Chapter FOUR

In Savage Europe--Real Brigands Before the Camera--The Brigand
Beauty and the Blood-Feud--Another Brigand Chief Offers me
“Sport”--A Murderer Tells his Strange Story--King Nicholas
Writes me a Poem--His Majesty Fines one of his Subjects
Five Francs and Pockets the Money.

On the day following the events recorded in the previous chapter, we were climbing the rocks--for Vatt and his bodyguard thought that they might get a shot at a bear--when there was a sudden alarm. The hawk-like eyes of my companions espied strangers, and a sudden halt was called. In a moment we were all under cover of the rocks. Every man unslung his rifle, and Vatt himself, with knit brows, drew his big silver-butted pistol, while I crouched behind a rock expecting something to happen.

Nothing, however, did happen. But, a few moments later, there were shouts from the opposite side of the defile, and my companions, leaving the shelter of the rocks, waved their rifles over their heads as a sign of greeting.

Vatt, replacing his pistol in his belt, spoke in a loud, sharp voice, and received an answer. Those mountaineers can throw their voices long distances, and be heard distinctly, a fact I often noticed.

Palok told me that the strangers were of the neighbouring tribe, the Kastrati, and that their chief, Dêd Presci, had come to pay Vatt a visit.

This was fortunate for me, since it gave me an opportunity of meeting the other ruler of Northern Albania. Next to the Skreli the Kastrati are most powerful in the Accursed Mountains, even to-day after the war.

Half-an-hour later we met our visitors. Dressed very similarly to my companions, they wore white, tasselless fezes instead of the little white skull-cap, while the black stripes down their trousers were somewhat different. The two chieftains touched foreheads, and afterwards I was introduced. Dêd Presci, a round-faced, pleasant man, rather stout and burly, his hair cut in mediæval style, gripped me warmly by the hand, saying:

“I heard that you were in Skodra during the _festà_. Some of my men told me there was an Englishman. But I never expected to meet you. Perhaps you are coming across to see me, eh? If so, you are quite welcome.”

“I may come next year to shoot, with a couple of English friends. May I visit you then?”

“Most certainly. You have only, through one of our men down in Skodra, to warn me of your coming, and I will give you safe escort,” was his reply. “If you are fond of sport, you will find plenty with us. Only bring a tent, and perhaps some provisions; for our food is not what you foreigners are used to.”

“Then I shall return one day before long,” I promised.

“Do. You need fear nothing, you know. We never betray a friend.”

“Or forgive an enemy,” added Vatt, laughing.

“Especially if he be a Turk,” I remarked; whereat both chiefs laughed in chorus.

That evening, in a small lonely house on the mountainside, I ate with the pair; and the moon had long risen before Palok and I returned to Lûk’s.

My camera was, from the first, regarded with a good deal of suspicion, and it was with very great difficulty that I persuaded anybody to be photographed. Many surreptitious snapshots I took with a small Brownie camera, for unfortunately I had run out of films for my larger Kodak. Those photographs, the first ever taken of the Skreli brigands, may be found in my book.

Early one morning, soon after sunrise, I was walking with Lûk and Palok when a young woman passed us.

“That is Mrika Koi Marashut,” Lûk remarked.

“And who is she?” I asked.

“Mrika, the woman who carried on the blood-feud,” was his answer. “Two years ago she was the most beautiful girl of our tribe, and had a dozen men ready to marry her. She married Lez, a smart young man from the Pulati side, and one of the _Baryaktar’s_ bodyguard, like myself. A month after their marriage Lez was treacherously killed by his brother, who lived down by the White Drin and was violently in love with her. When she received the news she became half demented by grief. But, by slow degrees, she formed her plans for avenging her husband’s death, and for carrying on the blood-feud, and, having no male relatives, resolved to take it on herself. She therefore left us and was absent nearly a year, during which time she persistently followed her brother-in-law first to Ochrida, in Macedonia, then to Uskub, Prisrend, and many other places, always awaiting her opportunity to strike the blow. This came one afternoon when her husband’s assassin was walking in the main street in Skodra, and she took Lez’s pistol from her belt and blew his face away. It was valiant of a woman, was it not? But not only that,” he went on. “Having killed the murderer, she went straight to his parents’ house, three days’ journey, and shot them both dead. Since then she has been back with us, now that poor Lez’s death has been avenged. I was sorry he died,” he added regretfully, “for he was one of my dearest friends.”

Murder is hardly a crime in Albania, for there life is cheap--very cheap. An enemy or a stranger is shot like a dog, and left at the roadside.

