Jan Gordon - The Luck of Thirteen

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[Illustration: JO AT THE MACHINE GUN.]

THE LUCK OF THIRTEEN

WANDERINGS AND FLIGHT THROUGH MONTENEGRO AND SERBIA

BY

MR. AND MRS. JAN GORDON

WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND A MAP
TAIL PIECES BY CORA J. GORDON
COLOUR PLATES BY JAN GORDON

NEW YORK
E.P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
1916

PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED
LONDON AND BECCLES, ENGLAND

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION 1

II. NISH AND SALONIKA 10

III. OFF TO MONTENEGRO 20

IV. ACROSS THE FRONTIER 31

V. THE MONTENEGRIN FRONT ON THE DRINA 47

VI. NORTHERN MONTENEGRO 66

VII. TO CETTINJE 85

VIII. THE LAKE OF SCUTARI 99

IX. SCUTARI 105

X. THE HIGHWAY OF MONTENEGRO 122

XI. IPEK, DECHANI AND A HAREM 145

XII. THE HIGHWAY OF MONTENEGRO--II 169

XIII. USKUB 182

XIV. MAINLY RETROSPECTIVE 198

XV. SOME PAGES FROM MR. GORDON'S DIARY 213

XVI. LAST DAYS AT VRNTZE 227

XVII. KRALIEVO 244

XVIII. THE FLIGHT OF SERBIA 263

XIX. NOVI BAZAR 284

XX. THE UNKNOWN ROAD 299

XXI. THE FLEA-PIT 315

XXII. ANDRIEVITZA TO POD 328

XXIII. INTO ALBANIA 341

XXIV. "ONE MORE RIBBER TO CROSS" 359

INDEX 377

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

COLOURED PLATES

FACING PAGE

Jo at the Machine Gun _Frontispiece_

The Ipek Pass in Winter 140

Retreating Ammunition Train 276

Albanian Mule-drivers Camping 354

HALF-TONE PLATES

Out-patients 4

Shoeing Bullocks 4

Peasant Women in Gala Costume, Nish 20

Serb Convalescents at Uzhitze 28

Serb and Montenegrin Officers on the Drina 58

A Concealed Gun Emplacement on the Drina 58

Peasant Women of the Mountains 76

A Village of North Montenegro 76

Jo and Mr. Suma in the Scutari Bazaar 110

Christian Women hiding from the Photographer 112

Scutari--Bazaar and Old Venetian Fortress 112

Disembarkation of a Turkish Bride 114

Governor Petrovitch and his Daughter in their State Barge 114

In the Bazaar of Ipek 162

Street Coffee Seller in Ipek 162

A Wine Market in Uskub 184

Big Gun passing through Krusevatz 194

In-patients 202

Broken Aeroplane in the Arsenal at Krag 220

Where the "Plane" fell 220

House near the Arsenal damaged by Bombs 220

Peasant Women leaving their Village 260

Serb Family by the Roadside 260

The Flight of Serbia 266

Unloading the _Benedetto_, San Giovanni di Medua 364

Route Map of the Authors' Wanderings _At end of text_

THE LUCK OF THIRTEEN

INTRODUCTION

It is curious to follow anything right back to its inception, and to
discover from what extraordinary causes results are due. It is strange,
for instance, to find that the luck of the thirteen began right back at
the time when Jan, motoring back from Uzhitze down the valley of the
Morava, coming fastish round a corner, plumped right up to the axle in a
slough of clinging wet sandy mud. The car almost shrugged its shoulders
as it settled down, and would have said, if cars could speak, "Well,
what are you going to do about that, eh?" It was about the 264th mud
hole in which Jan's motor had stuck, and we sat down to wait for the
inevitable bullocks. But it was a Sunday and bullocks were few; the wait
became tedious, and in the intervals of thought which alternated with
the intervals of exasperation, Jan realized that he needed a holiday.

To be explicit. Jan was acting as engineer to Dr. Berry's Serbian
Mission from the Royal Free Hospital:--Jan Gordon, and Jo is his wife,
Cora Josephine Gordon, artist, and V.A.D.

