ismael was cruel and dishonorable; he violated his given word and pledges without the slightest regard for his influence with the population. I have since seen a good deal of Turkish maladministration, and I am of the opinion that more of the oppression of the subject populations is due to the bad and thieving instincts of the local officials than directly to the Sublime Porte, and that the simplest way of bringing about reforms (after the drastic one of abolishing the Turkish government) is in the Powers a.s.serting a right of approbation of all nominations to the governorships throughout the whole empire. When, as at certain moments in the long struggle of which I am now beginning the history, I came in contact with the superior officers of the Sultan, I found a better sense of the policy of justice than obtained with the provincial functionaries.

Ismael Pasha had only one object,--to do anything that would advance his promotion and wealth. He regarded a foreign consul, with the right of exterritoriality, as a hostile force in the way of his ambitions, and, therefore, until he found that one was not to be bought or worried into indifference to the injustice perpetrated around him, he treated him as an enemy. I always liked a good fight in a good cause, and I had no hesitation in taking up the glove that Ismael threw down, and my defiance of all his petty hostile manoeuvres was immediately observed by the acute islanders and put down to my credit and exaltation in the popular opinion. The discontent against his measures was profound, and the winter of my first year in the island was one of great distress. Ismael had laid new and illegal taxes on straw, wine, all beasts of burden, which, with oppressive collection of the habitual t.i.thes (levied in accordance not with the actual value of the crops, but with their value as estimated by the officials), and short crops for two years past, made life very hard for the Cretan. Even this was not enough; justice was administered with scandalous venality and disregard of the existing laws and procedure. Not long after my arrival at Canea, the hospital physician, a humane Frenchman, informed me that an old Sphakiot had just died in the prison, where he had been confined for a long time in place of his son, who had been guilty of a vendetta homicide and had escaped to the Greek islands. According to a common Turkish custom, the pasha had ordered his nearest relative to be arrested in his place. This was the old father, who lay in prison till he died.

The capricious cruelty of Ismael was beyond anything I had ever heard of. One day I was out shooting and was attacked by a dog whom I saluted with a charge of small birdshot, on which the owner made complaint to the pasha that I had peppered accidentally one of his children. Ismael spread this report through the town, learning which I made him an official visit demanding a rectification and examination of the child, which was found without a scratch. The pasha, furious at the humiliation of exposure, then threw the man into prison, and as he, Adam-like, accused his wife of concocting the charge, he ordered her also to prison for two weeks, without the slightest investigation, leaving three small children helpless. I protested, and insisted on the release of the man, who had only obeyed the wish of the pasha in making the charge against me.

Having no occupation but archaeological research and photography, I decided to make a series of expeditions into the mountain district, and to begin with a visit to the famous strongholds of Sphakia. The pasha protested, but as I had a right to go where I pleased, I paid no attention to his protests, and he then went to the other extreme, and offered to provide me with horses, which offer I unfortunately accepted. The horse I rode and the groom the pasha sent with him were equally vicious. The man, when we saddled up the first day out, put the saddle on so loosely that as we mounted the first steep rocky slope the saddle slipped over the horse's tail, carrying me with it, and the horse walked over me, breaking a rib and bruising me severely, and then tried to kick my brains out. I remounted and kept on, but that night the pain of the broken rib was such, and the fever so high, that I was obliged to give up the journey and go back to Canea. I found that the pasha had antic.i.p.ated a disaster, and heard of it with great satisfaction.

As soon as restored, I set out on a trip to the central district of Retimo, then perfectly tranquil, the agitation in Sphakia, which preceded the great insurrection, having already begun, and making my venturing there imprudent. I was anxious to see something of the provincial government of the island, as, in Canea, where the foreign consuls resided, there was always the slight check of publicity on the arbitrariness of the official, though what we saw did not indicate a very effective one. I had a dragoman in Retimo, a well-to-do merchant, who served for the honor and protection the post gave him, and his house was mine _pro tem_., and over it, during my stay, floated the flag of the consulate. We made an excursion across the island to the convent of Preveli, situated in one of the most beautiful valleys in the island, sheltered on the north, east, and west by hills, and lying, like a theatre, open to the south, and looking off on the African sea. The entrance was by a narrow gorge, and here we witnessed one of those natural phenomena that still impress an ignorant people with the awe from which, in more ancient times, religion received its most potent sanction. The wind pa.s.sing through some orifice in the cliff far above our heads, even when we felt none below, produced a mysterious organ-like sound, which the people regarded as due to some supernatural influence. As all the modern sanctuaries in that part of the world are founded on the ruins of ancient shrines, I have no doubt that our hospitable shelter of that night was on the site of some temple to one of the great G.o.ds of Crete.

