Into the land of Montenegro, the land of the Black Mountains, which already threatened precipitously to bar our way, we must now force an entrance. Our first path, about two feet wide, ran through a thick wood; I went first, and led my horse, for, though there were plenty of men to lead it, I guessed that I should better be able to sympathise with the difficulties of the road, if I had to overcome them first myself; and I wished to choose the route. Colson, Jordan, Vooitch, George, and Ilia also each led a pony, and the Serbian men led the others, and the oxen. Our skeleton column was followed by other skeleton columns, and during all that day we tramped and splashed, and slipped, and scrambled, over rocks, and through scrub, in mud, and over slopes of ice and snow--a route impossible for carts.
Roads had now ceased, and even the tracks were only those which had been trampled by the multitudes in front of us; over passes 5,000 feet high; between mountains 8,000 feet high; through snow, ice, boulders, unbroken forest, mud-holes, bridgeless rivers. And always those pitiless mountains glaring at the tragedy; mountains with steep, snow-covered slopes, or mountains of grey, bare rock, precipitous, shutting out, for thousands, all hope of return to home and nationhood.
It would be impossible now to trek at night, and at dusk, I noticed ahead of us, a mountain slope covered with trees, which would give us partial shelter from the cold wind. Only another half hour's scramble, down a steep incline, in a thick wood, and rest, and fire, and supper would reward us. The last 100 yards of descent were precipitous, and at the top, my horse and I slipped on the ice, and we rolled together to the bottom. We picked ourselves up, shook ourselves, looked at each other--I was still holding the reins--and walked on. There was no one to say "Poor dear, are you hurt?" so it wasn't worth while to be hurt. Men who were passing, passed; they took no notice. Why should they? A broken leg, even a broken neck, more or less, of what consequence would such trifles be in the general havoc? During war, new values--are they better values?--are found for many things.
We were now in a narrow valley, with steep mountains close upon either side of us. We scrambled a little way up the slope on our left, and found that the whole mountain side was becamped, and we secured a small level space for our fires, with difficulty. We scraped away the snow and made a fire, with wood, of which there was, fortunately, plenty, collected some clean snow for tea water, warmed some tinned food, and had supper. Except from snow, there was no water available during the next three days. No hay was procurable for the animals, and all we could give them to eat was dead beech leaves, which we unburied from the snow. We slept round the fire, and prevented ourselves from slipping down the mountain side, by logs of wood placed at our feet. The men, with their fires, and the horses and the oxen, were close to us. And then I noticed that not only was our own hillside ablaze with camp fires, but that the lights amongst the trees upon the mountain opposite, from which we were only divided by two hundred yards of valley, were also camp fires, and not, as I had fancied, stars. Where did camp fires end and stars begin? Were there still such things as stars? Or was heaven quite shut out by earth? There was only a small piece of sky visible between the towering and overhanging mountains, and, in the darkness, heaven and earth seemed merged in a huge amphitheatre which was outlined by myriads of flickering lights. During the precious moments just before sleep--the only moments, in these times, available for thought--stars and camp fires, earth and heaven, became hopelessly mixed. I couldn't sort them, and I went to sleep, convinced that stars were the camp fires of the heavenly host, which is now out in mortal combat against the hosts of evil on our earth.