"Playing cards, probably. Or perhaps they're drinking with the rest. Anyway, if we're going to stay here all night, it's just as well to have the entertainment of this _al fresco_ supper-party. Anything is better than that intolerable silence." Sylvia blew out the stump of candle, and they sat in darkness, watching the fire-flecked revel. The shouting grew louder with the frequent passing of the wine-skins; after an hour groups of _comitadjis_ and regulars left the bonfire and wandered along the permanent way, singing drunken choruses. What happened presently at the far end of the train they could not see, but there was a sound of smashed glass followed by a man's scream. Those who were still sitting round the fire snatched up their weapons and stumbled in loud excitement toward the center of the disturbance. There were about a dozen shots, the rasp of torn woodwork, and a continuous crash of broken glass, with curses, cries, and all the sounds of quarrelsome confusion. "The drunken brutes are breaking up the train," Michael exclaimed. "We'd better sit back from the window for a while." Sylvia cried out to him that it was worse and that they were dragging along by the heels the bodies of men and kicking them as they went. "Good God!" he declared, standing up now in horror. "They're murdering the wretched Serbian prisoners. Here, we must get out and protest." "Sit down, fool," Sylvia commanded. "What good will your protesting do?" But as she spoke she gave a shuddering shriek and held her hands up to her eyes: they had thrown a writhing, mutilated shape into the fire. "The brutes! The filthy brutes!" Michael shouted, and, jumping upon the seat of the compartment, he kicked at the window-panes until there was not a fragment of glass left. "Shout, Sylvia, shout! Oh, hell! I can't remember a word of their bloody language. We must stop them. Stop, I tell you. Stop!" One of the prisoners had broken away from his tormentors and was running along the permanent way, but the blood from a gash in the forehead blinded him and he fell on his face just outside the compartment. Two _comitadjis_ banged out his brains on the railway line; with clasp-knives they hacked the head from the corpse and merrily tossed it in at the window, where it fell on the floor between Sylvia and Michael. "My God!" Michael muttered. "It's better to be killed ourselves than to stay here and endure this." He began to scramble out of the window, and she, seeing that he was nearly mad with horror at his powerlessness, followed him in the hope of deflecting any rash action. Strangely enough, nobody interfered with their antics, and they had run nearly the whole length of the train, in order to find the officers in charge, before a tall man descending from one of the carriages barred their progress. "Why, it's you!" Sylvia laughed, hysterically. "It's my rose-grower! Michael, do you hear? My rose-grower."