We turned on our heels and left without salaaming to the bey or to any of his sitting satellites.
The kaimakam jumped to his feet and followed us to the door shouting, ‘Ce n’est pas ma faute, messieurs. Ce n’est pas ma faute!’
An hour later an officer who had been attached to us during our sojourn at Djuma was ushered in by Sandy. He came to present the kaimakam’s compliments and to say that by a strange coincidence the permission we sought had just arrived from the Governor-General.
RUINS OF KREMEN.
We rode away from Djuma-bala with a large escort, and made our way slowly through the wildest and most beautiful mountains I have ever seen. We worked around Perim Dagh to Mahomia; spent a night at Bansko, where Miss Stone had been ransomed; passed through the ruins of Kremen, the scene of a wicked massacre; dropped down the river Mesta by a long-untrodden path; crossed a trackless lava formation of many miles that resembled a vast boneyard of giant skulls and scattered skeletons. The trail was hard, and it took four days to get to Drama.
CHAPTER XIII
THE TRAIL OF THE INSURGENT
The Consuls and two newspaper correspondents cordoned at the storm centre received comprehensive and accurate reports of what was happening in the surrounding country through a secret emissary of the revolutionary committee. This envoy extraordinary, pleading his cause before the foreign representatives at a hostile capital, was a man of nerve, resource, and careful judgment, as well he had to be. Besides his other accomplishments, he had a knowledge of three European languages, French, German, and Italian, and was therefore able to translate the official insurgent reports from the original Bulgarian into languages understood of the Consuls. The contents of these periodical papers were a record of recent activities on the part of both insurgents and Turks. Combats and massacres were located, and where possible the numbers of killed and wounded were given. The final report was a summary of the summer’s work. It announced the razing, partial or entire, of 120 villages, and stated that 60,000 peasants in the vilayet of Monastir were homeless. Illustrating the report was a map which had been drafted by a skilled hand and manifolded by machine; a key in the corner explained the meanings of the different intensities of colour in which the villages were marked, from white, indicating total escape, to black, total effacement.