There was in our camp a young German officer who had been under a shadow, and had been sent away to retrieve his reputation for courage.  He came to Montenegro to earn a decoration, and begged the Prince to let him go with the Montenegrin battalion.  At the foot of each ridge was an outwork which had first to be taken by assault, from across the open, and which was taken in the early twilight, the Turks seeking refuge in the redoubt above.  The Montenegrin force reversed the works they had taken, and a desultory rifle fire went on till it was too dark to see the sights of the rifles.  We, the spectators, were assigned posts to see the spectacle as at the theatre, and went to them just after sundown.  The straggling fire of the early twilight stopped, and there was an unbroken silence and immobility which lasted perhaps twenty minutes, and until everything had become vague and indefinable in the deepening twilight, when we heard the signal, given by a trumpet call, and instantly the steep sides of the two ridges were crawling with gray shadows, and a terrific fire burst out from the redoubts at the top, lasting for hardly ten minutes, when it as suddenly ceased; and then, after a brief pause, the Montenegrin trumpet sounded from the summit of their ridge to tell that the work was done.  We trooped back to our tents and to supper, and presently came in our little German friend, unharmed and exultant.  His account was graphic.  The Montenegrins had taken the outwork, working up on hand and knee, crawling and firing from such cover as they could find until the Turks broke and escaped to the summit, and the Montenegrins lay close behind the wall they had taken.  When the trumpet sounded they threw their rifles down, drew their sword bayonets, and made a rush with the naked steel.  The fire broke out from the redoubt above, said our little German, with a roar that was absolutely appalling; it was as if the sky were woven with whistling missiles, and but for very shame, seeing the rage of combat in the men around him, he would have lain down in overmastering panic.  But no man halted, and the race between the two battalions was won by the Montenegrins only by a minute, and they poured over the wall of the redoubts, the Turks who could escape going out at the rear as their assailants poured in.  When it comes to this final charge, the Montenegrin always leaves his gun behind and trusts only to the cold steel.

The next morning a flag of truce came to ask for terms, and the town surrendered on condition of the garrison going out with their arms and their private property.  We went out to see them defile past the Prince and his staff.  The poor fellows were in rags, and the bundles they carried on their backs contained everything they had in the world.  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.