The night train passed south about nine o’clock. Then the Turks relaxed their vigilance. And there was about two hours left before the moon rose. As soon as the puff of the engine had died away in the distance, two strong swimmers descended to the river with the rope and fastened it securely from one shore to the other. This done, they returned and informed the chief, and one by one the men climbed down through the culvert and launched out into the stream. Arriving on the opposite bank, they scurried into the woods. Four of the men, more fastidious than the others, took off their clothes to make the passage, and attempted to hold them, with their guns, over their heads. The Vardar is not very deep, but its current is terrific, and all four, finding that they needed both hands to the rope, lost their clothes. This quartet arrived at the point of reassembling dressed in cartridge belts; but they had saved these, their guns and dynamite bombs. Very like Kipling’s warriors who ‘took Lungtungpen naked!’ The other men suppressed their laughter at the discomfited group only because of the dangerous proximity of the camp to the north, and made up between them costumes for the shivering four. The last man to cross the stream loosened the rope at the other side, and two others pulled him over; and the ‘trek’ was immediately renewed. Before day dawned, the insurgents drew up at a sheepfold on a mountain-side. The barking of the dogs woke the old shepherd, who, discovering the nature of his guests, roused his sheep and drove them out; and the insurgents crept in under the low brush roofs on to the warm straw. The insurgents took two sheep and roasted them whole for their evening meal. One morning, by accident, the band lay down to rest within two hundred yards of a vast camp of soldiers. At sunset, the Mohamedans offered up the three evening cheers for their Padisha, and the insurgents uttered three curses upon ‘his Sultanic Majesty.’ It had come to be known to the Turks that Sarafoff was making his way to the Bulgarian border; a reward was offered for his head, and cavalry patrols were sent out to intercept him. But it was not difficult to elude these, for the cavalry could not leave the roads; and it broke the monotony of the days in hiding to watch the patrols pass on the highways below. It is generally with the bands to fight or not to fight; but sometimes they are surprised by the Turks. Sarafoff and his band succeeded in eluding the troops until they arrived in the neighbourhood of a little town named Bouff, where, being worn out with a week’s hard marching, they elected to rest for thirty-six hours.