Chapter XIV: The White Island--A Story (4)

At first she did not seem to understand, and bent inquiringly toward the Commissaire, her little gray eyes screwed up in bewilderment at his words. “What is it, mynheer?” she asked.

“Mynheer says that we should remove the three Germans and let you have your garden.”

“Oh, nay, nay,” she remonstrated, shaking her head emphatically. “Nay, mynheeren. God gave me these three graves instead of the grave of my boy. I could not tend them so well if they were in the churchyard. It is too far from my house. Nay, nay, let the three sleep here.”

“But you have not the room, madame.”

“There is room in my heart and in my garden, mynheer. I shall keep these three graves, and maybe in Germany there is some one who will keep the grave of my boy.”

* * * * *

“Messieurs, there is no use arguing with a Belgian peasant,” said the Commissaire of Metseys, as we walked back through the Street of the Spy to our waiting automobile. “But she has a fine spirit, that old grandmother.”

XIV

THE WHITE ISLAND

A STORY OF THE GALLIPOLI ADVENTURE

The aviation launch rolled slowly in the grip of the grounds well behind one of the desolate islands off Tenedos, southwest of the entrance to the Dardanelles. The afternoon was windless and humid. Warm, dripping fog covered the launch and hid from her the outlines of the rocky, treeless island in the lee of which she lay. Fog had sprinkled the deck as if with baptismal water, and the day was noiseless except for the lazy slapping of waves against the launch’s side.

A hydro-aeroplane alongside dipped and rose rhythmically with the launch’s motion, and the aviator, Lieutenant Douka, of the Royal Flying Corps, muffled in a British airman’s uniform, with thick wadded helmet on his head, goggles, and rubber gauntlets, bent over and tested the bomb-dropping mechanism. Those who had known Douka as a student in America or as an unambitious idler in Paris would hardly have recognized him in his new rôle. He had always been romantic, but he explained this amiable weakness as an inheritance from his Byzantine ancestors. “My grandparents were Greek, you know,” was his offhand explanation to college friends of his glowing fondness for the classics and things Hellenic. His two or three trips to Greece had been marred by the unpleasant contrast between the Greece he had imagined and the Greece of to-day. He could scarcely make himself understood in the modern tongue of Hellas; it irritated him, as modern English would doubtless irritate Chaucer. “A degenerate language and a degenerate people,” he told himself. Yet he had taken up aviation at Pau, not as a sport--although that is what he told his friends--but as one of the gifts he could offer modern Greece when the day of her final fight with the Turk should dawn.

The war came. He went hopefully to Athens. There came a day when King Constantine overrode his people, Venizelos retired, constitutional government in Greece ceased to be, and Douka went to London and volunteered in time for the Dardanelles expedition.

But he gave no sign of all this as he tested and retested the bomb-dropping mechanism hanging between the pontoons which supported the machine, and pushed and pulled the controls. He thrust his feet against the pedals and examined the petrol and oil throttles. “Right, lieutenant?” called the skipper of the launch. “Right, sir,” he answered. “Belay there! Lively!” the skipper shouted to two sailors who held the machine. A mechanician spun the propeller and dropped from sight; the motor churned nervously; Lieutenant Douka lifted his hand and signalled that all was satisfactory. The launch shot sidewise, and the ’plane skated swiftly forward, leaving a foaming wake. She tilted and shot forward faster, then up from the water and heavily into the mist. Douka swung her back and around the launch. Along the deck beneath him the sailors stood at attention, but a gust of gray smoke showed him that his escort was already in motion, off for the mother-ship and the flock of aeroplanes at Imbros, and he was alone, sailing away to bomb the _Sultan Omar_, the flagship of the Turkish fleet.

