“Teshko” (It is hard), he whined.

“Ni je teshko” (It is not hard), said Miss Brindley, cheerfully trudging along.

We wanted to stop at the top of a hill for lunch.

“Horrible,” he said.  “Here the brigands will shoot us from the bushes,” and pushed ahead, being held on by the grinning policeman.

We pulled out some biscuits and margarine, and drank water from our bottles, cigarettes went round, and we charged ahead.  In front was the professor falling off his horse and being put on again.

We were very anxious about the frontier.  Most of our party were travelling without official permits, as they had known nothing about such things; but we hoped that being English Red Cross and having passports there would not be much trouble.  We arrived at a little village, three or four wooden houses.  Three pompous old men came to meet us, and we took coffee together outside the inn.  They were very surprised to hear we were English, and said that no English had ever passed that way before.

At the frontier, an hour further on, a man and his wife came down from a little house on the hill and stopped us.  They examined the papers of the two Serbs, but left us alone, to our huge relief.  We breathed again.

Soon after, however, Whatmough rushed up to Jan and Jo, who were talking to a ragged woman.

“Do come and talk.  An officer has arrested West and Mawson.”

We ran ahead to find a perplexed mounted officer surrounded by our party.  He had come upon West and Mawson walking on ahead and took them to be Bulgarian comitaj.

“No, that’s not an English uniform,” he said, and searched them for firearms.  When the others came he wavered.  Miss Brindley did not look like a comitaj; and by the time we arrived he began to talk about the military situation in the Balkans, and rode off with the politest of farewells.

If there isn’t a telegraph wire to guide, don’t take short cuts.  Jan, Stajitch, and Jo tried to race the darkness by cutting straight down a ravine.  We lost the horses, lost every one else, and we came out again on to a hill crest.  No one was to be seen.  After a while the professor rode by, led by his policeman, who had been almost suffocated by laughter all day.

“Teshko, teshko,” moaned the professor.

“Ni je teshko,” we said.  “But where are the horses?”

He waved a hand vaguely behind him.  Rogerson, Whatmough, and Owen came up.  It was getting dark and a mist was rising.  So we left the three at the corner to mark where it was and went back.  For a long time we stumbled in the darkness, shouting, but no horses could we find.  At last we decided to turn back, wondering if they too had lost their way and decided to camp out.  There were shouts in the valley beyond.  A light flashed and some one fired off a revolver.  There was a candle end in Jan’s bag, and by its dim light we found a road.  It went downwards, so we thought it might be the right one.  Suddenly it turned in the wrong direction, but as there were hoof marks on it we decided to follow it as it must lead somewhere—­we could not search the whole countryside with a candle.  Just as we were in despair the road seemed to shake itself and twisted back again.  We heard more shouting and saw a light, and at last found Miss Brindley and Mawson, who were waiting for us.