y authorities to
allow one to get transport or help of any kind. But four days later I
was marching out of Mustapha Pasha on the way to Kirk Kilisse by way of
Adrianople, a bullock-wagon carrying my baggage, an interpreter
trundling my bicycle, I riding a small pony. The interpreter was gloomy
and disinclined to face the hardships and dangers (mostly fancied) of
the journey. Beside the driver (a Macedonian) marched a soldier with
fixed bayonet. Persuasion was necessary to force the driver to undertake
the journey, and a friendly transport officer had, with more or less
legality, put at my command this means of argument. A mile outside
Mustapha Pasha the soldier turned back, and I was left to coax my
unwilling helpers on a four days' journey across a war-stricken
countryside, swept of all supplies, infested with savage dogs
(fortunately well fed by the harvest of the battlefields), liable to
ravage by roving bands.

That night I gave the Macedonian driver some jam and some meat to eke
out his bread and cheese.

"That is better than having a bayonet poked into your inside," I said,
by pantomime. He understood, grinned, and gave no great trouble
thereafter, though he was always in a state of pitiable funk when I
left the wagon to take a trip within the lines of the besieging forces.

[Illustration: GIPSIES]

So to Kirk Kilisse. There I got to General Savoff himself and won not
only leave, but a letter of aid to go down to the Third Army at the
lines of Chatalja. But by then what must be the final battle of the war
was imminent. Every hour of delay was dangerous. To go by cart meant a
journey of several days. A military train was available part of the way
if I were content to drop interpreter, horse, and baggage and travel
with a soldier's load.

That decision was easy enough at the moment--though I sometimes
regretted it afterwards when the only pair of riding-breeches I had with
me gave out at the knees, and I had to walk the earth ragged--and by
train I got to Tchorlu. There a friendly artillery officer helped me to
get a cart (springless) and two fast horses. He insisted also on giving
me as a patrol, a single Bulgarian soldier, with 200 rounds of
ammunition, as Bashi-Bazouks were ranging the country. I objected that I
had a revolver, and there was the driver, a Greek. "He would run away,"
said the officer pleasantly, and the patrol was taken.

It was an unnecessary precaution, though the presence of the soldier