The Luck of Thirteen Part 7

The lake is beautiful enough, but too big for mystery, too small to be impressive. One had imagined it twinkling like the wicked pupil of a witch's eye, with cornea of white stones and eye-lashes of pine trees, and we desecrated even its stillness by shooting at wild duck with a rifle.

Jan had been describing to the villagers how well Jo rode; they now think he is a liar. Her horse took an unexpected jump at a small obstacle; the huge hump at the back of the saddle rose suddenly, threw her forward, and before she had realized anything, she was hanging almost upside down about the horse's neck, helpless because of the enormous steeple in front. This horse, as though quite used to similar occurrences, stood quietly contemplative, till Mike had restored her to a perpendicular.

Then on again. At times the tracks grew very muddy, and the horses side-slipped a good deal. At the top of a pa.s.s we halted to get coffee from a leafy hut. Before us were the mountains of Voynik, a blue ridge with shadowy, strange creva.s.ses and cliffs; behind us Dormitor was still visible, a faint stain on the sky, as though that great canopy had been dragging edges in the dew.

Four women clambered up towards us. When they had reached the top they flung down their enormous knapsacks and sat down. They were a cheery, pretty set, and we asked them where they were going.

"To the front," they said.

"What for?"

"Those are for our husbands and brothers," answered they, patting the huge coloured knapsacks.

"How far have you to walk?" we asked.

"Four more days."

"And how far have you walked?"

"Four days."

No complaining, no repining, just a statement of fact, these women were cheerfully tramping eight days with bundles weighing from 45 to 50 pounds upon their backs, to take a few luxuries, or necessities, to their fighting kin.

We bade them a jolly farewell, wished them luck, and started downhill.

The track became so steep that we had to descend from our horses and walk, and so we came to Shavnik.

Shavnik is not of wood; it is stone, and as we came into its little square--with the white river-bed on one side--we realized that no welcome attended us. To our indignant dismay the inn was full, and no telegram from the "State" had arrived.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PEASANT WOMEN OF THE MOUNTAINS.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A VILLAGE OF NORTH MONTENEGRO.]

We learned that in Montenegro are two kinds of travellers--royalties and n.o.bodies. Royalties are done for, n.o.bodies do the best they can. We found a not overclean room over a shop--there was nothing better--we had already experienced worse: so we ordered supper, and went off to the telegraph station, to make sure that we arrived as "Royalty" at the next stop.

A man suddenly burst into the office, crying, "Sirdar! Sirdar!"

Jo and Jan made their way through the darkness to the inn, squeezed between sweating horses to the door. We were admitted.

The Sirdar received us kindly, but was dreadfully tired, and looked years older than he had two days before. He had ridden some 150 kilometres in sixteen hours, had left Chainitza at two o'clock in the morning, and had been in the saddle ever since. He is a famous horseman, but is no longer young. Almost all his escort had succ.u.mbed to the speed, and he was full of the story of his orderly's horse which had done 300 kilometres in four days, and was the only animal which had come through with him, he having changed mounts at Plevlie. We left him and went straight to bed.

Just as we were comfortably dozing off, a man burst into the room and demanded "Mike," and said something about a horse. Jan dressed hurriedly and clattered downstairs. It was pitch dark. He ran to the stable, felt his way in, and struck a match. There were two horses, one was lying on its side, evidently foundered and dying but Jan felt that they would not have disturbed him for that. By matchlight again he found that his own horses had been turned out by the Sirdar's orderly, and that one was missing. Mike was not to be found, but the missing horse was discovered by a small boy in the dry river-bed apparently in search of water. Jan retired to his bedroom to find that in his absence two more strangers had burst in, to Jo's indignation. He pushed them out and locked the door.

When we awoke the Sirdar had already retaken his whirlwind course--evidently grave news called him to Cettinje--leaving the orderly's gallant horse dead behind him.

"He kills many horses," said a peasant, shaking his head; "he rides fast--always."

We crossed the dry bed of the river and prepared for the hill in front of us. Suddenly Mike's horse plunged into a bog. The poor beast sprawled in the treacherous green up to its stomach, and, thinking its last hour had come, groaned loudly. Mike threw himself from the saddle, and with great effort at last extracted his horse, which emerged trembling and dripping with slime. Mike grinned ruefully.

"I orter remembered," he admitted. "Sirdar, 'e get in dere one day 'imself."

This day's riding was the worst we had yet experienced. Our horses were f.a.gged, the road abominable, great stones everywhere on the degenerated Turkish roads.