That journey gave me a sight of one of the remarkable Cretan women, whose reputation for beauty I had always regarded, judging from the women in the cities, as a cla.s.sical fable. I had been making a visit to the _mudir_ of the province through which we were pa.s.sing, and, after pipes and coffee, and the usual ceremonies, I mounted my horse, and, at the head of my escort, rode out of the mudir's courtyard, when my eye was caught by the flutter of the robes of a woman in a garden across the road. Around the garden ran a high hedge of cactus, and as I leaned forward in my saddle to look through one of the openings, a girl's face presented itself to me at the other side of it, and we stared each other in the eyes for several seconds before she--a Mussulman girl--remembered that she must not be seen, when, wrapping her veil around her head, she flew to the house. The vision was of such a transcendent beauty as I had, and have since, never seen in flesh and blood,--a mindless face, but of such exquisite proportion, color, and sweetness of modeling, with eyes of such l.u.s.trous brown, that I did not lose the vivid image of it, or the ecstatic impression it produced, for several days; it seemed to be ineradicably impressed on the sensorium in the same manner as the ecstatic vision I have recorded of my wood-life. I suppose such beauty to be incompatible with any degree of mental activity or personal character, for the process of mental development carries with it a trace of struggle destructive to the supreme serenity and statuesque repose of the Cretan beauty. Pashley tells of a similar experience he had in the mountains of Sphakia, and he was impressed as I was.

On our arrival at the city gates, returning to Retimo, we had an experience of the mediaeval ways of the island, finding the gates locked and no guard on duty. We called and summoned,--for a consul had always the privilege of having the gates opened to him at any hour of day or night,--but in vain, until I devised a summons louder than our sticks on the gate, and, taking the hugest stone I could lift, threw it with all my force repeatedly at the gate, and so aroused the guard, who went to the governor and got the keys, which were kept under his pillow. The next day we had an affair with Turkish justice which ill.u.s.trates the position of the consuls in Turkey so well that I tell it fully. The dragoman and I had gone off to shoot rock-pigeons in one of the caves by the seash.o.r.e, leaving at home my breech-loading hunting rifle, then a novelty in that part of the world. When we got home at night the city was full of a report that some one in our house had shot a Turkish boy through the body. I at once made an investigation and found that the facts were that a boy coming to the town, at a distance of about half a mile from the gate, had been hit by a rifle ball which had struck him in the chest and gone out at the back. No one had heard a shot, and the sentinel at our doors, set nominally for honor, but really to watch the house, had not heard any sound. The boy was in no danger, and he declared that the bullet had struck him in the back and gone out by the chest. My Canea dragoman, who was reading in the house all the time we were gone, had heard nothing and knew nothing about it; but, on examining the rifle, I found that some one had tried to wipe it out and had left a rag sticking half way down, the barrel. This pointed to a solution, and an investigation made the whole thing clear. The dragoman's man-servant had taken the gun out on the balcony which looked out on the port, and fired a shot at a white stone on the edge of the wall, in the direction of the village where the boy was. .h.i.t.

The _kaimakam_ of Retimo sent an express to Canea to ask Ismael what he should do, and received reply to prosecute the affair with the utmost vigor. He therefore summoned the entire household of the dragoman, except him and myself, to the konak, to be examined. As they were all under my protection I refused to send them, but offered to make a strict investigation and tell him the result; but, knowing the rigor of the Turkish law against a Christian who had wounded a Mussulman, even unintentionally, I insisted on being the magistrate to sit in the examination. The pasha declined my offer, and I forbade any one in the house to go to the konak for examination. I then appeared before the kaimakam and demanded the evidence on which my house was accused. There was none except that of the surgeon, who was a Catholic, and a bigoted enemy of the Greeks, and especially of the dragoman, with whom he had had litigation. He declared that the shot came from the direction of the town, while the boy maintained the contrary; and as, in the direction from which the boy had come, there was a Mussulman festival, with much firing of guns, I suggested the possibility that the ball came, as the boy believed, from that direction, and put the surgeon to a severe cross-examination. I asked him if he had ever seen a gunshot wound before, and he admitted that he had not. Thereupon I denounced him to the kaimakam, who had begun to be frightened at the responsibility he had a.s.sumed, and the man broke down and admitted that he might be mistaken, on which the kaimakam withdrew the charge.

