On Friday, December 10th, we were up at dawn as usual, and we trekked
along a better road to Berani. When we were outside the town, halting
for a few minutes, I found the men talking excitedly, and I discovered
that they were very angry with Sandford and Merton. This couple, on the
pretext of going on ahead, to procure bread and hay, had left us on the
morning of the Arnaut scare, had taken with them the Government money,
and had not returned. We had elected another commissaire, and J. G. was
acting as treasurer, and using our own money. The men knew that many
soldiers from other columns had deserted. To avoid evils of which they
knew--hunger, weariness, discomfort and home-sickness--they had flown
to others of which they knew nothing, and I guessed that our men might
argue, that if now the superior Sandford and Merton had also thought it
wise to desert----. But I reminded them that there would be no Serbian
homes to go to, unless the Serbian Army was preserved. The longest way
round was the shortest way home. "For the sake of your own people, and
your own land, you must," I told them, "march bravely forward now."
"Your own people, your own land!" The words came glibly enough, though
I knew that they would hack, like a sword with jagged edges, at the
hearts of those dead living men. But it was my duty to keep them with
us to the end, wherever and whatever that end might be.
And then, by a coincidence, Sandford and Merton at that moment
reappeared. I asked them sternly where they had been, and they
replied with a naïve frankness which disarmed me: "We were afraid of
the Arnauts, and we ran away, to get quickly to Berani; we thought
we should be safer there." Comment was useless: we are not all born
heroes. But had they, I asked, at least, during their time in Berani,
secured bread and hay for men and cattle? I braced myself for the
inevitable answer, but when the poisonous words exuded, dropping soft
and pulpy into the mud in which the men stood, "Hleba nema" (bread,
none), "Ceno nema" (hay, none), "Y Berani, nema nishta" (in Berani,
nothing at all), I wished I had been born in Whitechapel. Piety was out
of place. But I was pious, and I told them to go back to the town and
try again; Vooitch and I should also go there to secure what they would
try for.
The column waited for Vooitch and me on the far side of the town. A
few shops were still open, and maize bread, at exorbitant prices, was
being carried by triumphant buyers through the streets. This made our
mouths water, and presently gaolbird met a Montenegrin friend (from
the United States) who had an official position in the town, and he
generously made us a present of a huge loaf of corn bread, and sent
a gens-d'arme with us across the bridge (over the river Leem) to the
other side of the town, to direct us to the houses of the Prefect and
of the Governor, from whom I hoped to get bread rations, now very much
overdue. I felt sure from the look of things that we should get them.
But I was told that the Governor was ill in bed. All the better, I
thought; he won't be able to get away from me. Starving people don't
stand on ceremony. I went to his bedroom, knocked at the door, for
form's sake, and walked in. He didn't seem very ill. Perhaps the shock
of seeing me revived him. I expressed sympathy with his illness at such
an inopportune moment. Could we help him in any way? No? Very well, but
he could help us. Military rations were overdue, and somewhat difficult
to get. Would he very kindly write a note for us to the Prefect? This
was done. The Prefect was away lunching, but after a little trouble
we unearthed him, and we obtained 25 kilos of bread for the men and
for ourselves. Thanks to a little searching-eye business, short-weight
of loaves was discovered, and finally the glad-eye business secured
an extra couple of loaves. We also obtained the hay for the cattle. I
hoped that Sandford and Merton would be ashamed, but they were not.
It was three o'clock before we rejoined the others, and were able to
give the ponies and the oxen food. Roshai was already in the hands
of the Schwabes, and we must not dally, so we trekked till dark,
bivouacked partly in a paddock, and partly in two rooms of a house
belonging to an Arnaut and his wife. The latter could not read, and had
never been beyond her village of Vootsche.
On Saturday, December 11th, the usual routine. Over mountains, and
through mud which had been churned into jelly, by countless hoofs of
oxen and horses. Towards the end of the day we were in a narrow lane,
which was bounded on one side by a high hill, and on the other by a
deep precipice over the river. The mud was three feet deep, and when
I looked round to see if all were following, I saw one of our ponies
lying, half-drowned, in the mud, and our indomitable cook was sitting
on its head, to prevent the pony rolling over the edge, whilst one of
the men was loosening the pack.
We were now near Andreavitza; our road led near to, but not through
the town, and we cherished hopes of oil, and candles, meat and bread.
We arrived at 4 (dusk) at the cross-roads, and placed the column in a
convenient field, amongst trees, on the eastern side of the bridge. A
blustering sergeant came up and ordered us to move; no one was allowed,
he said, to camp on this side of the bridge; the officer on the bridge
had given this order. I didn't believe it; our sergeant wanted to give
in and meekly to move on, but as there was no other good site near, I
rode on to the bridge, and saw the officer, who, of course, allowed us
to stay. I would have given much that evening not to have been obliged
to sally forth to look for bread and hay, but if I had not gone, the
result would have been "nema nishta." The shopping party set forth full
of high hopes for the town. "Buy me this, that, and the other thing,"
cried optimistically those who were left in camp, as if we were in
Piccadilly.
