“S’bogom!” (God be with you!) It is the expression you hear on every hand in the Balkans. In the streets the peasants touch their round caps in salute and exclaim, “S’bogom!” When you leave for a journey and when you return, when you rise and when you go to rest; even if you go for a short walk—it is the same. Life is so uncertain in those wild regions that the protection of the Almighty is invoked upon you always, and your revolver is ever ready in your belt.
In Cettinje I had a faithful guide and servant, a black-eyed, somewhat sinister-looking Albanian, named Palok. He travelled with me through Montenegro and Albania, and was most faithful and devoted. Besides Albanian and Serb he spoke a little Italian, and possessed a keen sense of humour.
One day, while we were travelling through the wild, bare mountain, a perfect wilderness of huge boulders without a single tree or even blade of grass, we halted for our midday meal, and while eating he told me of a great friend of his who had recently been killed at Spuz for vendetta, and he added, fondling the butt of his revolver, “I too, gospodin, shall die before long.”
I looked at him in surprise. His usually humorous face had changed. It was dark and thoughtful, and his black eyes were fixed upon me.
“Is there a blood-feud upon you, then?” I asked, in surprise.
“Yes,” he replied briefly; and though I endeavoured to persuade him to tell the story, it was not until the following day that with some reluctance he explained.
“A year ago my brother Tef, away in Scutari, fell in love with a beautiful girl. He had a rival—a young Albanian, a coppersmith in the bazaar. They quarrelled, but the girl—ah! she was very beautiful—preferred Tef. Whereupon the rival one night took his rifle and laid in wait for my brother in the main street of Scutari. Early in the evening he left the house of the girl’s father, and as he passed the fellow shot poor Tef dead.”
And he paused as his brow knit deeply, and his teeth were set tightly.
“Well?” I asked.
“Well, gospodin. What would you have done had your own brother died a dog’s death? I took a rifle, and within a week the murderer was in his grave. I shot him through the heart—and then I left Scutari.”