On Friday, December 10th, we were up at dawn as usual, and we trekked along a better road to Berani. When we were outside the town, halting for a few minutes, I found the men talking excitedly, and I discovered that they were very angry with Sandford and Merton. This couple, on the pretext of going on ahead, to procure bread and hay, had left us on the morning of the Arnaut scare, had taken with them the Government money, and had not returned. We had elected another commissaire, and J. G. was acting as treasurer, and using our own money. The men knew that many soldiers from other columns had deserted. To avoid evils of which they knew—hunger, weariness, discomfort and home-sickness—they had flown to others of which they knew nothing, and I guessed that our men might argue, that if now the superior Sandford and Merton had also thought it wise to desert——. But I reminded them that there would be no Serbian homes to go to, unless the Serbian Army was preserved. The longest way round was the shortest way home. "For the sake of your own people, and your own land, you must," I told them, "march bravely forward now." "Your own people, your own land!" The words came glibly enough, though I knew that they would hack, like a sword with jagged edges, at the hearts of those dead living men. But it was my duty to keep them with us to the end, wherever and whatever that end might be.

And then, by a coincidence, Sandford and Merton at that moment reappeared. I asked them sternly where they had been, and they replied with a naÏve frankness which disarmed me: "We were afraid of the Arnauts, and we ran away, to get quickly to Berani; we thought we should be safer there." Comment was useless: we are not all born heroes. But had they, I asked, at least, during their time in Berani, secured bread and hay for men and cattle? I braced myself for the inevitable answer, but when the poisonous words exuded, dropping soft and pulpy into the mud in which the men stood, "Hleba nema" (bread, none), "Ceno nema" (hay, none), "Y Berani, nema nishta" (in Berani, nothing at all), I wished I had been born in Whitechapel. Piety was out of place. But I was pious, and I told them to go back to the town and try again; Vooitch and I should also go there to secure what they would try for.

The column waited for Vooitch and me on the far side of the town. A few shops were still open, and maize bread, at exorbitant prices, was being carried by triumphant buyers through the streets. This made our mouths water, and presently gaolbird met a Montenegrin friend (from the United States) who had an official position in the town, and he generously made us a present of a huge loaf of corn bread, and sent a gens-d'arme with us across the bridge (over the river Leem) to the other side of the town, to direct us to the houses of the Prefect and of the Governor, from whom I hoped to get bread rations, now very much overdue. I felt sure from the look of things that we should get them. But I was told that the Governor was ill in bed. All the better, I thought; he won't be able to get away from me. Starving people don't stand on ceremony. I went to his bedroom, knocked at the door, for form's sake, and walked in. He didn't seem very ill. Perhaps the shock of seeing me revived him. I expressed sympathy with his illness at such an inopportune moment. Could we help him in any way? No? Very well, but he could help us. Military rations were overdue, and somewhat difficult to get. Would he very kindly write a note for us to the Prefect? This was done. The Prefect was away lunching, but after a little trouble we unearthed him, and we obtained 25 kilos of bread for the men and for ourselves. Thanks to a little searching-eye business, short-weight of loaves was discovered, and finally the glad-eye business secured an extra couple of loaves. We also obtained the hay for the cattle. I hoped that Sandford and Merton would be ashamed, but they were not.

It was three o'clock before we rejoined the others, and were able to give the ponies and the oxen food. Roshai was already in the hands of the Schwabes, and we must not dally, so we trekked till dark, bivouacked partly in a paddock, and partly in two rooms of a house belonging to an Arnaut and his wife. The latter could not read, and had never been beyond her village of Vootsche.

On Saturday, December 11th, the usual routine. Over mountains, and through mud which had been churned into jelly, by countless hoofs of oxen and horses. Towards the end of the day we were in a narrow lane, which was bounded on one side by a high hill, and on the other by a deep precipice over the river. The mud was three feet deep, and when I looked round to see if all were following, I saw one of our ponies lying, half-drowned, in the mud, and our indomitable cook was sitting on its head, to prevent the pony rolling over the edge, whilst one of the men was loosening the pack.

We were now near Andreavitza; our road led near to, but not through the town, and we cherished hopes of oil, and candles, meat and bread. We arrived at 4 (dusk) at the cross-roads, and placed the column in a convenient field, amongst trees, on the eastern side of the bridge. A blustering sergeant came up and ordered us to move; no one was allowed, he said, to camp on this side of the bridge; the officer on the bridge had given this order. I didn't believe it; our sergeant wanted to give in and meekly to move on, but as there was no other good site near, I rode on to the bridge, and saw the officer, who, of course, allowed us to stay. I would have given much that evening not to have been obliged to sally forth to look for bread and hay, but if I had not gone, the result would have been "nema nishta." The shopping party set forth full of high hopes for the town. "Buy me this, that, and the other thing," cried optimistically those who were left in camp, as if we were in Piccadilly.

