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.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE TAKING OF NIKSICH

To the Prince the siege of Niksich was like a game of chess played by cable, a move a day.  But even this brought progress, and, when we had taken the outlying blockhouses, one by one, and there remained only the citadel, a flimsy fortress, mainly, I should judge, the work of the Servian kings, all that remained to accomplish was the bombardment of its walls, which became a sort of spectacle, to which we went day after day to watch the effect of the fire, as we should have done with a game of skittles.  I climbed up on the top of a neighboring mountain, and, with my field-glass, inspected the town.  Women went and came with their water-pitchers on their heads, moving in serene tranquillity, without quickening a step, and the life of the place seemed absolutely undisturbed by the danger, as if shells did not burst.  Now and then one of the houses caught fire and varied the show; the Turkish return fire was mainly directed at the batteries where the great Russian guns were posted, and the Montenegrins used to sit on the rocks around, utterly heedless of the Turkish fire, despising cover.  Finally a shell fell and exploded in the midst of a group of men, and, for the time, cover was made compulsory by order of the Prince.  But the rank and file grew impatient, and demanded an attack with such insistence that the Prince was obliged to move.  There were two steep ridges to the west of the city, crowned by strong stone breastworks and held by considerable detachments of regulars, being positions of supreme importance, as they commanded the redoubts on that side from a distance of 300 to 500 yards.  The Prince gave the assault of one to a battalion of Montenegrins, and the other to the Herzegovinian auxiliaries.