The Luck of Thirteen Part 11

We were suddenly disturbed, the box was wrested away, the bundles also, the bed was carried off, also a tin dish too small for a bath, too big for a basin, and a tin watering pot--the bride's trousseau. The bride was seized by two men, her brothers we were told, and carried up the stairs to a waiting brougham, the trousseau was piled upon a bullock cart, and shouting and singing and dancing the _cortege_ moved out of sight.

At Virbazar the steamer could not come to the quay, so the authorities ran a five-inch rounded tree trunk from the boat to the mud. Many dared the perilous crossing, and one nearly fell into the water. Dr. Ob was furious, and at last a plank was subst.i.tuted. Then we found that the only way off the mud was by clambering round a corner of wall on some shaky stepping stones. Dr. Ob fumed, his little round face grew rounder, his moustache went up and down, he threatened everybody with instant execution, like the Red Queen in "Alice." Then he found that no motor was awaiting us. He rushed to the telephone while we had a belated lunch. No motors; one was out taking the Serbian officers for a joy-ride; Prince Peter had taken the other to Antivari. Montenegro seemed to have no more. We soothed ourselves with "American" grapes.

This grape tastes not unlike strawberries and cream, but not having the same sentimental a.s.sociations, does not come off quite as well. We heard a motor coming. Dr. Ob ran out to intercept it. It was crammed. Then the telephone boy brought a message that Prince Peter's motor would not return till to-morrow.

Miss Petrovitch wrung her hands.

"We cannot stay here the night," she said.

"Are the bugs awful?" we asked.

"It's not the bugs, it's those dreadful women," she answered. "We shall all be murdered in our beds."

Now the women appeared to us most inoffensive.

Dr. Ob was purple with rage. He stamped his foot.

"But I am a minister," he kept repeating crescendo, till he shouted to the villagers, "But I am a minister."

It is impossible to take Montenegro seriously. Situations occur at every corner which remind one irresistibly of "the Rose and the Ring," and we wondered what would happen next. There were other belated pa.s.sengers who had hoped for conveyance, and the Frenchman's carriage had not turned up. Dr. Ob at last decided to commandeer a c.o.c.ked hat boat rowed by four women with which to navigate the river to Rieka, and thence by carriage to Cettinje if carriages came. It was six p.m., we might reach Rieka by ten.

We rowed out through the half-sunken trees. At the end of a spit of land was a man gnawing a piece of raw beef. We shouted to him to ask what he was doing; and he answered that he was curing his malaria. The two women in the bow were very pretty, one was a mere child.

There were wisps of sunset cloud in the sky, and soon night came quite down.

As it grew dark all sense of motion disappeared. The boat shrugged uneasily with the movement of the oars, the rowlocks made of loops of twisted osier creaked, but one could not perceive that one was going forwards. The hills lost their solidity, becoming mere holes in the grey blue of the sky, a bright planet made a light smudge on the ruffled water in which the stars could not reflect. As we crept forwards into the river and the mountains closed in, the water became more calm, and the stars came out one by one beneath us, while in the ripple of our wake the image of the planet ran up continuously in strings of little golden b.a.l.l.s like a juggling trick.

The Frenchman turned his head and made a noise like the rowlocks. "Il faut chanter quand meme," he explained, "pour encourager les autres." Jo then started "Frere Jacques." Jan and Dr. Ob took it up till the Frenchman burst in with an entirely different time and key. Then one of the oar girls began a queer little melody on four notes only, and all the four women joined, one end of the boat answering the other. They sang through their noses, and high up in the falsetto. By shutting one's eyes one could imagine a great ox waggon drawn uphill by four bullocks and one of the wheels ungreased. Yet it was not unpleasing, this queer shrill, recurrent rhythm, the monotonous creak and splash of the oars, the mystery of feeling one's way in the blue gloom, through reed and water-lily beds, up this cliff-bound river, and far away the faint twitter--also recurrent and monotonous--of some nightjar....

The night grew bitterly cold on the water. One of our pa.s.sengers, a little Russian dressmaker, had malaria and s.h.i.+vered with ague. Jo gave her her cloak. The Frenchman's cook was unsuitably dressed, for she had on but a thin chiffon blouse. We ourselves had summer clothes, and we were all mightily glad to see the glare of Rieka in the sky.

