Wives and children in numbers followed or preceded, and to our
attempts to show them little kindnesses they shrank from us as if we
had been wolves, the children generally howling with fear when we
offered them a biscuit or a coin. One of our battalions escorted them
through the narrows of the Duga, and, when they reached the wild and
bosky gorge which makes its strongest position, the women stopped in a
paralysis of panic, asking if this was the place where they were to be
butchered, so completely had the Turkish authorities impressed on them
the fiction of infallible slaughter for all who fell into the hands of
the Montenegrins. The Prince gave the inhabitants four days to choose
whether they would stay and become his subjects or take all their
possessions and go to Albania. The most had decided to stay, when word
was sent them from Spuz that all who accepted the protection of the
Prince would be expelled and have all their property confiscated when
the Turks returned, and many were frightened into revocation of their
submission. Some were as irreconcilable as wolves, and would not
endure conversation with us. I found a little fellow, about five or
six, pasturing a lamb in the outskirts of the town, and tried, with
the aid of the interpreter, to enter into conversation with him, but
to no effect. He repelled every advance, and, when I offered him a
piastre, he refused it with a savage dignity, saying that he had money
of his own and did not want mine.
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