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"Is it true that you are going to Montenegro?"
"Yes," answered Jo. "If we can get there."
"Could you give me only a little advice, madame? You see we do not know
what to do. My husband--he is an old man, and he is an Austro-Serb. If
the enemy catch him they will hang him."
"I'm afraid he will have to walk," said Jo.
"But he is so old," said the woman, with tears in her eyes; "he is
fifty."
"We ourselves will have to walk," said Jo. "Make him a knapsack for his
food. Give him warm clothes. It is his only chance of safety. And," she
added, "the sooner he gets away the better, for in a little all the food
on the road will be eaten up, and one will starve."
The woman thanked us. "I will make him go at once," she said, and ran
out wringing her hands.
A Russian woman with a thin-faced man sat at her table.
"You are going to Montenegro?" she said.
We nodded.
"I too am going. I am a good sportswoman. I have walked fifty kilometres
in one day."
We looked at her well-corseted figure, her rather congested face, and
had already seen thin high-heeled shoes.
"I will come with you, yes?"
The little man interrupted. "Why do you say such things, Olga? You know
that you cannot walk a mile."
We pointed out that we were going to march across the Austrian front,
and that no one could tell us where the Austrians were exactly; that our
safety depended to some extent on our speed, and that the failure of one
to make the pace meant the failure of all. The little man drew her away.
In the afternoon a miserable fit of depression took us, but we pushed it
behind us. To the hospital for tea, taking with us a tin of cocoa and
some condensed milk, which the people lacked. Biscuits and treacle, the
treacle looted from the railway, where an obliging guard had said that
he could not give permission to take it, but that he could look the
other way. We heard the tale of Kragujevatz, of the camp and all the
buildings filled to overflowing. More aeroplane raids; and of the sudden
order to evacuate. All the wounded who could crawl were got from their
beds and turned into the street by the authorities to go: if they could
not walk, to crawl. A few Serb and Austrian doctors were left to guard
and watch those too ill to go; with them some Swedish and Dutch sisters,
and the Netherlands flag flying from the hospitals. Dr. Churchin seemed
to have been the good genius of the Missions, never flagging in his
efforts for them.
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