We compared notes on this part afterwards.  “Happy hunting?” we inquired like Mowgli’s friends.  It was good to sit by the big kitchen stove holding bits of dripping clothing to the blaze; the downfall at Cettinje the evening before having completely drenched our damp things again.

Next day outside the world was white and silent, the snow covering the little city and its intrigues with a thick whitewash.

The minister was the kindest of hosts and could not do enough for us during our stay.  Cettinje had not changed much.  The hotel-keeper showed an intense and violent anxiety to leave Montenegro.  Never had his native Switzerland seemed so alluring and never was it so unattainable.  The chemist, who owned a little one-windowed shop, was engaged to the king’s niece, quite a lift in the world for her, as she was marrying a man of education.

Penwiper, the dog, was still in sole possession of the street, and again went mad with joy at the sound of English women’s voices, and accompanied us everywhere, generally upside-down in the snow, clutching our skirts with her teeth.

Jan was in and out of the Transport Office door while Miss Brindley and Jo were being followed around the streets by a jeering crowd of children, who seemed to think that Miss Brindley’s india-rubber boot-top leggings and Jo’s corrugated stockings and safety-pinned-up skirt out of place.  We bought some bags from a woman we afterwards heard was suspected of being an Austrian spy.

Poor old Prenk Bib Doda was in our hotel.  He was Prince of the Miridites.  As a boy he had been kidnapped by the Turks and haled off to Constantinople.  Grown to a middle-aged man in captivity, he was restored to his tribes during the Young Turk Revolution, only to be abducted by the Montenegrins, and to be kept practically a prisoner in Cettinje.  We don’t know if he disliked it, possibly not, for his walk in life seems to be that of a professional hostage, if one may say so.  His ideals of comfort were certainly nearer to the cabarets in Berlin, than to the wild orgies of his own subjects.  In fact he was civilized.

A passage across the Adriatic seemed problematic.  The Transport Minister hoped we might catch a ship that had tried to leave Scutari three times, but had always been thrown on the beach by storms.  The great difficulty was crossing the lake of Scutari.  One steamer had been mysteriously sunk and another damaged.  He promised to arrange a motor for us directly he should be able to put his hand on a boat to take us across the lake.

Jan and Jo simultaneously began to wish they had not eaten sardines at Rieka.  The attack was very violent, and next day Jo stayed in bed, refusing the page boy’s efforts to tempt her with lunch.

“See,” he said, bearing in a third dish, “English, your i risshkew.”

Jo pretended to be pleased, and made Jan eat the Irish stew after his lunch, so that the page boy’s feelings should not be hurt.