He looked at the clock--it read 3:17; then at the oil gauge--it was working properly. He climbed to fifteen hundred feet. Under him the mist lay like an Arctic snow-field, broken by pools of rotten ice through which the gray sea stared. The sea abruptly changed to gray land, and he mounted higher. He was flying at a height of four thousand feet over Asia, the ancestral enemy of his race and his continent. Somewhere down in the haze beneath lay Troy. Douka smiled bitterly as he thought again of the ten years’ warfare, and of how the Greeks had blotted her from the earth. The sullen roar of his motor seemed to stimulate his imagination. The mist thinned slightly, and he saw far away the narrow blue ribbon of the Dardanelles--the blood-thickened boundary between free Europe and the despotic East. Haughty Xerxes once sat on those cliffs and watched his Asiatic worms crossing to conquer the West. Twenty-eight centuries had battled on that blue line. Always it had been the same, age after age, century after century, always the Greek against the Asiatic, the Greek against the barbarian, and for five hundred years the disinherited Christian Greek against the Moslem Turk. Muffled in his helmet as he was, he began to sing an old Byzantine war song--a song his grandmother had taught him. His hate rose like a bird in a gale; his clutched hands bit into the rubber sheathing of the levers; he drove ahead at top speed, but his wrath seemed to leap out before him like a racer distancing the thing behind. To kill, to destroy, to blot out, utterly obsessed him.

High over the Sea of Marmora he flew toward Constantinople. Battles without end had been fought on the watery plains below. There the vast Greek Empire had struggled to the death with the hordes of Asia. The mist which had half hidden the land thinned and disappeared. The choppy air became cleaner and easier to fly through. He climbed to eight thousand feet. Far away he caught sight of the Golden Horn, the royal city of Constantine the Great, like a Grecian jewel set in Oriental gold, or like a Grecian body pierced by the bright spears of Turkish minarets. For five centuries she had been the spoil of the East. He cursed her conquerors and laughed to himself. What if he should bomb the mosque of Omar or the Sultan’s palace?... He shook his fist at Scutari as if the city were a person. Little flowers of dirty-white smoke bloomed in the air beside him and above him; once he seemed to fly through a shower where before all had been clear, and he felt small pieces of steel drumming like rain on the wings of his ’plane. It was a burst of shrapnel. He laughed and flew on.

Up the Bosphorus he drove, searching the sea with his eyes. The British Secret Service had reported the _Sultan Omar_ at Bojukdere. He strained for a sight of her.

Then suddenly, like a mirage, he saw the half-moon of a harbour and black ships at anchorage. He drew rapidly near. A violent puff of smoke rose from the funnels of the largest ship. She had seen him, or she had been warned, and was endeavouring to escape. He recognized her with a cry of delight. She was the _Sultan Omar_.

Hidden forts on the green hills about the harbour burst into life. Smoke, flame, and the dull thud of cannon rose to him, for he was flying lower and lower. A shrapnel shell flashed just in front of him and showered steel splinters against his windshield. He screamed with laughter. It seemed to him ridiculously funny that they should think they could kill him or escape him.

He volplaned; from seven thousand feet he sank to one thousand, then to eight hundred--to seven hundred--to six hundred--to five hundred. A curving white wake showed him that his victim was in motion. He was almost over her. Rifles cracked as the crew endeavoured to reach him with their bullets. He did not hear them. His right arm swung deliberately back to the bomb-thrower. He was near. He was over. He jerked madly, and the pent volcano fell straight on the warship.

The air rocked and heaved. His ’plane almost turned a somersault, and he fought to restore its balance in an atmosphere reeling like a typhoon. Solid waves of air beat and buffeted him. He jerked the levers and fought furiously. Then, like a bronco, the machine found her feet, prancing and shuddering in the choppy air, and up he climbed. A glance over his shoulder was enough, even if the boiling air had not told him of his success. The blue sea was black with wreckage; men like insects floated in the water, but the _Sultan Omar_ had disappeared.

The air still cracked and roared as the Turks shelled him. The whole land seemed to wake, and the setting sun shone through a curtain of dirty smoke. A Turkish aeroplane slid up in long spirals behind him to cut off his retreat; petrol dripped slowly from a leak in his reservoir caused by shrapnel or a rifle bullet. It was the price of his success; a glance told him that he could not stop the leak. He had often thought of that moment. Should he go back and risk capture by the Turks? No; he would fly straight out into the Black Sea and die alone in its waters. He would fly out into the sea where his ancestors had sailed centuries before the Moslems had taken Constantinople; the sea of the Golden Fleece, of Medea, of Xenophon and the Ten Thousand, of the long campaigns against the Persians. He would die there.

