On that night in the early autumn I was seated upon a rock with a tall, thin, wiry, but handsome, young man, named Lûk, known in his tribe as “The Open Eye,” whom the great chieftain, Vatt Marashi, had given me as head of my body-guard, while beside was the dark-faced Albanian who, speaking Italian, acted as my guide and interpreter. Zorka was spinning her flax close by.
In the domain of his Imperial Majesty the Sultan, the moon seems to shine with far greater brilliancy than it does anywhere else in the world, and surely the panorama of high mountain and deep dark valley there spread before us was a veritable stage-picture, while the men at my side were as romantic looking a pair as could be found anywhere in real life.
Many times, as at night I lay down upon my humble bed of leaves, had I reflected how insecure was my position, and how easily my hosts could break their word, hold me to ransom, and worry the Foreign Office. Yet, let me here assert that all, from the chieftain, down to the humblest tribesman, treated me with a kindness, courtesy, and forethought, that, from the first, caused me to admire them. They might be brigands, and the blood-curdling stories of their cruelty might possibly be true, but they were, without doubt, a most gentlemanly gang of ruffians.
We had eaten our evening meal, and were sitting in the calm night smoking cigarettes, prior to turning in. The two men beside me had placed their rifles upon the ground, where the moonbeams glinted along the bright barrels, and our conversation had become exhausted.
Below, in that dark valley, ran the mule-track to Ipek, therefore day and night it was watched for passing travellers, as indeed were all the paths at the confines of the territory over which my friend Vatt Marashi, defiant of the Turks, ruled so firmly and yet so justly.
Lûk, rolling a fresh cigarette, was making some remark to Palok, my guide, in his peculiar soft-sounding but unwritten language, when it suddenly occurred to me to ask him to give me some little reminiscence of his own adventurous life.
He was silent for a few moments, his keen gaze upon the shining rifle-barrel before him, then, with Palok translating into Italian, he told me the story of how he earned his nickname of “The Open Eye.”
About two years before, when his tribe were at feud with their neighbours, the powerful Kastrati, who live in the opposite range of mountains, he was one dark night with a party of his fellow tribesmen in ambush, expecting a raid from their enemies. The false alarms were several when, of a sudden, Lûk discerned a dark figure moving slowly in the gloom. Raising his rifle he was on the point of firing when some impulse seized him to stay his hand and shout a challenge.
The reply was a frightened one—and in Turkish.
Lûk came forth from his hiding-place, and a few seconds later, to his great surprise, encountered the stranger, who proved to be a woman wearing her veil, and enshrouded by an ugly black shawl wrapped about her. He knew sufficient Turkish to demand her name, and whence she had come, but she refused to satisfy him. She had already recognised by his dress, that he was of the tribe of the Skreli, therefore she knew that she had fallen into the hands of enemies.