The Balkan Trail

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

THE MACEDONIAN.

They now avoided encounters with the Turks, travelled by night and rested by day. At the limit of each revolutionary district the band were met by a guide, who conducted them on to the next. They found the local organisations, disarmed the ‘irregulars,’ and secreted the rifles and munitions. They dropped almost due south, passing along the crest of the mountain range to the east of Lake Presba, which Bakhtiar Pasha’s forces were then ‘driving’; but Sarafoff, with several other bands, slipped through and proceeded in safety down around Florina, then up across the Monastir-Salonica railway, and north by a zigzag trail past Prelip to the Vardar above Kuprili.

At the side of the Vardar runs the railway from Servia to Salonica, utilising the cuts the water has made in centuries of flow through the mountains. At every mile-post along the railway was a military camp or a blockhouse. Here was the first failure of the organisation.

The local guide did not appear at the appointed meeting-place, and the band waited in vain. What happened to the peasant was never known, but shortly after the appointed hour several voices were heard. Lest the party who were approaching should be Turks, the insurgents took the precaution to remain silent.

The voices became distinct, and the insurgents were relieved to hear the Bulgarian tongue. One of Sarafoff’s lieutenants, named Detcheff, also an ex-Bulgarian officer, was sent out to meet the newcomers. A call of ‘Halt!’ was heard, and in quick succession the crack of several rifles. Detcheff did not return.

The number of the enemy was evidently small, and they took themselves off hurriedly in the direction they had come. The band were much attached to Detcheff, and hotheads among the men were for following the Turks; but Sarafoff, seeing the folly and danger of this, led them off at once towards the river, travelling fast to escape possible trackers.

It was difficult marching in the dark without a man who knew the ground, and the insurgents dared not light a match to look at a map. Suddenly the band came to the edge of a yawning chasm. A stout rope which they carried was unrolled and slung around a tree, both ends trailing down the precipice. Two by two, one on each line of the rope, the men dropped down to a watercourse below. Then one end of the rope was pulled, and the other went up around the tree, and fell. The rope had to be saved.

The insurgents arrived at the river before morning, but did not dare to cross without a survey. They laid themselves down on an elevation covered with a thick growth of shrub, speaking only in whispers throughout the next day. It was a tantalising day, for every half-hour a patrol of Asiatic or Albanian soldiers would pass at a languid pace—and an enticing range—along the railway below. The hiding-place of the band overlooked the river and the railway for about a mile in each direction, and, with the aid of Austrian military maps, Sarafoff planned his crossing and the route to be taken thereafter.

To the south, about half a mile away, was a camp of half a dozen tents guarding a bridge; to the north, about a quarter of a mile, was another, of tents and brush huts. Almost immediately below the band was a narrow, walled waterway which carried flood-water from the mountain, down under the tracks into the river. The waterway was now dry.

The night train passed south about nine o’clock. Then the Turks relaxed their vigilance. And there was about two hours left before the moon rose. As soon as the puff of the engine had died away in the distance, two strong swimmers descended to the river with the rope and fastened it securely from one shore to the other. This done, they returned and informed the chief, and one by one the men climbed down through the culvert and launched out into the stream. Arriving on the opposite bank, they scurried into the woods. Four of the men, more fastidious than the others, took off their clothes to make the passage, and attempted to hold them, with their guns, over their heads. The Vardar is not very deep, but its current is terrific, and all four, finding that they needed both hands to the rope, lost their clothes. This quartet arrived at the point of reassembling dressed in cartridge belts; but they had saved these, their guns and dynamite bombs. Very like Kipling’s warriors who ‘took Lungtungpen naked!’ The other men suppressed their laughter at the discomfited group only because of the dangerous proximity of the camp to the north, and made up between them costumes for the shivering four.