"ONE MORE RIBBER TO CROSS"
The Mayor of Alessio had said that there were lots of horses, if we had Essad's permission; but the Turkish captain said that there were none, only at San Giovanni were they to be found. It was pelting with rain, but Blease and we decided to walk over to explore for ourselves. Jan first wrote a very stiff letter to the Governor of Scutari about the non-arrival of the telegram, and off we went, having borrowed oilskins and sou'westers. The Serb captain insisted on coming with us.
In half an hour the storm had made the stony road into a series of deep ponds which nearly joined each other, so Jo tucked her now ragged skirt into a bright woven Serbian belt and walked along with the water streaming from coat to boots. It became rather a pleasure to splash through ten-inch deep puddles, knowing that one could not possibly get any wetter, and this joy was intensified by the knowledge that the Serbian captain was being soaked and didn't like it.
San Giovanni consists of a series of huts, each like Burns' birthplace, grouped on the shelving side of a stony cliff. The bay itself is semi-circular, with a long cape jutting out to the south, the extremity of which almost always is floating in the air, owing to the mirage. In the bay were two rusty steamers—one the Benedetto, which had been promised to us by the Italian governor—several old wooden sailers, and a lot of smallish fishing smacks very brightly painted and with raised poop and prow. A group of Albanians were toiling at sacks which cumbered the little wooden jetty.
We immediately hunted out Captain Fabiano, the Italian commander of the wireless telegraph, and found him in a little house at the northern horn of the bay. He received us gaily. He spoke an excellent French, so that the Serbian captain could not butt in and interfere, as was his habit. Fabiano said that it would take a long time to get a wire to Brindisi, where we had heard were several ships of the English fleet, very bored and craving for something to do; we had hoped to get into communication with them. Then Jan had a brain wave.
"Is not the wind good for Durazzo?" asked he.
"Splendid," said Fabiano, "and no submarines to-day."
"Could we not get a fishing boat?"
"I will send and see."
While we were waiting he told us that he was sheltering the crew of the ship which had been transporting the English mission's kit. The captain of the little transport had set fire to the benzine which his boat was carrying, which act so enraged the submarine captain that he fired three torpedoes into her, and afterwards mounted his conning tower and fired ten full clips from his revolver at the swimming men. Luckily revolver shooting requires much practice. The men had clung to an overturned boat and had all eventually reached shore, after which they had to march a day and a half without boots or food, often fording rivers which came to their waists. Fabiano said that he was going to send them home on the Benedetto.
The captain of the port sent back word that we could have a boat immediately—much to Fabiano's surprise. But most of the party were at Alessio. We hurried off to see the captain of the port. Explanations, certainly when the luggage came; and off went Jan with a guide to get pack ponies. Halfway back to Alessio was the stable, but the steeds were not ready, so Jan was ushered up into a top room where was a huge fire, over which an Albanian was stewing a cormorant with all its feathers on. There were other Albanians and a very old Montenegrin soldier. He admired everything English, even Jan's tobacco which he had bought in Pod.
We got to Alessio and packed everything hurriedly, paid the bill, tipped an old soldier two dinars, and off. As we passed over the bridge the clerk came running behind us. We had not paid the bridge fees, he said.
"How much?" asked Jan.
He hesitated.
"Two dinars," said he. He had been talking to the soldier.
Meanwhile Jo and Blease had found refuge in the house of the military commandant. It was a hovel like all the houses, but they were given a huge log fire which was built on the mud floor. Their stockings were soon hanging on a line above the blaze, and their shins were scorching, while they drank wonderful liqueur which was hospitably poured out by the beautiful old host.
Turkish coffee was prepared for them by a soldier in a bursting French fireman's uniform.
The captain's fire was the rendezvous of the village. Amiable and picturesque people came in and talked about the unhealthiness of the place, the relative bravery of nations with a special reference to the courage of Montenegrins, and about the submarine raid and of how the Austrian captain had repeatedly fired his revolver at the sailors of the boat he had sunk while they were swimming in the water. Their eyes were streaming, not with emotion, but because in Montenegro one has no chimneys.
