He had never seen a telescope before, and his delight over it was childlike.

"Why," he exclaimed in rapture, "this is worth a thousand men." "Then take it," I said, "and I hope it will prove worth a thousand men." His force of 2500 men was then blockading the little fortress of Medun, a remotely detached item of the defensive system of Podgoritza, and on the next day he set out for his post.
I saw him some months later, and he told me that when the great sortie from Podgoritza to relieve Medun came in view of the blockading force, though at a distance of several miles, his men declared that they could not fight that immense army, which filled the valley with its numbers and had the appearance of a force many times greater than their own.

Marko looked at it through the glass and found it to be mainly a provision train, for Medun was on the verge of starvation, the garrison having "shaken out the last grain of rice from their bags," to use the expression of the moment.

When Marko's men found the actual number of fighting men in the Turkish sortie, they decided to fight it out.

They didn't mind ten to one, they said, but much more than that had appeared to confront them.