“I’ll bet on it,” said Jan.

“A dinner,” answered Dum.

“Good,” said Jan.

This lent a new interest to life.

The very next day the Frenchmen told us that the Serb Government had arrived at Scutari; the Montenegrin Governor had telegraphed to commandeer and keep back the Benedetto.  We had been forgotten, and the French boat was to leave at dawn under escort.

She had been strictly forbidden by her owners to take passengers, but the Frenchmen had arranged through their minister to go by that boat if she left the first.

Telegraphic communication with the English minister at Cettinje was practically impossible; the only thing was to appeal to the captain.  First we rushed up the hill, and interviewed Captain Fabiano, who had already made various efforts to get us off.  He promised to try and influence the French captain.

Then we flung ourselves into a boat and made for the little steamer.  People were looking at something with opera glasses, and our boatmen took fright and wanted to row straight for land.  Jan cursed them so much, however, that they began to fear us more than imaginary submarines or aeroplanes, and brought us alongside the vessel.

The captain was ashore, taking a walk; the crew very sympathetically made contradictory suggestions as to his whereabouts.

At last we caught him.  He was nice, but had strict orders, he said, to take no one.

“But, monsieur,” we said, “if we were swimming in the sea, or cast off on a desert island, you would rescue us.”

He admitted it.

“Well, what is the difference?  Here we cannot get away; the food is growing less and less.”

He objected that he had no boats, and no life-saving apparatus.

“That is nothing.  We must get away from here.  We will give you a paper saying that it is on our own responsibility.  In this country one cannot telegraph, the telegrams never arrive.  You know the Balkans.”

He smiled.

“Oui, oui, c’est un pays ou le Bon Dieu n’a pas passe, ou au moins il a peut-etre passe en aeroplane.”

At last he agreed to take us if we could get a letter from Fabiano, and so take the responsibility from his shoulders.  This we got.  Fabiano said “Au revoir, bon voyage” for the fifth time, and at dawn we got a call, and quitted the bar-room floor for ever.  Fabiano wished us “bon voyage” for the sixth time in the chilly dawn, and we embarked.

The mate, a little round man, greeted us, and in the moments when they were not rushing about with ropes and chains the cook explained the Austrian submarine attack.

“You see, monsieur et dame,” said he, “they came in over there.  The Benedetto was lying outside of that sandbank, and that is the torpedo which is lying on the beach.  The one aimed at us came straight, one could see the whorls of the water coming straight at us, but it just tipped the sandbank and dived underneath our keel.  It stuck in the mud then, and the water boiled over it for a long while.”