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Updated: May 27, 2025
When we reached our hotel again we found the élite of the town waiting in the bar-room for us. There was a huge jolly Greek priest, all big hat and velvet, the prefect, the schoolmaster, a linguist, and the little black-hatted man whom we had mistaken for a hotel tout. The priest was president of the Montenegrin Red Cross, the prefect was a former Prime Minister and a Voukotitch.
We rode fast to the Colonel's cottage, sat down to the dinner table, which was decked with pale blue napkins, and a fine-looking old Voukotitch, an ex-M.P. in national costume, acted as butler. In spite of his seventy odd years he had joined the army as a common soldier. He refused all invitations to sit with us, for he knew his place.
During lunch the youngest Voukotitch tempted the major who was in splendid mood suggesting that it was rather tame to go home after having come within mere bowing distance of the Austrians, and that a few stray bullets would not incommode us. The major saw reason fairly quickly, so we bestrode our horses again and continued our switchback course.
Captain Voukotitch, the husband of a day, was appointed to be our guide for the morrow because Jo spoke Serbian. After tea we went up to the bubbly mosque, which was in reality the Greek church. We entered a large gate; on the one side of a yard was the church, and on the other a big two-storied rest-house, where one could lodge while paying devotions or doing pilgrimages.
It was almost dark, and one man began to play a little haunting melody upon a wooden pipe, but though they linked arms and shuffled their feet, the young men did not dance. At supper the Shadow revealed a quaint sense of humour, and so to bed. The next morning was lovely, and we started at seven with the youngest Voukotitch and the others.
When the first polite ceremoniousness had worn off we asked delicately about the front. "Did we wish to see the front?" Certainly, said the prefect, we should have the first horses that should come back to the town, and the little transparent shadow man should accompany us. And our letter to the Sirdar Voukotitch, commander in chief of the north?
Some officers had lent us their horses, and Voukotitch had proudly produced his English saddle for Jo. On the road the spirit of mischief entered him. "You can ride all right," he said; "wouldn't you like to go to the nearest machine-gun to the Austrian lines?" "Rather," said Jo. "You'll have to do some stiff riding, though. I know the major, and he is bored to death. He'll let us."
The Russian girl had been married only the day before to a Montenegrin officer, nephew of the Sirdar Voukotitch, Commander-in-Chief of the North, and she was flying back to Russia to collect her goods and furniture. Next day as we were sketching in the picturesque main street, from the distance came the sounds of a weird wailing, drawing slowly closer and closer.
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