At dusk the rest of us arrived. The port captain said "To-morrow," so we climbed up to the inn, examined the stores, a few tins of tunny, mackerel, and milk, and the thirteen made the best of the bar-room floor for the night, booted and ready in case a transport for the Benedetto should arrive.
In the morning the captain said we could have the boat that night, and in the evening he said we could have it in the morning. His excuse was that the Borra was blowing its hardest, and no sailor could be found to venture out; but Fabiano said that this was not true.
The real reason was the sleek Austrian torpedo lying on the beach, for the Dulcinos are famed on the Adriatic coast because of their timidity.
Time passed drearily. The only amusement we had was to go and annoy the captain of the port by asking when we could have a boat. The wind was too cold for constitutionals, and we piled on all our clothes and sat on our knapsacks in the bar-room—for there was no fire—and talked wistfully of sausages, Yorkshire Relish and underdone beefsteaks.
We had much time for meditation, and pondered over the downfall of Serbia. Why had the Serbian Government so resolutely refused to make any territorial concessions to Bulgaria, when it was obvious that the entry of Bulgaria into the conflict meant the ruin of Serbia? Why had they permitted the Austrians to build their big gun emplacements on the Danube without interruption? Why had they not withdrawn to the hills and then built proper defences with barbed wire entanglements and labyrinths? for properly entrenched they might have defied the Austro-German forces for months. Some day, perhaps, these questions may have to be answered.
One day a party came in. They had passed through Vrntze much later than we, and we heard that Dr. Berry and an assistant had been seen hurriedly nailing boards on to the slaughter-house roof. They, too, had come by the Novi Bazar route. They said that the other routes were deep in snow and that the sufferings of the army were terrible. That a great portion had been hemmed in at Prizren, and that the Bulgars had shelled the passes so that they could not escape. They themselves had escaped the advancing Austrians by the skin of their teeth owing to good horses.
The snow came down, driving along the valleys and whitening all the hills; the cold grew more intense, and the desire for English beefsteaks became an obsession: one talked of little else—or of Christmas. Food was becoming scarce. The tinned mackerel was diminishing; some days we had no bread. We walked once as far as Fabiano's wireless. The men were living in a shed made of wattle, and the Borra whistled through the cracks. There was a stove round which we sat while the men gave us tea; but the warmth it induced in one's face only intensified the feeling of cold on the back. Outside in the snow was a long-distance telescope, and peering through one could see the conning tower of the Austrian submarine, a faint hump on the sea by the southernmost point. As we returned to the cold hotel we passed the Montenegrin batteries: cannon too small to be of any use and the gunners of which were all so ill that they could not handle them.
Two Frenchmen had been in San Giovanni for ten days, and their anxiety to go was up to fever point. They took it in turns to stand "pour observer," wrapped up to their noses, in a doorway, watching the Benedetto in case she should give them the slip. We called them Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
One night somebody rushed up to their room. Booted, they jumped out of bed, and ran about overhead. We thirteen scrambled up and intercepted them between the stairs and the door. "Pour observer, steam-funnel," they shouted, and disappeared into the night, followed by their valet with two hold-alls. They soon came back, very cold, and announced that steam had been seen issuing from the Benedetto's funnel. They had rushed to it in an open boat, and had learnt that the Benedetto was ordered to be in readiness. She fumed quietly for three days, and then was commandeered by the Serbian Government.
One day we saw a French aeroplane, an old friend of ours. Immediately every one working in the port tore up hill, men jumped off the big boats into little ones and rowed like a cinematograph turned double speed.
The commandant roared reassuringly from his attic window, and an officer tried to beat the men back. Seeing us convulsed with laughter, they turned sheepishly; but the little boats wagged on, people jumping into the water as they neared shore.
"Come and sit round my fire," said the commandant. So we again imbibed coffee and discussed courage. It was explained to us that none of the men in the boats were Montenegrins, and we politely agreed.
Hearing that a Red Cross party was in the village people came and asked for medical aid. We explained that we had no doctors, but they begged us to come and see the invalids.
Doctors and chemists were unobtainable, and soldiers were dying every day.
