“This southern band--after recruiting up to over a thousand men at one time, and making life miserable for the Austrians for nearly four months--ran short of food in mid-winter and had to break up. Its leader, however, disguised as a Bulgar soldier, worked his way back through the enemy lines, and after just missing being potted by the first Serb patrol he ran into after crossing the Cerna, reached Salonika in safety with a complete report of what he had seen during five months in hostile territory. It was the slickest job of the kind that has been put through in this neck of the war. The guy’s name is----, and, unless he’s off on another lay of the same kind, you can probably see him in Salonika.[5] [5] Through the courtesy of the Crown Prince of Serbia, the writer, on his subsequent visit to Salonika, was granted an interview with the Intelligence Officer in question, and expects shortly to have permission to write a complete account of what was undoubtedly not only one of the most daring, but also one of the most successful exploits of the war. “As I was telling you,” resumed Radovitch, “dynamite was the one thing we felt the need of more than anything else, and yet--perhaps the one big thing we did wouldn’t have been half so big (and maybe it would have failed completely) if we’d had the powder to go about the job the way we planned to do it in the first place. Did you ever hear what happened to the Austrian force that was camped in the ---- Valley last spring?” “I remember reading one of their bulletins,” I replied, “which admitted losing a battalion or two in a flood in that region. But that was due to ‘natural causes,’ wasn’t it? Didn’t a broken dam have something to do with it?” “Natural causes and a busted dam did have something to do with it,” said Radovitch with a grin; “but nature in this case had some active assistance, and that was where we came in. It wasn’t just a battalion that went down-stream, either; it was more like two of their big regiments--the whole of the main force they had shivvied together to bottle us up with. It was the best thing we did by a mile; and, as I told you, it wouldn’t have been half the clean-up it was if we’d had in the first place the powder to do it in the ‘regular way.’ If we _had_ had the powder, we’d never have given Providence a chance, and, believe me, it was nothing but Providence that could have worked things round the way they finally came out.