We were early on the move on Monday, December 20th, and hoped to reach the military station within an hour or two. The route began with its usual ferocity of mud, and the continuous effort, during hour after hour, of dragging the feet out at every step, was wearisome; leg-pulling that morning became a common form of entertainment, and rain fell in torrents all day.

We reached the military station at Ritzik at 11 o'clock a.m. The office was in an old monastery, and we waited for our turn to be served with bread, in an upper room. There our hosts were two Albanian (Franciscan) monks. The ponies and oxen had to wait in the pelting rain. There was, after all, no bread, but mealies were given instead, both for the men and for ourselves. We were disappointed, but made no comment, and, as we were leaving, the officer in charge whispered to me to say nothing about it, but he gave me quietly two large corn loaves of his own, in addition to the mealies, so we gave the extra mealies to the men.

The weather grew worse all day, and at dusk a heavy thunderstorm, with drenching rain, made shelter desirable. We had fortunately reached a village, and we went up to a house and knocked at the door. The occupants were women (Albanians), and we asked for shelter; this was refused, and we tried two other houses, with the same result. But the first house had a large shed which was only open on two sides, so I insisted on putting the ponies, and men, and ourselves, under the partial shelter during the storm, but it was already crowded with soldiers, and there was not standing room for us all. The women of the house came out, and we pleaded with them, asking them to allow us to go into one of their rooms, but in reply they burst into tears. This turned the tables on us; we could not all cry, and they had thought of it first. So we had to comfort them; a horrid waste of time in the deluging rain. They said that their neighbour's house had been pillaged by soldiers, and they were afraid of our soldiers. Finally, when we dried their eyes with money, they said that they would take in the women, but that all the men must move on at once. We would not, of course, agree to this, and as we were already wet to the skin, we thought we had better get warm by walking, and try and reach the next military station, which was, we were told, only two hours distant.

The night was now pitch dark, though there should have been a moon, and as we moved away from the slight shelter of some haystacks, into the road, the heavens shook, and thunder, lightning, wind, and hailstones, hurled themselves in unrestrained fury on us from the folds of night, and progress on the invisible road, which was full of mud-holes, was difficult. After we had been walking for an hour, a flash of lightning suddenly revealed that the road had disappeared, and that we were on the edge of a broad expanse of lake. Had we missed the road in the dark, and were we about to stumble into the Lake of Scutari? Another lightning flash showed us that there was no way round the water, unless we climbed steep hedges, impossible for the pack ponies. But it could not be Scutari Lake; it must be flood, and there was nothing to be done but to plunge into the water.

It was, of course, my job to go first; so I jumped on my pony, and told the others to wait and see what happened. There was nothing to guide you as to the depth of the water, and you couldn't see a yard ahead, except when the lightning flashed capriciously; but the worst that could happen would be a ducking. I plunged; the water was up to the saddle girths, and there were holes and boulders every few yards; but we all crossed safely. We were now doubly wet, from rain above and from water below, but this was a useful encouragement to everyone to continue in spite of fatigue.

And at this point we decided that we would be bold, and push on to Scutari, as no earlier military station seemed likely. A hot drink might save some of them from catching cold, but we couldn't light fires, or stop in the pouring rain, and we had no brandy or whisky, so I concentrated thoughts on obtaining some refreshment. The miracle always happens, if you will it to happen, and look out for it. We were trudging along silently, no sign of life anywhere. All the other columns had mysteriously disappeared, and we had the dark road to ourselves, when I noticed a house, a hundred yards back from the road, on our right. I told Vooitch to go up to it, and knock, and to ask the inhabitants to give us something hot to drink; he said the house was uninhabited. "Never mind; do as I ask you." He went and knocked, and, behold, the door was promptly but charily opened. I rode quickly up, and went in, before they could shut the door, and I saw that the house had been a wine and spirit shop. Round the walls were shelves on which stood bottles. A fire was lighted in the middle of the floor, and three or four men were seated round it, on the floor, smoking and drinking. The owner said he had no wine and no rakiya in the place. He had closed his shop and had sent away his wares. But he couldn't get away from the fact that the men round the fire were drinking cognac. "Yes; very well." He would give us what he had, but he was nervous lest we should let it be known to others that his shop was open. We reassured him on this point, and within a few minutes, we were all inside that room, drinking cognac out of tiny glasses, and every man and woman of the column had his or her share. We then divided amongst us all, the two cornbread loaves given us in the morning, and we all felt much refreshed.