The Turkish road is a narrowish path of flat paving-stones laid directly upon mother earth: but that is the first stage. In the second stage the paving-stones have begun to turn and lie like slates on a roof; in the third they have turned completely on edge, like a row of dominoes, and the horses, stepping delicately between the obstacles, pound the exposed earth to deep trenches of semi-liquid mud. In the fourth stage the stones have entirely disappeared, leaving only the trenches which the horses have formed, so that the path is like a sheet of violently corrugated iron. Most of the tracks are now between the third and fourth stages of degeneration. One never knows how far the horse will plunge his legs into the trenches, for sometimes they are very shallow, and sometimes the leg is engulfed to the shoulder.

Jan's horse slipped over one domino, went up to the shoulder into a trench, and off came the rider. Luckily he fell upon a heap of stones, and not into the mud, but he decided for all that to walk for a bit.

Every now and then one came across traces of the construction of a great road--white new stone embankments that started out of nothing, and went to nowhere, and Mike confessed that he had lost the path once more--

"When I come out of dat confounded mod!"

After a hustle across country we found the road, and wished that we had not, for it was a Turkish track in its most belligerent form.

At last we reached the top and rested awhile. Mike showed us his revolver.

"He good revolver," he said. "De las' man I shoot he killin' a vooman. I come. He run away. I tell 'im to stop, but he no stop, so I shoot 'im leg. 'E try to 'it me wi' a gon."

The man got fourteen years.

We pushed on again, and on the road picked up an overcoat, which later we were able to restore to its owner, a Turk, who was going to Nicks.h.i.tch to buy sugar and salt for Plevlie.

Bits of the big white road appeared and reappeared with insistence. We asked who was responsible for its inception.

"Sirdar," said Mike; "he good boy. Much work."

The country was now like brown velvet spread over heaps of gigantic potatoes.

Our horses grew slower and slower, and the inn which we were seeking seemed ever further and further away. We pa.s.sed many peasants, and had evidently entered the land of Venus, for each one was more beautiful than the neighbour. Since Jabliak we had not seen an ugly man or woman, and the dignity of their carriage was exceeded only by the n.o.bleness of their features. Ugly women must be valuable in these parts, and probably marry early; humans ever prize the rare above the beautiful.

Mike spoke to many of the girls, asking them their names and of their homes. One had his own name--which we forget--and he said that she must be his cousin, and that if she would wait where she was he would come back later and give her a lift.

At last we came to the wooden inn.

The better-cla.s.s inns have dining-room and kitchen separate, the second-cla.s.s both are one, but in each case the fire is made on a heap of earth piled in the centre of the floor; there is no chimney, and the smoke fills the room with a blue haze, smarting in the eyes; it drifts up to the roof, where hams are hung, and finds its way out through the cracks in the wooden roofing slats. This inn was second-cla.s.s, and along one wall was a deep trough, in which were four huge lumps of a white substance which puzzled us. First we thought it was snow, but that seemed impossible; then we thought it was salt--but why?

It was snow, there being no water fit to drink, so the snow was stored in the winter in huge underground cellars.

We got coffee and kaimak--a sort of cross between sour milk and cream cheese--and as a great honour the lady of the house, a villainously dirty-looking woman, brought us two eggs. Jan's was bad, but he put it aside, saying nothing, for it is impossible to explain to these people what is a "bad" egg--all are alike to them.

We took an affectionate leave of Mike, for here we degenerated to a carriage, which was waiting us, and he rode off, dragging our tired horses behind him.

As we were getting into the carriage the dirty woman ran up and, before Jo could ward it off, planted a loving kiss on either cheek.

We flung our weary limbs upon the rusty cushions. Our driver was a cheery fellow, who only answered "quite" to everything we said. We drove through miles of country so stony that all the world had turned grey as though it had remembered how old it was. The road twisted and curled about the mountains like the flourish of Corporal Trim's stick: below one could see the road, only half a mile off as the crow flies, but a good five miles by the curves. We were blocked by a great hay-cart. Our driver shouted and cursed without effect, so he climbed down from the box, and, running round the hay, slashed the driver of it with his whip.

We expected a free fight, but nothing occurred. When the hay had modestly drawn aside, we found "only a girl." Poor thing! she looked rueful enough.

The road was the best we had seen in all the Balkans, white and well-surfaced like an English country highway, and at last we clattered into Nicks.h.i.tch, the most important town of Northern Montenegro. It was like a fair-sized Cornish village, with little stone houses and stone-walled gardens filled with sunflowers.

A charming old major came to the inn to do us the honour we had telegraphed for, and together we strolled about the streets. There is a pretty Greek church at one end on a formal mound, and behind the town runs a sheer fin of rock topped by an old castle where once had lived another man who "was a gooman all to hisself;" now it is a monastery, and one of the most picturesque in Montenegro.