The Luck of Thirteen Part 3

The Greek church looked as if it had been new built, so that the Serbs could claim Prepolji as a Christian town, and had a biscuit tin roof not yet rusted.

Our hotel was like that where Mr. Pickwick first met Sam Weller, a large open court with a crazy wooden balcony at the second story, and the bedrooms opening on to the balcony. When we opened our knapsacks to get out was.h.i.+ng materials, we found that the heat of the horse had melted all the chocolate in Jan's, and it had run over everything. It was a mess, but chocolate was precious, and every piece had to be rescued. We had only been ten hours in the saddle, but we descended stiffly, and were pounced on by a foolish looking man, with a head to which Jo took immediate offence. This fellow attached himself to us during the whole of our stay, and was an intolerable nuisance; we nicknamed him "glue pot," and only at our moment of departure discovered that he was the mayor who had been trying to do us honour.

The next day was Sunday, and the village full of peasants. Stiff-legged and groaning a little within ourselves we walked about the town making observations: Turkish soldiers, Turkish policemen, Turkish recruits, but all the peasants Serb. The country costume is different from that of the north, the perpendicular stripe on the skirt has here given way to horizontal bands of colour, and some women wear a sort of exaggerated ham frill about the waist. The men's waistcoats were very ornate, and much embroidery was upon their coats.

An English nurse came into the town in the afternoon. She, a Russian girl, and an English orderly had driven from Plevlie, en route to Uzhitze. Half-way along the wheel of their carriage had broken in pieces, so they finished the road on foot. Curiously enough we had travelled from England to Malta with this lady, Sister Rawlins, on the same transport. The Russian girl had been married only the day before to a Montenegrin officer, nephew of the Sirdar Voukot.i.tch, Commander-in-Chief of the North, and she was flying back to Russia to collect her goods and furniture.

Next day as we were sketching in the picturesque main street, from the distance came the sounds of a weird wailing, drawing slowly closer and closer.

"Hurra," thought we--two minds with but a single, etc.,--"a funeral--magnificent. Just the thing to complete the scene."

A string of donkeys came round the corner, on either flank each animal bore a case marked with a large red cross. Amongst the animals were donkey-boys, and it was from their lips came the dismal wailing. Never have we seen so ragged and wretched a crew. The boys were evidently the "unfits," and they looked it, every face showed the wan, pallid shadow of hunger and disease. A few old men in huge fur caps, with rifles on their backs, stumbled along, guarding the precious convoy. "Glue pot"

led us all to a large empty building, once a Turkish merchant's store, where the cases were to be housed. The bullock carts with the heavier packages came in in the evening, and we sent the men five litres of plum brandy to put some warmth into their miserable bodies. This moved them once more to singing, but we think the songs sounded a little less dreary.

The Commandant asked for, and got, half a dozen sheets from us as a sort of superior backsheesh, and promised us horses for the morrow.

The next morning dawned dismally. Miss Rawlins and her companions were to go on by post cart, and their conveyance arrived first, only two and a half hours late. It was a sort of tinker's tent on four rickety wheels. There seemed to be barely room for one within the dark interior, but both Miss Rawlins and the little Russian climbed in somehow.

Charlie, the orderly, clung on by his eyelids in front, and off they went. We last saw two faces peering back at us beneath the fringe of the tent. They had no luck. Half-way to Uzhitze the cart upset and they were all rolled into the ditch, missing a precipice of sixty feet or so by the merest fraction.

Our own horses arrived later, we mounted, and with cheers from the a.s.sembled authorities, we rode off.

The rain came down in a steady drizzle; we discovered that the waterproof cloaks which we had borrowed from Nish were not very weathertight. We climbed right up into the clouds, but still the rain held on. From the floating mist jutted great boulders and huge red cliffs. Our guide put up an umbrella and rode along crouching beneath it. At 1400 metres we reached an inn, where we lunched. A Montenegrin commissioner insisted on paying our bill, and said that we would do the same for him when he came to England. Every one in Serbia or Montenegro is interested in ages. They were astounded at ours. They said that Jo would have been seventeen if she were Serbian; and one rose, shook Jan warmly by the hand and said he must have "navigated" the marriage well.

We rode over the frontier, but we were not yet in the real Montenegro.

This is not the black mountain where the last dregs of old Serbian aristocracy defied the Turk, this is still the Sanjak, three years ago Turkish, and with pleasant pasturages spreading on either hand.

At last we came up over Plevlie. To one corner we could see the town creeping in a crescent about the foot of a grey hill, far away on the other side was a little monastery, forlorn and white, like a s.h.i.+vering saint, and between a great valley with four purplish humps in the midst of the corn and maize fields, like great whales bursting through a patchwork quilt.

Our horses were thoroughly cheered up, and we pa.s.sed through the long streets of the town at a lively trot, a thing Jo was taught as a child to consider bad form.

A semi-transparent little man in a black hat stood on the hotel steps beckoning to us. But we had no use for hotel touts, and waved our sticks saying, "Hospital." He seemed curiously disappointed.

The hospital, many long low buildings, lay buried in a park of trees.

The staff lived in a tiny house near by, where we were welcomed by the cook, Mrs. Roworth. She explained that as the house was hardly capable of holding its ten or twelve occupants, a room had been taken for us at the inn, but that we were to meal with them.

"Not that you will like the food," she said, "for it's all tinned, and I have only twenty-five s.h.i.+llings a week to buy milk, bread, and fresh meat."

We wondered why, in such a fertile country, a party of hard-working people should be condemned to eat tinned mackerel and vegetables brought all the way from England?

