The Rising of the Tide

it below the belt. Moreover, he was too wise to attempt to influence the likes or dislikes of his spirited daughter. He had too great faith in the soundness of her instincts. However deeply she

s, and sensing far better than any one in Sabinsport the motives which had invol

met him on the street; and always Dick found that his reason was the need he had of talking about his girl. Evidently he talked to no one else, for nobody in Sabinsport knew any of the details of the terrible experiences these months had brought Nancy Cowder or anything of the hell of torment her father had gone through. Dick himself never mentioned her name, sensing that, at the first hint the hard old man had that he h

ced it into a whole. He saved every item he read to talk over with Cowder, and every day that he built up the story he unconsciously became more deeply involved. "The coura

wing the qualities of a great, pitying, resourceful soul, naturally and quietly gi

nd nurses worn out by the long strain through which they had been going, the country could scarce have been in a worse condition to stand a new shock. She, to be sure, repulsed her enemy, but the repulse cost a frightful price of dead and mutilated. Who shall ever have the courage to tell of the savage cruelti

t together a unit of a half-dozen women. The result was two physicians, two nurses, one chauffeur and one "general utility man," as Nancy called herself. They moved heaven and earth to raise money, collect supplies and secure such recognition from the English and French gover

eastward connecting with the main line between Salonika and Belgrade. It was over this single track, with its dwarf engine and cars, that the soldiery of all Central Serbia was traveling-with their supplies, their wounded and their sick. Since the terrific figh

s and medicines-and more to follow. They had planned to find a little house on one of the green hi

as conquerors and built houses with overhanging eaves and trellised windows. It was from this little house that they started out for their work in what was then on

s, cafés, had been turned into wards-and such wards! The only beds were piles of straw on the floor. The only utensils the helter-skelter articles the doctors and nurses could pick up. And to meet this misery, there were just six doctors! Everything that they could do they had done to bring something like order and cleanli

uld. From daylight to dark they went from one group to another, cleansing and dressing wounds, changing straw often stiff with blood and filth, fumigating garm

her life and health for the past twelve months-and such wonderful letters as she wrote; the first appalled cry at the suffering-suffering so out of proportion to their puny efforts-was never repeated. The girl had plunged into steady work, and it was of what they did that she

nderful money is before. You mustn't mind if I spend a great deal-if I overdraw-if I cut into my principal. There couldn't be a better use for it. If it all goes I can work. Why, I could earn my living as a hospital orderly now, Father. You ought to see what I can do-what I do do. I sweep floors and cha

other person, and I shall know when I get there how

rstand," said

" said

come back!" groa

ll," sa

y here! How

g Sabinsport in S

the money I have,"

do better with

things! The redemption of a forsaken church on a hillside turned into a perfectly good sanitarium

ces, scrubbed and cooked and even sewed. "We have a class in mattress making-such a funny, funny class. There's a poor one-legged Austrian with a cough which will carry him off soon,

nd how dangerous it was to drink the dreadful water used in Valievo. We didn't succeed very well, though some of them would do almost anything to please us. When we took over the old church we were put to it for water at first. It had to be carried for nearly a mile. Then, oh, Happy Day, Dr. Helen and I made up our minds there must be water above us somewhere and we'd find it and pipe it down. We found a perfectly good, bubbling spring, grown about with willows. We paid t

d by body lice, but where it was known, the war on the pests which the unit had always waged took on a fury and an ingenuity worthy of the enemy. It was war, war, war. The girls shaved, sulphurized and burned from morning until night. They isolated the inco

seen what we have seen-if you had known the cause and if you had labored and sweat day and night for weeks to remove that cause, you would understand why we sing what we do. The words came

re no li

e no lic

ice

ay be o

g fat li

ce on

t to Dick with tears r

e Nancy,"

rave lady,

With the end of the fighting and the conquest of typhus their life was more like that of a normal hospital.

just a spark of life left. They brought him finally to us-and we did our best of course. It's strange what a fury to save seizes you when a poor shattered thing like this is put into your hands. You fight and fight-and won't give in, and we won with this man, but I don't believe we would if he had not been so determined to live. He whispered it to one of the girls, speaking for the first time day

was in the ward. I knew there was something he wanted to say but was too weak, or perhaps hi

better he called me

' I to

bins

ied, 'you kno

children ther

do you

u once, at

ean to get him on his feet and take him back to Sabinsport. As soon as you get this, c

tter to Dick. "You know the

It's been months since they've had news. Stana had almost lost hope.

out with you. If Nancy has adopted Nikola, I guess I'll take the family." And so, for the first t

which gladdened Reuben Cowder's sore heart as he had not believed it ever again would be gladdened-Nikola could take care of himself now. Nancy really needed a rest, and they were all insisti

first time Sabinsport learned in details of what Nancy Cowder had been doing, for when the seal he had put on his lips was broken by Reuben Cowder's change of heart, Dick told both Patsy and Mary Sabins the story, omit

abins; but before a week had passed the library had it penciled in blue on a fresh outline map, with Valievo marked probably within fifty miles of the true location, but quite as exact as the maps which amateur cartographers of the press were publishing; the Woman's Club had engaged a lecturer to tell it what he knew of Serbia; a subscription had been started, and in the alley on the South Side Jimmy Flanni

nce as necessary, doing it feverishly, joyfully-he who had always stuck night and day at his post and grumbled at every busin

force the news of the second invasion of Serbia. From north and west came the Austro-Hungarians-from the west the Bulgars-hordes of them

