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A small detachment on the road had not been warned, and fired. Otherwise nothing occurred. Yes, Vuko is Mayor! All your old friends remain, Yanko Vukotitch, and all! Only the King and suite left. Mirko, as you know, remains." Here he burst out laughing. "He is tuberculous, you know, and will go to Vienna to consult a doctor!
Soon a boat appeared in the distance; it drew near rapidly; and, as on the night before, a man in a Tartar cap stepped out of it, but he now had his hair cropped round in the Cossack fashion, and a large knife was sticking out behind his leather belt. "Yanko," the girl said, "all is lost!" Then their conversation continued, but so softly that I could not catch a word of it.
Captain Royce could be stern enough when he let himself out. The emu-section of the dream being thus partly fulfilled, Bill clutched at a release in any form; and it happened that, simultaneously with the arrival of Captain Royce's mandate, came Tom Armstrong and his mate, Andrew Glover, from a job of ringing on the Yanko.
On July 11th Yanko told me all was ready, and he could take Scutari in ten days. He offered to take me there on a gun carriage. The artillery tracks to the mountains were completed, and the big guns were going up. Ox-carts creaked past at night, taking up the ammunition. The Turks, it was said with glee, dared not withdraw troops from the Bulgar frontier, and were hampered with revolts elsewhere.
I was workin' mates with a raw new-chum feller las' winter, ringin' on the Yanko. Grand feller he was name o' Tom but, as it happened, we was workin' sub-contract for a feller name o' Joe Collins, an' we was on for savin', so we on'y drawed tucker-money; an' beggar me if this Joe Collins did n't git paid up on the sly, an' travelled. So we fell in.
Yanko took his seat in the boat; the wind was blowing from the shore; they hoisted the little sail and sped rapidly away. For a long time the white sail gleamed in the moonlight amid the dark waves. Still the blind boy remained seated upon the shore, and then I heard something which sounded like sobbing.
An interval of silence followed. One thing, however, struck me in talking to me the blind boy spoke in the Little Russian dialect, but now he was expressing himself in pure Russian. "You see, I am right!" the blind boy went on, clapping his hands. "Yanko is not afraid of sea, nor winds, nor mist, nor coastguards! Just listen!
Madame Yanko begged me to go with her husband and photograph his entry into Prizren. The whole campaign, it appeared, was expected only to last a few weeks, and only 150 beds had been made ready at the hospital. The Montenegrins honestly believed that theirs was the finest army for its size in Europe. General Martinovitch told me to go off to Podgoritza if I wanted to see the first shot fired.
The big guns had already been taken up and were on the frontier, and ammunition was widely distributed, not only to Montenegrins, but also to the Serbs from Turkish territory, who came over the border at night. General Yanko Vukotitch was in command. There was a hospital full of wounded, and Andrijevitza was furious with the Government for having broken faith.
They stood and looked at Ridge as he sat on his wooden stool, and he stared back. For a moment the three gazed at one another in silence. Then the girl exclaimed, pettishly: "If that is all your famous Yanko amounts to, I have already seen enough, since he looks exactly like other men, only more ugly than some. Come, let us go."
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