But, as usual, in the town it was "Nema! nema!" everywhere. The only
triumph was a tiny bunch of tallow candles, and a promise from the
Prefect of bread for to-morrow. Always bread to-morrow; never bread
to-day. But we met an officer who knew us, and he kindly insisted on
treating us to cups of coffee, at a café which had open doors for the
last time. No food was procurable. We were on our way back to camp,
when in the street, a man came towards us carrying--we couldn't believe
our eyes--three shining silver fish upon a string. They were not trout,
but memories of happy fishing days in Norway, Sweden, Finland, gave
this fish an added glory. We stopped him and asked if he would sell
them. The sight of them made us fastidious towards thoughts of bully
beef awaiting us in camp, and we would have given almost anything he
asked. He would not sell them, but to our surprise he said: "I will
give you this as a present," and he put the largest fish into my hands,
and at that moment I thought Andreavitza, with its mountain setting,
and its picturesque church, the most lovely townlet in the world. In
camp we slept round the fire as usual, under the espionage of the
highest mountains of Montenegro.
Next morning, Sunday December 12th, we were late in starting, as we
had to wait for the return of the men sent to fetch the bread from the
military station in Andreavitza. When the sergeant saw the fifty loaves
(25 kilos), he brought with him to the distribution, an admonitory rod,
to ensure that no man should take more than his due share. As long as
bread was procurable, the men need not starve, as trek ox could always
be sacrificed, and I frequently had the melancholy task of deciding
that the weariness of death was coming over such and such an ox; he had
been lovely and pleasant in his life, and now in his death, he must
be divided. And for ourselves, our supply of mealie meal, and rice,
and beans, still held out. We saw too much of the inward ways of oxen,
along the road, to be keen to eat the roast beef of Montenegro. We had
said good-bye to butter, jam, milk, sugar, and biscuits, long ago, but
we were, of course, in luxury compared with many thousands, and we had
long outgrown the absurd habit of thinking that it is necessary to take
nourishment every two or three hours.
And now, on this Sunday, to our surprise, we found ourselves upon a
road which was more like a Corsican, than a Montenegrin road. Steep,
very steep, all day long, but with excellent surface and excellently
graded. We were grateful, as it allowed us to be more polite than we
had been of late, to the wondrous scenery. But even now, only in a
distant fashion. The beauty of Nature depends, for each one of us, upon
what the mind reads into it, and the mountains of Montenegro, reflected
from every stone, the hungry hearts of an exiled people.
By the evening we were amongst the hill-tops; the mountains of
Montenegro and Albania were all around us, naked, precipitious, and
inhospitable rocks, with occasional gloomy forests of beech, and fir
trees, interspersed. Majestic, magnificent, and the magnitude of
outlook, wonderful, no doubt, but my heart refused to praise this
sarcophagus of hope. How could mountains be beautiful which enclosed
such sorrow? How could their air invigorate, when it carried, not the
scent of flowers, or the breath of the sea, but the stench of the
unburied dead? As empty shells, upon the hills, reveal the presence
in the past, of the waters of the sea, so the bones of men upon these
mountains, will, in the future, betray the wave of human life, which
flowed westwards to the coast.
The river at Andreavitza had been, when we saw it, green, of a colour
which no painter could ever hope to mix; but I found myself comparing
it to a green satin ribbon, which is a detestable thing. The river fell
in fine cascades, and should, to a sympathetic ear, have sounded the
arpeggio of the common chord of Nature; but I only heard the thumping
of a child's fists upon the piano. And now the sunset hues amongst the
hill-tops were, to me, the funeral colours of the dying sun, and the
crimson gleam slowly spreading over the dead white snow, was bloodstain
which would never melt.
Moist clouds, and mist, came down from heaven to try and veil the
harshness of the mountains, in gossamers of mauve and purple, dragged
from the setting sun, but they could not veil the memory of the
suffering they enclosed; suffering of battle-fields and suffering worse
than that of battle-fields.
We turned our eyes impatiently again to the road scenes. We were much
interested in trying to induce a pony, which had been abandoned on
the road, and was now recovering, to come with us: we needed all the
four-legged help we could get. Colson and Jordan cheered it on with
bundles of hay, and a touch of stick, and brought it into our night's
camp. This latter was in a thick beech wood. The ground was our bed,
and the dead beech leaves were our mattresses. During the night we
had a scare of Arnauts, when a number of men rushed past us, shouting
excitedly, but they were only in pursuit of a thief. If he was caught,
he would be shot; if he was not caught, he would die of starvation.
Death! Death! everywhere. Always Life fleeing from Death, and always
Life overtaken in the end.