of feeling one's way in the blue gloom, through reed and
water-lily beds, up this cliff-bound river, and far away the faint
twitter--also recurrent and monotonous--of some nightjar....

The night grew bitterly cold on the water. One of our passengers, a
little Russian dressmaker, had malaria and shivered with ague. Jo gave
her her cloak. The Frenchman's cook was unsuitably dressed, for she had
on but a thin chiffon blouse. We ourselves had summer clothes, and we
were all mightily glad to see the glare of Rieka in the sky.

Our luck be praised, there were two old carriages with older horses, and
another for the Frenchman. We supped moderately at a restaurant kept by
an Austrian, and still shivering scrambled into the carriages. We had no
lights, but the road was visible by the stars.

We went up and up, up the same road down which we had come three days
before. Below one could see strange planes of different darknesses, but
not any shape, and soon one was too aware of physical discomfort to
notice the night. Besides, one had had enough of night. Miss Petrovitch
told the boy to hurry up the horses; he beat them; she then rebuked him
for beating them. After a while the boy grew tired of her contradictory
orders, and lying down on the box fell fast asleep. The poor old horses
plodded along. To right and left were immense precipices, but nobody
seemed to care.

We reached Cettinje about two a.m., found the hotel open, and a room
ready for us, and in spite of our frozen limbs were soon asleep.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER X

THE HIGHWAY OF MONTENEGRO

We went next day to see the doctor, who was late, so we strolled out to
the market. They were selling grapes and figs, fresh walnuts, and lots
of little dried fish, strung on to rings of willow, from the lake of
Scutari. The scene, with the men in their costumes of red and blue, the
women all respectably dressed in long embroidered coats of pale blue or
white, and the village idiot, a man prancing about dressed in nothing
but a woman's overall, was very gay. We caught the doctor later. He was
talking with a Mrs. G----, an Englishwoman, from the hospital at
Podgoritza: she was trying to hustle him as one hustles the butcher who
has belated the meat. The doctor had let up his efforts since his orgy
of respectability in Scutari, and his beard and whiskers were enjoying a
half-inch holiday from the razor. With him was a Slav-Hungarian, who
recommended us to go home by G