Next day we sorted clothes.  Every uniform had to be taken from its bag, tabulated, searched for money or food, and repacked.  They were swarming with vermin, but we wore mackintosh overalls which are supposed to be anathema to the beasties.  More operations.  One of the men had been hit in the cerebellum, and was quite blind.  The boy who had been hit in the lungs prayed for a cigarette and an apple, he felt sure they would do him good.  We sorted more clothes.  One of the men had a pocket full of scissors—­evidently regimental barber; another’s pockets were crammed with onions; a third had a half-eaten apple, as though the fight had surprised him in the middle of his dessert.  The cerebellum man wanted his purse.  We could not find it; after exhaustive inquiry found that the lung youth had stolen it.  Another patient claimed he had lost thirty-six francs; so down we had to go once more, search his package—­the smelliest of the lot—­and at last found the money pinned into the lining of his coat, also a watch.  Jan took them back to him, wound up the watch and set it.  The grateful owner said that the watch was an ornament, but that he could not read it.

The French were never in Nish at all—­all lies; but Austrian aeroplanes had bombed it and killed several people.  The Bulgarian comitaj cut the line at Vranja, but had been badly beaten in a battle near Zaichar.  The flight over Gotch degenerated into a joke, and Jo was commissioned to do a caricature of it.

Suddenly a refugee turned up, the hostess of the rest house in Nish.  She was very worried about the loss of her fifteen trunks, which she had had to leave, and which contained all her family mementoes and miniatures.  She hoped that the scare would only last a few days.  The Bulgars had occupied Veles though, which was bad news.  Another refugee lady from Belgrade came in.  More patients.  Forty-nine for the “Merkur” hospital.  Lots of running about, but at last all were bedded.

A Serbian comitaj girl came in in the afternoon, looking for a lady doctor.  She was a fine upstanding creature with a strong, almost fierce, face.  There had been six of her, she said, but one had been killed.  The bombardment of Varna turned out to be a lie, but they said that all the Bulgars at Vrnja had been surrounded.  Major Gaschitch also said that if Serbia could hold out till the 10th, something wonderful was going to happen.

Our visitors had rather a hard time.  One of them was trotting into the little sitting-room of the hospital.  She opened the door and started back aghast.  There was a man within clad in nothing but a large pair of moustaches.  She fled.  Mr. Berry having nowhere to examine a stray patient had occupied the room at an unlucky moment.  More wounded were expected, so we got into our war paint, and they arrived five hours later than we had expected them.  They came in “fiacres,” and climbed off very easily.  We inquired, “Where wounded?” “Belgrade.”  “When?” “Three