Some time after the soldiers had withdrawn, and the dome was desolate again, a few peasants ventured to the top. They found the bodies of twenty-four Servians, battered and disfigured, and completely stripped; the Turks had taken away their own dead. Not so much of value as an old shoe remained on the battlefield. The next day the strong outfits of the insurgents, which had come from Belgrade, were sold by the soldiers on the market place at Koumanova. The peasants of Pschtinia rolled the bodies in coarse striped buffalo blankets, carried them down to the village, and buried them in the cemetery, the village priest performing the burial service. A rough wooden cross was raised over each grave. The villagers said the soldiers came back to Pschtinia and tore the crosses down; but they reared them again when the Turks were gone.
‘Are you Servians?’ we asked the peasants.
‘Bulgarians, effendi.’
‘Then this band was an enemy to your party?’
‘But they were Christians.’
On descending to the village we found our Turk already harnessing his team. He had been fed, and so had his horses, and they were all in a more tractable mood. The villagers, hale and halt, gathered around our carriage as we prepared to start, and poured forth their blessings on our Christian heads. Several small boys brought us dirty little fried fish, about two inches long, as a parting gift. We took the fish, rewarding the young villagers, and, as we crossed the stream, deposited the smoky carcases whence they had been drawn wriggling an hour before.
Our driver took us home by a different route, more direct, he said, with a great ‘something’ to see. He had noted that the Englishman gave backsheesh, and was wont to put us in his countrymen’s way. He himself belonged to the world-fraternity of cab-men, whose instincts vary nowhere, East or West; but his cousin, to whom he took us, was a Turkish peasant, a man who, when the spirit of war is without his soul, is as true a gentleman as Occident or Orient produces.
In crossing a trackless moor to the road that led where our Turk would take us, we lost the road, and for an hour wandered aimlessly till we met an armed man with a woman who covered her face at sight of us. The armed man asked the usual questions of our Turk, and gave him directions.
It was five o’clock when we arrived at a great wall of mud bricks, infinitely higher and better built than those surrounding the average Macedonian dwelling, but dilapidated and showing long want of care. The walls enclosed a vast irregular area, and entirely obscured the view within. We drove round wondering and asking questions of our Turk, which he ignored with a smile. Finally, we approached a high gate designed after the fashion of that leading to the Sublime Porte. Our driver stood up on the box and began a hallooing, which burst like trumpet blasts on the still surroundings. It was some time before a far-off answer came over the walls. The call and the reply were continued, the latter drawing gradually nearer, and after some minutes a man spoke through a keyhole not less than five inches high. Our Turk descended from the carriage-box, was recognised by him within, and told to wait until the key was fetched. We then peered through the keyhole, and after a brief interval spied the inmate returning from the house toiling under the weight of an iron key of robust diameter and a foot and a half long.
The huge oak gate was swung back, and we entered, greeted with a dignified salaam and a shake of the hand. There are no social classes among the Turks across which the hand-shake is debarred. Deference is shown superiors only in the salaam, a pasha receiving a lower bow with an extra twist of the hand than that given a bey, and a bey a lower dip of hand and head than a bimbashee, a bimbashee than an ordinary mortal effendi.