We had a six months of work behind us. We had seen the typhus, and had
dodged the dreaded louse who carries the infection, we had seen the
typhus dwindle and die with the onrush of summer. We had helped to clean
and prepare six hospitals at Vrntze or Vrnjatchka Banja--whichever you
prefer. We had helped Mr. Berry, the great surgeon, to ventilate his
hospitals by smashing the windows--one had been a child again for a
moment. Jo had learned Serbian and was assisting Dr. Helen Boyle, the
Brighton mind specialist, to run a large and flourishing out-patient
department to which tuberculosis and diphtheria--two scourges of
Serbia--came in their shoals. We had endeavoured to ward off typhoid by
initiating a sort of sanitary vigilance committee, having first sacked
the chief of police: we had laid drains, which the chief Serbian
engineer said he would pull up as soon as we had gone away. We had
helped in the plans of a very necessary slaughter-house, which Mr. Berry
was going to present to the town. There was an excuse for Jan's desire.
The English papers had been howling about the typhus months after the
disease had been chased out by English, French, and American doctors,
who had disinfected the country till it reeked of formalin and sulphur;
shoals of devoted Englishwomen were still pouring over, generously ready
to risk their lives in a danger which no longer existed. Our own unit,
which had dwindled to a comfortable--almost a family--number, with Mr.
Berry as father, had been suddenly enlarged by an addition of ten. These
ten complicated things, they all naturally wanted work, and we had
cornered all the jobs.

So, after the fatigues of February, March, and April, and the heat of
June, Jan quite decided on that Uzhitze mud patch that a holiday would
do little harm to himself, and good to everybody else. Then, however,
came the problem of Jo. Jo is a socialistic sort of a person with
conservative instincts. She has the feminine ability to get her wheels
on a rail and run comfortably along till Jan appears like a big railway
accident and throws the scenery about; but once the resolution
accomplished she pursues the idea with a determination and ferocity
which leaves Jan far in the background.

Jo had her out-patient department. Every morning, wet or fine, crowds of
picturesque peasants would gather about the little side door of our
hospital, women in blazing coloured hand-woven skirts, like Joseph's
coat, children in unimaginable rags, but with the inevitable belt
tightly bound about their little stomachs, men covered with tuberculous
sores and so forth, on some days as many as a hundred. Jo, having
finished breakfast, had then to assume a commanding air, and to stamp
down the steps into the crowd, sort out the probable diphtheria
cases--this by long practice,--forbid anybody to approach them under
pain of instant disease, get the others into a vague theatre queue,
which they never kept, and then run back into the office to assist the
doctor and to translate. All this, repeated daily, was highly
interesting of course, and so when Jan suggested the tour she "didn't
want to do it."

But authority was on Jan's side. Jo had had a mild accident: a
diphtheria patient fled to avoid being doctored, they often did, and Jo
had chased after her; she tripped, fell, drove her teeth through her
lower lip, and for a moment was stunned. When they caught the patient
they found that it was the wrong person--but that is beside the subject.
Dr. Boyle thought that Jo had had a mild concussion and threw her weight
at Jan's side. Dr. Berry was quite agreeable, and gave us a commission
to go to Salonika to start with and find a disinfector which had gone
astray. Another interpreter was found, so Jo took leave of her
out-patients.

* * * * *

In Serbia it was necessary to get permission to move. Jan went to the
major for the papers. There were crowds of people on the major's
steps, and Jan learned that all the peasants and loafers had been
called in to certify, so that nobody should avoid their military
service. Later we parted, taking two knapsacks. Dr. Boyle and Miss
Dickenson were very generous, giving us large supplies of chocolate,
Brand's essence, and corned beef for our travels, and we had two boxes
of "compressed luncheons," black horrible-looking gluey tabloids which
claim to be soup, fish, meat, vegetables and pudding in one swallow.

[Illustration: OUT-PATIENTS.]

[Illustration: SHOEING BULLOCKS.]

The Austrian prisoners bade us a sad farewell, but many friends
accompanied us to the station, and the rotund major and his rounder wife
did us the like honour. Our major was a queer mixture: he was jolly
because he was fat, and he was stern because he had a beaky nose, and in
any interview one had first to ascertain whether the stomach or the nose
held the upper hand, so to speak. With the wife one was always sure--she
had a snub nose. On this occasion the major furiously boxed the Austrian
prisoner coachman's ears, telling us that he was the best he had ever
had. The unfortunate driver was a picture of rueful pleasure. The two
plump dears stood waving four plump hands till we had rumbled round the
corner of the landscape.

