We were early on the move on Monday, December 20th, and hoped to reach
the military station within an hour or two. The route began with
its usual ferocity of mud, and the continuous effort, during hour
after hour, of dragging the feet out at every step, was wearisome;
leg-pulling that morning became a common form of entertainment, and
rain fell in torrents all day.
We reached the military station at Ritzik at 11 o'clock a.m. The office
was in an old monastery, and we waited for our turn to be served with
bread, in an upper room. There our hosts were two Albanian (Franciscan)
monks. The ponies and oxen had to wait in the pelting rain. There was,
after all, no bread, but mealies were given instead, both for the men
and for ourselves. We were disappointed, but made no comment, and, as
we were leaving, the officer in charge whispered to me to say nothing
about it, but he gave me quietly two large corn loaves of his own, in
addition to the mealies, so we gave the extra mealies to the men.
The weather grew worse all day, and at dusk a heavy thunderstorm, with
drenching rain, made shelter desirable. We had fortunately reached
a village, and we went up to a house and knocked at the door. The
occupants were women (Albanians), and we asked for shelter; this was
refused, and we tried two other houses, with the same result. But the
first house had a large shed which was only open on two sides, so I
insisted on putting the ponies, and men, and ourselves, under the
partial shelter during the storm, but it was already crowded with
soldiers, and there was not standing room for us all. The women of the
house came out, and we pleaded with them, asking them to allow us to
go into one of their rooms, but in reply they burst into tears. This
turned the tables on us; we could not all cry, and they had thought
of it first. So we had to comfort them; a horrid waste of time in
the deluging rain. They said that their neighbour's house had been
pillaged by soldiers, and they were afraid of our soldiers. Finally,
when we dried their eyes with money, they said that they would take in
the women, but that all the men must move on at once. We would not,
of course, agree to this, and as we were already wet to the skin, we
thought we had better get warm by walking, and try and reach the next
military station, which was, we were told, only two hours distant.
The night was now pitch dark, though there should have been a moon, and
as we moved away from the slight shelter of some haystacks, into the
road, the heavens shook, and thunder, lightning, wind, and hailstones,
hurled themselves in unrestrained fury on us from the folds of night,
and progress on the invisible road, which was full of mud-holes, was
difficult. After we had been walking for an hour, a flash of lightning
suddenly revealed that the road had disappeared, and that we were on
the edge of a broad expanse of lake. Had we missed the road in the
dark, and were we about to stumble into the Lake of Scutari? Another
lightning flash showed us that there was no way round the water, unless
we climbed steep hedges, impossible for the pack ponies. But it could
not be Scutari Lake; it must be flood, and there was nothing to be done
but to plunge into the water.
It was, of course, my job to go first; so I jumped on my pony, and
told the others to wait and see what happened. There was nothing to
guide you as to the depth of the water, and you couldn't see a yard
ahead, except when the lightning flashed capriciously; but the worst
that could happen would be a ducking. I plunged; the water was up to
the saddle girths, and there were holes and boulders every few yards;
but we all crossed safely. We were now doubly wet, from rain above and
from water below, but this was a useful encouragement to everyone to
continue in spite of fatigue.
And at this point we decided that we would be bold, and push on to
Scutari, as no earlier military station seemed likely. A hot drink
might save some of them from catching cold, but we couldn't light
fires, or stop in the pouring rain, and we had no brandy or whisky,
so I concentrated thoughts on obtaining some refreshment. The miracle
always happens, if you will it to happen, and look out for it. We
were trudging along silently, no sign of life anywhere. All the other
columns had mysteriously disappeared, and we had the dark road to
ourselves, when I noticed a house, a hundred yards back from the road,
on our right. I told Vooitch to go up to it, and knock, and to ask the
inhabitants to give us something hot to drink; he said the house was
uninhabited. "Never mind; do as I ask you." He went and knocked, and,
behold, the door was promptly but charily opened. I rode quickly up,
and went in, before they could shut the door, and I saw that the house
had been a wine and spirit shop. Round the walls were shelves on which
stood bottles. A fire was lighted in the middle of the floor, and three
or four men were seated round it, on the floor, smoking and drinking.
