es 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 i