We arrived at a little
village, three or four wooden houses. Three pompous old men came to meet
us, and we took coffee together outside the inn. They were very
surprised to hear we were English, and said that no English had ever
passed that way before.
At the frontier, an hour further on, a man and his wife came down from a
little house on the hill and stopped us. They examined the papers of the
two Serbs, but left us alone, to our huge relief. We breathed again.
Soon after, however, Whatmough rushed up to Jan and Jo, who were talking
to a ragged woman.
"Do come and talk. An officer has arrested West and Mawson."
We ran ahead to find a perplexed mounted officer surrounded by our
party. He had come upon West and Mawson walking on ahead and took them
to be Bulgarian comitaj.
"No, that's not an English uniform," he said, and searched them for
firearms. When the others came he wavered. Miss Brindley did not look
like a comitaj; and by the time we arrived he began to talk about the
military situation in the Balkans, and rode off with the politest of
farewells.
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