CTION

It is curious to follow anything right back to its inception, and to
discover from what extraordinary causes results are due. It is strange,
for instance, to find that the luck of the thirteen began right back at
the time when Jan, motoring back from Uzhitze down the valley of the
Morava, coming fastish round a corner, plumped right up to the axle in a
slough of clinging wet sandy mud. The car almost shrugged its shoulders
as it settled down, and would have said, if cars could speak, "Well,
what are you going to do about that, eh?" It was about the 264th mud
hole in which Jan's motor had stuck, and we sat down to wait for the
inevitable bullocks. But it was a Sunday and bullocks were few; the wait
became tedious, and in the intervals of thought which alternated with
the intervals of exasperation, Jan realized that he needed a holiday.

To be explicit. Jan was acting as engineer to Dr. Berry's Serbian
Mission from the Royal Free Hospital:--Jan Gordon, and Jo is his wife,
Cora Josephine Gordon, artist, and V.A.D.

We had a six months of work behind us. We had seen the typhus, and had
dodged the dreaded louse who carries the infection, we had seen the
typhus dwindle and die with the onrush of summer. We had helped to clean
and prepare six hospitals at Vrntze or Vrnjatchka Banja--whichever you
prefer. We had helped Mr. Berry, the great surgeon, to ventilate his
hospitals by smashing the windows--one had been a child again for a
moment. Jo had learned Serbian and was assisting Dr. Helen Boyle, the
Brighton mind specialist, to run a large and flourishing out-patient
department to which tuberculosis and diphtheria--two scourges of
Serbia--came in their shoals. We had endeavoured to ward off typhoid by
initiating a sort of sanitary vigilance committee, having first sacked
the chief of police: we had laid drains, which the chief Serbian
engineer said he would pull up as soon as we had gone away. We had
helped in the plans of a very necessary slaughter-house, which Mr. Berry
was going to present to the town. There was an excuse for Jan's desire.
The English papers had been howling about the typhus months after the
disease had been chased out by English, French, and American doctors,
who had disinfected the country till it reeked of formalin and sulphur;
shoals of devoted Englishwomen were still pouring over, generously ready
to risk their lives in a danger which no longer existed. Our own unit,
which had dwindled to a