But, as usual, in the town it was "Nema! nema!" everywhere. The only triumph was a tiny bunch of tallow candles, and a promise from the Prefect of bread for to-morrow. Always bread to-morrow; never bread to-day. But we met an officer who knew us, and he kindly insisted on treating us to cups of coffee, at a cafÉ which had open doors for the last time. No food was procurable. We were on our way back to camp, when in the street, a man came towards us carrying—we couldn't believe our eyes—three shining silver fish upon a string. They were not trout, but memories of happy fishing days in Norway, Sweden, Finland, gave this fish an added glory. We stopped him and asked if he would sell them. The sight of them made us fastidious towards thoughts of bully beef awaiting us in camp, and we would have given almost anything he asked. He would not sell them, but to our surprise he said: "I will give you this as a present," and he put the largest fish into my hands, and at that moment I thought Andreavitza, with its mountain setting, and its picturesque church, the most lovely townlet in the world. In camp we slept round the fire as usual, under the espionage of the highest mountains of Montenegro.

Next morning, Sunday December 12th, we were late in starting, as we had to wait for the return of the men sent to fetch the bread from the military station in Andreavitza. When the sergeant saw the fifty loaves (25 kilos), he brought with him to the distribution, an admonitory rod, to ensure that no man should take more than his due share. As long as bread was procurable, the men need not starve, as trek ox could always be sacrificed, and I frequently had the melancholy task of deciding that the weariness of death was coming over such and such an ox; he had been lovely and pleasant in his life, and now in his death, he must be divided. And for ourselves, our supply of mealie meal, and rice, and beans, still held out. We saw too much of the inward ways of oxen, along the road, to be keen to eat the roast beef of Montenegro. We had said good-bye to butter, jam, milk, sugar, and biscuits, long ago, but we were, of course, in luxury compared with many thousands, and we had long outgrown the absurd habit of thinking that it is necessary to take nourishment every two or three hours.

And now, on this Sunday, to our surprise, we found ourselves upon a road which was more like a Corsican, than a Montenegrin road. Steep, very steep, all day long, but with excellent surface and excellently graded. We were grateful, as it allowed us to be more polite than we had been of late, to the wondrous scenery. But even now, only in a distant fashion. The beauty of Nature depends, for each one of us, upon what the mind reads into it, and the mountains of Montenegro, reflected from every stone, the hungry hearts of an exiled people.

By the evening we were amongst the hill-tops; the mountains of Montenegro and Albania were all around us, naked, precipitious, and inhospitable rocks, with occasional gloomy forests of beech, and fir trees, interspersed. Majestic, magnificent, and the magnitude of outlook, wonderful, no doubt, but my heart refused to praise this sarcophagus of hope. How could mountains be beautiful which enclosed such sorrow? How could their air invigorate, when it carried, not the scent of flowers, or the breath of the sea, but the stench of the unburied dead? As empty shells, upon the hills, reveal the presence in the past, of the waters of the sea, so the bones of men upon these mountains, will, in the future, betray the wave of human life, which flowed westwards to the coast.

The river at Andreavitza had been, when we saw it, green, of a colour which no painter could ever hope to mix; but I found myself comparing it to a green satin ribbon, which is a detestable thing. The river fell in fine cascades, and should, to a sympathetic ear, have sounded the arpeggio of the common chord of Nature; but I only heard the thumping of a child's fists upon the piano. And now the sunset hues amongst the hill-tops were, to me, the funeral colours of the dying sun, and the crimson gleam slowly spreading over the dead white snow, was bloodstain which would never melt.

Moist clouds, and mist, came down from heaven to try and veil the harshness of the mountains, in gossamers of mauve and purple, dragged from the setting sun, but they could not veil the memory of the suffering they enclosed; suffering of battle-fields and suffering worse than that of battle-fields.

We turned our eyes impatiently again to the road scenes. We were much interested in trying to induce a pony, which had been abandoned on the road, and was now recovering, to come with us: we needed all the four-legged help we could get. Colson and Jordan cheered it on with bundles of hay, and a touch of stick, and brought it into our night's camp. This latter was in a thick beech wood. The ground was our bed, and the dead beech leaves were our mattresses. During the night we had a scare of Arnauts, when a number of men rushed past us, shouting excitedly, but they were only in pursuit of a thief. If he was caught, he would be shot; if he was not caught, he would die of starvation. Death! Death! everywhere. Always Life fleeing from Death, and always Life overtaken in the end.