After supper we sat growing colder and colder.  At last, in desperation, we asked if there were no place in the village which had a fire.

“Oh yes, there is a fire in the other cafe,” and thither we were conducted.

We were in a jolly wooden room, with a blazing stove and a most welcome fugginess.  The hostess brought us rakia, coffee and walnuts, and did her utmost to make us comfortable.  Montenegrins crowded in, and discussed the probable end of the war.  There was little enthusiasm shown, most of the talk was of the hardships, and a little grumbling that the farms were going to pieces because of the lack of men.

Before leaving Plevlie, Dr. Clemow had presented Jan with a box of Red Cross cigars, and he handed one to the captain.  The official received it gratefully.

“Ah!” he said.  “Cigars, eh!  One does not often see those nowadays.”

The cigar was a Trichinopoli.  Jan said nothing, but watched.  The captain lit the cigar manfully, and for some minutes puffed, looking the apotheosis of aristocracy.  Presently his puffing ceased, he looked thoughtful, and then saying that he had forgotten an important paper which he had not signed, he fled.  We found the cigars most useful afterwards, as a sort of spiritual disinfector, infallible against bores.

Into the cracks of the ceiling were stuck white and yellow flowers, thyme and other plants, till the roof looked like an inverted flower-bed.  We had noticed this custom before, and asked Mike if it had any significance.

“Oh yes,” he answered, “all dose tings, dey stuck up dere ’gainst de fleas ’n bugs.”

This was translated into Serbian, and the woman boxed his ears.

We supped on meat—­three courses—­meat, meat, meat, and so tough that our teeth bounced off, and we were compelled to bolt the morsels whole.  One course tired us out, weary as we already were with our journey, but Mike, making up for his former abstinence, wolfed all his own share and what remained over from ours.

The night was so cold that we went to bed in our clothes, and even then could not sleep for hours.

We woke with difficulty to a glorious day, and found that what we had thought yesterday to be a plain was in truth a great plateau surrounded by towering grey mountains on which were gulfs and gullies filled with eternal snow.  Jabliak is a queer village, fifty or sixty weathered wooden houses—­with the high-peaked roof of Northern Serbia—­flung down into this wilderness, where the grass and crops fight for existence with the pushing stones, and where the summer is so short that the captain’s plum tree—­the only one—­will not ripen save in exceptional years.  Never a wheel comes to Jabliak, and so it is a village without streets.  Everything which passes here is horse-or woman-borne, and for hay they use long narrow sledges which slide over the stones and slippery grass as though it were snow.