lve to go--thirty-two hours
for a man without legs. This will show of what some Serbs are made.

Within the office we found a professor whom we had met before, and who
was acting as assistant mayor. We took him to the station and estimated
that thirty-two waggons would deal with our stuff.

[Illustration: SERB CONVALESCENTS AT UZHITZE.]

Jo and Jan went for a stroll, Uzhitze, especially in the back
streets, is like a Duerer etching--that one of the Prodigal Son, for
instance, all tiny, peaky-roofed houses. We took a siesta in the
afternoon, but Jan was dragged out to talk to our professor, who
explained that it was impossible for the Serbian Government to find
thirty-two ox-carts at once, so the convoy must make two journeys. He
also said that horses would be provided for us, and that we would take
two or three days to do the trip, but that the ox-waggons would be at
least seven, which was death to our romantic dream of toiling
laboriously up almost inaccessible mountains at the head of straining
ox-carts, sleeping by the roadside, brigands, and all that.

We went down to the station, unloaded the truck and checked the numbers.
A few were missing, but not so many as we had expected.

A regiment of soldiers were called up; at a word of command they pounced
upon our packing-cases and hurried them off to a storehouse. The smaller
cases were left to go on donkeys, two on either side.

The professor dined with us. He is an Anglophile, and was determined
after the war to go to England in order to discover the secret of her
greatness. He had a theory that it lay in our educational laws, which he
wanted to transplant into Serbia wholesale. Jan thought not, and
suggested that it might lie even deeper than that.

Next day was a Prazhnik, or feast day, and the great square was crowded
with peasantry in their beautiful hand-woven clothes. There were
soldiers straight back from the lines chaffing and flirting with the
pretty girls, and presently a group began to dance the "Kola" about a
man who played a pipe. It is not difficult to dance the Kola. You join
hands till a ring is formed, and then shuffle round and round. If you
have aspirations to style you fling your legs about as much as space
will allow, and we noticed how much better the men danced than the
girls, who were almost all very clumsy.

We were to be called at six, so went to bed early, and in spite of the
odours from the yard slept soundly.

[Illustration]