For several days the two armies watched each other, each waiting for
the offensive of the other, until one morning found the plain covered
with a fog so dense that the combatants could not see each other one
hundred yards away, when the Montenegrins made an attack so furious
that the Turks retreated and took refuge across the Tara and withdrew
to Kolashin, abandoning the movement and the attempt to relieve
Niksich. But the beautiful schoolhouse at Aluga and all the houses and
churches on the planina and at Bukowitza, the haystacks which had so
picturesquely dotted the plain, and which were to have furnished the
winter subsistence of all the flocks of the region, were ashes.
The night at Shawnik had proved as sleepless from fleas as that of
Bukowitza from bugs, and, what with the fatigue of the race against
time and the lack of any sleep for forty-eight hours, the next day
found me laboring under an attack of illness which left me absolutely
helpless, with a raging headache and cholera morbus. I dragged myself
out into the sun and ordered my horse boy to bring me a bucket of
water as hot as I could bear my feet in, and then made him keep it
hot with ashes until my feet were almost parboiled, when the headache
gradually subsided, leaving me a wilted, helpless being, hardly able
to sit in the saddle. I waited another day to recruit, and hoping to
hear from Peiovich the result of the invasion; but, hearing that the
deadlock might last for days, I returned to Niksich and found the
siege still going on as if it were the work of the generation.
Pages:
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228