The Luck of Thirteen | Page 4

and fled to
their table, where we chatted till our train arrived. We found a coupé--a
carriage with only one long seat--the exigencies of which compelled
Jan to be all night with Jo's boots on his face, and we so slept as well as
we were able.
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II
NISH AND SALONIKA
To our dismay a rare thing happened--our train was punctual, and we
arrived in Nish at four o'clock. It was cold and misty. The station was
desolate and the town asleep. Around us in the courtyard ragged
soldiers were lying with their heads pillowed on brightly striped bags.

A nice old woman who had asked Jo how old she was, what relation
Jan was to her, whether they had children, and where she had learnt
Serbian, suddenly lost all her interest in us and hurried off with voluble
friends whose enormous plaits around their flat red caps betokened the
respectable middle-class women.
Piccadilly weepers vanished and a depressed little quartet was left on
the platform--our two selves, a lean schoolmaster, and an egg-shaped
man who never spoke a word. We found a clerk sitting in an office. He
said we could not leave our bags in his room, but as we made him own
that we could not put them anywhere else he looked the other way
while we dropped them in the corner.
In the faint mist of the early morning the great overgrown village of
one-storied houses seemed like a real town buried up to its attics in fog.
We found a café which was shut, and sat waiting on green chairs
outside. Around us old men were talking of the news in the papers.
They said that Bulgaria was making territorial demands, and as the
Balkan governments covet land above all things they felt pessimistic as
to whether Serbia would concede anything, and said, shaking their
heads, "It will be another Belgium."
We celebrated the opening of the café by ordering five Turkish coffees
each, and the schoolmaster and we alternately stood treat. Jo loaded up
with aspirin to deaden a toothache which was worrying her.
We spent a cynical morning in interviews with people who were
supposed to know about missing luggage. Both they and we were
aware that the first hospital which got a wandering packing-case froze
on to it, and if inconvenient people came to hunt for their property the
dismayed and guilty ones hurriedly painted the case, saying to each
other, "After all it's in a good cause, and it's better than if it were
stolen."
Then we went to see the powers who can say "no" to those who want to
do pleasant things, and were handed an amendment to a plea for a tour
round Serbia, including the front, which we had sent to them and which
had been pigeon-holed for a month.

"But we don't want to see a lot of monasteries," said Jan, as he gazed at
a little circle drawn round the over-visited part of Serbia. The powers
were adamant and seemed to think they had done very well for us. We
went away sadly, for monasteries had not been the idea at all.
Half an hour later we were pursuing an entirely different object. We
had discovered that Sir Ralph Paget was housing about £1000 worth of
stores destined for Dr. Clemow's hospital--which was in
Montenegro--and which needed an escort. He was somewhat puzzled at
our altruistic anxiety to take them off his hands, but was much relieved
at the thought that he could get rid of them.
We hurried to the station, rescued our knapsacks under the nose of a
new official who looked very much surprised, and boarded the English
rest house near by. English people were sitting in deck chairs outside
the papier-maché house which stood surrounded by a couple of tents
and a wooden kitchen in a field. Austrian prisoners were preparing
lunch, and we were introduced to Seemitch the dog.
Though young, Seemitch was fat and exhibited signs of a much-varied
ancestry. The original Seemitch, an important Serb with long gold teeth,
was very indignant that a dog, and such a dog, should be called after
him, so Sir Ralph arranged that of the two other puppies one should be
called after him and the other after Mr. Hardinge his secretary. Thus the
man Seemitch's dignity was restored.
At the station, to our great joy, we met two American doctors from
Zaichar. One we had mourned for dead and were astonished to see him,
shadow-like, stiff-kneed, and sitting uncomfortably on a chair in the
middle of the platform. Months before he had pricked himself with a
needle while operating on a gangrenous case, and had since lain
unconscious with blood-poisoning.
While we were cheering over his recovery, a little Frenchman slipped