The sun set swiftly. In the twilight his mind seemed to slip its leash and play high jinks with him. His palms grew into the handles of the controls and became part of the mechanism; his fingers lengthened into levers, his legs into rods upholding the aeroplane, and he flew, screaming, laughing, and cursing, until night fell like a plummet from the dusky sky.

* * * * *

Suddenly his machine struck the level surface of the sea and buckled forward. Douka awoke, as if from sleep, tore the harness from his aching head, and slumped forward against the straps, waiting for the end. The wreckage of his machine still floated on the long, slow waves, and rocked easily to and fro, but one of the pontoons was crushed and another was leaking.

He felt no wind against his face, and the sea was calm. “Lucky,” he thought listlessly, knowing that at a touch of wind or wave the ’plane would go under. It might float for hours, or only for minutes; he did not care. Death was certain.

But there seemed to be a sound of voices in the air, a distant singing and a splash of oars. “Delirium,” he said calmly. “But how beautifully they sing! What is it? It is Greek! Why, it is the old Greek: ‘To thee, Zeus, blessings upon our timid flocks.’” His wondering lips formed the words which he had learned in school.

Then out of the darkness swam a boat, and in the boat were a steersman and four men at the oars, and the men were singing a hymn to Zeus, the Father of all and the King of all. To Lieutenant Douka nothing now seemed strange. To his shaken mind it seemed good to hear them, good to see them, good to find them loosing the straps which held him to the wrecked machine, and lifting him, in silence, into their boat.

Half an hour they rowed, when Douka caught across the level sea a hot breath of wind and the odour breathed from rye-fields in midsummer. “Land! It is land!” he exclaimed. “It is land--the White Island,” they answered gently. Both he and they had spoken in the classic Greek, the Greek of the old heroic days--not the bastard modern speech, larded with cruel words from the Turks and the rough idioms of northern barbarians. His tired eyes strained forward. Like night mist advancing upon them came the land, white like foam and very fair; and he heard cicadas chanting in the olive trees, and the warm breath of the night brought murmurs of song and the sibilant lapping of waves along a sandy shore.

All the island was white. A crescent moon stole out of cloudbanks and stared down on white sands, white balustrades, the white walls of palaces, white hills swelling against the darkness, silvery white olive groves, and slowly moving figures, clad all in white, pacing along the stairs.

A white crane beside the landing-place awoke, flapped his wings, and flew slowly off. Stately men and beautiful women thronged the quay and looked down curiously as the boat grated against the beach. “We have brought another from the wars,” the steersman called to them. “Welcome, friend,” those on the quay called gently; and “Thanks, friends,” Douka answered.

His tortured muscles knotted and failed as he tried to climb from the boat, and he fell back helplessly. Two of the oarsmen bent to him, lifted him like a child, and bore him between them up the long flights of steps. He had fainted.

When he awoke, his nude body lay on a warm marble slab, and two male attendants of the bath were kneading his aching flesh with perfumed hands. Their touch was like ice and like fire, and life seemed poured back into his body as into a wineskin as they worked. The hands stole over him, gradually more and more softly, exploring, soothing, stupefying. He slept.... He awoke once more, to find that they had placed him in what seemed to be a bed of live coals, in a white furnace which burned and leaped with light, but the crackling heat did not harm him, and again he slept.... He awoke in a high-roofed hall, and all around him was light and laughter, jets of fountains and music of slow streams; and the two attendants plunged him again and again into pools which received him as into a bed and covered him with warm floods.

Then he was rubbed with oils, and a garland was placed on his head. Two girls came, bringing him clothing--a blue-bordered peplos, a white mantle for his shoulders, and white sandals for his feet. “Drink,” they said, and they gave him a cup of barley crushed in water flavoured with mint.

