The miralai finally gave over his search for hostile motive in our visit, and we discussed the programme for the morrow. I found that there was a healthy fear of the Prince of Montenegro, for, when I told him that the Prince's little steamer would be waiting for me at Plamnitza the next day at noon, the whole circle broke out in wonder if it could be true that the Prince took so much interest in us, for if so, they must be prudent. We had the interesting advantage in that Gosdanovich understood all that they said as they talked Serb to each other, for they were a mixed company, and mostly of that race, and they supposed that he was a Russian and I an Englishman, and that both of us were ignorant of their language. If, they finally agreed, the Prince of Montenegro would send his steamer for me, I must be a person of greater distinction than they thought me, and they must be careful. So the miralai called the chief of the zapties, and in our presence gave him his charge, viz., to escort us to Plamnitza, leaving by early light, and, if the steamer did not come for us, to bring us back to the prison he took us from, and to kill us on the spot if we attempted to escape. And so to sleep, as far as the crowing of many cocks outside and the activity of multitudinous fleas within would permit; and to make sure of us, we were locked in—fairly at last in a Turkish prison.
The morning broke with the rain pouring in torrents. I had tried to buy a pair of shoes before going to sleep, but they brought me a pair for a boy of twelve and assured me that there were no others in the town, and those I had come with were in tatters which were hardly to be kept on my feet. The mud was indescribable,—the entire country flooded, and all the bridges across a river we must pass carried away, except one over a narrow gorge where the rocks approached so closely that a couple of logs reached from side to side, and over these the horses must be led. To say that I was at ease on this trip would be exaggeration, the more as the zaptie-bimbashi talked freely to his subordinate about us, and vented his rage at being obliged to make such a journey for two beastly infidels, to whom the only grateful service he could render was decapitation. However, we reached the lake, to find the steamer waiting, tied to the top of one of the largest oaks a half mile from the actual shore, for the country was so inundated that we floated over entire villages as we boated out to it. I delighted the heart of the bimbashi by a baksheesh of half a napoleon, which so astonished him that he hardly knew how to express himself, after all his bitter words and unkind intentions. I was later convinced that if the Turkish authorities had known who I was,—their old enemy in Crete,—we should not have come out alive from Podgoritza. In fact, when Danish Effendi at Ragusa heard that I had been put in prison in Albania he exclaimed, "If I had been there it is not only a night in prison he would have had, but a file of soldiers at daylight."
Our steamer had come, however, not to carry me to Scutari, but, and perhaps fortunately, to take me back to Rieka, whence I had to go to Cettinje to get a refit, for I was ragged, bootless as my errand to Scutari, and draggled with mud from head to foot; notwithstanding which, as soon as the Prince had learned of my arrival, though in the midst of a diplomatic dinner, he sent for me to come to the palace, and made me sit down with the company as I was and tell my story. I had to wait a few days for the voyage to Scutari, profiting by the occasion of the return of some engineers and the French consul at that place. We found the town flooded, a fisherman by the side of one of the streets showing us a fine string of fish which he had caught in the roadside ditch. Decay, neglect, and utter demoralization were written large on the general aspect of the capital of one of the most important of the provinces of the Turkish Empire in Europe, i.e. important to Turkey. The magnificent country around Scutari for miles on miles square—most fertile ground, producing, beside wheat, the finest tobacco known for cigarettes generally sold as of Cavalla (and how many nervous hours I have soothed with it during these campaigns), and enormous crops of maize—lies a large part of the time every year under water, as I had found it, for the sole reason that the Drin, which ought to empty into the sea below the Boyana (the outlet of the Lake of Scutari, the Moratcha, etc.), has built a bar by its floods and abandoned its proper course, emptying into the lake a flood which the Boyana is incapable of managing.
The fortress was a relic of Dushan, little mended by the Turk, and had been three times struck by lightning, the magazine each time exploding (once while I was in Montenegro), only because the Turkish government, in putting up the lightning-rod and finding the supply of rod short, had pieced it out with telegraph wire. The body of the rod had fulfilled its destiny in attracting the lightning, while the telegraph wire, not being able to carry the load brought to it, had discharged it into the magazine. And, when I saw it, the wire was still inviting another disaster. I found in Eshref Pasha a most interesting and amiable personage, out of his place completely in the management of a turbulent and really hostile Christian population, with whom his very best qualities were a disqualification. Eshref was a poet, a dreamer, and, I was told, the second man of letters in the empire. He laughingly asked me if I had been at Podgoritza, and I as good-humoredly replied that I had not come to complain of my treatment there, but to pay my compliments to a fellow man of letters. His broad, good-natured face lighted up with pleasure, and, dropping politics and fighting, we talked poetry and letters. Secretaries and messengers were coming and going with papers to be signed, or orders to be given, and we could talk only by interludes. I remarked that he must have little time for letters in all this complication of cares, and he replied that "poetry was his refuge in the night when he was unable to sleep; he had no other time." I tried to get a sample of his verse, and he recited me one, of which I could judge only by the sound, which was very musical; but to my urging for a copy for publication in England he objected that translators were not good for the reputation of a poet, which we all know. I assured him of the entire competence of literary London to render him the completest justice, and he finally yielded in the spirit to my solicitations, but put them to the rout in the letter; for, though he promised the script for the next morning, it never came. It is curious that Eshref fell through his good faith, for when, a few months later, the Porte issued an irade asking for indication of the reforms needed in the provinces, he replied by calling the population to formulate their wants, which they did, asking for the reopening of the Drin so as to facilitate the draining of the Lake of Scutari, the making of roads and a railway from Scutari to Antivari on the seacoast. The Porte, unaccustomed to be taken at its word, recalled the poet, who shared the fate of his great predecessor Ovid.
