“There are cases full of boots on the railway,” said some one, consoling.

“But those are men’s boots,” said another.

Part of the morning we spent sitting on the banks of the Ebar River and watching the bridge, wondering if Ellis would come with his car.  Ten times we thought we could see it, and each time were deceived.

The French aeroplanes came in.  They hovered over the town seeking a flat place, finally swooping down on to the marshy plain on which the “Stobarts” were encamped.  They landed, dashing through the shallow puddles and flinging the water in great showers on every side.  As each landed it wheeled into line and was pegged down.  Behind them was a line of cannons, the Serbian engineers were hard at work, smashing off their sighting apparatus, destroying the breech blocks, and jagging the lining with cold chisels.  Some of the cannon were Turkish.  All the morning, through the noise of the town, the shouting of the bullock drivers, the pant of the motor cars, and the steady tap, tap of the engineers’ mallets, came the faint booming of the battle at Mladnovatch, not fifteen miles away.

After lunch we went again to the cafe.  Again it was full, and we were forced to wait for a table.  Just as we sat down a woman with a drawn, anxious face came up to us, clutched Jo by the arm and said eagerly—­

“Is it true that you are going to Montenegro?”

“Yes,” answered Jo.  “If we can get there.”

“Could you give me only a little advice, madame?  You see we do not know what to do.  My husband—­he is an old man, and he is an Austro-Serb.  If the enemy catch him they will hang him.”

“I’m afraid he will have to walk,” said Jo.

“But he is so old,” said the woman, with tears in her eyes; “he is fifty.”

“We ourselves will have to walk,” said Jo.  “Make him a knapsack for his food.  Give him warm clothes.  It is his only chance of safety.  And,” she added, “the sooner he gets away the better, for in a little all the food on the road will be eaten up, and one will starve.”

The woman thanked us.  “I will make him go at once,” she said, and ran out wringing her hands.

A Russian woman with a thin-faced man sat at her table.

“You are going to Montenegro?” she said.

We nodded.

“I too am going.  I am a good sportswoman.  I have walked fifty kilometres in one day.”

We looked at her well-corseted figure, her rather congested face, and had already seen thin high-heeled shoes.

“I will come with you, yes?”

The little man interrupted.  “Why do you say such things, Olga?  You know that you cannot walk a mile.”

We pointed out that we were going to march across the Austrian front, and that no one could tell us where the Austrians were exactly; that our safety depended to some extent on our speed, and that the failure of one to make the pace meant the failure of all.  The little man drew her away.