The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II | Page 9

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 assure 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 assembly 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 petition 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 assembly to disperse and wait at home for the answer. He
had on a previous occasion tried the same device, and when the
assembly had dispersed he had arrested the chiefs, called a counter
assemblage of his partisans, and got up a counter petition, 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 assembly 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 assembly 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 assembly by force. As
this meant fighting, the consuls opposed it, with the exception of
Derché, the French consul, who took the lead in approving the pasha's
proposals. The English consul, Dickson, an extremely honest and
humane man, but tied by his instructions to act with his French
colleague, could only say that the assembly 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 assembly had expressed their
willingness to disperse on receiving assurance 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
assembly 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 Dickson said that
what he had said was implied in the