A jingle of many bells announced the arrival of our carriage next morning at ten o’clock Turkish (about 5.30), the hour at which we planned to leave. The bells were for the purpose of warning other vehicles coming the opposite way along steep roads, but they would also have the effect of disturbing sleeping guardhouses and apprising them of the fact that we were bound on a country journey. The danger of collision was the minor risk, and we ordered the driver to relieve his ponies of their noisy necklaces. The Turk protested, and commenced to discuss the matter, but there was no time for argument. Having got the bells safe under a seat, we told him to drive to Pschtinia.
‘You hired me to go to Kalkandele.’
‘We have changed our minds.’
‘But I have told the police you were going to Kalkandele.’
Exactly; and without doubt the first guardhouse on the road to the west had instructions to turn us back.
Our Turk soon learned that we were no meek and native Christians, and rather than lose his job altogether he obeyed our commands. We drove quietly through the deserted streets, the ponies’ hoofs pattering softly in the thick cushion of dust, the lucky beads on their harness rattling, one wheel of our shandrydan maintaining a rhythmic creak—but no one speaking. Drowsy patrols who had fallen asleep by the wayside looked up from the corners as we drove by, but our Turk on the box served us as a passport. Even the guardhouse at the far side of the Vardar was content to let us pass at this sleepy hour, seeing that our team was not equipped with country bells. We passed under the barracks observed only by the sentinel on the crest of the cliff, who blinked his heavy eyes and stared stupidly down like a waking owl, his head swinging a mechanical half-circle as we came into view and passed out again. A mile and a half through a million gravestones, stretching from the crooked roadway on either side across the sweep of a broad plateau—this was nerve-racking. We were in full view from the citadel, the barracks, the Konak, and several minarets—a black beetle crawling along a crooked chalk line drawn through a never-weeded prairie of white stone stalks and sheaves. We urged the driver to lay on the lash and crawl quicker, and we took turns in casting sly glances behind. But the end of this drear graveyard came at last. We switched sharply on a waggon trail to the left, and plunged into the hills, in a stroke clipping dreamy Uskub from the scene. We breathed freer; we were fairly started on our journey long before the guardhouse on the road to Kalkandele had given us up and reported our failure to pass their way.
From time to time our driver became unruly, slowing his pace and refusing to use his whip, protesting that his horses would not last to Pschtinia at the rate at which we were going. We promised to let him give them a long rest at our destination, to drive back to Uskub at his own pace, and to raise his fee a mijidieh, all of which, with occasional promptings, kept the horses to their fugitive gait. Our rattle-trap dashed through the cornfields, terrified the peasants in their harvesting, drew the shepherds’ dogs, and scattered grazing sheep, rolled down the mountain sides, making desperate swerves, and climbed up empty, assisted by its passengers. We passed Albanians and Bulgarians, who may have been brigands and insurgents, and questions were asked our driver, but he was out of temper and did not stop to reply. We made Pschtinia at eleven—the wonder, only a trace broke!—the Turk in a rage, and the sweat pouring from his panting steeds.
We chuckled at the expense of Hilmi Pasha, and drew visions of his wrath; he would permit us to see no more of the interior for ourselves. We grew bold here and planned to march on foot across Macedonia, from Uskub east to Djuma-bala, and from there on the Bulgarian border to Drama near the sea, a distance, all told, of three hundred miles, and you shall see whether we carried out this resolution.
The inhabitants of Pschtinia, many bandaged and limping, gathered round us and kissed our hands, thinking we were foreign Consuls come to inquire into their grievances. After the fight the Turks had passed through Pschtinia on their way back to barracks at Koumanova, stopped and beaten the peasants for having harboured the insurgents (which they protested they had not), and carried off the headmen to prison at the town. The old men insisted on showing us the welts on their backs and bruises on their legs, inflicted by the Turks with heavy sticks, and said that the villagers worst mauled had been taken to Koumanova to the doctor, and were now in the gaol there.
When we had eaten of the eggs and brown bread, and drunk of milk provided by different villagers, we climbed to the battlefield with two guides who had escaped mauling. It was a forlorn place for a last stand against overwhelming odds—a vast gravel dome, barren but for dwarfed yellow shrubs, and out of sight of every human habitation, even the village it sheltered. The band had been discovered some distance to the north, and chased by an ever-increasing pack of pursuers until driven to bay at this high peak. The insurgents attempted evidently to reach a forest on a neighbouring height, but the Turks cut them off before they could reach it. Little piles of stone a foot high, showing the haste with which they had been thrown together, were still standing, behind each a dark brown spot, a bloody rag or two, a scattering of empty Mauser cartridge-cases. On the slope of the dome we picked up Martini cases. ‘Turk,’ said the peasants. That was evident. The calibre was stamped in Turkish characters. Holes in the pink earth, with bits of cast iron firmly embedded in the rock, marked the places where the dynamite bombs had struck at the last charge, when the soldiers stormed the crest and the end of the insurgents was a matter of seconds.