However, the dinner was excellent--all "disguised," she said, for she had during the few weeks she had been there concentrated on the art of disguising bully beef and worse problems, and had sternly put Dr. Clemow on omelets and beefsteaks, as his digestion had caved in under six months' unadulterated tinned food.

We met old friends, fellow travellers on the way out. In those days they were a wistful little party, wondering how they were going to reach Montenegro, the Adriatic being impossible. At last one of the pa.s.ses was hurriedly improved for them by a thousand prisoners, and they rode through in the snow. Since then typhus had raged, two of their number had been very ill, and one had died. Their energy had been tremendous, and everywhere in the country they were spoken of as the wonderful English hospital, and even from Chainitza, where there was a Russian hospital, soldiers walked a long day's march in order to be treated by the English.

Dr. Roger's rival was there, the perpetrator of ninety hernia operations a week--or was it more?

All this on tinned food!

Our hotel room proved large and comfortable with a talkative willing Turk in attendance. We slept immensely and were wakened by yet another horrible c.o.c.k crowing. All Balkan c.o.c.ks seem to have bronchitis.

Plevlie is a red-tiled nucleus with a fringe of wood-roofed Serb houses planted round it. There are ten mosques, while the only Greek church stands forlorn on the other side of the great hollow two miles away.

The town is not really Montenegrin. It has the cosmopolitan character of all the Sanjak, Turks, Austro-Turks and Serbs--a mixture like that at Ma.r.s.eilles or Port Said.

The shops are Turkish, though their turbaned owners, sitting cross-legged on the floor-counters, can speak only Serb--a thing which puzzled us at the time.

We saw veiled women and semi-veiled children everywhere, thickly latticed windows with curious eyes peeping through, and yards with high wooden palings above to prevent the possible young men on the houses opposite from catching a glimpse of the fair ladies in the gardens.

Plenty of long-legged Montenegrin officers--with flat caps bearing the King's initials, and five rings representing the dynasties of the ruling house--filled the streets, and also the inevitable ragged soldiers with gorgeous bags on their backs.

Some of the women, too, were wearing these caps, but theirs were yet smaller and tipped over their noses, like the pork pie hat of our grandmothers. One closely veiled woman showed the silhouette sticking up through her veil just like a blacking tin.

The Mahommedan is much more fanatic in these parts than his more civilized brother of Salonika or Constantinople. Women of the two religions do not visit. The hatred is partially political, and Jo began to realize that her dream of visiting a harem would not be easy to achieve. We met three women walking down a lonely street. Although their faces were covered with several thicknesses of black chiffon, they modestly placed them against the wall and stood there, three shapeless bundles, until we were out of sight.

Jan's feelings were very much hurt, but he soon got used to being treated like a dangerous dragon.

When we reached our hotel again we found the elite of the town waiting in the bar-room for us. There was a huge jolly Greek priest, all big hat and velvet, the prefect, the schoolmaster, a linguist, and the little black-hatted man whom we had mistaken for a hotel tout.

The priest was president of the Montenegrin Red Cross, the prefect was a former Prime Minister and a Voukot.i.tch. All important men who are not Petroviches are Voukot.i.tches; the first being members of the king's and the second of the queen's family.

The little black-hatted man was secretary of the Red Cross, and was formally attached to us while there as cicerone. He explained to us that they had all been in the hotel expecting us the night before, with a beautiful dinner which had been prepared in our honour.

We apologized and inwardly noted the grateful temperament of the Montenegrin. We were solemnly treated to coffee and brandy, and the jolly priest emptied his cigarette box into Jo's lap. When the first polite ceremoniousness had worn off we asked delicately about the front.

"Did we wish to see the front?"

Certainly, said the prefect, we should have the first horses that should come back to the town, and the little transparent shadow man should accompany us. And our letter to the Sirdar Voukot.i.tch, commander in chief of the north?--He should be told about it on his return that evening from the front.

At sunset the muezzin sounded, cracked voices cried unmelodiously from all the minaret tops. Immediately, as if it were their signal, all the crows arose from the town, hovered around in batches for a moment, chattering, and flew away up the hill to roost in the trees round the hospital till sunrise.

Salonika rings with children's cries, Dawson city with the howlings of dogs, but the towns of the Sanjak have no better music than the croaking of carrion crows.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER V

THE MONTENEGRIN FRONT ON THE DRINA

When Jan awoke it was dark, and he was with difficulty rousing Jo when suddenly a voice howled through the keyhole that the horses were waiting. Jan grabbed his watch--5 a.m.; but the horses had been ordered for six. Hastily chewing dry biscuit, Jan jumped into his clothes and ran down. There was a small squat youth with a flabby Mongolian face hovering between the yard door and the inn, and Jan following him discovered three horses saddled and waiting. He hastily ordered white coffee to be prepared, and ran up again to hurry Jo and to pack. He rushed down again to pay the bill, but found that the Montenegrin Red Cross had charged itself with everything, very generously, so he ran up once more to nag at Jo. The secretary, whom we called "the shadow," had not appeared, so we inquired from the squint-eyed youth, received many "Bogamis" as answer, but nothing definite; so we decided, as it was now past six, that he had changed his mind and had sent this chinee-looking fellow, whom we named "Bogami," in his place.

Jan's horse was like an early "John" drawing of a slender but antiquated siren, all beautiful curves. Jo's would in England long ago have taken the boat to Antwerp; her saddle stood up in a huge hump behind and had a steeple in front, and was covered by what looked like an old bearskin hearthrug in a temper, one stirrup like a fire shovel was yards too long, the other far too short, and were set well at the back.

"What queer horses!" we remarked.

"Bogami," said Bogami; "when there are no horses these are good horses, Bogami."