CHAPTER V LIFE WITH A BRIGAND BAND

The Skreli a lawless tribe—No man’s life safe unless the chief gives his word—Vatt prophesies a rising against the Turks—Our walks and talks—Our meeting with our neighbours the Kastrati, and with Dêd Presci their chief—A woman who avenged her husband’s death—The significant story of Kol—Manners and customs of the wild tribes—Farewell to my good friend Dêd—An incident a fortnight later.

The bright sunny days I remained with the Skreli were full of interest.

On every hand, from Vatt himself down to the humblest of his tribe, I received only the greatest kindness and hospitality. If I went out in Vatt’s absence, a dozen armed banditti followed me, mounting guard over me; for, as they told me, one never knew what little “accident” might happen. With the tribes of the Shiala and the Pulati they were not just then on particularly friendly terms, and there had been a series of sharp encounters a week ago. Having given their word to be responsible for my safety, it behoved them to take precautions.

I walked with Vatt Marashi every day, making long excursions through the mountains by the secret paths known only to the tribe.

Would I care for some sport? If I cared to come next year and bring a friend, or even two, he would let me shoot. My friends would always be welcome, and I could assure them of their safety. There was plenty of game, and lots of bears, lynx, and wolves. I should tell my friends in England, and come back for a month or two. I promised that I would, for in our walks I saw quantities of game. My friend shot several eagles, but I was not successful in bagging one.

As he was stalking at my side one afternoon, his argus eyes everywhere and a cigarette in his mouth, I returned to the subject of the Turks and their “occupation” of Albania.

“Bah!” he exclaimed, with a sneering curl of the lip. “They dare not come here. We, with the Kastrati, the Hoti, the Klementi, the Pulati, and the Shiala, are masters here. We have held the land always, and shall hold it still. We acknowledge no law except our own, and pay no taxes to anybody. The Turks, when they conquered Northern Albania, thought they could crush us. They tried to, but soon discovered their mistake. So ever since that they have left us severely alone, and retired into Skodra. They know full well that when we unite with our brothers, the Miriditi, in the south, then Skodra will be at our mercy.”

“And if the Sultan sends his soldiers here?”

“Well, and what then?” he asked, with a flash in his eyes. “Do you think we fear them? Many of them are Albanians, and would not fight us. Again, you have experienced the road here. What would an army do here? We should pick them off as fast as they came up. There are forty thousand of us Skreli alone, remember, without all the other tribes. If a Turkish army came in here, depend upon it, it would never get out again.”

“And is there likely to be a rising against the Turks?” I inquired, much interested.

“Why, of course. The revolt will come one day ere long—when we are ready. We can, however, afford to wait at present. Turkey will soon have her hands full with Bulgaria and Macedonia, and then—well, we shall help Bulgaria, and in a week there won’t be a Turk in Skodra.”

“You mean there will be a massacre?”

For answer he shrugged his shoulders.

“And after the revolution?”

“After we have driven out the Turk we hope to obtain our independence under either France or some other far-off country—England, for instance. Austria and Italy are, through their priests, conducting a strenuous propaganda all through Northern Albania—so strenuous as to be ridiculous. They foolishly think that we are like children, and that we do not discern their ulterior motives. Oh, it is very amusing, I can tell you! We accept their schools and their money, and put our fingers in our cheeks, for we don’t intend to have anything to do with either Power when the rising comes. We will help Servia or Bulgaria, or even Montenegro, to drive the Turk from Albania, but we will not lift a finger for either Italy or Austria. The secret agents of both Powers are always endeavouring to penetrate here among us and carry on their propaganda. But we do not want them, and will not have them. More than one has of late—disappeared.”

“Shot?”

He smiled in the affirmative.

“It is true,” he said, “that we kill—and kill often—for the vendetta—for espionage—and in the frontier disputes with Montenegro. Alas! we have here but little of the bessa (truce). But you must remember we are not like you English. The people have no government, except myself. I make the law, and they obey. We are Christians. We believe in God and in the Virgin, and soon we will drive the Mohammedan fanatics from our land.”

He spoke with an air of conviction, and, judging from my observations while I was guest of his tribe, I believe that when war between Turkey and Bulgaria comes—as it must come one day before long—these wild people will sweep down upon the Turks and play frightful havoc with them.

Skodra is often alarmed, and the people retire into their houses and bar their doors because the tribes are believed to be coming. One day they will come, and when they do those open drains in the streets will run with blood. The sign of the cross upon the Christian houses is in preparation for the day of vengeance.

My walks with Vatt Marashi, though often very fatiguing, were full of interest. He was never tired of making inquiries regarding England and England’s power. Did the Sultan recognise England as an independent state, and did we send an Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, like Austria and Germany? He knew that England once had a Vice-Consul in Skodra—but he committed suicide, it was said, poor fellow.

Nothing very extraordinary, I remarked inwardly. Doomed to live in such an out-of-the-world place as Skodra would be sufficient to drive any European to take his life. Of brigandage, Vatt Marashi told me that they held up but few travellers nowadays, and only, indeed, when there was necessity. Yet a year or two ago they held the worst reputation of any of the tribes.

One day while we were climbing the rocks—for Vatt and his bodyguard thought that they might get a shot at a bear—there was a sudden alarm. The hawk’s 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 pistol with silver butt, while I crouched behind a rock with my rifle ready, expecting something to happen.

Nothing, however, did happen, for a few moments later there were shouts from the opposite side of the defile, answered by my companions, who came forth and waved their rifles over their heads as 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.

Then 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.

For me this was fortunate, for it gave me an opportunity of meeting the other ruler of Northern Albania; for next to the Skreli the Kastrati are most powerful in the Accursed Mountains.

