There we met Colonel Stajitch. "Will you take my boy?"
"Delighted. Are his papers in order?"
The mayor hereupon turned up, and the colonel's face grew longer as they conversed.
"The mayor cannot give me the necessary permits without Government sanction," he said. "I must get it from Rashka by telephone. It will take an hour. Can you wait?"
We spent the time shopping. Each shop looked as empty as if it had been through a Saturday night's sale. One had elderly raisins, another had a few potatoes. We found some onions, bought another cooking pot and kitchen necessaries, and packed them in the carts which had arrived in the town. Nobody would take paper money unless we bought ten francs' worth. After waiting an hour and a half we hunted down the colonel. The telephone official told us he had got leave from the Government. At last we found him in the mayor's office, bristling with papers and the passport.
"I have got you an armed policeman as escort," he said, waving the papers, "and the boy has a good horse, twenty pounds in gold, and twenty in silver."
We found the boy waiting with the carriages. He wore a strange little brown cashmere Norfolk jersey and very superior black riding breeches. Dressed more romantically he would have made an ideal Prince for an Arabian Nights' story. His father accompanied us until our Albanian guide announced—
"Here begins the carriage road."
Their parting must have been a hard thing. The father could not tell how his son's expedition would end, and the son was leaving his father to an unknown fate. They embraced, smiling cheerily, and the boy rode on ahead of us all, blowing his nose and cursing his horse.
In many places the "carriage road" was no road at all. The carts lurched and bumped over rivers, boulders, fields, and the inevitable mud. Several times we had to jump on our carts as they dragged us over deep and rapid rivers. After three hours we stopped at a farm, our mounted policeman called out the owners and autocratically ordered two of the young men to accompany us as guides and guards.