At the station, to our great joy, we met two American doctors from Zaichar.  One we had mourned for dead and were astonished to see him, shadow-like, stiff-kneed, and sitting uncomfortably on a chair in the middle of the platform.  Months before he had pricked himself with a needle while operating on a gangrenous case, and had since lain unconscious with blood-poisoning.

While we were cheering over his recovery, a little Frenchman slipped into our reserved compartment, which was only a coupe, and had seized the window seat.  Jan found him lubricating his mouth, already full of dinner, with wine from a bottle.  As he showed no signs of seeing reason from the male, Jo tried feminine indignation.  “That seat is mine,” she snapped to his back-tilted head.

“Good.  I exact nothing,” he said, wiping his moustache upwards.  She suggested that if any exacting was to be done she possessed the exclusive rights.

“Quel pays,” he answered.  Jo thought he was casting aspersions on England and on her as the nearest representative, and the air became distinctly peppery.  The Frenchman hurriedly explained that he was alluding to Serbia, so they buried the hatchet and became acquaintances.

* * * * *

Uskub, or Skoplje, and one hour to wait.  All about the great plains the mountains were just growing ruddy with the dawn, and we gulped boiling coffee at the station restaurant.

One of the American doctors seemed restless.  Some one had told him it was advisable to keep an eye on the luggage.  They began to shunt the train, and soon he was stumbling about the sidings in a resolute attempt not to lose sight of the luggage van.  We sympathetically wished him good luck and walked past into the Turkish quarter, adopted by two dogs which followed us all the way.  We had a hurried glimpse of queer-shaped, many-coloured houses, trousered women, and a general Turkishness.

We returned to find our American friend furious, full of the superior methods of luggage registration in the States.

We had beer with him at the frontier, delicious cool stuff with a mollifying influence.  He told us he held the record for one month’s hernia operations in Serbia.  We were later to meet his rival, a Canadian doctor, in Montenegro.

Locked in the train, we awaited the medical examination, and sat feeling self-consciously healthy.  At last the Greek doctor opened the door, glanced at a knapsack, and vanished.  We were certified healthy.

It was a beautiful dark blue night when we arrived at Salonika.  Crowds of people were dining at little tables which filled the streets off the quay, in spite of the awful smells which came up from the harbour.

It is impossible to sleep late in Salonika.  Soon after dawn children possess the town—­bootblacks, paper-sellers, perambulating drapers’ shops; all children crying their wares noisily.  The only commodity that the children don’t peddle is undertaken by mules laden with glass fronted cases hanging on each side and which are filled with meat.