The rest of the Albanians
continued their flight to Kolashin, the panic involving the regulars,
who insisted on returning, and, in spite of all remonstrances of the
officers, went back.
The hegumenos, Mitrofan Banovich, whose name deserves record as well
as any I heard of in this land of heroes, introduced to me the captain
of the Moratsha battalion, who had taken part in the fight. He had
lost his son in it, and of his four hundred men twenty-five had been
killed and forty put _hors de combat_ from wounds which disabled them
from fighting. The Wassoivich had exhausted their ammunition and
the unwounded of the Moratshani were only enough to carry away the
wounded; had the Turkish regulars maintained the attack, there could
have been no further resistance, the way would have been open to take
the Montenegrins about Danilograd in the rear, and Suleiman would have
had a clear course.
The captain told me of one brave Albanian who had fallen wounded from
his horse and taken shelter in a crevice of the rocks, and who had
killed two Montenegrins and wounded a third before he was disposed of
by one of them getting behind him and shooting him through a crevice
in the sheltering rocks. The manner of his death and that of those
of his assailants illustrate the war manners of the Montenegrins so
completely that I was interested in the case more than in other heroic
details of the fight.
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