to the door I turned the handle; the door did not open. I pulled hard at it. Then I looked at my companions.
‘Queer,’ said Denny, and he began to whistle.
Hogvardt got the little lantern, which he always had handy, and carefully inspected the door.
‘Locked,’ he announced, ‘and bolted top and bottom. A solid door too!’ and he struck it with his fist. Then he crossed to the window and looked at the bars; and finally he said to me, ‘I don’t think we can have our walk, my lord.’
Well, I burst out laughing. The thing was too absurd. Under cover of our animated talk the landlord must have bolted us in. The bars made the window no use. A skilled burglar might have beaten those bolts, and a battering ram would, no doubt, have smashed the door; we had neither burglar nor ram.
‘We’re caught, my boy,’ said Denny, ‘nicely caught! But what’s the game?’
I had asked myself that question already, but had found no answer. To tell the truth, I was wondering whether Neopalia was going to turn out as conservative a country as the Turkish Ambassador had hinted. It was Watkins who suggested an answer.
‘I imagine, my lord,’ said he, ‘that the natives’ (Watkins always called the Neopalians ‘natives’) ‘have gone to speak to the gentleman who sold the island to your lordship.’
‘Gad,’ said Denny, ‘I hope it’ll be a pleasant interview!’
Hogvardt’s broad good-humoured face had assumed an anxious look. He knew something about the people of these islands; so did I.
‘Trouble, is it?’ I asked him.
‘I’m afraid so,’ he answered, and then we turned to the window again, except Denny, who wasted some energy and made a useless din by battering at the door till we beseeched him to let it alone.
There in the room we sat for nearly two hours. Darkness fell; the women had ceased their gossiping, but still stood about the street and in the doorways of their houses. It was nine o’clock before matters showed any progress. Then came shouts from the road above us, the flash of torches, the tread of men’s feet in a quick triumphant march. Next the stalwart figures of the picturesque fellows, with their white kilts gleaming through the darkness, came again into sight, seeming wilder and more imposing in the alternating glare and gloom of the torches and the deepening night. The man in tweeds was no longer visible. Our innkeeper was alone in front. And all, as they marched, sang loudly a rude barbarous sort of chant, repeating it again and again; while the women and children, crowding out to meet the men, caught up the refrain in shrill voices, till the whole air seemed full of it. So martial and inspiring was the rude tune that our feet began to beat in time with it, and I felt the blood quicken in my veins. I have tried to put the words of it into English, in a shape as rough, I fear, as the rough original. Here it is:
‘Ours is the land!
Death to the hand
That filches the land!
Dead is that hand,
Ours is the land!
‘Forever we hold it,
Dead’s he that sold it!
Ours is the land,
Dead is the hand!’
Again and again they hurled forth the defiant words, until at last they stopped opposite the inn with one final long-drawn shout of savage triumph.
‘Well, this is a go,’ said Denny, drawing a long breath. ‘What are the beggars up to?’
‘What have they been up to?’ I asked; for I could not doubt that the song we had heard had been chanted over a dead Stefanopoulos two hundred years before. At this age of the world the idea seemed absurd, preposterous, horrible. But there was no law nearer than Rhodes, and there only Turk’s law. The sole law here was the law of the Stefanopouloi, and if that law lost its force by the crime of the hand which should wield it, why, strange things might happen even to-day in Neopalia. And we were caught in the inn like rats in a trap.
‘I don’t see,’ remarked old Hogvardt, laying a hand on my shoulder, ‘any harm in loading our revolvers, my lord.’
I did not see any harm in it either, and we all followed Hogvardt’s advice, and also filled our pockets with cartridges. I was determined—I think we were all determined—not to be bullied by these islanders and their skull-and-crossbones ditty.
A quarter of an hour passed; then there came a knock at the door, while the bolts shot back.
‘I shall go out,’ said I, springing to my feet.
The door opened, and the face of a lad appeared.
‘Vlacho the innkeeper bids you descend,’ said he; and then, catching sight perhaps of our revolvers, he turned and ran downstairs again at his best speed. Following him we came to the door of the inn. It was ringed round with men, and directly opposite to us stood Vlacho. When he saw me he commanded silence with a gesture of his hand, and addressed me in the following surprising style.
‘The Lady Euphrosyne, of her grace, bids you depart in peace. Go, then, to your boat and depart, thanking God for His mercy.’
‘Wait a bit, my man’ said I; ‘where is the lord of the island?’
‘Did you not know that he died a week ago?’ asked Vlacho, with apparent surprise.
‘Died!’ we exclaimed one and all.
‘Yes, sir. The Lady Euphrosyne, Lady of Neopalia, bids you go.’
‘What did he die of?’
‘Of a fever,’ said Vlacho gravely; and several of the men round him nodded their heads and murmured in no less grave assent, ‘Yes, of a fever.’
‘I am very sorry for it,’ said I. ‘But as he sold the island to me before he died, I don’t see what the lady, with all respect to her, has got to do with it. Nor do I know what this rabble is doing about the door. Bid them disperse.’
This attempt at hauteur was most decidedly thrown away. Vlacho seemed not to hear what I said. He pointed with his finger towards the harbour.
‘There lies your boat. Demetri and Spiro cannot go with you, but you will be able to manage her yourselves. Listen now! Till six in the morning you are free to go. If you are found in Neopalia one minute after, you will never go. Think and be wise.’ And he and all the rest, as though one spring moved the whole body, wheeled round and marched off up the hill again, breaking out into the old chant when they had gone about a hundred yards. We were left alone in the doorway of the inn, looking, I must admit, rather blank.
Upstairs again we went, and I sat down by the window and gazed out on the night. It was very dark, and seemed darker now that the gleaming torches were gone. Not a soul was to be seen. The islanders, having put matters on a satisfactory footing, were off to bed. I sat thinking. Presently Denny came to me, and put his hand on my shoulder.
‘Going to cave in, Charley?’ he asked.
‘My dear Denny,’ said I, ‘I wish you were at home with your mother.’
He smiled and repeated, ‘Going to cave in, old chap?’
‘No, by Jove, I’m not!’ cried I, leaping up. ‘They’ve had my money, and I’m going to have my island.’
‘Take the yacht, my lord,’ counselled Hogvardt, ‘and come back with enough force from Rhodes.’
Well, here was sense; my impulse was nonsense. We four could not conquer the island. I swallowed my pride.
‘So be it,’ said I. ‘But look here, it’s only just twelve. We might have a look round before we go. I want to see the place, you know.’ For I was very sorely vexed at being turned out of my island.