Our luck be praised, there were two old carriages with older horses, and another for the Frenchman. We supped moderately at a restaurant kept by an Austrian, and still s.h.i.+vering scrambled into the carriages. We had no lights, but the road was visible by the stars.

We went up and up, up the same road down which we had come three days before. Below one could see strange planes of different darknesses, but not any shape, and soon one was too aware of physical discomfort to notice the night. Besides, one had had enough of night. Miss Petrovitch told the boy to hurry up the horses; he beat them; she then rebuked him for beating them. After a while the boy grew tired of her contradictory orders, and lying down on the box fell fast asleep. The poor old horses plodded along. To right and left were immense precipices, but n.o.body seemed to care.

We reached Cettinje about two a.m., found the hotel open, and a room ready for us, and in spite of our frozen limbs were soon asleep.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER X

THE HIGHWAY OF MONTENEGRO

We went next day to see the doctor, who was late, so we strolled out to the market. They were selling grapes and figs, fresh walnuts, and lots of little dried fish, strung on to rings of willow, from the lake of Scutari. The scene, with the men in their costumes of red and blue, the women all respectably dressed in long embroidered coats of pale blue or white, and the village idiot, a man prancing about dressed in nothing but a woman's overall, was very gay. We caught the doctor later. He was talking with a Mrs. G----, an Englishwoman, from the hospital at Podgoritza: she was trying to hustle him as one hustles the butcher who has belated the meat. The doctor had let up his efforts since his orgy of respectability in Scutari, and his beard and whiskers were enjoying a half-inch holiday from the razor. With him was a Slav-Hungarian, who recommended us to go home by Gussigne, Plav and Ipek, the best scenery in all Montenegro he said; he himself had just returned from Scutari, whence he had advanced with a Montenegrin army halfway across Albania.

At each village the natives had fled, burying their corn and driving off their cattle, leaving the villages deserted, and the army, starving, had at last been forced to retire. Dr. Ob promised us a motor by four, but added that they had no oil and very little benzine. Then growing more confidential, he took us by the b.u.t.tonholes and asked us to use our best influence with the Count de Salis, and request him to tell the Admiralty to allow petrol to be brought up from Salonika, where the British had laid an embargo upon it. He promised pathetically that _all_ the petrol would be brought up overland.

Intensely amused by the doctor's idea of our importance, we solemnly delivered his message to the Count.

We went to the Serbian Minister, a charming man with a freebooter's face, for our pa.s.sports, and then back to Dr. Ob. The motor was going off at 6.30 he said. We cheered internally, for we were getting tired of Cettinje, which reminded us of a watchmaker's wife with her best silk dress on. On our way downstairs we called in to thank the Minister of War for our jolly trip; and he wished us "Bon voyage."

We got en route almost up to time, with us was Mrs. G----, who was also going back as far as Podgoritza. She was storekeeper and accountant for the Wounded Allies, and ever had a hard and troublesome task between what she needed and what she could get from the Sanitary Department. She took the front seat with Jo, and inside Jan found a French sailor of the wireless telegraphy, who had had typhoid fever, but was now going back to work. As we rattled down the curves and along the edge of the darkening chasms of the mountain side, he summed up with the brevity of a "rapin."

"Dans la journee ici, vous savez, il y'a de quoi faire des cliches."

We stopped at Rieka for water, and then on once more. In the glare of our headlights, little clumps of soldiers, with donkeys loaded with the new uniforms, loomed suddenly out of the darkness. Once a donkey took fright and bolted back, and the soldier in charge yelled and pointed his rifle at us. If we had moved he would have shot without compunction.

Later the men had bivouacked, and all along the rest of the road we pa.s.sed little fires of fresh brushwood, the sparks pouring up like fountains into the night, round which the soldiers and drivers were sitting and singing their weird songs.

At Podgoritza we found Dr. Lilias Hamilton at supper with her staff. She has had rather a hard time. The hospital was intended for Ipek, but for some reason, although there were wounded in the town, the Montenegrins decided to move it to Podgoritza, where there were none. After a difficult journey across the mountains they settled down, but could never get sufficient transport from the Government to bring their stores over, except in small quant.i.ties. They started to work, but as there were few soldiers to treat, Dr. Lilias, being a lady, interested herself in the Turkish female population, a thing which the Montenegrins thought a criminal waste of time, and tried to stop.

