HE FIRST DROPS OF THE THUNDERSTORM
CHAPTER 20. 1914.
CHAPTER 21. THE YEARS OF THE WAR
INDEX.

TWENTY YEARS OF BALKAN TANGLE

CHAPTER ONE

PICKING UP THE THREADS

It was in Cetinje in August, 1900, that I first picked up a thread
of the Balkan tangle, little thinking how deeply enmeshed I should
later become, and still less how this tangle would ultimately affect
the whole world. Chance, or the Fates, took me Near Eastward.
Completely exhausted by constant attendance on an invalid relative,
the future stretched before me as endless years of grey monotony,
and escape seemed hopeless. The doctor who insisted upon my having
two months' holiday every year was kinder than he knew. "Take them
in quite a new place," he said. "Get right away no matter where, so
long as the change is complete."

Along with a friend I boarded an Austrian Lloyd steamer at Trieste,
and with high hopes but weakened health, started for the ports of
the Eastern Adriatic.

Threading the maze of mauve islets set in that incomparably blue and
dazzling sea; touching every day at ancient towns where strange
tongues were spoken and yet stranger garments worn, I began to feel
that life after all might be worth living and the fascination of the
Near East took hold of me.

A British Consul, bound to Asia Minor, leaned over the bulwark and
drew a long breath of satisfaction. "We are in the East!" he said.
"Can't you smell it? I feel I am going home. You are in the East so
soon as you cross Adria." He added tentatively: "People don't
understand. When you go back to England they say, 'How glad you must
be to get home!' They made me spend most of my leave on a house-boat
on the Thames, and of all the infernal things. ...

"I laughed. I did not care if I never saw England again. . . .

"You won't ever go back again now, will you?" he asked whimsically,
after learning whence I came. "I must," said I, sadly. "Oh don't,"
said he; "tell them you can't, and just wander about the East." He
transshipped shortly and disappeared, one of many passing travellers
with whom one is for a few moments on common ground. Our voyage
ended at Cattaro and there every one, Baedeker included, said it was
correct to drive up to Cetinje. Then you could drive down next day
and be able to say ever afterwards, "I have travelled in Montenegro."

It was in Cetinje that it was borne in on me that I had found the
"quite new place" which I sought. Thus Fate led me to the Balkan