CHAPTER XXIX
WAR CORRESPONDENCE AT RAGUSA
The splendid victory of Muratovizza led to the recall of our old enemy Shefket Pasha, who was sent to Bulgaria and replaced in the Herzegovina by a more competent and humane man, an old friend of Cretan days, Raouf Pasha, one of the most competent and liberal Circassian officers in the service of the Sultan. Of the operations which followed I have no direct cognizance, and I am not writing the history of the war, except as it mingles with my own experiences. The lull that followed the change of command left me time to study Montenegro and its people, and I made many friends. The battle at Muratovizza had developed a quarrel between Socica, who commanded there with a most distinguished ability, and old Peko Pavlovich, who had refused his coöperation in the battle, to the great diminution of the consequences of the victory. Peko had now come to follow the suggestions of the Russian consulate at Ragusa, from which his fortunate rival would accept no indications. The Russian Slavonic committees had begun to work, and their contributions and influence, more than the direct action of their government, gradually brought the whole movement under Russian influence. I noticed here again what had happened in Crete, that the Russian agents, profiting by the irresponsibility which must always be the accompaniment of a despotic government so extensive as that of Russia, acted without orders and on their own inspiration, sometimes with disastrous results. The personal rivalry between Derché and his Russian colleague in the beginnings of the Cretan troubles had, I have no doubt, a much greater influence on the event of all the negotiations than any desire of the Russian government to provoke an insurrection, and so here the feuds that arose between the agents of the Slavonic committees and the consulate at Ragusa no doubt refracted the intentions of the authorities at St. Petersburg more than was suspected.
There is no doubt that Jonine, on his own responsibility and in opposition to the wishes of the Czar, did what he could to stimulate the movement in Herzegovina, and that this was the tendency of all the Russian agents in the Balkans. Of this I had many opportunities of assuring myself, and, as I sympathized in that feeling, I had no difficulty in finding it where it existed. Those agents systematically provoked hostility to Turkey, which was natural and consistent with the good of the people, for the Turkish abuses are incurable and always merit rebellion, but also against Austria, which was unjust and aggravated the trouble of the rayahs needlessly. The Slavonic committees in Russia, too, went far beyond the desire of the government, and there were continual rivalries between them and the consular agents, the latter feeling obliged to outbid the committees to keep their influence. They had, generally, the mania of activity and zeal, and commonly went beyond their orders, trusting that if the luck followed them they would be approved, and if it deserted them they would find protection in the surroundings of the throne, as they generally did, activity in the Slavonic cause covering many sins against discipline. During the lull after the defeat of Servia (to anticipate a little the course of my narrative), I made the acquaintance of the Russian General Tcherniaieff at an English watering-place. We became great friends, for personally I have always liked the Russians, and he told me with no little glee how he had outwitted the Czar, who, learning that he intended to go to Herzegovina to fight, called him and made him swear that he would not go to "fight with those brigands, the Herzegovinians." He swore, and then went, evading the surveillance of the police and with a false passport, to Belgrade, where he gave himself to inciting the Servians to war, and, when Servia declared war the following spring, he commanded the army. So he never came to Herzegovina or to Montenegro, and he was personally hostile to the Prince, as I found most Russian officers to be. But he assured me that the Czar was bitterly opposed to the movement, and that if it had been suspected that he was going to the Balkans he would have been arrested. The prudence of the Czar is always in danger of being nullified by the imprudence of his agents.
The pressure of the Turkish government on Montenegro became severe, and the Prince, in the failure of Servia to respond to the Montenegrin proposals to fight it out, was unwilling to take the responsibility of a war. But the Sultan inclined to war so strongly that Raouf Pasha, who advised him that his army was not prepared for it, was recalled, partly on account of that advice, and partly because he declared that the insurrection was to a great extent justified by the bad government of Bosnia, and was replaced by Achmet Mukhtar, later the Ghazi, who came breathing flames and extermination. The bands of Montenegrins were ordered to leave the frontier of the principality, and came down to the vicinity of Ragusa; and as the interest at Cettinje diminished I followed the war. The winter set in with great and unremembered rigor, the refugees suffered the greatest misery, and many of the Turkish troops in the high mountain country died of exposure. I saw deserters at Ragusa who declared that there would be very general desertion were it not that the troops were assured, and believed, that, if they deserted, the Austrian authorities would certainly send them back to their regiments.
Before this the "Times" had come to the conclusion that the movement had come to stay awhile, and I was informed that I should be henceforward placed in the position of its special correspondent. As I had thoroughly mastered the field and enjoyed the confidence and friendship of the Prince, I had, as long as the war lasted, no rival on the English press. The suffering amongst the families of the Herzegovinians, exiled almost en masse into Dalmatia and Montenegro, was very great; but the influence of the letters which appeared in the "Times" produced a wide and happy charitable movement, and I received at Ragusa supplies of money and clothing, which made the wretched Christians bless England continually. I had a sharp attack of bronchitis from the absolute impossibility of finding quarters where I could do my work in a tolerable comfort; for the usual mildness of the climate of Dalmatia leaves every house unprovided for the cold, which that winter was unprecedentedly severe. I used to sit at my writing-table wrapped in all the blankets I could keep on me. Fireplaces seemed to be unknown.