the country to skirmish, and retard the advance of the Turks while reinforcements could be brought up.  “Ride hard,” said the voivode, “and keep ahead of the Albanians, for when it comes to fighting we shall probably have to disperse and every man provide for himself, and you do not know the country.  Tell the Prince to hurry up reinforcements.”  I lunched in the schoolhouse of Aluga, and pushed on for Bukowitza and Shawnik, where the invasion would be stopped with certainty.  Half way to Bukowitza there burst on us a terrific thunderstorm, with torrents of rain.  One bolt struck so near us that the concussion knocked my perianik down, and my horse jumped up on all fours as I never saw a horse do before, but neither was touched by the lightning, and we arrived at the first house of Bukowitza drenched and tired, having knocked the two days’ march into one.

The owner of the house at which we asked for shelter said:  “What I have you are welcome to, but I have only two rooms, that in which the family sleeps, and the kitchen.  You are welcome to the bedroom, but I fear there are too many fleas for you to sleep, and you had better stay in the kitchen.”  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.