I knew perfectly well that the servant was guilty, but I knew, too, that for accidental wounding he would have been punished by indefinite confinement in a Turkish prison, as if he had shot the boy intentionally. The refusal of the pasha to permit me to judge the case, as I had a right to do, he being my protege, left me only the responsibility of the counsel for the prisoner, and I determined to acquit him if possible. The bullet had, fortunately, gone through the boy and could not be found; and, as the wound, though through the lungs, was healing in a most satisfactory manner, and would leave no effects, I had no scruples in preventing a conviction that would have punished an involuntary offense by a terrible penalty, which all who know anything of a Turkish prison can antic.i.p.ate. The governor-general was very angry, and the kaimakam was severely reprimanded, but they could not help themselves. My position under the capitulations was secure, but it made the hostility between the pasha and myself the more bitter.

The acc.u.mulated oppressions of Ismael Pasha had finally the usual effect on the Cretans, and they began to agitate for a pet.i.tion to the Sultan, a procedure which time had shown to be absolutely useless as an appeal against the governor; and, while the agitation was in this embryonic condition, I decided to go back to Rome and get my wife and children. We were still in the state of siege by the cholera, and there was still no communication with the Greek islands, so that I accepted the offer made by my English colleague, the amiable and gratefully remembered Charles H. d.i.c.kson, of whose qualities I shall have to say more in the pages to come, of a pa.s.sage on a Brixham schooner to Zante. Sailing with a clean bill of health, we had to make a fortnight's quarantine in the roadstead, and, taking pa.s.sage on the Italian postal steamer to Ancona, I was obliged, on landing, to make another term of two weeks in the lazaretto, though we had again a clean bill; and, on arriving on the Papal frontier by the diligence, we had to undergo a suffocating fumigation, and all this in spite of the fact that no one of the company I had traveled with had been at a city where cholera had existed at any time within three months, or on a steamer which had touched where the cholera was prevalent. At that time there was no railway northward from Rome, and traveling was conducted on the system of the sixteenth century, except for sea travel.

I was not long cutting all the ties that bound me to Rome, though I left a few sincere friends there, and, drawing a bill on my brother for my indebtedness to the kind and helpful banker, an Englishman named Freeborn, to whose friendship I owed the solution of most of the difficulties and all the indulgences I had enjoyed while in Rome, I started on my return to Crete in the problematical condition of one who emigrates to a foreign land through an unknown way. I had money enough to get through if nothing occurred to delay me, and no more, for, with the high rate of exchange on America, I felt distressed at the burthen I was laying on my brother, though I had always been told to consider myself as to be provided for while he had the means, and by his will when he died. His death took place at this juncture, and, curiously enough, the draft reached him in time to be accepted, but he died before it was paid. His will made no mention whatever of me, but left all his property to his wife during her lifetime, and to three Seventh-day Baptist churches after her death.

In our consular service there was no allowance for traveling expenses, or provision of any kind for the extraordinary expenses which might fall on the consul from contingencies like mine. The salary at Crete, which had been $1500 during the war, was reduced to $1000 at its close, and in future I had only that and what my pen might bring me. Arrived at Florence on our way to Ancona, we found the Italian government being installed there; and our minister to Italy, Mr.

Marsh, knowing my circ.u.mstances, insisted on my taking a thousand francs, though his own salary, which was, as in my case, his only income, was always insufficient for his official and social position at the capital. I accepted it, and it was ten years before I paid it all back.

Looking back on this period of my life from a later and relatively a.s.sured, though never prosperous condition, I can see that most of my straits in life have been owing to my having accepted the miserable and delusive advantage of an official position under my government. I was not indolent, and asked for an appointment not to escape work, but to be put in the way of work which I wanted to do; and when I was disappointed in the appointment to Venice I should have set to work at home. But my position was a difficult one. The arts were for the war times suspended; I could not get into the army, my mother in an extreme old age was a pensioner at my brother Charles's house, and my sister-in-law refused to allow me to remain in my brother's house. I had, at an earlier date, in obedience to my brother's urgings and in deference to the Sabbatarian scruples, refused all offers to go into business, as he regarded me as his heir, and had formally and at more than one juncture a.s.sured me that my future was provided for and that I need have no anxiety as to money.

