“Yes: it is besa until we return to the village. Leka is an honourable man.”
And then Maurice learnt, with amazement, that among the villagers who had accompanied him was the man who had shot Giorgio. The blood-foes were at this moment squatting side by side, laughing and talking in the friendliest way, drinking alternately out of the same mug. The truce between them would hold until they returned to their village: then Leka would watch for an opportunity of stalking and slaying his enemy, with no more compunction than if he were a noxious beast.
“Sleep, friends,” said Zutni presently to the two Englishmen, who were nodding. “The Inglesi need much sleep; it is one of God’s mysteries. I will wake you when day comes. Long life to you!”
They needed no pressing. Zutni’s wife brought some mats for pillows, tucked them up in blankets with her own delicate fingers, and they slept till daybreak, oblivious of the insects that feasted on them.
In the wan, grey light Zutni awoke them. The fire was raked together: the women made strong coffee; and after a breakfast of coffee and hot maize bread baked on the hearth they set off to resume their journey. Zutni himself accompanied them; like Giulika, he felt responsible for his guests, and had resolved to see them safely to the Drin.
When they looked back upon the track they had traversed, they could scarcely realise that it had been possible to cross the rugged mountains behind them. Looking forward, it seemed equally impossible that they could climb the heights in front with so cumbrous a vehicle as the gyro-car. Peak after peak thrust its pinnacles into the sky. The path was visible for only a few yards ahead, and as each rugged corner was rounded, another came into view. But the terrors of the night had vanished. Daylight, while it revealed the difficulties and dangers of the journey, enabled the travellers to avoid them; and the Albanians hauled and pushed and dragged joyously, grunting with satisfaction as each new obstacle was surmounted. The only check upon their high spirits was the necessity of moving quietly, in order not to attract attention from any who might be wandering on the heights. For the same reason George did not start his engine. In the clear mountain air its throbbing might be heard for many miles. But it was possible now to let the car run down many a downward slope by its own weight, so that the progress was nearly twice as rapid as it had been in the darkness.
After they had been marching for about an hour, and began to find the descents longer than the ascents, they came to the blackened ruins of a small mountain village. In answer to Maurice’s inquiries, Giulika explained that the houses had been burnt by the Turks in the last rising. The Ottoman troops, coming to a village and finding any of the men absent from their homes, would assume that they were with the insurgents, and burn their houses. There was no more effective means of crushing an insurrection, for the Albanian’s house is his all.
“What we want is a good government,” said the old man. “You Inglesi have a good king, they say; why does not he come and govern us?”
This was a question which Maurice found it difficult to answer in any way that could satisfy the simple mountaineer, to whom international politics was an unknown world. He was listening sympathetically to Giulika’s recital of the misdeeds of the Turks, when the party encountered a more serious obstacle than any they had yet met. A mountain stream, running towards the Drin, had spread out into a wide swamp, dotted with boulders. So soft and oozy was the soil, that the leaders of the march sank deep into it. There was not water enough to float the car, and its weight would clearly prevent its being run across. Nor was there any possibility of carrying it as the sailors had carried it from the quay to the launch at Dover: the men could not get a firm footing.
They halted, looking blankly at one another. Zutni said that the morass could be circumvented, but only by striking back into the mountains, and following a track that would take them several hours’ march out of the direct course. Such loss of time was dangerous, and might prove fatal. Remembering how the man from Elbasan had refused to shoot him at the bidding of Slavianski, Maurice asked Giulika whether the Austrian might not have permanently lost the help of his allies. But the old man answered that this was unlikely. The Elbasan had obeyed the dictate of honour in refusing to kill a helpless prisoner; but the same sense of honour would bid him fulfil his obligation to his employer when the prisoners were free. They would certainly pursue on horseback, and the delay involved in fetching a circuit about the swamp would enable them to gain upon the fugitives.