In the train to Nish it was intensely hot. We had sixteen or seventeen
fellow-passengers in our third-class wooden-seated carriage--all the
firsts had been removed, because they could not be disinfected--and the
windows, with the exception of two, had been screwed tightly down. Every
time we stood up to look at the landscape somebody slipped into our
seat, and we were continually sitting down into unexpected laps.
Expostulations, apologies, and so on. Somebody had gnawed a piece from
one of the wheels, and we lurched through the scenery with a banging
metallic clangour which made conversation difficult, in spite of which
Jo astonished the natives by her colloquial and fluent Serbian. We had
an enormous director of a sanitary department and a plump wife,
evidently risen, but fat people rise in Serbia automatically like
balloons. We had three meagre old gentlemen, one unshaven for a week,
one whiskered since twenty years with Piccadilly weepers like a stage
butler; some ultra fashionable girls and men; and a dear old dumb woman
wearing three belts, who had been a former outpatient; and several
sticky families of children.

The old gentlemen took a huge interest in Jo. They drew her out in
Serbian, and at every sentence turned each to the other and elevated
their hands, ejaculating "kako!" (how!) in varying terms of admiration
and flattery.

The American has not yet ousted the Turk from Serbia, and the bite from
our wheel banged off the revolutions of our sedate passing. Trsternik's
church--modern but good taste--gleamed like a jewel in the sun against
the dark hills. On either hand were maize fields with stalks as tall as
a man, their feathery tops veiling the intense green of the herbage with
a film, russet like cobwebs spun in the setting sun. There were plum
orchards--for the manufacture of plum brandy--so thick with fruit that
there was more purple than green in the branches, and between the trunks
showed square white ruddy-roofed hovels with great squat tile-decked
chimneys. Some of the houses were painted with decorations of bright
colours, vases of flowers or soldiers, and on one was a detachment of
crudely drawn horsemen, dark on the white walls, meant to represent the
heroes of old Serbian poetry.

To Krusevatz the valley broadened, and the sinking sun tinted the
widening maize-tops till the fields were great squares of gold. We had
no lights in the train, and presently dusk closed down, seeming to shut
each up within his or her own mind. The hills grew very dark and
distant, and on the faint rising mist the trees seemed to stand about
with their hands in their pockets like vegetable Charlie Chaplins.

A junction, and a rush for tables at the little out-of-door restaurant.
In the country from which we have just come all seemed peace, but here
in truth was war. Passing shadowy in the faint lights were soldiers;
soldiers crouched in heaps in the dark corners of the station; yet more
soldiers and soldiers again huddled in great square box trucks or open
waggons waiting patiently for the train which was four or five hours
late. There were women with them, wives or sisters or daughters, with
great heavy knapsacks and stolid unexpressive faces.

While we were dreaming of this romance of war, and of the coming romance
of our own tour, a little man dumped himself at our table, explained
that he had a pain in his kidneys, and started an interminable story
about his wife and a dog. He was Jan's devoted admirer, and declared
that Jan had performed a successful operation upon him, though Jan is no
surgeon, and had never set eyes upon the man before.

Georgevitch rescued us. Georgevitch was fat, tall, young and genial, and
was military storekeeper at Vrntze. He was an ideal storekeeper and
looked the part, but he had been a comitaj. He had roamed the country
with belts full of bombs and holsters full of pistols, he and 189
others, with two loaves of bread per man and then "Ever Forwards." Of
the 189 others only 22 were left, and one was a patient at our hospital
where we called him the "Velika Dete" or "big child," because of his
sensibility. With Georgevitch was a dark woman with keen sparkling eyes.
Alone, this woman had run the typhus barracks in Vrntze until the
arrival of the English missions. She was a Montenegrin; no Serbian woman
could be found courageous enough to undertake the task. After struggling
all the winter, she was taken ill about a fortnight after the arrival of
the English. The Red Cross Mission took care of her and she recovered.

