“Yes.”

“Good-bye, then.  Lie down when you come to the bridges, or you’ll get your heads knocked off.”

We lay down at once, taking no risks, not knowing when the bridges were coming.  Luckily the wind was with us, and the night was warm.  The engine showered sparks into the air, which fell little hot touches on to our faces and hands.  Later a little rain fell.

Kralievo at three a.m.  We did not know the town so Jo stormed the telegraph office.  The officials tried to shut the door, but she got her foot into it.

“When I ask you a polite question you might answer it,” she said.

“You can get shelter next door,” said one grumpily.

We tried next door.  It was crowded, and the heat within was unbearable.  We saw a door in the opposite wall and opened it—­back into the telegraph office.  There were people sleeping there already, so without asking permission we dumped our baggage and lay down on the floor.  The officials said nothing.

After a while two French generals (or somethings) came in.  They were refused as we were, but they took no notice, unpacked their blankets and lay down under the great central table.  With them was a wife, she sat miserably on a chair.  The room got so stuffy when the door was shut that she wished it opened; the draught was so bad when the door was open that she immediately wished it shut.  Unfortunately she got mixed:  the Serbian for open is very like the word for shut, and she used them reversed.  There was much confusion.  Just as the officials were getting used to her inversions, she corrected herself.  More confusion.  An English girl came in, pushed aside the papers on the big table, and began to brew cocoa on a Primus stove which she had brought with her.  The officials looked helplessly at each other.  Jan recognized her as one of the Stobart unit from Krag:  she had got astray from her band, but was now rejoining them.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XVII

KRALIEVO

We roused ourselves at seven a.m.  A damp, chilly fog was hanging low over the valley, it penetrated to the skin, and one shuddered.  The railway was congested, but train arrived after train, open trucks all packed with men whose breath rose in steam, and whose clothes were sparkling with the dew.  We stepped from the station door into a thick black “pease puddingy” mud, as though the Thames foreshore had been churned up by traffic.  Standing knee deep in the mud were weary oxen and horses attached to carts of all descriptions, with wheels whose rims, swollen by the mire, were sunk almost to the axles.  Across the mud, surrounded by shaky red brick walls, the District Civil Hospital showed pale in the morning, and we made towards it, splashing.

We came to the lodge:  an English girl was doing something to a kitchen stove.  She stared at us.

“Hullo!”