Mrika, the woman who carried on the blood-feud.

Half an hour later we met our visitors. Dressed very similarly to my companions, they wore white tassel-less fezes instead of the little white skullcap, and the black stripes down their trousers were somewhat different. The two chieftains touched foreheads, and I was afterwards 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 to warn me of your coming through one of our men down in Skodra, 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 I ate with the pair in a small lonely house on the mountainside, and the moon had long risen before Palok and I returned to Lûk’s.

My photographic camera was, from the first, regarded with a good deal of suspicion, and it was with very great difficulty I persuaded anybody to have his picture taken. Many surreptitious snap-shots I took with a small “Brownie” camera, for unfortunately I had run out of films for my own larger Kodak. But I was able to secure some photographs, which now appear in this volume.

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

“That is Mrika Kol 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 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 Skopia, 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, for 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 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 which truly illustrates the utter disregard the Albanian has for other people’s lives. He was once with a man of the Hoti—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 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 into Servia, where he earns his living by sawing firewood. Every few years the Sultan issues an irade “for the pacification of the blood,” as it is put, and the murderer then returns. He pays a small tax to the Turkish 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, of course, does not apply to the mountain tribes. They care not a jot for the Sultan or for his irades. There is no law—save that of the blood-feud, the vendetta falling upon the murderer and upon his next male relative. Many were the curious facts regarding the blood-feud and the Albanian laws of hospitality told to me.

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

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

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

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

He blew a cloud of smoke from his 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.”

“Bah!” he said, with a slight shrug of the 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, “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 poor little 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 empty 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 meat the old woman had given me when there came the sound of voices outside, and to my horror I saw four men carrying 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. 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 sundown 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 Kol, 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 code of honour exists? I am inclined to think not.

Had I been in the midst of a highly civilised people—a foreigner wandering in the wilds of Yorkshire, for example—I certainly should never have received the many charming kindnesses that I did at the hands of those rough, uncivilised tribes. Climbing like cats up the mountainsides as they did, I was often compelled to lag behind, being unused to such walking. But, laughing merrily, those armed banditti would take me by the arms and help me up the steeper places; they would roll cigarettes for me, carry my rifle when I grew fagged, and fetch and carry for me like children.

My neat Smith-Wesson hammerless revolver was constantly 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 Browning repeating revolver, with its magazine holding eight cartridges, 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 handy weapon against the Turks. Where could he get one? Was it costly?

And when I promised to send him one through our mutual friend in the bazaar down in Skodra, as souvenir of my visit, his joy knew no bounds.

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

I wonder whether he has yet used it against the hated Turk? Whether or not, 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.

When one evening I told my host that I had still a long way to go—through Bosnia, Herzegovina, Servia, Bulgaria, Roumania, and Macedonia—and that I must bid him farewell, his face fell. He seemed to genuinely regret.

“But you will return soon,” he urged. “You will redeem your promise, and bring your friends to shoot. Bring that friend you told me about who shoots tigers in India. I want to see what sort of shot he is. And the friend who shoots partridges and pheasants.”

I promised that I would go back to him before long.

“Remember, there will be no danger—none. Tell your friends that Vatt invites them, and that they are free to go anywhere—anywhere,” he said, waving his hand over the wild panorama of mountain and valley that is his indisputable domain.

Next day I rose, packed my small belongings, and with a little present to Lûk and to his pretty wife prepared to leave, when, judge my amazement to find Vatt and his bodyguard outside, and to hear that the chief had decided to accompany me right down to Skodra!

This indeed he did, and when we arrived in the town held by the Turks he strutted down the main street with me, apparently proud of his guest, and in open defiance of the scowling ragged soldiers in dirty red fezes.

Though a deadly enemy of the Turks, he openly defied them. As we walked along the streets there came close behind us twenty of his faithful followers, armed to the teeth and carrying their rifles ready loaded in case of trouble.

But there was no trouble. The Turks of Skodra are wise enough to let the Skreli severely alone.

Trouble will, however, come one day before long, and then alas for the subjects of the Sultan. The Albanians will avenge the blood of the Christians now spilt daily in Macedonia, and the Turk will be driven back southward—or at least what is left of him.

My Body-guard in Northern Albania.

I parted from Vatt at the door of my so-called albergo. He took a glass of rakhi with me, and afterwards, with a hearty hand-grip, he told me not to forget my promise to return. Then he left me, stalking at the head of his armed band, who one and all wished me bon voyage, and he went down the street on his return to his mountain home.

But the irony of Fate followed. A fortnight later I found myself riding with a strong military escort on the other side of the mountains, where I had been so hospitably entertained—along the frontier of the Skreli country.

It was growing dusk, and we were passing through a deep ravine, our horses stumbling at every step, when of a sudden the crack of a rifle startled us.

Next instant a dozen rifles flashed fire in the deep shadows to our left. The Skreli outposts were sniping at us!

In a moment we had all dismounted and sought cover, and for fully ten minutes returned their fire vigorously, while the officer of the escort kept up a volley of imprecations on the heads of my late hosts, who were, of course, in ignorance that they were firing upon “the Englishman.” We were too far off each other to do much harm, therefore we simply blazed away. I was crouched behind a rock with the muzzle of my rifle poked through a convenient crack, and fired towards the spot where the flashes showed.

A good deal of powder and bad language were expended, until at last our friends on the other side of the valley, apparently thinking we were too far away, ceased firing, and we of course did the same.

It was a mutual truce. For ten minutes longer we waited in order to see what would happen. Then, leading our horses, we crept carefully along on our way northward, out of the range of our friends’ guns.

Those moments were exciting, however, while they lasted, yet they were not without their grim humour.