My brother had urged my acceptance of the post at Rome, and all the disasters of my subsequent life came from that error. My temperament and the habit of my life had always prevented me from antic.i.p.ating trouble, and I never hesitated to go ahead in what lay before me, trusting to the chapter of accidents to get through, incessant activity keeping anxiety away. I have never flinched from a duty, if I saw it, have never done an injustice to man or woman, intentionally, and at more than one moment of my career have accepted the worse horn of a dilemma rather than permit a wrong to happen to another; and if I have been erratic and unstable it has not been from selfish or perverse motives. I have always been what most people would call visionary, and material objects of endeavor have not had the value they ought to have had in my eyes. As I look back upon a career which has brought me into contact with many people and many interests not my own, I can honestly say that I have not been actuated in any important transaction by my own interest to the disadvantage of that of other people, though I have probably often insisted too much on my own way of seeing things in undue disregard of the views of others. Confronted with opportunities of enriching myself illicitly, I can honestly say that they never offered the least temptation, for I have never cared enough about money or what it brings to do anything solely for it; and, if I have been honest, it has not been from the excellence of my principles, but because I was born so.

But if I could have conceived what this Cretan venture was to bring me to, I should have taken the steamer to America rather than to the Levant. The few days we remained in Florence, then still crowded by the advent of the court, with its satellites and accompaniments, gave me an opportunity to know well one of the n.o.blest of my countrymen of that period of our history, Mr. George P. Marsh. It is difficult even now, after the lapse of many years since I last saw him, to do justice to the man as I came, then and in later years, to know him and compare him with other Americans in public life. As a representative of our country abroad, no one, not even Lowell, has stood for it so n.o.bly and unselfishly; Charles Francis Adams alone rivaling him in the seriousness with which he gave himself to the Republic. Lowell was not less patriotic, but he loved society and England; Marsh in those days of trial loved nothing but his country, and with an intensity that was ill-requited as it was immeasurable. He took a great interest in our little Russie, whom he p.r.o.nounced the most remarkable child for beauty and intelligence he had ever seen, and his interest followed us in the tragedy of our Cretan life.

We sailed by the Austrian Lloyds' steamer to Corfu, with a bill of health in perfect order, but on arrival at Corfu were ordered into quarantine, because six months before cholera had made a brief appearance at Ancona. Our consul, Mr. Woodley, came off to the steamer to see me, for the American flag was flying from the masthead, as is customary in the Levant when a consul is on board, and he proposed to hire a little yacht for us to make the quarantine in, as otherwise we should have to go to a desert island at the head of the bay, where the only shelter was an ancient and dilapidated lazaretto overrun by rats, and where we should have to pa.s.s two weeks dependent on the enterprise of the Corfiotes for our subsistence. The yacht was accepted, and came to an anchor off the marina, two or three hundred yards from the quay, and we transshipped at once, as the steamer continued her voyage. The putting us in quarantine was a monstrous injustice. We came from a clean port, on a steamer which had not for several months touched at a foul port; but the panic was such amongst the people that there was no reasoning with them. We had not lain a day at the anchorage when the fright of the Corfiotes at our proximity, as great as if we had the plague on board, caused a popular demonstration against us, and the health-officer coming off in a boat ordered us from a distance to move off to the lazaretto island. I replied that if he was prepared to come and weigh the anchor and navigate us there he might do so, but that no one of the yacht's people should touch the anchor, and on that I stood firm; and, as no one dared come in contact with the yacht in contumacy, there we remained. The panic on sh.o.r.e increased to such a point that Woodley and the health-officer had a quiet consultation, and it was agreed to give us pratique immediately. We went that night to the hotel, and the question was forgotten by the next day. The Corfiotes are certainly the most cowardly people I have ever known, and in later years we had other evidence of the fact; but, as they disclaim h.e.l.lenic descent, and boast Phoenician blood, this does not impeach the Greek at large.

We left Corfu by the steamer of the h.e.l.lenic Navigation Company on the eve of the Greek Christmas, my family being the only pa.s.sengers, and without the captain of the steamer, who pretended illness, in order to be able to enjoy the festa with his family; the command being taken by the mate, a sailor of limited experience in those waters. The engineers were English or Scotch, the chief being one of the Blairs.

