Vukovich is in a deep hollow, and, as we rose on the ridge that separated it from the higher land on which the fight was going on, a rifle ball sung over my head and went on into the village.  Others followed, some plunging into the earth near us, and some striking the rocks.  We were just in the range of the insurgents, who were fighting up hill on the farther side of the hill, round the summit of which was the circle of breastworks held by the doomed Turkish force, and the bullets of the assailants ranged over to us.  It was my first experience under a prolonged fire, though not of being fired at, and I must admit that it put me in a terrible funk.  I put the largest Montenegrin of the group which accompanied us between myself and the firing party.  I had not eaten a crumb since the day before, or taken even a cup of coffee, and my legs were in cramp from the hard walking for six hours in mud and snow, and I was ready to drop from fatigue and hunger.  One of the chiefs who came by on his way to the ambulance, where the ghastly procession of wounded was now coming in, seeing me pale and exhausted, offered me his flask of slievovits (plum brandy), of which I drank a half-tumbler raw.  The effect was marvelous, and enabled me clearly to understand the meaning of the familiar term “Dutch courage,” so that I watched from afar the fight to the end without a return of funk.

The Turks were entrenched within a double line of stone wall, concentric, and the insurgents were fighting upwards, and when we came on the scene the fighting was still at the lower wall.  Presently there was a more rapid firing, then a moment’s lull, and then the firing broke out again from the upper breastwork.  The insurgents had charged and carried the lower line and reversed it, and the poor Turks surviving were driven into the inner circle of about a hundred feet in diameter, out of which not one could hope to come alive.  The rest of the garrison of Trebinje were so cowed by the result of the fighting the day before that they dared not come out to the relief of their comrades.

And so the night fell on us, and the bands returned to their camp, leaving a cordon to pen in the few remaining Turks.  We had many wounded, and a few killed, amongst whom was Maxime Bacevich, voivode of Baniani, and a cousin of the Prince of Montenegro, one of the bravest of the brave, whose death was moaned over by all as we gathered together that night in the large hut that served as headquarters.  It was a stone cabin of one room, at one end the stall for the cattle, and in the centre a fireplace, the smoke from which went out by a hole in the roof.  Three sides of the room were surrounded by a stone platform, wide enough for the tallest man to lie with his feet to the fire; but there was no furniture, not even a bundle of straw.  This was the bed of fifty men, lying side by side on the bare stone, my pillow being my felt hat, and my bedding my overcoat.  The fire was hot, and the smell indescribable,—­fifty