The room had no beds but it had a shelf about it on which
Amanda and Benham rolled up in their blankets and slept. "We can do
this sort of thing all right," said Amanda and Benham. "But we
mustn't lose the way again."
"In Scutari," said Benham, "we will get an extra horse and a tent."
The way presently became a lake and they reached Scutari by boat
towards the dawn of the next day. . . .
The extra horse involved the addition of its owner, a small
suspicious Latin Christian, to the company, and of another horse for
him and an ugly almost hairless boy attendant. Moreover the British
consul prevailed with Benham to accept the services of a picturesque
Arnaut CAVASSE, complete with a rifle, knives, and other implements
and the name of Giorgio. And as they got up into the highlands
beyond Scutari they began to realize the deceitfulness of Podgoritza
and the real truth about khans. Their next one they reached after a
rainy evening, and it was a cavernous room with a floor of indurated
mud and full of eye-stinging wood-smoke and wind and the smell of
beasts, unpartitioned, with a weakly hostile custodian from whom no
food could be got but a little goat's flesh and bread.
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