What with the Christmas festivities and the customary dawdling, we did not sail till 10 P.M., instead of at 10 A.M., and, to make up for the delay, the commander _pro tem._ made a straight course for the port of Argostoli in Cephalonia, our next stopping place. We made the island about 10 A.M. of the next morning, and were well in towards the sh.o.r.e when we were caught by one of the sudden southwesterly gales which are the terror of the Mediterranean, and more dangerous than a full-grown Atlantic gale. The cliffs to the north of Argostoli were in sight, looming sheer rock above the sea line, and the wind, rapidly increasing, blew directly on sh.o.r.e, bringing with it a quick, sharp sea, and getting up before long a cross sea by the repercussion from the cliffs, so that in the complicated tumult of waters the old, heavy paddle steamer rolled and pitched like a log, the water pouring over the bulwarks with every roll either way. Soon, what with the wind and the sea, she made nothing but leeway. They put her head to the wind, and we soon found that even to hold her own was more than she could do, while our port lay ten miles away dead on the beam, and the cliffs dead astern.

The plunging and rolling of the ship made it impossible to stand or walk on deck, and I sent Laura and the children to their stateroom and to bed, lest they break their bones. The wind, a whistling gale, cut off the caps of the waves and filled the air with a dense spray, and the main deck was all afloat. There were no orders heard, none given, nothing but the monotonous beat of the paddles and the roar of the wind, and the crew were all under shelter, for it was no longer a question of seamanship, but of steam-power; only the commander pacing the bridge to and fro, like a polar hear in a cage, and the engineers changing their watch, broke the monotony of the merciless blue day, for, except a little flying scud, the sky was as blue as on a summer day.

I walked aft to the engineers' mess-room, on the upper deck, and found Blair and the two a.s.sistants off duty, seated round the table, not eating, but mute, with their elbows on the table and their heads in their hands, looking each other in the face in grim silence. We had made friends on leaving Corfu, and were on easy terms, so that, as I entered and no one spoke to me, but all looked up as if I were the shadow of death, I began to rally them for their seamanship, but got no word of retort from one of them. "What's the matter with you all?"

I said; "you look as if you had had bad news." "The matter is we are going ash.o.r.e," said the chief engineer. "This--fool of a mate has got caught in sh.o.r.e and we can't make steam enough to hold our own against this wind." I had not thought of this; I was chafing at the delay and the discomfort to Laura and the children. What was the worst in the case was still to be known. The boilers of the steamer were old and rotten, and had been condemned, and, but for the sharp economy of the Greek steamship company, would have been out already. The chief engineer, when he found that the engines at ordinary pressure did not keep the steamer from, going astern, had tied the safety valve down and made all the steam the furnaces would make. "If we don't go ahead we are done for just as much as if we blow up," said he; "for if we touch those rocks not a soul of us can escape, and we shall touch them if we drift, just as surely as if we blow up."

I went out of the mess-room with a feeling that it was a dream,--so bright, so beautiful a day,--we so well, so late from land, and so near to death! "Bah!" I said to myself. "They are fanciful; the cliffs are still a couple of miles away, and something will come to avert the wreck." I went down to the stateroom; Laura and the boy were unable to raise their heads from extreme sea-sickness, but baby Lisa was swinging on the edge of her berth, delighted with the motion, and singing like a bird, in her baby way. I sat down in my berth--there were four berths in each room--and watched her, and somehow the faith grew in me that we were not going that way at that time, that the hour had not come; and I went back to the mess-room to try to inspire confidence in my friends.

The afternoon was now wearing on. Since 10 A.M. we had made no headway towards our port, and when I looked at the cliffs it was clear that they were getting nearer, and the wind showed no signs of lulling. Our only hope lay in being able to drift so slowly that the wind might fall before we struck, and if that did not take place before nightfall it probably would not till the next morning. Rationally I understood this perfectly, but I could not feel that there was imminent danger. I had no presentiment of death, and nothing that I could do would enable me to realize the real and visible danger.

The wind never lulled an instant or blew a degree less furiously; it came still from the blue sky, and still we plunged and buried our bows and shipped floods at every plunge; the wheels throbbed and beat as ever, and no one moved on deck. The engineers changed their watches and the captain unrelieved kept up his to and fro on the bridge. I am confident that of all the men on board I was the only one who was not persuaded that death was near. My wife never knew till long after what the danger had been. We could already see that the water beneath the cliff was a wild expanse of breakers, coming in and recoiling, crossing, heaving, surging,--a white field of foam, where no human being could catch a breath. The waves that swung in before this gale rose in breakers against the cliff higher than our masts. We might go up in their spray if we reached the rocks, but no anchor could check our crawling to doom. To this day I look back with surprise at the complete freedom, not from fright, but even from a recognition of any real danger impending over us, which I then felt; it was not courage, but a something stronger than myself or my own weakness; it was not even a superst.i.tious faith that I should be preserved from the threatened peril, but a profound and immovable conviction that the danger was not real; and the whole thing was to me simply a magnificent spectacle, in which the apprehension of my shipmates rather perplexed than unnerved me.

