any rate on his return without me; so, on consultation with the sirdar in command at Danilograd, I sent back to Cettinje the horses we had come with, and hired those of a rayah of Podgoritza who had come to market at Danilograd, intending to go to Podgoritza, where we should hire other horses to Plamnitza, on the lake shore, whence we could proceed by water to Scutari.  I telegraphed the Prince to send his steam launch to meet me at Plamnitza; and, as my interpreter, the Montenegrin student, determined to run the risks of decapitation and go with me, I imposed on him a European costume, took away his revolver as a safeguard against dangerous excitement, put him under severe charge not to show that he understood the Serb language, and started in a pouring rain.

The road to Spuz was unique.  Now that Montenegro has entered into possession of the region, there is a carriage road, but the ancient one was a pavement of the days of Dushan which now ran along the top of a ridge like a hog-back in the middle of the road, on each side of which the track had been worn down by travel until the original road was as high as the backs of our horses above the actual track each side of it.  At the gate of Spuz we were stopped and our passports were demanded.  Mine had been visaed at Ragusa for Mostar, and Gosdanovich had the Russian passport, which is freely accorded to all Montenegrins.  The sentinel could read neither, and sent them to the konak with a demand for instructions.  Meanwhile the guard turned out to laugh at us sitting on our market horses in the pouring rain, our saddles being only blankets fastened on the pack saddles, on which we were perched high, the rain pouring off from every extremity of our costumes.  The messenger brought word to send us to the police office, and there we went.

A binbashi, grave, polite, and curious, invited us to be seated and ordered coffee.  He could speak only Turkish, and I tried English, French, and Italian in vain, when a bright Albanian lieutenant standing by made a remark in Romaic, and for the needs of the case I caught on.  He knew much less Romaic than I, but I could make him understand that I was the correspondent of an English journal going to Scutari, etc., etc.  Gosdanovich played his part well, and was as stolid as an ox, though the conversation, which he understood, between the Mussulman Serbs present was not at all cheering.  “Bah!” said one of the secretaries who sat writing on the mat beside the bimbashi, “I can kill twenty such men as that with a stick, and should like to do it—­such rubbish as they are—­I should like to send them all to the devil.”  “So should I,” replied the other.  Then one of them suggested that, though I was evidently a stranger, he felt sure he had seen Gosdanovich in Cettinje.  “Impossible!” replied the other; “no Montenegrin would dare to come here now.”  Finally came the doctor, an Italian, and we had an excursion into general politics, after which another coffee and cigarette, and then, with the visa of the bimbashi, we were permitted to move on to Podgoritza.