Next morning, Monday, December 13th, we were off early, and after half an hour's further climb, we began, to our joy, to descend. The road was tolerable, but it rained all day, and our adventures were with swift and bridgeless rivers. Ponies, with their packs, stumbled in mid-stream, and everyone, wet to the waist, must go to the rescue. We were now carrying the minimum of food and blankets, and could not afford further losses. But the ponies were so weak that, if they fell, it was unlikely that they would rise again, and then both pony and pack must be abandoned.
We wanted to reach Yabuka that night, as there was, we were told, a military station there, and bread might be obtainable. It was dark when we arrived, and rain was falling in torrents. We couldn't find the military station, for the good reason that it had already been evacuated: therefore, no bread. There were only three cottages in the place, and they were packed with soldiers and prisoners. Before turning them out into the wet, I went with Vooitch another mile, as we saw a long wooden shed ahead of us, and hoped that it might be available; the column halted by the cottages. The shed was inhabited by some officers, who said that half a mile further on there was—an hotel! and that the landlord would be sure to make room for us; some officers also were there, and if I addressed myself to them they would make things easy, etc. I was a little incredulous about the hotel, and the readiness to welcome us, but Vooitch and I rode on, only to find "nema nishta Bogami." The so-called hotel was crammed, there was not standing room; the officer of whom we had been told, was in a house opposite. We went to this, and found that one tiny room had been given to him and to his wife and family for the night. I asked him if my family might share the room with his family. He began demurring, but I suggested that it was not an ideal night for picnicking outside. He shrugged his shoulders, then pointed to the corner of the room farthest from his family; in this many soldiers, and odds and ends were crouched, and sleeping, but at the first shrug, I sent Vooitch off to fetch the others. We boldly brought in, not only ourselves, but our packs. After eating our supper, we lay down on the dirty floor on our rugs, luxuriating in having a roof over our heads. The soldiers found shelter in sheds and stables.
Amongst the fellow-inhabitants of our room, was a priest. In the game of musical chairs, for possession of the only chair in the room, he had triumphed, and he sat tight on this chair, all through the evening, and all night long. He was evidently particular about proprieties, and liked things to be done in order. Bedtime was bedtime, wherever you met it, and it must be scrupulously regarded. At ten o'clock he looked at his watch, replaced it, then, with the calm deliberation of a man who, in a well-appointed bedroom, performs the same act in the same way regularly every night of the 365 nights of the year, he removed his trousers. For a moment I was in trepidation; what was coming next? I looked round to see if the girls were asleep. Their eyes were shut. I couldn't take mine off the priest; he never looked round, he took no notice of anyone, and when the trousers were off, he sat down again on the precious chair, folded his trousers, placed them on his lap, went to sleep, sitting bolt upright, and snored vigorously all night long. I understood the trouser action; the removal was a danger signal, to keep off talkative people, or people who might want his chair. By this simple act, he established all around that chair, a Brunhilde ring of fire, through which no one dared to break. It was original and effective, and I was so grateful to him for giving me something to laugh at, that I could have—but the trousers prevented me.
Next day, Tuesday, December 14th, the weather gave us a variety. Rain, and hail, and sleet, and bitter cold all day. We had found hay for the animals last night, but none for the morning's feed, and we were still fifty-four kilometres—a two days' journey—distant from Podgoritza. No wonder that animals were lying dead in hundreds by the roadside. Bread, too, became more and more difficult to get. We had to-day seen a woman coming out of a cottage, with a loaf of corn bread in her hand. We flew at her and bought it for thirty dinars (18s.). Was it a wonder that men also were lying dead, and dying, in hundreds by the roadside? But I never grew callous to the things I saw. On the contrary, my heart grew softer, and I became more and more angry at a system of world government which permits those second-class angels to bluff mankind, and keep him from the Tree of Life, by the flourishing of a flaming sword.
After trekking for three hours, we heard that there was hay to be bought some way up a mountain on our left. So we halted at a cottage by the roadside, while the men climbed the hill to fetch the hay. Some of the drivers at first wanted to shirk the climb; I did not blame them, though I told them they must go; but one of our Englishmen commented scornfully on the laziness of the Serbian soldier, so I reminded him that yesterday, when he was in trouble with his pony, owing to mud and rain, he had lost his temper for a moment, and I now asked him if he would like his character to be judged by his behaviour at that time of only a slight trouble? The Serbian soldier, in addition to such slight troubles, was suffering from troubles which we British islanders can scarcely imagine. The Englishman had for the moment forgotten all this, and he agreed with me that the behaviour of the Serbian soldiers was, under all the circumstances, marvellous.
The road ran in hairpin curves between huge mountains of grey, bare, rugged rock. You might as well expect milk from stones, as food amongst such mountains. It was a terrible land, and I felt, as I trudged through it, that I should never want to see another mountain. But at dusk (4 p.m.) we reached the military station of Levorcka. Would this also be deserted? I sent gaolbird on to try and find rooms. He found one room and a kitchen in which we could cook food, in the house of an Arnaut woman. When I went into the living room to ask her to let us boil a kettle on her fire, a pretty little girl of eight was fastening the dress of her little sister, six years old. I said something about the children in my best Serbian, and the woman who was, at first, very curt with us, told me that she had no children; these were two lost refugees; an officer had picked them up on the road, and had left them here. The woman was very kind to them, and had grown to love them. She said that it was possible that the mother might come past this way. But the elder girl was already useful, and I wondered if the childless woman would keep a very vigorous look-out for that lost mother?
After much trouble we housed the ponies in cattle stables, and the men slept with them to prevent their being stolen. We had lost two more ponies to-day; left on the road too weak to rise, and it was doubtful whether my horse could go much further. But the men found a fine strong pony on the mountains, when they went for hay, and this was a great help.
We were, alas, too late to get bread that evening, but we were told to come again in the morning. That looked hopeful; but when, on the morning of Wednesday, December 15th, we arrived at the military station, the officer said that no bread had come, and that he had just received a telegram saying that all bread, when it came, was to be sent to the soldiers at the front—an effective silencer.
On that day we saw epitomised, the barbarous beauty of the land of Montenegro. Our route lay in narrow valleys between steep mountains of grey rock; bare of vegetation, bare of life, bare of everything but inhospitable jagged peaks which dared you to come near them. The rocks were grey, the sky was grey, and yet, suddenly, at a sharp turn of the grey road, a grey precipice pointed grimly all the way down, three thousand feet, to a tiny ribbon of the most brilliant green water that ever flowed in fairyland. In such drab surroundings, where did it get that colour? Prosaic people would say "melted snow water," but Hans Andersen would have known better than that. And so did I. But as it (the river) was quite inaccessible, it was, like everything else in the country, a forbidding sight.
But there was that day another moment of stolen joy, when, before beginning the descent towards the plain in which lay Podgoritza, the grey prison walls slid open, and revealed vast stretches of open country, distant mountains, valleys, and, in the middle of a grey mist of mountain ranges, glinting in the midday sun, a line of gold—could it be—yes, it was the Lake of Scutari. Ah! that was beautiful indeed! We had never seen anything so refreshing as that.