lifting its head spasmodically—­finished.  Quantities of carts passed us filled with furniture, baths, and luggage.  A smartly dressed family was picnicking by the roadside, sitting on deck-chairs.  Colonel P——­ and Admiral T——­ slipped by in a shabby little red motor.  They stopped and told us they were going to Rashka.  It was good to see English faces again.  A familiar figure went by.  It was the brave young officer from Uzhitze.  We gave a lift to a footsore lieutenant, who laughed as we trudged in the mud.

“Ah, English and sport,” he said.

Crowds were congregated round a man who was carrying over his shoulder a whole sheep on a spit and chopping bits off for buyers.  On a hillside a woman was handing out rakia.  We thought she was selling it, but were told that it was a funeral and she was giving rakia to all who wanted it.  Starving Austrian prisoners rushed for a glass and were not refused.  The Crown Prince passed, touching his hat to fifty kilometres of his people.  This time we were not going to be caught by the darkness, so we stopped near a village at half-past three.  The sides of the two tents made good shelters for us.  They were set up, looking like two long card-houses, and we used bits of canvas for flooring, very necessary, as it was so wet.  Our fires were quickly made with superfluous tent pegs, and the rice bag was again drawn forth.  A groaning soldier with bloodstained bandage asked us to help him.  His arm had not been dressed for some time.  The doctor with us at first thought he had better not be tampered with; but finally agreed to look at his wound, which was bleeding violently.

She tore up a towel and bound him up tightly.  He said he was going to Studenitza, a long day’s walk, though he was nearly fainting.

On the hill opposite was a huge encampment of boys.  As the darkness grew all disappeared but the light of the fires.  It looked like an ancient battleship with the portholes on fire.  We slept, the women fairly comfortably, but the men were overcrowded.

Heavy rain came on and poured through the top of the card houses.

“Now I know what the men suffer in the trenches,” said a very young girl, when she awoke in a pool of water.

“Guess you don’t—­they’d call this clover,” said a sleepy voice.

Looking our oddest we trudged off in the gloom and wet of next morning, leaping across rivulets of water which hurtled down the roads.  West’s arm was worse, Willett was recovering from a bad chill, Mawson had not yet got a decent night’s rest for a week—­every one longed for a house.

“Dobra Dan,” said a voice.  It was the friend of the wounded man we had bound up the first day.

“Where is your friend?” we asked.

“I lost him,” he answered.

We climbed for three hours then waited, blocked.  A military motor had stuck deeply in the mud and the wheels were buzzing round uselessly, so we helped to dig her out.  Every one’s inside cried for breakfast, and when at last we found a swampy plain, Whatmough and Cutting flung themselves upon an old tree trunk and cut it up for firewood.