This moved them
once more to singing, but we think the songs sounded a little less
dreary.
The Commandant asked for, and got, half a dozen sheets from us as a sort
of superior backsheesh, and promised us horses for the morrow.
The next morning dawned dismally. Miss Rawlins and her companions were
to go on by post cart, and their conveyance arrived first, only two and
a half hours late. It was a sort of tinker's tent on four rickety
wheels. There seemed to be barely room for one within the dark interior,
but both Miss Rawlins and the little Russian climbed in somehow.
Charlie, the orderly, clung on by his eyelids in front, and off they
went. We last saw two faces peering back at us beneath the fringe of the
tent. They had no luck. Half-way to Uzhitze the cart upset and they were
all rolled into the ditch, missing a precipice of sixty feet or so by
the merest fraction.
Our own horses arrived later, we mounted, and with cheers from the
assembled authorities, we rode off.
The rain came down in a steady drizzle; we discovered that the
waterproof cloaks which we had borrowed from Nish were not very
weathertight.
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