“Now it is time for the feast,” they cried gayly. “Come to the feast.” And they led him through alleys bordered with white violets, hyacinths, roses, crocuses, and ghostly narcissi. In the cleft hills the olive groves gleamed like pools of moonlight; a waking dove gurgled drowsily, and the cicadas sang; and to left and right he heard faint snatches of old Greek hymns and saw white figures moving slowly along the sandy paths.

So they brought him to the banquet in a high-roofed hall of marble, lit by flambeaux in sconces along the walls, garlanded with white lilies, and spread with Oriental tables and low couches. And boys and girls flew laughingly about serving the meats and drink.

He was led to his place, and reclined in the antique fashion on a cushion beneath his elbow. Then guests began to appear through the wide marble doors. To his delight and astonishment he knew them. They were like old friends--friends of his youth, friends of the youth of all the world; and they came into the hall with garlands in their hair and bright robes upon them and gayety and peace in their looks.

There came Achilles, his gigantic arm over the shoulders of Hector, and a smile on his youthful face as he talked; and goat-bearded, bandy-legged Thersites, limping and chattering endlessly; and stately Nestor; broad-breasted, stout Agamemnon; Priam, leaning on an ivory staff; wily Odysseus, walking alone in the throng; huge, ungainly Ajax; gossipy Menelaus, Sarpedon, and Patroclus; Neoptolemus leading by the hand the sweet boy Astyanax; Diomedes, Æneas, smooth-shaven Troilus, black Memnon, laughing Paris. And the women! white-armed Briseïs, motherly Hecuba, Andromache and gentle Cressida, Chryseïs, grave Cassandra, Penelope, Polyxena, Iphigenia, the lithe, dark-eyed beauty of Myrine the Amazon, and the golden radiance of Helen, her face like noon sunlight--Helen of Sparta, for whose sake the Greeks are forever named Hellenes, at whose shrine all men worship, and shall worship so long as beauty endures--these came into the high-roofed hall; these, and many more.

And after them came an old blind singer, a lyre in his hands, a laurel crown on his head. “Homer, Homer!” they cried. “A welcome to Homer!” All rose as he passed, and they led him to the highest place in the hall, and took their pillows again, applauding him.

They poured libations and began the banquet, drinking from four-handled cups studded with gold. They ate no flesh. There was no mark of death in the hall, or violence, or cruelty. They talked gayly, and all their talk was of peace; they told old stories, but all their stories were of peace; and when they sang, their songs were of peace. And always the boys and girls served them, laughing.

Douka drank from his cup, and it was filled again and again. Pain and hatred fell from him like a garment; he laughed and jested with the rest--with Paris of Troy, Paris of Asia, Paris of the East, smiling on his right, and bearded Odysseus on his left. “Tell us a tale, Odysseus,” he begged at last, “a tale of your travels and your prowess.” And Odysseus, shaking great tones from his chest like snowflakes in winter, told of Nausicaa, daughter of King Alcinoüs, and the game of ball on the Phocæan shore.

“Prowess?” he ended. “There is no prowess but kindliness. Only kindliness lives forever in the memory.”

Then Helen, smiling at them, cried: “Sing, Homer, sing, for the moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, and the time is going by. Sing of hearth and shrine, sing of youth and age, sing of love, sing of peace, sing of the flocks safe from harm, the plowed earth and the groves, and the untroubled sea. Sing of the child nestling close to his mother, and of joy, joy, joy! Sing to us of these, old Homer.”

And Homer sang.

* * * * *

At three o’clock in the morning a Turkish torpedo-boat patrolling in the Black Sea came upon the aviator who had destroyed the _Sultan Omar_. He lay in the wreckage of his hydro-aeroplane. The Turks took him unresistingly into their craft. They say that he sang softly to himself in an obscure Grecian dialect and babbled incessantly of Helen and the heroes who fell before Troy.

THE END

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Page 46: la Toisond ’Or changed to la Toison d’Or.

Page 49: Hotel de Ville changed to Hôtel de Ville.

Inconsistent hyphenation retained as printed. A few printing punctuation errors were corrected.

End of Project Gutenberg's Tales from a Famished Land, by Edward Eyre Hunt