This was more than Cecil could endure; he drew a pistol from his holsters and called to the Russian to face him; but, muttering something about 'an island cur,' the gallant Ruski spat at his feet in token of detestation, and galloped away.
'And I am the comrade of wretches such as this!' thought Cecil, as he dismounted and found that he had accomplished thirty-five miles of his journey.
After a repast of hashed duck and caviare (having, as usual there, to use his own clasp-knife and pocket-fork), and after a bumper or two of strong red wine with the natural soda-water, which comes from many springs in Servia, Cecil lit a cigar, and, divested of his arms and tunic, gave himself up to reflection—and, sooth to say, he had as usual plenty to ponder over—while watching the sunlight fading out in the little street of one-storeyed houses, mere huts built of white-washed clay, and which he knew were too probably without beds, tables, or chairs, and furnished with little more than an iron pot, in which the inhabitants cooked, and out of which they ate everything.
Carefully securing his door against intrusion when night fell, he slept on a divan with his rug and cloak over him and his sword and pistols under his head for a pillow; and next morning, after settling his bill for a few copper piastres (one hundred and twenty-eight of which go to one British sovereign), he was again in the saddle and pursuing the road to Bratisna.
The next day saw him without any incident—somewhat to his disappointment, certainly to his surprise, at least. After passing through Kolar, and then Semendria, as his horse was breaking down, he was compelled to halt there for the night, within twenty-four miles of his destination. But the halt was not without interest, as there for the first time he saw that river so famed in history, the magnificent and dark-blue Danube, the waves of which 'have witnessed the march of Attila, of Charlemagne, of the Lion of the North, and the armies of imperial France; and whose shores have echoed to the blast of the Roman trumpet, the hymn of the pilgrims of the Cross, the wild halloo of the sons of Islam, and whose name is equally dear to history and to fable.'
Reining up his horse upon a slope, he watched the river for a time, flowing there between mountains clothed with forest trees, its blue waters in the vista washing in some places beaches of yellow sand, with pretty, toy-like hamlets sleeping in the sunshine, and then rode in to Semendria, which occupies a low peninsula in the river and is overlooked by a quaint old castle, in remote ages the abode of the kings of Servia, and which has since been taken and retaken, battered and bombarded by Turks and Hungarians in turn.
Next morning saw him approaching his destination, the stately city of Belgrade. Towering over its picturesque masses, over the spires and domes of more than a hundred Greek churches and Moslem mosques, steeped in the blaze of the morning sun on one side, and with deep shadows on the other, rose its citadel on the summit of a precipitous rock, surrounded by a lofty wall with flanking towers, a triple fosse, and a magnificent esplanade, four hundred yards in breadth.
On the summit waved the Servian tricolour, pale-blue and red together, with the white outside.
Around on every side spread lovely gardens. As he approached this famous frontier city, the scene of so many bloody sieges, Cecil could not but smile, in these our days of vast projectiles, at remembering how great a feat it was thought of the Scoto-Austrian Marshal Loudon, when in 1789 he opened his first parallel there, at one hundred yards from the glacis. That stately citadel was the scene of many awful atrocities perpetrated upon Christians, and Cecil ere he left it was shown the place where Rhigos the Greek was sawn asunder limb by limb; and so lately as 1815, thirty-six unhappy Servians, among them the grandfather of Count Palenka, were impaled alive, in violation of a pledge given for their safety.
Anxious to return and to be rid of his despatches, Cecil certainly did not loiter, and in a few minutes he found himself traversing the streets of timber-built houses, and those lines of open wooden stalls which compose the shops, the barber and coffee vendor alone having glazed fronts, and where the nationalities are so distinctly marked in the motley population, the laughing shopkeeper in his tiny Servian bonnet, the suave insinuating Greek banker or merchant in his red skullcap, and the haughty, sallow and bearded armourer, blacksmith, or baker, always Turks, as their white turbans show.