We left our bore still talking about his wife and the dog, and fled to
their table, where we chatted till our train arrived. We found a
coupe--a carriage with only one long seat--the exigencies of which
compelled Jan to be all night with Jo's boots on his face, and we so
slept as well as we were able.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER II

NISH AND SALONIKA

To our dismay a rare thing happened--our train was punctual, and we
arrived in Nish at four o'clock. It was cold and misty. The station was
desolate and the town asleep. Around us in the courtyard ragged soldiers
were lying with their heads pillowed on brightly striped bags. A nice
old woman who had asked Jo how old she was, what relation Jan was to
her, whether they had children, and where she had learnt Serbian,
suddenly lost all her interest in us and hurried off with voluble
friends whose enormous plaits around their flat red caps betokened the
respectable middle-class women.

Piccadilly weepers vanished and a depressed little quartet was left on
the platform--our two selves, a lean schoolmaster, and an egg-shaped man
who never spoke a word. We found a clerk sitting in an office. He said
we could not leave our bags in his room, but as we made him own that we
could not put them anywhere else he looked the other way while we
dropped them in the corner.

In the faint mist of the early morning the great overgrown village of
one-storied houses seemed like a real town buried up to its attics in
fog. We found a cafe which was shut, and sat waiting on green chairs
outside. Around us old men were talking of the news in the papers. They
said that Bulgaria was making territorial demands, and as the Balkan
governments covet land above all things they felt pessimistic as to
whether Serbia would concede anything, and said, shaking their heads,
"It will be another Belgium."

We celebrated the opening of the cafe by ordering five Turkish coffees
each, and the schoolmaster and we alternately stood treat. Jo loaded up
with aspirin to deaden a toothache which was worrying her.

We spent a cynical morning in interviews with people who were supposed
to know about missing luggage. Both they and we were aware that the
first hospital which got a wandering packing-case froze on to it, and if
inconvenient people came to hunt for their property the dismayed and
guilty ones hurriedly painted the case, saying to each other, "After all
it's in a good cause, and it's better than if it were stolen."

Then we went to see the powers who can say "no" to those who want to do
pleasant things, and were handed an amendment to a plea for a tour round
Serbia, including the front, which we had sent to them and which had
been pigeon-holed for a month.

"But we don't want to see a lot of monasteries," said Jan, as he gazed
at a little circle drawn round the over-visited part of Serbia. The
powers were adamant and seemed to think they had done very well for us.
We went away sadly, for monasteries had not been the idea at all.

Half an hour later we were pursuing an entirely different object. We had
discovered that Sir Ralph Paget was housing about L1000 worth of stores
destined for Dr. Clemow's hospital--which was in Montenegro--and which
needed an escort. He was somewhat puzzled at our altruistic anxiety to
take them off his hands, but was much relieved at the thought that he
could get rid of them.

We hurried to the station, rescued our knapsacks under the nose of a new
official who looked very much surprised, and boarded the English rest
house near by. English people were sitting in deck chairs outside the
papier-mache house which stood surrounded by a couple of tents and a
wooden kitchen in a field. Austrian prisoners were preparing lunch, and
we were introduced to Seemitch the dog.

Though young, Seemitch was fat and exhibited signs of a much-varied
ancestry. The original Seemitch, an important Serb with long gold
teeth, was very indignant that a dog, and such a dog, should be called
after him, so Sir Ralph arranged that of the two other puppies one
should be called after him and the other after Mr. Hardinge his
secretary. Thus the man Seemitch's dignity was restored.

At the station, to our great joy, we met two American doctors from
Zaichar. One we had mourned for dead and were astonished to see him,
shadow-like, stiff-kneed, and sitting uncomfortably on a chair in the
middle of the platform. Months before he had pricked himself with a
needle while operating on a gangrenous case, and had since lain
unconscious with blood-poisoning.

While we were cheering over his recovery, a little Frenchman slipped
into our reserved compartment, which was only a coupe, and had seized
the window seat. Jan found him lubricating his mouth, already full of
dinner, with wine from a bottle. As he showed no signs of seeing reason
from the male, Jo tried feminine indignation. "That seat is mine," she
snapped to his back-tilted head.

"Good. I exact nothing," he said, wiping his moustache upwards. She
suggested that if any exacting was to be done she possessed the
exclusive rights.

"Quel pays," he answered. Jo thought he was casting aspersions on
England and on her as the nearest representative, and the air became
distinctly peppery. The Frenchman hurriedly explained that he was
alluding to Serbia, so they buried the hatchet and became acquaintances.

