We parted here from gaolbird. He wanted to come to London with us, and I thought that the nearer we were to the coast, the more difficult it would be to prevent his coming on board, so we gave him enough money to enable him to communicate with his well-to-do friends in America, and parted. Next morning, Friday, December 17th, we did not leave till noon, as we had to wait for the bread, and for the shoeing of some ponies. Fifty-four loaves came, and these had to last us and our sixty men, till we reached the next military station, wherever that might be. We only had four loaves for ourselves. CHAPTER XLI The first few miles of the road were passable, over an uncultivated plain, but as the mountains of Montenegro closed sulkily behind us, the mountains of Albania opened threateningly before us. The grass plain became a swamp, and soon we were playing the same old game, wading and splashing through mud and water, no road traceable. The Albanian mountains were evidently twin brothers to the Montenegrin fiends, and after we had crossed a river, with a bridge broken off at both ends, our route lay across an expanse of basaltic rock, which looked impossible for horses and oxen. By that time it was dark, and it seemed wise to wait till daylight to attack the new enemy, so we bivouacked in a tiny grass enclosure, near an old ruined chapel. The field belonged to an Albanian, who promptly told us to be off, but the sight of money, five dinars, and a promise of five dinars for wood, mollified him, and he became friendly, and he even said he would sell us a sheep for the men's supper. The time went on, and the sheep never arrived. I kept asking Sandford and Merton about it, and they kept saying it would come soon. Then, finally, they confessed that they had not bought it because it was too expensive. Of course, it was more expensive than it would have been in normal times, but if it kept men from starving, it was cheap at any price, and I insisted that it should be fetched. They went away as though to buy it, and came back saying that the Albanian owner had gone to bed, and couldn't bring the sheep in from the hills in the dark. Flaming-eye business; I would not be defeated, so I discovered where the Albanian lived, and went with Vooitch to his house, over stone walls and boulders and through the usual bogs.