The Luck of Thirteen | Page 7

tooth must come out," squeaked the small dentist.
"Can't you save it?" prayed Jo; "it's the best one I've got, and the one to
which I send all the Serbian meat."
"It must come out," squeaked the Russ.
"Can't you save it?" prayed Jo.

"It must come out," reiterated the Russ.
"You're very small," said Jo, doubtfully.
This annoyed the dentist. She pushed unwilling Jo into a chair,
produced a pair of pincers, and, oh, woe! she wrenched to the north, she
wrenched to the south, she wrenched to the east, and there was the
tooth, nearly as big as the dentist herself.
"I never can eat Serbian meat again," murmured Jo as she mopped her
mouth.
After tea we returned to the S.D.W.O., and by means of our letter and
our Englishness we got in front of all the unfortunate people who had
been waiting for hours, and received our passes, etc., immediately.
Sir Ralph Paget's storekeeper wouldn't work on Sunday, so we had also
to rest, and we celebrated by staying in bed late and going for a walk in
the afternoon with an Englishman who was en route for Sofia. We
came to a little village where every house was surrounded by high
walls made of wattle. The women soon crowded round, imagining Mr.
B---- a doctor. Jo pretended to translate, and gave advice for a girl with
consumption, and an old woman whose hand was stiff from typhus, and
we had to give the money for the latter's unguent. For the consumptive
she said, "Open the windows, rest, and don't spit"; but that isn't a
peasant's idea of doctoring: they want medicine or magic, one or the
other, which doesn't matter.
The train started "after eight" on Monday evening. The English boys at
the Rest house were very good to us, adding to our small stock of
necessities a "Tommy's treasure," two mackintosh capes, and some oxo
cubes. One youth said, "You won't want to travel a second time on a
Serbian luggage train"; then ruefully, "I've done it! The shunting,
phew!"
A Serbian railway station is a public meeting-place; along the platform,
but railed off from the train, is a restaurant which is one of the favourite
cafés of the town. It is such fun to the still childish Serbian mind to sit

sipping beer or wine and watch the trains run about, and hear the
whistles. We had our supper amongst the gay crowd, and then pushed
out into the darkened goods station to find our travelling bedroom, for
we were to sleep in the waggons--beds and mattresses having been
provided--and we had borrowed blankets from the Rest house.
We found our truck and climbed in. There were certainly beds enough,
for there were thirty light iron folding bedsteads piled up at one end.
We chose two, and, not satisfied with the stacking of the others, Jan
repiled them, with an eye on what our friend had said about Serbian
shunting. Even then Jo was not happy about them.
We sat on our beds, reading or staring out of our open door at the
twinkle of the station lights, the moving flares of the engines, and the
fountains of sparks which rushed from their chimneys; listening to the
chains of bumps which denoted a shunting train. We heard another
chain of bumps, which rattled rapidly towards us and suddenly--a most
awful CRASH. The candle went out, and we were flung from bed on to
the floor. Our truck hurtled down the line at about thirty miles an hour,
and suddenly struck some solid object. Another wild crash, and the
whole twenty-eight beds flung themselves upon the place where we had
been, and smashed our couches to the ground.
We have read stories of the Spanish Inquisition about rooms which
grow smaller, and at last crush the unfortunate victim to a jelly: we can
now appreciate the feeling of the unfortunate victim aforesaid. There
were piles of packing-cases at either end of the van, and for the next
hour, as we were hurtled up and down by the Serbian engine-driver, at
each crash these packing-cases crept nearer and nearer. The beds had
fallen across the door, so it was impossible to escape. When the lower
cases had reached the beds they halted, but the upper ones still crept on
towards us. In the short, wild intervals of peace Jan tried to push the
cases back and restore momentary stability. In addition to diminishing
room, we were flung about with every crash, landing on the corner of a
packing-case, on the edge of an iron bedstead, and with each crash the
light went out. We will give not one jot of advantage to your prisoner
in the Spanish Inquisition, save that we escaped whereas he did not.

The engine-driver