“I have eaten nothing for three days—­give me bread.”  We had no bread, but we discovered some Petit-Beurre biscuits, and left him turning them over and over.

The whole town buzzed:  motor cars, surrounded by curses, insinuated their way through the crammed streets; whips were cracking, men were quarrelling but all had their faces turned towards the road to Rashka, which we realized would be as full as at straphanging time in the Tube.  The boys passed us, then we passed them.  They passed us again.  Hundreds of Austrian prisoners were being hurried along, goodness knows where.  Neat young clerks, suit case in hand, elbowed their way through the crowd.  Young staff officers were walking, jostled by beggars.  Jo called to an old man who was driving a cart full of modern furniture, his face drawn into wrinkles of misery—­

“Where are you going?”

“Ne snam,” he answered, staring hopelessly before him.

Wounded men were everywhere, tottering and hobbling along, for none wanted to be taken prisoners.  Some had ship’s biscuit, which they tried to soften in the dirty ditch water, others were lapping like dogs out of the puddles.  Sometimes a motor far ahead stuck in the mud, and we had to wait often half an hour until it could be induced to move.  Gipsies passed, better mounted and worse clad than other folk, some of them half naked.  Many soldiers had walked through their opankies and their feet were bound up with rag.  Why in this country of awful mud has the opankie been invented?  It is a sole turned up at the edges and held on by a series of straps and plaited ornamentations useless in mud or wet, which penetrates through it in all directions.

We arrived at an open space and halted for lunch.  Water had to be fetched.  It trickled from a wooden spout out of the hill and before our cooking pot was filled we were surrounded by thirsty soldiers, who were consigning us to the hottest of places for our slowness.  Cutting displayed a hitherto buried talent for building fires.  We unpacked the food and soon a gorgeous curry was bubbling in an empty biscuit tin with Angelo, Sir Ralph Paget’s chef, at the spoon.  A leviathan motor car lurched by containing all that was left of the Stobart unit.  Another monster passed, piled with Russian nurses and doctors.  A face was peeping out at the back, eyes rolled upwards, moustaches bristling.  Was it?  Yes, it was—­“Quel Pays”—­but he did not recognize us.

[Illustration:  THE FLIGHT OF SERBIA.]

The baking ovens appeared again, and we felt we had stayed long enough.  Some of our party were very fagged after their various adventures since leaving Nish, so they climbed on to the carriages wherever there was a downhill.  The road wound up a narrow stony valley down which was flowing a muddy stream.  The trees on our side of the river were still green, on the other bank they were bright orange, blood red and all the tints of a Serbian autumn.  The road full of moving people was like another river, flowing only more sluggishly then the Ebar itself.  For us in future, the autumn will always hold a sinister aspect.  These trees seemed to have put on their gayest robes to mock at the dreary processions.  At intervals by the roadside sat an ox dead beat and forsaken by its owner as useless.