The horse had
come the last few miles very heavily; I had been in the saddle twelve
to fourteen hours each of the last two days, and the food I could get
for him was insufficient even for a Herzegovinian mountain pony, so
that it was hard work to get him to a pace above a slow walk as we
approached Rieka; but when we left the place he seemed to realize that
he had a work of necessity before him, and that the light would not
see him through it, and he showed that he understood the case, for he
needed neither spur nor whip to make his best pace over the very rough
and difficult road. In spite of his best efforts, the darkness fell on
us half way to Cettinje, with rain and a fog which made it impossible
to see the way before me, or even to see the horse's ears.
There was on that road, on the mountain which frames on that side
the plain of Cettinje, a passage of the bridle-path which even the
Montenegrins, used to it, passed always on foot; a sharp ridge, almost
an _ar?te_ of rock, which carries a path hardly wide enough for two
horses to pass each other on it, and on each side of which the rock
falls away in a steep precipice high enough to leave no hope of
survival from a fall down it. If I had dismounted I could not have
seen the path before me; to stop and pass the night there, drenched
and cold as I was, would have been fatal, for we were in the early
cold of autumn in a high country; there was nothing for it but to
trust to the horse, and I threw the bridle on his neck and left him
to himself.
Pages:
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252