And at 10 p.m. we reached Scutari—Military Headquarters. It seemed too good to be true. We had reached our goal, and the human portion of the column was intact. Nunc dimittis. The town was deserted for the night; the streets were empty; everyone in bed. The column halted in a side street, while V. and I went to find quarters. It was too late to bother the Commandant at Headquarters. I came to the conclusion that he would not have expected men to arouse him out of his slumber, and we mustn't take advantage of sex. But we must wake somebody. People are impersonal till you know them, and you can be callous with impersonals; so I fixed on the Prefect.

He was guarded by a sentry, who was clothed in impenetrable armour of stupidity, obstinacy, and ignorance; but before he closed the door in our faces, he suggested that we should go to the headquarters of the gens-d'armerie.

We went. And after various adventures in a huge rabbit-warren building, an officer who was on duty, sent a man to take us to our own Commandant, who would, he said, probably have made arrangements for us. For an hour, whilst the others were waiting in the rain, we wandered up and down the streets with this soldier, who pretended he couldn't find the Commandant's house. Finally, when I grew fiercely angry, the man at last discovered the house, and we went in, only to find that the soldier on guard would not awaken the Commandant. I told him how angry the Colonel would be when he learned how we had been treated, and that the Commandant need not even turn in his bed, to tell the soldier where we were to go; and, in truth, as I heard next day, rooms and a good dinner had been prepared for us. But I was then desperate, and decided to go boldly to the British Consulate. We had found quarters for the men and ponies in the barracks. We, V. and I, marched to the big door in the high walls which enclosed the British Consul's house, and rang the bell. An old Italian servitor answered it. I asked him, as it was now too late to see the Consul, to let us have the use, for the night, of the Consul's kitchen, in which to dry our clothes. He said, "No; impossible." But another, older man, appeared and he was softer hearted, and said we might have a room; not the kitchen, but an empty room next to the kitchen, which was, at this time, kept for tramps. I completed the heart-softening process, with a little palm oil, and Vooitch went back to fetch the staff.

When they arrived, at 1 a.m., I was able to usher them proudly into a room which contained—a rare luxury in Scutari—a fireplace. The grate was tiny, but wood—very scarce in this town—soon made a hospitable blaze, and we crowded round that tiny fireplace, trying to dry wet clothes. Our old Italian friend brought us a kettle of boiling water for some tea, dragged out some mattresses from a corner of the room, and we laid ourselves down to sleep. We could have cried for joy at being inside a friendly house once more.

Next morning, Tuesday, December 21st, no early trek! Breakfast at the grotesquely late hour of eight o'clock; almost the first time that I had been up later than 4.30 since we left London. I was up in time to write a line to the Consul, for him to receive with his seven o'clock cup of tea, telling him of the increase of his family during the night. We didn't know that though the British Consul lived here, the owner of the house was Major Paget, an old inhabitant of Scutari. The Major came to see us at eight o'clock, and most hospitably said we might stay as long as we were in Scutari, and he told his man, Parkes, to make tea for us and to do all that he could to make us comfortable. Parkes did not need to be told twice. He was an Englishman and glad to see other English people, and he was very kind to us.

At nine o'clock, Major Paget took me to see the British Consul, Mr. F. W. Monaghan, who was also very kind. And all day long, the scene at the door of our little ground-floor-back was like a scene in the last act of a play, in which every sort of unlikely person unexpectedly turns up. We had just indexed Major Paget, and Mr. Monaghan, when the kindly countenance of Sir Charles Des Graz, British Minister, whom I had met at Nish, appeared in the doorway. He asked me to have tea with him, in the afternoon, upstairs; he also was living in the house! After that, we were not surprised when Colonel Phillips, British Military AttachÉ, also arrived. He had often dined with us at Kragujevatz, and he and I had never agreed upon the subject of Balkan politics.