In half an hour more, the captain said, our margin of safety would be pa.s.sed,--drifting as we then drifted our stern would try conclusions with the cliffs of Cephalonia. The sun was going down in a wild and lurid sky, a few fragments of clouds still flying from the west, when, almost as the sun touched the horizon, there came a lull; the wind went out as it had come on, died away utterly, and as we got our bows round for Argostoli we could hear the roar of the great waves that broke against the cliffs, and could see in the afterglow the tall breakers mounting up against them. In ten minutes we were going with all the steam it was safe to carry for Argostoli, where we ran in with the late stars coming out, and our engineers broke out into festive exuberance of spirits as we sat down to dine together at anchor in the tranquil waters of that magnificent port, where the Argonauts had taken refuge long before us. Blair shook his head at my rallying him, as he said in his broad Scotch tongue, "Ah, but no man of us expected ever to see his wife and bairns again; that I can a.s.sure ye." We were again indebted to private courtesy for a trip from Syra to Canea, though the delay was long. I had made an appeal to the commander of our man-of-war on the station to see us back to my post, but received a curt and discourteous refusal. I am not much surprised when I remember some of the occupants of the consulates in those days.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CRETAN INSURRECTION

Returned to Canea, I found that the Cretan a.s.sembly had begun its deliberations at Omalos. The real agitation began (ten days after my arrival) on its coming down to Boutzounaria, a little village on the edge of the plain of Canea, where it could negotiate with the governor and communicate with the consuls. There was a plateau from which the plain could be overlooked, so that no surprise was possible, and on which was the spring from which Canea got its water, an aqueduct from the pre-Roman times bringing it to the city. It was cut by Metellus when he besieged Canea, and at all the crises of Cretan history had been contested by the two parties in its wars. Long deliberation was required to formulate the pet.i.tion to the Sultan, but it was finally completed, and a solemn deputation of gray-headed captains of villages brought to each of the consuls a copy, and consigned the original to the governor for transmission to Constantinople. He, in accepting it, ordered the a.s.sembly to disperse and wait at home for the answer.

He had on a previous occasion tried the same device, and when the a.s.sembly had dispersed he had arrested the chiefs, called a counter a.s.semblage of his partisans, and got up a counter pet.i.tion, which he sent to the Sultan. They, therefore, refused this time to separate.

The reverence of the Cretans for their traditional procedure was such that when the a.s.sembly had dissolved, its authority, and that of the persons composing it, lapsed, and the deputies had no right to hope for obedience if they called on the population to rise. The a.s.sembly would have to be again convened, elected, and organized in order to exercise any authority.

As the plan of the pasha was to provoke a conflict, he ordered the troops out, and called a meeting of the consuls, to whom he communicated his intention of dispersing the a.s.sembly by force. As this meant fighting, the consuls opposed it, with the exception of Derche, the French consul, who took the lead in approving the pasha's proposals. The English consul, d.i.c.kson, an extremely honest and humane man, but tied by his instructions to act with his French colleague, could only say that the a.s.sembly thus far had acted in strict accordance with its firman rights, and he hoped that they would be respected, but he did not join in the opposition with the rest of us.

Colucci, the Italian, the youngest of the consular body, said that he had information that the committee of the a.s.sembly had expressed their willingness to disperse on receiving a.s.surance that they would not, as in the former case, be molested for the action they had taken; and as they had committed no illegal act, he considered this their due. His excellency dodged the suggestion, and, rising, was about to dismiss the meeting, when, seeing that nothing had been done to avert the collision, I arose and formally protested against the attempt to disperse the a.s.sembly by force, and against any implied consent of the consular body to the programme he had announced. The Italian, the Russian, and one or two of the other consuls followed, supporting my protest, and the pasha, disconcerted by the unexpected demonstration against him, sat down again, and we renewed the discussion, when d.i.c.kson said that what he had said was implied in the position, and that as the a.s.sembly had done nothing to deserve persecution, it could not be supposed that they would be subjected to it, and he regarded the a.s.surance of immunity as uncalled for. And so the conference broke up, leaving me in the position of the defender of Cretan liberties, but the troops were not sent out, and the report spread through the island that the pasha and the consuls were at loggerheads.

