There was barely room to pass, but I rode forward with Vooitch, scraping and bruising my legs against the wagon wheels and hard wooden pack-saddles, to try and discover the reason for the long halt. If there was a serious reason, it was as well to be prepared. But we found, as we had suspected, that a little way up the line, some of the oxen had decided that, enemies or no enemies, it was now bedtime, and they were calmly lying across the road, and the complacent drivers, in the absence of officers, had acquiesced, as there was no space by the side of the road, on which the animals could rest. The soldiers were seated around the promptly lighted fires; they were not sleeping, they never seemed to sleep; or eating, one seldom saw them eat; they were gazing into the red ashes, in apparent ignorance, or indifference to their pending fate. There was only one remedy. Vooitch and I were both wearing thick boots. We dismounted, and with the optimism of Mark Twain when he tried to push the glacier forward with his stick, we walked along the line of the columns ahead of us, kicked the oxen out of their slumbers, called the men from their dreams, and provoked a move; we may thus possibly have prevented the capture of some of the rearguard columns.
We then journeyed continuously, except for short compulsory halts, due to congestion of convoys, all through that night, and the next day, till 6 o'clock in the evening--a 25 hours' ride--till we reached Ravni, in an opening which ended the first, or Maidevo, half of the gorge. This opening was also the entrance to the second, or Yankova, portion of the defile.
We bivouacked by the side of a small river. We economised time in those days, and pitched as few tents as possible--one for hospital, one for doctors, one for men, and one for women. This evening we made our kitchen in the open, under a large walnut tree, by the side of the stream. Four or five officers, including the Colonel who had been the head of the powder factory at Krushievatz, joined us for supper, and we gave them blankets, and straw, and the shelter of the hospital tent, for the night. The Colonel, like most officers, had been obliged to leave his wife and children in Krushievatz. How could he have transported them, and where could he have taken them? He hated the Germans, although, or was it because, he had a German wife, but he trusted, he said, that they would be cavaliers. But he was nervous and excited. Is it a wonder? He asked the question which I always dreaded, "Where are the English?" And I could only reply, as always, "Oh! they'll turn up some day." But I never, during our three months' retreat, heard either officer, or soldier, utter a word of bitterness, or reproach, about the non-arrival of the Allies. They always said, with quiet dignity, that there was some good reason why they had not yet been able to send help.