A binbashi, grave, polite, and curious, invited us to be seated and
ordered coffee. He could speak only Turkish, and I tried English,
French, and Italian in vain, when a bright Albanian lieutenant
standing by made a remark in Romaic, and for the needs of the case
I caught on. He knew much less Romaic than I, but I could make him
understand that I was the correspondent of an English journal going
to Scutari, etc., etc. Gosdanovich played his part well, and was as
stolid as an ox, though the conversation, which he understood, between
the Mussulman Serbs present was not at all cheering. "Bah!" said one
of the secretaries who sat writing on the mat beside the bimbashi, "I
can kill twenty such men as that with a stick, and should like to do
it--such rubbish as they are--I should like to send them all to the
devil." "So should I," replied the other. Then one of them suggested
that, though I was evidently a stranger, he felt sure he had seen
Gosdanovich in Cettinje. "Impossible!" replied the other; "no
Montenegrin would dare to come here now." Finally came the doctor, an
Italian, and we had an excursion into general politics, after which
another coffee and cigarette, and then, with the visa of the bimbashi,
we were permitted to move on to Podgoritza.
We had no further adventure on the road, and early in the afternoon
arrived at Podgoritza, an ancient Servian city, much dilapidated and
very picturesque, taking lodgings at an inn kept by a Christian, a
rather creditable establishment but absolutely empty of guests.
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