The real reason for the insistence on the formal promise being made to the consuls was that a list of the agitators indicated for arrest had been found by the daughter of the Greek secretary of the pasha, in which, amongst the names of the persons to be arrested, was her lover, to whom she gave the list. It was possible even then that the Cretans would have submitted but for the influence of two Greek agents in the camp of the a.s.sembly. These were one Dr. Ioannides and a priest called Parthenios Kelades, a patriotic Cretan, but long resident in Greece.

These urged the a.s.sembly to extreme measures, and promised support from Greece. When, later, hostilities broke out, Parthenios went into the ranks and fought bravely, but Dr. Ioannides disappeared from the scene. The next device of Ismael was to call the Mussulmans of the interior into the fortresses, and when we protested against this as dangerous and utterly uncalled for, the pasha sent a counter order; but the bearers of it met the unfortunate Mussulmans by the way, having abandoned everything, thrown their silkworms to the fowls, and left their crops ungathered, and being ready to vent their hostility on the innocent Christian population, whom they made responsible for the disaster. The call to come in was then renewed, and the entire Mussulman population gathered in the three fortresses of Canea, Candia, and Retimo. A panic on the part of the Christians followed, and all the vessels sailing for the Greek islands were crowded with fugitives. The pasha called for troops from Constantinople, though no violence had been even threatened, and several battalions of Turkish regulars with eight thousand Egyptians arrived and disembarked. With one of the battalions was a dervish fanatic, carrying a green banner, who spread his praying carpet in every public place in Canea, preaching extermination of the infidels. I took a witness and went to the general in chief, Osman Pasha, and protested against this outrage, and the dervish was at once shipped off to Constantinople.

The military chiefs were reasonable, and the Christian population totally unprepared and averse to hostilities, but the plan at Constantinople was, as we soon found, to provoke an insurrection in order to justify a transfer of the island to Egypt. Later we had from Constantinople all the details, but for the moment we could only conjecture the Egyptian collusion in the plan by the presence of Schahin Pasha, the general-in-chief of the Egyptian army, and minister of war of the viceroy, and the very important part taken by him in the ensuing negotiations. He came in great state and pomp, and immediately a.s.sumed the lead in the negotiations with the islanders, which were carried on in secret and through Derche. Ismael Pasha, who was probably not in the Egyptian secret, had another plan of his own, equally secret, and the two conflicted. Ismael, as we later learned, intended to raise and subdue an insurrection, which he hoped to do easily, and then, on the strength of his Greek blood and the protection he had at Stamboul, to be named the Prince of Crete. The Egyptian plan was, on the contrary, conciliatory, and depended mainly on direct bribery and the promise of concessions to the Cretans. It had been, as I learned from Constantinople, concocted between the Turkish government, the Marquis de Moustier, the French amba.s.sador, and the viceroy, and proposed to coax or hire the Cretans to ask for the Egyptian protection, when, on the application of the plebiscite, the island was to be transferred to the viceroy on the payment of 400,000 down and a tribute of 80,000. The French diplomatic agent in Egypt had arranged the details in consultation with Derche, but none would fit. Derche thought that all the Cretan chiefs could be bought, and the Egyptian pasha began by distributing 16,000 amongst the churches, mosques, and schools, without forgetting handsome baksheesh to the leading chiefs, who accepted the money, but promised nothing, and made no responsive move. Ismael, meanwhile, was doing his best to provoke hostilities, and finally succeeded in getting up a collision between Cretan Christians and Mussulmans at Candanos, in the southwestern part of the island.

As the Egyptian overtures did not seem to succeed, Schahin Pasha consulted some of the princ.i.p.al merchants of Canea, and was informed that Derche was of no weight or influence, and that if he wanted to move the Cretans he must do so through the American or Russian consuls; whereupon he came to me and frankly told me the whole plan, and that the viceroy proposed to build a great a.r.s.enal and naval station at Suda, and fortify the bay, the work being already planned by French engineers. He promised me whatever compensation I should ask if I could help him out. I sent the details to our minister at Constantinople, who laid them before Lord Lyons, the English amba.s.sador, who, I presume, put his foot on the whole affair, as it was never heard of more in the island; but the condition of active hostilities which had supervened at Candanos continued.

An Egyptian division of 4000 men had been posted at Vrysis,--a very important point in the Apokorona, near the position to which the committee of the a.s.sembly had retreated,--under a pretext of Schahin Pasha that it would facilitate negotiations and protect the committee.

