The Bridge on the Drina Read Online Free PDF Page B

flashed, at first naturally confused and foggy, across the imagination of a ten year old boy from the nearby village of Sokolovići, one morning in 1516 when he was being taken along the road from his village to far-off, shining and terrible Stambul.
    Then this same green and awe-inspiring Drina, this mountain river 'which often grew angry', clamoured there between barren and naked, stony and sandy banks. The town even then existed, but in another form and of different dimensions. On the right bank of the river, on the crest of a precipitous hill, where now there are ruins, rose the well preserved Old Fortress, with widespread fortifications dating from the time of the flowering of the Bosnian kingdom, with casements and ramparts, the work of one of the powerful Pavlović nobles. On the slopes below this fortress and under its protection stood the Christian settlements, Mejdan and Bikovac, and the recently converted Turkish hamlet of Dušče. Down on the level ground between the Drina and the Rzav, where the real town later spread, were only the town meadows, with a road running through them, beside which was an old-fashioned inn and a few huts and water-mills.
    Where the Drina intersected the road was the famous Višegrad ferry. That was a black old-fashioned ferryboat and on it a surly, slow old ferryman called Jamak, whom it was harder to summon when awake than any other man from the deepest sleep. He was a man of giant stature and extraordinary strength, but he had suffered in the many wars in which he had won renown. He had only one eye, one ear and one leg (the other was wooden). Without greeting and without a smile, he would moodily ferry across goods and passengers in his own good time, but honestly and safely, so that tales were told of his reliability and his honesty as often as of his slowness and obstinacy. He would not talk with the passengers whom he took across nor would he touch them. Men threw the copper coins that they paid for the crossing into the bottom of the black boat where they lay all day in the sand and water, and only in the evening would the ferryman collect them carelessly in the wooden scoop which he used to bale out the boat and take them to his hut on the river bank.
    The ferry only worked when the current and height of the river were normal or a little higher than normal, but as soon as the river ran cloudy or rose above certain limits, Jamak hauled out his clumsy bark, moored it firmly in a backwater and the Drina remained as impassable as the greatest of oceans. Jamak then became deaf even in his one sound ear or simply went up to the Fortress to work in his field. Then, all day long, there could be seen travellers coming from Bosnia who stood on the farther bank in desperation, frozen and drenched, vainly watching the ferry and the ferryman and from time to time yelling long drawn summonses:
    'O-o-o-o-o.... Jama-a-a-k....'
    No one would reply and no one would appear until the waters fell, and that moment was decided by Jamak himself, dark and unrelenting, without discussion or explanation.
    The town, which was then little more than a hamlet, stood on the right bank of the Drina on the slopes of the steep hill below the ruins of the one-time fortress, for then it did not have the size and shape it was to have later when the bridge was built and communications and trade developed.
    On that November day a long convoy of laden horses arrived on the left back of the river and halted there to spend the night. The aga of the janissaries, with armed escort, was returning to Stambul after collecting from the villages of eastern Bosnia the appointed number of Christian children for the blood tribute.
    It was already the sixth year since the last collection of this tribute of blood, and so this time the choice had been easy and rich;
    the necessary number of healthy, bright and good-looking lads between ten and fifteen years old had been found without difficulty, even though many parents had hidden