We accordingly hunted up the doctor. He promised us horses for the morrow. The carriages had all gone to fetch the English officers. We asked him about Alessio, and he assured us that the telephone message had been received saying that they were waiting. We asked him several times until he grew angry and said—
"Do you doubt my honour, then?"
Before we went to bed the hotel proprietor came to us.
"Do you pay or the Government?" asked he; and seemed very relieved when we told him that we paid. The Montenegrins are neither loved nor trusted here.
The next morning the horses came, but very late. In the crowd watching our departure was an old Albanian without a moustache. That was a strange sight; we looked harder. It was a woman. She must have been one of those who had sworn eternal virginity, and so achieve all a man's privileges, even eating with them instead of getting the scraps left over from the meal. But the punishment of death awaited her if she failed her vow. Here was one, chuckling and grinning at some of us in our attempts to mount the weird saddles and weirder steeds which had been provided. The Serb captain had a carriage, and another carriage took all our baggage, which had now sadly dwindled owing to the continued depredations of the police. We straggled out of the town and through the crowded bazaar, for it was a Saturday. Passed the Venetian fort and the river from which stuck the funnel of the steamer so mysteriously sunk one night. We had heard that the Turkish gun flat which had transported us had burst her boilers, so now the Montenegrins had no steamers left.
The road was level and better than many we had come over, though once or twice the carriages were hopelessly mired, and had to be pushed across. West's horse had ideas about side streets, and bolted down each as he came to it.
We met the Adriatic Commission. Mr. Lamb and Mr. George Paget, returning after so long an absence, were in the first carriage. We recognized Mr. Paget at once, for though either of them might have liked old arms, only one would have collected old cookery books. The rest of the commission came along later. They stopped us. We expected questions about the Serbs; but no. They said—
"Can one buy underclothing in Scutari?"
Their baggage transport had been sunk by an Austrian submarine and they had only what they were wearing. We wished each other luck and went on. There was no hope of arriving at Alessio that night, we had started too late. As evening was falling, we came to an Albanian inn and decided to put up.