The agitation increased, and isolated murders began to take place at various points. The exodus of the Christians to Greece went on, and of the poorer cla.s.s, who had not the means of emigrating, great numbers took refuge at the friendly consulates, chiefly the Italian, as my premises were very small and offered little shelter. Mult.i.tudes also fled to the mountain, pursued by the Mussulman rabble, and many were killed on the plain in their flight. I had taken a little house in Kalepa (a suburb of Canea where most of the consuls lived) adjoining that of the Greek and near that of the Italian consul, whose wife, being an American, strengthened the alliance which held good between us to the end. The Mussulman populace, already supplied with arms and ammunition _ad libitum_, chafed at being confined within the cities, for the pasha, aware of the danger of an open outbreak at the capital, had several times shut the gates to prevent a _sortie en ma.s.se_ of the rabble intent on attacking the consulates, for we were now known as divided into two parties; the Russian, the Italian, the Greek, and myself friendly to the Cretans, and Derche and d.i.c.kson to the pasha; the Austrian and Swedish completing the corps,--both old men, the latter having witnessed the insurrection of 1827-30,--taking little part in the discussions. The Russian, Dendrinos, a Greek by race and also an old man, was of a timidity which prevented him from taking any initiative even in discussion, while he was intensely active in the intrigues which kept up a running accompaniment to the fight between the pashas.

I had not long before received a present from my brother of some samples of a new revolver and breech-loading hunting rifles, with ammunition, some of which I had, at his request, given Schahin Pasha, as they were novelties to him. With the rest I provided for the defense of my house, barricaded the windows with mattresses, took another cava.s.s guaranteed as faithful by my old one,--Hadji Houssein,--put a rifle and a box of cartridges at each window, besides organizing, with Colucci, a strong patrol of Cretans from the refugees in the consulate, to watch the roads, and waited events. We had written urgently for the dispatch of a man-of-war of one of the European powers, without the protection of which there was imminent danger that an accident might precipitate a fight, and all the friendly consuls be murdered. In this request Derche and d.i.c.kson refused to join, on the ground that the presence of a man-of-war of a Christian power (we had plenty of Turkish at Suda) might encourage the Christian Cretans. These on their side gathered, with such arms as they had, to protect the committee, sitting in the Apokorona, and face to face with the Turkish-Egyptian troops, a movement of whom forward would at once bring on the collision we were working to prevent and Ismael and Derche to bring on, but which was really prevented by the discord between Ismael and Schahin. The irregulars, proud of their new rifles, were firing in every direction, and one heard b.a.l.l.s whistling through the air, falling on the roofs. On one occasion, when my wife, with other ladies of the consular circle, was walking between Canea and Kalepa, some of the Mussulmans amused themselves by firing as near their heads as it was safe to do. I begged Laura to take the children and go to Syra until the troubles were over, but she refused, saying that the women gathered around the friendly consulates, seeing her yielding to the panic, would lose all courage and fly to the mountains.

We were then at the end of August, 1866. My vice-consul lived in the city and provided for our communications, and when I had to go to the konak I went armed, and with a cava.s.s also armed _cap-a-pie_, but I received several warnings not to be out after nightfall, as the Turks had decided to kill me, though my known and often ostentatiously displayed skill with the revolver made them timid in any attempt in broad daylight, lest if their first shot failed I might have the second.

Weeks pa.s.sed. The nervous strain became very great. I found myself continually going unconsciously to my balcony, which commanded a wide range out to sea, telescope in hand, to see if the sail so long implored was in sight, though five minutes before I had seen nothing.

Finally there came a loathing at the sight of the masts of a steamer on the horizon, feeling that it would be only a Turkish man-of-war.

My children, for months, did not pa.s.s the threshold, though Laura insisted on showing her indifference to the danger by walking out; and one night when some mischievous Mussulmans started a cry of "Death to the Christians," in the streets of Kalepa, and the entire Christian population in a few minutes were at our doors, beating to be admitted, the cava.s.ses refusing to open without orders, she had flown to the door in her night-dress and thrown it open to the crowd, who pa.s.sed the rest of the night sitting on the floor of the consulate. The sentinel at the city gates, whose duty it was to salute as I pa.s.sed, turned his face the other way, with a muttered "Dog of a Christian,"

on which I called back Hadji Houssein, who was marching in front of me, and, ordering him to look the soldier well in the face, so that he might remember him, sent him directly to the governor to repeat what had pa.s.sed, and demand summary punishment for the insult. I was informed that the man had six weeks of prison. I don't believe he had a day, but the insults were stopped, which was what I wanted. Of those weeks of intense, prolonged anxiety the impression remains indelible to this day.