Nicholas fell in with the scheme, and two days afterwards set out with perhaps the least efficient army that has ever taken the field. But he had deliberately chosen his troops from the most ill-prepared and untrimmed of the recruits, for somehow or other all this raw material had to be put into shape before it was possible that it should render a creditable or useful account of itself in any serious operations. But they were all hardy, out-of-door folk, accustomed to sleep on the hills and eat the roughest food with health and cheerfulness, and it was just these who would most speedily prove a drag and a demoralization if left idle in camp.
So on the third morning they set out, at an open and scattered double, where the mountain-side was steep, among the budding bushes and tilted rocks, taking the short-cut down to the plain, where it might be possible to give them some semblance of formation. The baggage and commissariat mules had preceded them by a few hours, and were to wait for them when they got down to marching ground.
Two days' march, or rather tramp, brought them to Megalopolis, a sparkle in the centre of the green Arcadian plain. They found the town in the hands of the insurgent Greeks, a body of whom, consisting of about two hundred men, enrolled themselves under Nicholas. Here, too, they heard the same tale of slaughter and pillage of the Turk; but already the selfish evil which was to do such harm to the Greek cause generally--namely, the personal greed for plunder--had crept in, and the insurgents were wrangling over the distribution of the booty. But Nicholas, with a fine indignation which shamed them into obedience, though amid murmurs of suppressed grumbling, was hot with reproach. Was it for a few piastres, he said, that they were up in arms? Was the liberty of the nation to be weighed against a cask of wine or a Turkish slave? And taking the whole matter into his own hands, he reserved half the booty captured for the expenses of the war, and half he divided as fairly as might be among the claimants.
From Megalopolis Karitaena was only a four hours' march, and he was anxious to force the pace so as to reach it early next morning, before rumor of their approach should have gone abroad. The Megalopolis men were as untrained as his own, but they knew the country better, and he organized out of them a corps of skirmishers, who should go in advance and intercept any fugitives who might carry the news of the march into Karitaena. The only chance of taking it was if he could find it unprepared, like Kalamata, creep up to it at night, and either make a night assault or draw beleaguering lines round it before he could be attacked.