We had no hesitation in tackling the Montenegrin soldiers, for at least we could do no harm, considering that our whole pharmacopœia was a little boracic, some bismuth capsules, Epsom salts, quinine, iodine, and one of the party owned a bottle of some patent unknown stuff, against fever and many other ailments.
We were first taken to the barracks in the evening, scrambling up a stony hill. The building looked like the disreputable ruins of somebody's "Folly." Half the roof was off, and the walls were full of holes. We stumbled up some black steps and entered a huge dark barn with four log fires down the centre of the room.
Round these were huddled crowds of men. They pulled some rough planks out of a hole in the wall to let in the sunset light, and the icy Borra rushed in, playing with the smoke and setting the men to coughing. Here and there on the ground were long mounds, covered completely with rough hand-woven rugs. These were the invalids, who moaned as the rugs were pulled off their faces. A great many had malaria; others had, as far as we could see, very bad pleurisy; and one old Albanian with rattling breath was huddled up in a far corner, too miserable to speak.
Whatmough sent for a dribble of camphorated oil he had stored in his knapsack, "to cheer them up," said he, and rubbed everybody who had pain and a cough.
"Give them hot drinks," said Jo, in a large way. "Milk or—"
"Milk! There is no milk in Medua," said the sergeant.
"No tinned milk—eggs to be bought?"
"Nothing, no meat; we have not even enough bread, and that is all we get."
Very depressed, we sent them the remains of our Bovril and some tins of milk from the tiny hotel store, and bought the last three eggs in the place.
"Can't you send for more?" we asked.
"The hens are five hours away," said the proprietor, and didn't see why he should send for eggs even if we paid heavily for them. He had malaria—and nothing mattered.
We saw our patients daily, and the ones who weren't going to die got a little better, so this made our reputation. People poured in from the hills around, and we were much embarrassed. Our white-lipped waiter confided to each member of the party that he had a lump on his knee.
Every one became very busy and put off looking at it. We discussed it.
What could a lump on the knee be which did not make a busy waiter limp? And what on earth could we do for him when he wouldn't rest, and we were reduced to boracic powder and bismuth capsules? We gave him a tube of quinine, though, for his next attack of malaria.
The longer we rested in San Giovanni the more hopeless seemed the chance of getting away from it. The Serbian Government was close on our heels, and once they caught us up, there would be little left for us. That evening we were sitting with the Frenchmen, it was Monday. They, too, were depressed, and at last Tweedledum said—
"We shall never reach Paris, we shall be here for ever and ever."
"Oh," said Jan, rashly, "I think we ought to be home in a week."
Dum put on the superior French air, which is aggravating even in a nice man.
"Vous croyez?" he said.
"I'll bet on it," said Jan.
"A dinner," answered Dum.
"Good," said Jan.
This lent a new interest to life.
The very next day the Frenchmen told us that the Serb Government had arrived at Scutari; the Montenegrin Governor had telegraphed to commandeer and keep back the Benedetto. We had been forgotten, and the French boat was to leave at dawn under escort.
She had been strictly forbidden by her owners to take passengers, but the Frenchmen had arranged through their minister to go by that boat if she left the first.
Telegraphic communication with the English minister at Cettinje was practically impossible; the only thing was to appeal to the captain. First we rushed up the hill, and interviewed Captain Fabiano, who had already made various efforts to get us off. He promised to try and influence the French captain.
Then we flung ourselves into a boat and made for the little steamer. People were looking at something with opera glasses, and our boatmen took fright and wanted to row straight for land. Jan cursed them so much, however, that they began to fear us more than imaginary submarines or aeroplanes, and brought us alongside the vessel.
The captain was ashore, taking a walk; the crew very sympathetically made contradictory suggestions as to his whereabouts.
At last we caught him. He was nice, but had strict orders, he said, to take no one.
"But, monsieur," we said, "if we were swimming in the sea, or cast off on a desert island, you would rescue us."
He admitted it.
"Well, what is the difference? Here we cannot get away; the food is growing less and less."
He objected that he had no boats, and no life-saving apparatus.