We got a bedroom in the hotel, and tired out, tried to sleep; but the occupants of the cafe began a set of howling songs, very unmusical, and kept us awake till past twelve. We have never heard this kind of singing anywhere else.

Next day we crossed the river and explored the quaint and beautiful streets of the Turkish quarter. The people are equally offensive on both sides of the town; however, Podgoritza seems to be the White-chapel of Montenegro--and we finally had to take refuge in the sheds of the French wireless telegraphy. The commandant at the motor depot again treated us rudely, but the Prefect was nice, this time. He promised us a carriage on the morrow if no motor were forthcoming.

After supper the people began the awful howling songs; also there was a wild orchestra which had one clarinet for melody and about ten deep ba.s.s trumpets for accompaniment.

Next morning no carriage came, so off to the Prefect. He promised one "odmah," which being translated is "at once," but means really within "eight or nine hours." We waited. Nine a.m. pa.s.sed. Ten a.m. went by. A small boy sneaked up and tried to sell some contraband tobacco; but Jan had just bought "State." An angry Turkish gentleman came and said that his horses had been requisitioned to take us to Andrievitza, and that we weren't going to get them till one o'clock, because he was using them.

We returned to the Prefect, not to complain--oh no--but to ask him to telegraph to Andrievitza that we were coming. He was naturally surprised to see us again, and explanations followed. A very humbled and much better tempered Turk came to the cafe to say that the horses would be with us "odmah."

A drizzle had been falling all the morning; at last the carriage came.

Our driver was a wretched half-starved, high-cheeked Moslem in rags, whose trousers were only made draught proof by his sitting on the holes.

He tried to squeeze another pa.s.senger upon us; but we were wiser, and were just not able to understand what he was saying. Our Turk's method of driving was to tie the reins to the carriage rail, flouris.h.i.+ng a whip and shouting with vigour; every ten minutes he glanced uneasily backwards to see that nothing had broken loose or come away.

The valley we entered had been very deep, but at some period had been half filled by a deposit of sand and pebble which had hardened into a crumbling rock. We were driving over the gravelly shelf, above our head rose walls of limestone, and deep below was the river which had eaten the softer agglomerate into a hundred fantastic caverns. All along the road we pa.s.sed groups of tramping volunteers fresh from America with store clothes and suitcases; the sensible were also festooned with boots. It was pretty cold sitting in the carriage, and it grew colder as we mounted.

At last we halted to rest the horses at a cafe. The influence of "Pod"

was heavy still. A group of grumpy people were sitting around a fire built in the middle of the floor; they did not greet us--which is unusual in Montenegro--but continued the favourite Serb recreation of spitting. In the centre of them was an old man on a chair, also expectorating, and by his side one older and scraggier, his waistcoat covered with snuff and medals, palpitated in a state of senile decay, holding in a withered hand a palmfull of snuff which he had forgotten to inhale. There were a lot of women saying nothing and spitting. A sour, hard-faced woman admitted that there was coffee.

Jo, trying to cheer things up a bit, said brightly--

"Is it far to Andrievitza?"

A woman mumbled, "Far, bogami."

Jo again: "It is cold on the road."

A long silence, broken with the sound of spitting, followed. At last a woman in the darkest corner murmured--

"Cold, bogami."

It was like the opening of a Maeterlinckian play, but we gave it up, sipped our coffee, and when we had finished, fled outside into the cold which, after all, was warmer than these people's welcome. Outside we met a young man who spoke German, and as he wanted to show off, he stopped to converse. We were joined by an older man who claimed to be his father. The father was really a jolly old boy. He said his son was a puny weakling, but as for himself he never had had a doctor in his life.

So Jan tried his mettle with a cigar. An officer, a filthy old peasant in the remains of a battered uniform, joined the group, but he was not charming; however, Jan offered him a cigarette. The old yokel rushed on his fate. He said--

"Cigarettes are all very well; but I would rather have one of those you gave to the other fellow."

The road wound on and up in the usual way, rain came down at intervals, and it grew colder and colder. At last we extracted all our spare clothes from the knapsack and put them on. We reached the top of the pa.s.s and began to rattle down the descent on the further side, and we kept our spirits up, in the growing gloom, by singing choruses: "The old Swanee river" and "Uncle Ned."