The Balkan Trail

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

The last man to cross the stream loosened the rope at the other side, and two others pulled him over; and the ‘trek’ was immediately renewed.

Before day dawned, the insurgents drew up at a sheepfold on a mountain-side. The barking of the dogs woke the old shepherd, who, discovering the nature of his guests, roused his sheep and drove them out; and the insurgents crept in under the low brush roofs on to the warm straw. The insurgents took two sheep and roasted them whole for their evening meal.

One morning, by accident, the band lay down to rest within two hundred yards of a vast camp of soldiers. At sunset, the Mohamedans offered up the three evening cheers for their Padisha, and the insurgents uttered three curses upon ‘his Sultanic Majesty.’

It had come to be known to the Turks that Sarafoff was making his way to the Bulgarian border; a reward was offered for his head, and cavalry patrols were sent out to intercept him. But it was not difficult to elude these, for the cavalry could not leave the roads; and it broke the monotony of the days in hiding to watch the patrols pass on the highways below.

It is generally with the bands to fight or not to fight; but sometimes they are surprised by the Turks. Sarafoff and his band succeeded in eluding the troops until they arrived in the neighbourhood of a little town named Bouff, where, being worn out with a week’s hard marching, they elected to rest for thirty-six hours.

The first day was uneventful, but as the second began to dawn on the heights one of the pickets, a boy of fourteen, rushed into camp with the news that the Turks were entering the little valley in which the insurgents were camped. The boy had hardly delivered this news when a picket from the summit of the ridge to the east rushed in breathless, and announced that soldiers were climbing the slope on his side. And from various other points soon came sentries with similar information.

The insurgents were about their chief in an instant to hear his command. Sarafoff had studied the lie of the land overnight, and it required but a moment for him to decide upon his plan of battle.

The band were occupying the base of a narrow ‘dip,’ one end of which was closed by an insurmountable wall of sheer stone, and the other now blocked by probably two hundred Turkish soldiers. Another body of Turks, perhaps three hundred strong, were already coming over one of the two mountain crests. The other slope—the only way of escape open to the band—was so steep as to be impossible of ascent except by aid of the low bush that covered it. The surprise was complete, and the trap was tight.

There was a huge rock, lodged half-way up the open mountain-side, which would offer some protection. Sarafoff picked eight men from his band and started for this boulder, leaving the others, in charge of a lieutenant, to lie low in the bushes until he and his party attained the eminence. By climbing fast and taking the shelter of the shrubs, the nine men got to the rock with the loss of but one of their number. Not until then did they return the fire of the Turks, now descending the opposite slope. As soon as the main body of the band heard the fire of their comrades, they scattered, and started to pick their way up around the rock to the summit of the peak. It took them two hours to make the ascent, and during this time some of the Turks wound around to the right of Sarafoff’s position on the boulder, and a few got far above him to his left. Between these two raking fires the place would have been untenable had not the insurgents above kept these parties of Turks replenishing their numbers every minute. When the Turks succeeded in picking off three more of Sarafoff’s men, leaving him now but four—though all of the other insurgents had not yet reached the point of the peak—he vacated the boulder. The four men scattered, as the others had done, and scurried up the ascent. All five succeeded in gaining the little fort at the top, and, without waiting to take breath, dropped beside the main body, and took up the fusillade which these had already begun.

While waiting for Sarafoff, the band had been surrounded. The heights were a mass of broken boulders which afforded protection to their enemies as well as to the insurgents. Only one spot, to the south, was smooth and bare, and this space the Turkish commander took the precaution not to occupy, for two reasons. First, his men would have been picked off as fast as they filled it, and the sacrifice evidently did not appear to him to be necessary; secondly, the opening acted as a bait for the hard-pressed insurgents, tempting them into the passage, on each side of which soldiers were massed in strong force. Sarafoff surmised that this was a trap, and, while realising the hopelessness of his position, chose to fight it out where the lives of the band would cost the Turks dearest.