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They were, when prisoners, the most amiable people possible, and at one time I saw many in Cettinje, prisoners taken in the fights about Podgoritza, enjoying the freedom of the place and making themselves useful to the women, bringing wood and water, and as inoffensive as children.
"The Prefect is only more unpleasant than Podgoritza," said Jo to the American in the mackintosh; but he deduced dyspepsia. The Prefect, having been to his office and having seen the lieutenant, came back in five minutes, rather more suave in manner, and announced impressively that he was going to give us his own carriage.
Later the men had bivouacked, and all along the rest of the road we passed little fires of fresh brushwood, the sparks pouring up like fountains into the night, round which the soldiers and drivers were sitting and singing their weird songs. At Podgoritza we found Dr. Lilias Hamilton at supper with her staff. She has had rather a hard time.
Our Albanian captain preferred the climate of Cettinje to that of Podgoritza, and there I made his acquaintance. He had not received a penny of his pay for forty months, and was in rags and shoeless in the depth of winter, when I knew him. I bought him some shoes and second-hand clothes, and interested the Prince in his case, so that finally he was given a place on the staff and regular pay.
But for the devil and Holy Russia, we might have been shouting "Zhivio Kralj Mirko!" I wondered if it hurt badly and felt sorry for him, for I have been ploughed in an exam, myself. We were a tight fit in our box. Gazivoda, head of the police at Podgoritza and brother-in-law to Vuko, was there. He, too, was assassinated a few years afterwards. And there was a crowd of Vuko's pretty daughters.
"Never forget a face," he said, "never forget its name. That is the secret of popularity." He was very anxious that we should go to Cettinje and to Scutari. He kindly promised to see about it, to arrange for our horses and to have our passage telegraphed before us. At Podgoritza he said a government motor-car should wait for us.
He knew what his country was doing, and cried: "Mon Dieu, Mademoiselle, I hope you will not write a book for five years! You know too much." To avoid being besieged in Scutari I left for Podgoritza at once, and found Podgoritza so certain of war that I was begged to stay and see the first shot fired. Why war was then postponed I never made out. Perhaps Montenegro had to wait for Bulgaria.
No Montenegrin would venture into the Turkish territory with the certainty of incurring decapitation, if not in my company, at any rate on his return without me; so, on consultation with the sirdar in command at Danilograd, I sent back to Cettinje the horses we had come with, and hired those of a rayah of Podgoritza who had come to market at Danilograd, intending to go to Podgoritza, where we should hire other horses to Plamnitza, on the lake shore, whence we could proceed by water to Scutari.
It ought to have been extraordinarily good fun, this camp under the vast heavens and these wild visitors, but it was not such fun as it ought to have been because both Amanda and Benham were extremely cold, stiff, sleepy, grubby and cross, and when at last they were back in the way to Podgoritza and had parted, after some present-giving from their chance friends, they halted in a sunlit grassy place, rolled themselves up in their blankets and recovered their arrears of sleep.
On our way downstairs we called in to thank the Minister of War for our jolly trip; and he wished us "Bon voyage." We got en route almost up to time, with us was Mrs. G , who was also going back as far as Podgoritza. She was storekeeper and accountant for the Wounded Allies, and ever had a hard and troublesome task between what she needed and what she could get from the Sanitary Department.
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