* * * * *

Uskub, or Skoplje, and one hour to wait. All about the great plains the
mountains were just growing ruddy with the dawn, and we gulped boiling
coffee at the station restaurant.

One of the American doctors seemed restless. Some one had told him it
was advisable to keep an eye on the luggage. They began to shunt the
train, and soon he was stumbling about the sidings in a resolute attempt
not to lose sight of the luggage van. We sympathetically wished him good
luck and walked past into the Turkish quarter, adopted by two dogs which
followed us all the way. We had a hurried glimpse of queer-shaped,
many-coloured houses, trousered women, and a general Turkishness.

We returned to find our American friend furious, full of the superior
methods of luggage registration in the States.

We had beer with him at the frontier, delicious cool stuff with a
mollifying influence. He told us he held the record for one month's
hernia operations in Serbia. We were later to meet his rival, a Canadian
doctor, in Montenegro.

Locked in the train, we awaited the medical examination, and sat
feeling self-consciously healthy. At last the Greek doctor opened the
door, glanced at a knapsack, and vanished. We were certified healthy.

It was a beautiful dark blue night when we arrived at Salonika. Crowds
of people were dining at little tables which filled the streets off the
quay, in spite of the awful smells which came up from the harbour.

It is impossible to sleep late in Salonika. Soon after dawn children
possess the town--bootblacks, paper-sellers, perambulating drapers'
shops; all children crying their wares noisily. The only commodity that
the children don't peddle is undertaken by mules laden with glass
fronted cases hanging on each side and which are filled with meat.

We breakfasted in the street, revelling in the early morning and shooing
away the children, who never gave us a moment's grace. In self-defence
we had our boots blacked, for the ambulating bootblack molests no longer
the owner of a well-polished pair of boots. It is queer to walk about in
a town where one-third of the population is only pecuniarily interested
in the momentary appearance of feet and never look at a face, like the
man with the muckrake with eyes glued on life as it is led two inches
from the ground.

When we had finished searching for disinfectors and dentists we
wandered up the hill through the romantic streets. Jan sketched busily,
but toothache had rather sapped Jo's industry, and she generally found
some large stone to sit on, whence to contemplate.

An old woman's face, peering round the doorway, discovered her sitting
on the doorstep, a Greek dustman gazing stupidly at her.

In two minutes they were talking hard. The old woman was a Bulgarian,
but they were able to understand each other. What Jo told the old woman
was translated to the dustman, and when Jan came up they were introduced
each to the other, the dustman with his broom bowing to the ground like
some old-time court usher.

Once a Greek woman offered a chair to Jo. She was much embarrassed, as
the only Greek words she had picked up were "How much?" and "Yet
another;" and as both seemed unsuitable she tried to put her gratitude
into the width of her smile.

We scrambled on ever afterwards through streets which were more like
cliff climbs than roads. The sun grew red till all Salonika lay at our
feet a maze of magenta shadow. We sat down in an old Turkish cemetery,
where we could watch the old wall sliding down to plains of gold, where,
falling into ruins, it lent its degraded stones for the construction of
Turkish hovels.

A kitten with paralysed hind legs crawled up to us and accepted a little
rubbing. When dusk came we moved on, marvelling at the inexhaustible
picturesqueness of Salonika.

As we clambered down the breakneck paths, the priests were illuminating
the minarets with hundreds of twinkling lights.

The next day was the Feast. Mahommedans were everywhere. By the women's
trousers, which twinkled beneath the shrouding veils, one could see that
they were gorgeously dressed. Befezzed men were lounging and smoking in
all the cafe's.

In the evening once more we wandered up through the old Turkish quarter.
We heard a curious noise like a hymn played by bagpipes, rhythmically
accompanied in syncopation by a very flabby drum. Round the corner came
four jolly niggers blowing pipes, and the drummer behind them. Very slim
young men with bright sashes and light trousers were twisting,
posturing, and dancing joyfully. One of them threw to Jo the most
graceful kiss she had ever seen.

We left Salonika in the morning, having been wakened by new sounds.
Thousands of marching feet, songs. This was puzzling.

In the train a young Greek told us that his nation had mobilized against
the Bulgars, but that it was not very serious. He said that there had
been very friendly feeling in Greece for England, but that we had done
our best to kill it.

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