"That is nothing. We must get away from here. We will give you a paper saying that it is on our own responsibility. In this country one cannot telegraph, the telegrams never arrive. You know the Balkans."
He smiled.
"Oui, oui, c'est un pays où le Bon Dieu n'a pas passé, ou au moins il a peut-être passé en aeroplane."
At last he agreed to take us if we could get a letter from Fabiano, and so take the responsibility from his shoulders. This we got. Fabiano said "Au revoir, bon voyage" for the fifth time, and at dawn we got a call, and quitted the bar-room floor for ever. Fabiano wished us "bon voyage" for the sixth time in the chilly dawn, and we embarked.
The mate, a little round man, greeted us, and in the moments when they were not rushing about with ropes and chains the cook explained the Austrian submarine attack.
"You see, monsieur et dame," said he, "they came in over there. The Benedetto was lying outside of that sandbank, and that is the torpedo which is lying on the beach. The one aimed at us came straight, one could see the whorls of the water coming straight at us, but it just tipped the sandbank and dived underneath our keel. It stuck in the mud then, and the water boiled over it for a long while."
The mate cut one of the anchors because they were afraid of fouling the sunken torpedo, and we steamed slowly out from the shelter of the sandbank.
No escort was visible, and soon the sailors began to look anxious. They scanned the horizon anxiously. At last one cried, "There she is." Far away against the western dawn could be seen a thin needle mark of smoke. In half an hour we were quite close, an Italian destroyer was convoying a small steamer. The destroyer swung round under our stern, while the steamer, its funnels set back, raced for San Giovanni looking like a frightened puppy tearing towards home. The grey warship surged past us, and out towards the horizon once more, our captain shouting to them that he could get to Brindisi by midnight. Far away on the sky-line could be seen the three funnels of a cruiser.
We breakfasted on tinned mackerel, an unlucky dish. The Harmonie, empty of cargo, was like an eggshell in the water. She bounced and rolled and bounded from wave to wave, half of the time her screw out of the water. The breakfast did not nourish many. Far on the horizon could be seen the destroyer and the cruiser sweeping in gigantic circles.
Half a kilometre away a periscope suddenly appeared, then the submarine dived, rose once more, showing the rounded conning tower, dived, rose again, like a porpoise at play.
"See," cried the sailors, "how well are we guarded. Outermost the cruiser, then the destroyer, and innermost the submarine." The cruiser and destroyer took big sweeps once more and steamed off behind us towards Cattaro.
Our boat rolled its way from dawn to dusk. We sought refuge in the coal hole, some lay down in the little officers' cabin. After dark the sea grew more rough, and splashing over the deck drove even the most ill to find shelter. Whatmough staggered to the companion, tripped over something, and fell the length of the stair accompanied by a hard object which hit him and made hissing sounds like a bicycle pump. He was too seasick to investigate, but next morning found the ship's tortoise lying on its back and feebly waving its feet and head.
Then the engines slowly ceased, and there was silence. What had happened? The steamer gave four timid hoots. The people in the cabin lay in the darkness wondering if they had broken down, for it was not nearly midnight. At last the mate came in.
"Why, you're all in the dark," he said.
Some one asked, "When shall we get to Brindisi?"
"We're there," said the mate.
The steamer rocked on the sea, waiting for an escort through the mine field, lights were sparkling in the distance, and now and then flashlights cut the dark blue of the sky. Great black ships surged by in the gloom, ships with insistent queries as to who we were and whence we came.
At last an escort came: we were berthed and lay about waiting for the dawn.
Long after day came the doctor, who passed us, and we stepped ashore saying—
"Thank God we are back in Europe once again."
Two days later San Giovanni was bombarded by an Austrian cruiser, and all the shipping was sunk, Benedetto and all.
We were heartily welcomed in Brindisi by the English colony, and at the consul's office learned that the submarine was an Austrian, and that the cruiser had made the sweep to chase it away. Jo, Miss Brindley, and Jan went to Rome, where they ere feasted by more English, while at Milan—where the rest of the party spent the night—a whole theatre stood and cheered them when they came in.
Jan won his bet by four minutes.
