Adventure, December 1914 — page 219: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Sinews of War “All the better,” I agreed. ‘Don’t you think we’ve waited long enough?”’ She stole a look at me out of.the corner of her eyes, and I knew that I had won. A shout brought the Tzigane leader to our side, and before she had finished her ques- tion he was chuckling and chattering volu- bly in reply. “‘He says there is a hermit priest who has a cell on Kara Dagh, a mountain half a day’s journey west of here,” translated Masoya. “Do you-—” “I have always wanted to be married by a hermit priest,” I protested. “Oh, if you are going to make fun of it!”’ she said with a feeble attempt at displeas- ure. And then I took her hand and made her look me squarely in the face; and I saw the light dawn in her eyes that I had never seen in any woman’s eyes before. For I never was a woman’s man; my time was spent among men. “Ah, Dan, dear Dan,” she murmured softly. ‘“‘We’re all alike, we women. We hate to surrender—but when we have to it is the most exquisite sensation of all. I’m glad, Dan; and I want it tomorrow as much as you do.” So the next day the Gipsy caravan es- ccorted us by ravine and gully and cloud- canopied moorland, far from the beaten tracks of man, to the hulking aerie of Kara Dagh, bolstering upward into the blue above the marches of Servia. On the lower levels the rest of the caravan halted, a med- ley of bizarre colors, yellow, red, green and blue; and with the Chief and one or two oth- ers we pushed on to the little shelf of rock where the hermit priest dwelt in a tiny chamber, half chapel, half anchorite’s cell that had harbored a priest ever since Metho- dius and Cyril converted the heathen of this land to Christianity. : The priest must have seen us coming from afar, for he came out to meet us—a picturesque old fellow with a long, sweep- ing gray beard and high-cast, thoughtful face. No heavy-paunched cloistered friar, but a mountain recluse and student, hard bodied from simple living and clear-eyed from deep thinking. : Well, the story is soon told. He married us there—with a big gold finger-ring I pur- chased from one of the Gipsies for five napoleons—on the clean summit of the mountain, from which we might look down 217 upon the tumbled peaks of a dozen ranges, high above the haunts of men and their petty strainings and cheatings and ambi- tions. And we went away from him feeling that no marriage could have been more complete in the things that go to make a marriage all it should be. The next day, disguised as Gipsies and riding in the center of the band, Masoya and I pressed on with the Tziganes across an unguarded section of the border-line into Servia, where the caravan soon joined itself to the procession of peasants fleeing from > the horrors of the war-zone. Then striking northward by obscure tracks, avoiding vil- lages and dodging the scanty gendarmerie patrols—for in Servia, as in Bulgaria, every able-bodied man was under arms at the front, either fighting the Bulgars or strug- gling to keep a tight grip on the new-won Servian territory in Albania—we steered a course for the Danube. You may look without avail on your small-scale maps for the village of Gheta on the banks of that river. It is only a col- lection of huts, or rather hovels; but it is known to fame in the underworld of the Balkans as a point whence contraband of many kinds may be smuggled into the Hapsburgs’ dominions—and out of them, too. It is on a barren reach of the great river, with no towns or hamlets on the op- posite bank for a number of miles; and the Austrian customs officials—doubtless for reasons of their own—give that vicinity a wide berth. Therefore Masoya and I met with no un- due adventures when, in company with a dozen head of horseflesh that had been ac- cumulated by divers dishonest means in the course of our caravan’s wanderings through the territory this side of the Bulgarian fron- tier, we were shipped onto a flatboat and poled across to Hungary. Secrecy was necessary—not for any fears for myself, for I was safe once out of Fer- dinand of Bulgaria’s reach; but on account of Masoya. She would have been a prize for Peter of Servia to hang onto, could he have caught her in his clutches—a constant threat to hold over his brother sovereigns’ heads. We bade good-by to our Tzigane friends with a mixture of sorrow and relief. They were kindly enough and worshiped Ma- soya with that unexplainable adoration which all the Balkan peasantry seemed to DOOLK C@