open
where food could be got. I remember hearing English spoken, and seeing
some Red Cross nurses in the custody of Austrian soldiers coming from
the railway station.

It would have done me a lot of good to have had a word with them. I
thought of the gallant people whose capital this had been, how three
times they had flung the Austrians back over the Danube, and then had
only been beaten by the black treachery of their so-called allies.
Somehow that morning in Belgrade gave both Peter and me a new purpose
in our task. It was our business to put a spoke in the wheel of this
monstrous bloody juggernaut that was crushing the life out of the
little heroic nations.

We were just getting ready to cast off when a distinguished party
arrived at the quay. There were all kinds of uniforms--German,
Austrian, and Bulgarian, and amid them one stout gentleman in a fur
coat and a black felt hat. They watched the barges up-anchor, and
before we began to jerk into line I could hear their conversation. The
fur coat was talking English.

'I reckon that's pretty good noos, General,' it said; 'if the English
have run away from Gally-poly we can use these noo consignments for the
bigger game. I guess it won't be long before we see the British lion
moving out of Egypt with sore paws.'

They all laughed. 'The privilege of that spectacle may soon be ours,'
was the reply.

I did not pay much attention to the talk; indeed I did not realize till
weeks later that that was the first tidings of the great evacuation of
Cape Helles. What rejoiced me was the sight of Blenkiron, as bland as
a barber among those swells. Here were two of the missionaries within
reasonable distance of their goal.

CHAPTER TEN

The Garden-House of Suliman the Red

We reached Rustchuk on January 10th, but by no means landed on that
day. Something had gone wrong with the unloading arrangements, or more
likely with the railway behind them, and we were kept swinging all day
well out in the turbid river. On the top of this Captain Schenk got an
ague, and by that evening was a blue and shivering wreck. He had done
me well, and I reckoned I would stand by him. So I got his ship's
papers, and the manifests of cargo, and undertook to see to the
trans-shipment. It wasn't the first time I had tackled that kind of
business, and I hadn't much to learn about steam cranes. I told him I
was going on to Constantinople and would take Peter with me, and he was
a