Two cairns on the road to Plavnica, and but half an hour from Podgorica, had often been pointed out to us.  They were erected to the memory of an attack made on four gendarmes in connection with a long-standing vendetta.  A party of Albanians had hidden themselves in two hollows beside the main road at night and as the gendarmes passed they fired into them, killing one and badly wounding two others.  This happened shortly before our arrival.

Another scene had been enacted a few days ago which they now related to us, to prevent us perhaps thinking too much of Keco’s story, and dreaming of it.

The men of the Zeta had sworn revenge for the death of their gendarme, a famous man and great favourite, but at the time Prince Nicolas had sternly forbidden reprisals.  But such things are not forgotten, and a man had crossed the Zem into Albania.  Coming on a party of men working in a field, he had fired, but his aim was unsteady, and he only wounded his intended victim slightly.  Then he fled, hotly pursued, and received a bad wound as he crossed an open space.  Still he managed to elude his pursuers for the time being, and reached the River Zem.  Here his strength failed him and he clung, half fainting from loss of blood, to the bushes fringing the bank, unable to go any further.  In this position a man of the clan Hotti found him, as he was coming along the river.  Having heard the shots and seeing a bleeding Montenegrin, he put two and two together and promptly shot him.  The other Albanians, directed by the report, now came up, and literally hacked the corpse to pieces.  So the Zeta peasants are now two deaths to the bad.  In conclusion, we were told that the authorities have reason to believe that the murdered man had been accompanied by others on his raid into a friendly country and were seeking for these men most diligently to punish them severely.

For their violating the border laws?

No, for deserting their comrade, and leaving him to meet his death alone, and the sentence for this craven deed is ten years.

Next morning we rode into Podgorica, and comparative civilisation, after a period of roughing it of the hardest description.  We had often gone from five a.m. till seven or eight p.m. on a couple of eggs and an occasional glass of milk, and had hard going all the time.  It proved to us pretty conclusively how we of civilised lands disgustingly and habitually overeat ourselves.

We finished considerably harder and more fit than at the start, and we had lived the whole time as the Montenegrins of the mountains live.

One remarkable gift of which these mountaineers are possessed, and which deserves special remark, is that of long-distance talking.  Men can speak with each other in the higher altitudes at distances of five miles and more, where our ears could hardly distinguish a faint sound of the human voice.  Children are accustomed to it at an early age, and the quaint sight of a mother conversing with her child guarding some sheep on a neighbouring hillside is often to be witnessed.  This gift must be acquired young, it seems, for Dr. S., who has lived twelve years amongst the Montenegrins, could neither make himself heard, nor understand, though he said that he had given himself much pains to learn the art.