Palok told me of an incident that truly illustrates the utter disregard the Albanian has for other people’s lives. He was once with a man of the Hoti tribe--on the Montenegrin frontier--who had just obtained a new rifle, probably from a murdered Turkish soldier. While he was inspecting it a man passed close by, a stranger, whereupon the man with the new gun raised it to his shoulder, took aim, and fired. The stranger fell dead. Palok remonstrated, but his companion merely said that he was testing his gun’s accuracy. Was it not better, he asked, to test it that way, instead of waiting till face to face with an enemy?

The assassin in that region is never punished, except by those who take up the blood-feud. If the murder takes place in a town the guilty one escapes to the mountains, or gets away into Macedonia, or Serbia, where perhaps he earns his living by sawing firewood. Every few years the Sultan issued an _irade_ “for the pacification of the blood,” as it is put, and the murderer then returned. He paid a small tax to the Government, after which he cannot be arrested; and if he pays about three hundred crowns to the relatives of his victim, the blood-feud is at an end.

This, however, does not apply to the mountain tribes. They care not a jot for the Sultan’s _irades_ or the new King of Jugo-Slavia. There is no law, except that of the blood-feud, the vendetta falling on the murderer and on his next male relative. Many are the curious facts that I have heard regarding the blood-feud and the Albanian laws of hospitality.

A case in point was that of a young man named Koi, a friend of Lûk’s, a tall, wiry youth, of somewhat sinister expression--a typical bandit.

I was talking about the hospitality extended by the various tribes to each other, when Kol passed and Lûk beckoned him, saying:

“He has just had a curious experience in the Klementi country. Let him relate it to you.”

So at Lûk’s invitation the young fellow accepted one of my cigarettes, placed his rifle against the wall, and flung himself down on a small boulder near us.

He blew a cloud of smoke from his thin lips, stroked his knees with his hands, and looked at me with considerable curiosity, wondering why I should want to know his story.

“The stranger is interested in your adventures with the Klementi. Tell him all about them,” said Palok.

“Bah!” he said, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “It was nothing--mere chance--luck, if you like to call it so. There is nothing to tell.”

“But what there is interests the Englishman. He is the _Baryaktar’s_ guest, remember,” Lûk remarked.

“Well,” said the young man reluctantly, and Palok translated his words as follow: “The fact is that I was in blood-feud with a man of the Klementi, and went over there to kill him. I laid in wait one evening, and as he drove home his sheep I shot him from behind a rock. He had killed my father, therefore I had a just right to avenge his blood. My shot, however, aroused the whole valley, and I knew that I, the only stranger, would be suspected and killed. Therefore I sped away down the valley in the darkness till I reached a small mean house. An old woman was there, and I craved food and shelter for the night. She gave me food at once, for, like ourselves, the Klementi never send a stranger away. I was hungry, for I had crossed into the Klementi region in secret, and dared not seek food lest my presence became known to the man I intended to kill. Scarcely had I eaten the meal the old woman gave me when there came the sound of voices outside, and to my horror I saw four men carrying in the body of my victim.

“‘See!’ they cried to the woman who was befriending me. ‘One of the Skreli has killed your son!’

“Then I knew that it was the murdered man’s mother who had given me shelter. A moment later the men, among whom was the elder brother of the victim, discovered me.

“‘See!’ they cried. ‘There is your son’s murderer. We will kill him!’

“I stood with my back to the wall, knowing well that my last moment had come. The dead man’s brother raised his rifle while I drew my pistol, prepared at least to fire once more before I died. I was caught like a rat in a trap!

“The old woman, however, seeing my position and my helplessness, cried:

“‘No! Enough! Though he has killed your brother, you may not touch him! He is beneath our roof! He has eaten our bread, and our protection must remain over him till to-morrow’s sunset. Remember, my son, it is our law.’

“The man dropped his rifle, and his friends drew back at the old woman’s reproof.

“‘Go!’ she said to me, after glancing at her son’s body. ‘You have eaten our bread, and therefore you cannot be harmed.’

“‘Yes, go,’ added my victim’s brother. ‘Till to-morrow’s sunset I will not follow. But after that I shall track you down, and, before heaven, I will kill you!’

“Need I say that I took up my rifle, and, leaving the house, travelled quickly all night and all next day, until I returned here? But,” added Koi, with a slight sigh, “we shall meet one day, and he will most certainly kill me!”

Is there any other country in the world where such a strict code of honour exists? I am inclined to think not.

Had I been in the midst of a highly civilized people--a foreigner wandering in the wilds of Scotland, for example--I certainly should never have received the many charming kindnesses that I did at the hands of those rough, uncivilized tribes. Climbing like cats up the mountain-sides as they did, I was often compelled to lag behind, being unused to such walking. But, laughing merrily, those armed banditti would catch hold of my arms and pull me up the steeper places; they would roll cigarettes for me, become distressed when I grew fagged, and fetch and carry for me like children.

