" I accepted the kitchen, and after a supper of
hot maize bread and trout fresh caught from the nearest brook, the
whole flooded with cream, I spread my cork mattress on a long bench
which served as chairs for the household, and, covering myself with
my waterproof, the only bedding attainable, I went to sleep. I was
awakened by the sound of something falling on the waterproof, which
I took to be bits of plaster from overhead, but, as it persisted, I
struck a light and discovered that it was caused by bugs which, not
finding a direct way to me from their nests in the wall, had climbed
up and dropped from the ceiling down on me. What with the insects
and the chance of being aroused at dawn by an attack of the raiding
Albanians, I did not sleep again, and was up at dawn preparing to
continue the journey to Shawnik, where alone we could count on being
safe from the swarms of bashi-bazouks, whose movements we could
already follow in the air by the smoke ascending from house and
haystack over the plains we had traversed the day before.
The day had broken fine, and after stopping long enough to make a
sketch of the house where I had passed the night, destined like all
others in the open country to be burned in the course of the day, I
pushed on to the fastness of Shawnik. The advance of the Turks was
practically unopposed, for there was only a battalion of Montenegrins
against thousands of irregulars and a strong division of regulars, and
the Prince, never much troubled about the odds except where he was
personally responsible, had not sent a man of the reinforcements which
Peiovich had urgently begged for by courier after courier, so he fell
back skirmishing until Socica from Piva joined him, when he made a
stand.
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