What of the Allies in Salonika? On 12th October General Sarrail arrived to take command of the French 2nd Division, which had been brought from Cape Helles. Before our 10th Division from Suvla was ready to move, the French moved up country in the hope of joining hands with the Serbians in the neighbourhood of Uskub. You will see on the map a railway running up the Vardar to Veles. Along this railway Sarrail moved his troops. It was a single, grass-grown track, quite inadequate for the advance of an army. Ninety miles north of Salonika, at a point marked X on the map, it begins to run through a narrow gorge with steep rocky walls, called the Iron Gate. If the Bulgarians once gained this ravine, the Allies would be held up and unable to advance. Early in the month of October Bulgarian raiders cut the railway at X, but on the 19th the French advance guards reached the place and drove them out. Four days later the rest of the division arrived, and detachments which were ferried across the Vardar seized positions on the left bank of the river, which was then swollen by the autumn rains. Meanwhile the British 10th Division extended the French right to Lake Doiran. It was now proposed to capture a steep wall of mountain which commanded the valley. In order to reach it the French left had to cross the swollen river once more. It had no pontoons, but by means of an old ferry-boat a detachment got across. The French scaled the summit, drove off the Bulgarians who held it, and dug themselves in. On 4th and 5th November the Bulgarians made a strong attack on the summit, but were repulsed after fierce fighting at close quarters. Now that the French commanded the valley southward, they began to push on towards the Babuna Pass in order to join hands with the Serbians who were holding the crest. By the time they were within ten miles of the Serbian position the Bulgarians were flinging 125,000 men against the heroic rearguard. The French dared not proceed further. Supplies could only reach them along a hundred miles of single-line railway, which might be cut any day; their only means of crossing the Vardar was by a crazy wooden bridge, and there were twenty miles of bad road in their rear. The Serbians had already retreated from the Babuna Pass, and an advance could be of no service to them. Further, the Bulgarians were trying to cut them off from the bridge. They were, therefore, obliged to retreat; no other course was open to them. The Allied endeavour had come to nothing. The French and British fell back on Salonika, and there remained throughout the winter. [Illustration: "Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow." (_From the picture by F. Matania. By permission of the Sphere._) This picture shows old King Peter and his court retreating on foot through the snows of winter into the wilds of Albania.]