My neat automatic pistol was greatly admired as being a much more handy and serviceable weapon than their own big pistols--Austrian-made revolvers fitted to antique silver butts that had once done service to flintlocks. My weapon with its magazine was declared a marvel of ingenuity, and on many occasions Vatt and his men amused themselves by firing with it at targets.

Once he remarked, with a grim smile, that it would be a very handy weapon against the Turks. Where could he get one? Was it costly?

When I promised to send him one through a mutual friend in the bazaar down in Scutari, as souvenir of my visit, his joy knew no bounds.

A month later I fulfilled my promise, sending it across from Sofia, and I received an acknowledgment of its safe receipt.

I wonder whether or not he used it against the hated Turk? I know he has survived the Great War, and he no doubt struts about with it in his belt, a greater chief than all the others, because he possesses the very latest and deadliest of weapons. He is to-day still Chief of the Skreli, who defied the whole of the Turkish army.

On the same evening of my return to Cettigné from the Skreli country I had audience of King Nicholas, who listened with greatest interest to my account of Vatt Marashi and his tribesmen; for the latter were constantly raiding on his frontier.

After hearing me for over an hour he invested me with the dark-blue enamelled cross of the Order of Danilo, with its cherry-and-white ribbon. Knowing His Majesty to be a poet of no mean distinction, I ventured to ask him if he would write me a poem.

He laughed and replied vaguely, “Perhaps.”

Two days later a large envelope was ceremoniously delivered to me containing the following in Serbian, in his own bold handwriting:

S’ veledušnog Albiona
Pružiše se dvije ruke
Crnoj Gori da pomogu
U junačke njene muke

S’ vrućom rječu na ustima
Gladston diže Crnogorce
A Tenison za najprve
U svijet ih broi borce

Na glas svoih Velikana
Britanski se narod trže
Da pomože da zaštiti.
Crnu Goru iz najbrže

Posla svoje bojne ladje
Sto na tečnost gospostvuju
Veledušno da zašitite
Domovinu milu Moju

O fala ti po sto puta
Blagorodni lyudi Soju
Dok je svjeta dok je greda
Nad Ulcinjem koje stoju

Hraniće ti blagodamost
Ova šaka sokolava
Koima si u pomoci
Stiga putem od valova.

It was later translated into English by my friend Count Chedo Mijatovitch as follows:

From the great-souled Albion,
Two arms were stretched
To help Montenegro
In her heroic sufferings.

With fiery word on his lips
Gladstone lifts up Montenegrins,
Whilst Tennyson declared them
The very first fighters in the world.

On the call of their great men
British people rose up
In quickest manner, to help
And to protect Montenegro.

They despatched their warships.
Which rule over the seas.
Generously to protect
My Fatherland so dear to me.

Oh! thanks to thee, hundredfold thanks,
Noble race of men.
As long as the world lasts,
As long as the mountains above Dulcigno stand.

Will remain grateful to thee
This handful of falcons.
To whose help thou didst come
By the road of the waves.

Dear old King Nicholas was ever a paternal monarch. Each Thursday morning he would sit in a big arm-chair beneath the portico of his Palace, accessible to any of his subjects who wished to petition him. He would listen to their troubles, give friendly advice, and frequently dispense a rough-and-ready justice.

On one occasion, while walking in the main street of Cettigné, I saw him stop a man and ask for his revolver. The man addressed drew his weapon from his belt and gave it sheepishly to the king, who examined it, and, finding it unloaded, promptly fined him five francs. The man paid merrily, while His Majesty pocketed the money, with a smile of evident satisfaction! There was a law that everyone must go armed, and anyone found with a weapon without cartridges was liable to a fine. It was apparently His Majesty’s delight to go about and administer the law--to his own advantage!

When I went to the Palace to wish him farewell, he gave me several messages to his friends in England, and on that occasion presented me to his Consort, Queen Milena, a very handsome, white-haired woman, whose daughter the Queen of Italy much resembles. It is only while writing this page that Her Majesty’s death has occurred in Italy, and she has been buried side by side with her husband, in the picturesque Russian cemetery, overlooking the blue Mediterranean, at San Remo.

Her two other daughters I met while the pretty Princess Xenia was assisting me with the photographs--Princess Militza, who married the Grand Duke Peter of Russia, and Princess Stana, who became wife of the Grand Duke Nicholas. Both were pretty, dark-eyed girls, devoted to tennis, and hoping that one day Cettigné would establish a golf-course.

They had been in Rome with their sister, the Queen, on several occasions, and one afternoon as we sat at tea on the verandah of Prince Mirko’s house Princess Stana sighed and said:

“Oh! how I wish we were back in Rome! Elena always gives us such a glorious time at the Quirinal.”