The owner said he had no wine and no rakiya in the place. He had
closed his shop and had sent away his wares. But he couldn't get away
from the fact that the men round the fire were drinking cognac. "Yes;
very well." He would give us what he had, but he was nervous lest we
should let it be known to others that his shop was open. We reassured
him on this point, and within a few minutes, we were all inside that
room, drinking cognac out of tiny glasses, and every man and woman of
the column had his or her share. We then divided amongst us all, the
two cornbread loaves given us in the morning, and we all felt much
refreshed.
And at 10 p.m. we reached Scutari--Military Headquarters. It seemed
too good to be true. We had reached our goal, and the human portion of
the column was intact. _Nunc dimittis._ The town was deserted for the
night; the streets were empty; everyone in bed. The column halted in a
side street, while V. and I went to find quarters. It was too late to
bother the Commandant at Headquarters. I came to the conclusion that he
would not have expected men to arouse him out of his slumber, and we
mustn't take advantage of sex. But we must wake somebody. People are
impersonal till you know them, and you can be callous with impersonals;
so I fixed on the Prefect.
He was guarded by a sentry, who was clothed in impenetrable armour of
stupidity, obstinacy, and ignorance; but before he closed the door in
our faces, he suggested that we should go to the headquarters of the
gens-d'armerie.
We went. And after various adventures in a huge rabbit-warren
building, an officer who was on duty, sent a man to take us to our own
Commandant, who would, he said, probably have made arrangements for us.
For an hour, whilst the others were waiting in the rain, we wandered
up and down the streets with this soldier, who pretended he couldn't
find the Commandant's house. Finally, when I grew fiercely angry, the
man at last discovered the house, and we went in, only to find that
the soldier on guard would not awaken the Commandant. I told him how
angry the Colonel would be when he learned how we had been treated, and
that the Commandant need not even turn in his bed, to tell the soldier
where we were to go; and, in truth, as I heard next day, rooms and a
good dinner had been prepared for us. But I was then desperate, and
decided to go boldly to the British Consulate. We had found quarters
for the men and ponies in the barracks. We, V. and I, marched to the
big door in the high walls which enclosed the British Consul's house,
and rang the bell. An old Italian servitor answered it. I asked him, as
it was now too late to see the Consul, to let us have the use, for the
night, of the Consul's kitchen, in which to dry our clothes. He said,
"No; impossible." But another, older man, appeared and he was softer
hearted, and said we might have a room; not the kitchen, but an empty
room next to the kitchen, which was, at this time, kept for tramps.
I completed the heart-softening process, with a little palm oil, and
Vooitch went back to fetch the staff.
When they arrived, at 1 a.m., I was able to usher them proudly into a
room which contained--a rare luxury in Scutari--a fireplace. The grate
was tiny, but wood--very scarce in this town--soon made a hospitable
blaze, and we crowded round that tiny fireplace, trying to dry wet
clothes. Our old Italian friend brought us a kettle of boiling water
for some tea, dragged out some mattresses from a corner of the room,
and we laid ourselves down to sleep. We could have cried for joy at
being inside a friendly house once more.
Next morning, Tuesday, December 21st, no early trek! Breakfast at the
grotesquely late hour of eight o'clock; almost the first time that I
had been up later than 4.30 since we left London. I was up in time to
write a line to the Consul, for him to receive with his seven o'clock
cup of tea, telling him of the increase of his family during the
night. We didn't know that though the British Consul lived here, the
owner of the house was Major Paget, an old inhabitant of Scutari. The
Major came to see us at eight o'clock, and most hospitably said we
might stay as long as we were in Scutari, and he told his man, Parkes,
to make tea for us and to do all that he could to make us comfortable.
Parkes did not need to be told twice. He was an Englishman and glad to
see other English people, and he was very kind to us.
At nine o'clock, Major Paget took me to see the British Consul, Mr. F.
W. Monaghan, who was also very kind. And all day long, the scene at the
door of our little ground-floor-back was like a scene in the last act
of a play, in which every sort of unlikely person unexpectedly turns
up. We had just indexed Major Paget, and Mr. Monaghan, when the kindly
countenance of Sir Charles Des Graz, British Minister, whom I had met
at Nish, appeared in the doorway. He asked me to have tea with him, in
the afternoon, upstairs; he also was living in the house! After that,
we were not surprised when Colonel Phillips, British Military Attaché,
also arrived. He had often dined with us at Kragujevatz, and he and I
had never agreed upon the subject of Balkan politics.