d Salonika before the advance, she'd have hardly a shadow of a chance. And he told himself, too, that if she saw need, she would not leave. His forebodings were so black that Dick urged him to go at once

nformation of his daughter, but to no avail. When it seemed certain that for the time being-and he was everywhere assured it was only for "the

been defeated on every side-they, and practically the entire population, were in retreat; had embark

ier or civilian of whom he heard, sending agents to Salonika and to Corfu to search. It was not until the opening of the year 1916 that news came to him that he trusted. This was when three of his daughter's companions in the Serbian unit reached London. They brought him the first tru

mulating stores and preparing for a second attack, welcomed the enemy, confident of their ability to drive him back. Their confidence was quickly destroyed. The mass thrown against them was overpowering. Nish was taken early in November by the Bulgars, while b

d, and their stores and a few of the most helpless patients loaded into them. Two native women who had become particularly useful we

ey were in a part of the country well known to both of them, they, in all probability, finding it impossible to overtake their own party in the rush and confusion of the fleeing mob, had sought to find a way out by another route, or had taken refuge in some mountain farm or village known to Nikola and unlikely to be reached by th

ped as lightly as they did; but that they could not do. They urged him, more for his own sake than for hers, to go himself to Corfu or Salonika, and ar

banian port held then by the Italians-the port from which so many of the refugees had been transferred to Corfu, to Corsica, and to Italy. It s

oved, and so to Durazzo he went, arriving the third week of the month. The Austro-Hungarians were already in Albania; they had

es, the crannies of the mountain on the route that they had traveled, were filled with hideous proofs of the anguish and death that marked the escape of the Serbians. Fully half of the army and of

ievo in November, he was assured that there was not a chance in a

e, she might be concealed in some mountain hamlet, but no searching party was possible under any auspices now. "You would have to bring over an American army to protect you, and I understand you Americans are too proud to fight,"

ith, he saw the enemy ready to sweep him into the sea as it had the people his d

just reached Durazzo. Such groups were common in those days. One of the men in this party-a man on crutches, a Serbian, claimed that a woman whom they carried with them in a rude hammock was an American. He had begged them to cable at once to Re

to see the girl. If she were as weak as the Serbian claimed, the shock of seeing him might be bad for her. A guide would conduct him to her lodgings. And this arranged, the over-worked, horror-fed, shock-proof Red Cross unit stopped for an instant to w

familiar in Durazzo in those days to cause remark. Nikola Petrovitch, meeting him at the door, shrank from his outstretched hands as if they were those of a ghost. In all his imaginings of what might happen to h

ber where Nancy Cowder lay, and he took the astonished nurse by the arm and led her out. He was right, for a half hour later, when Reuben Cowder called back the nurse, the first color that had tinged the girl's cheeks in weeks was on them, and every day that followed, in spite of the difficulties and dangers in getting away from

ean, and there for months she lay, regaining little by little her all but exhausted vitality. Reu

llapsed after a few days of the terrible sights and hardships of the retreat. They had found her one morning burning with fever and babbling nonsense. It was then that Nikola had asserted himself. Give him a bullock and a cart and the food they could spare, send one of the Serbian women with him, and he would take her to a place he knew in the mo

break into bands, seeking hiding places little likely to be disturbed for months at least, and it was one of these bands

p a rough hammock, and for days took turns in carrying it. The spot they sought, and finally reached, was a tiny hamlet, hidden in a cleft of a mountain-a group of huts, a few women and children, a few goats and bullo

homespun rugs, their homespun "tchilms"-hangings, some of which would have done credit to a Persian weaver-covered the walls. Homespun linen furnished her bed, na

the sick were to recover, and in spite of the protestations of the inhabitants in regard to air she saw to it, with almost religious zeal, that Nancy had all th

ally, to know them, to understand where she was; and with

ad saved her life, cut off as she was from everything that to him seemed essential. He little understood the power of resistance to death in Nancy herse

rally to make his plans for the hazardous journey. He was dominated by the fear that sooner or later the Austrians m

in the mountains of western Serbia and in the Albanian hills. Communications were soon established between these groups. Secret routes for messages were opened. It was not long before they all had learned of the rapid

n to sit up a little, he put his plan before her, told her of the groups scattered from point to point, which could be used as resting places, as refuges in case of need.

she was indomitable in spir

d with bundles on their back, started out-two strong Serbian soldiers, the native woman who had n

s that, whatever the danger, the exposure, the privation, the girl they carried never lost heart, never complained, never failed to greet them with smiles. They knew she grew daily weaker and weaker; but they knew,

did not both the heroine and the hero to whom she owed her life belong to them? Sabinsport had no

. Serbia's tragic fate, brought home to them as it was by Nancy Cowder's escape, set them to asking what it meant. Why should Austria set out to annihilate a people? Why, even Belgium's fate,

nt aid in time to prevent the disaster. "If we'd gone into this war when we ought to," he declared loudly, "this thing never would have

states, born and brought up to cut one another's throats-and that a peaceful group of American citizens should lash themselves into fighting mood because one of the cut-throats was getting the worst of it, was only another of the unspeakable absurdities of this war. And why were they so stirred up? They hadn't even remembered Serbia was in the war until this story about Nancy Cowder came out. Fool thing for any woman to do-just another example of the m

ria were the enemy. Serbia was on the side of the Allies. That was all that was necessary for him to know. Neither the War Board nor the town was so sure. In many a quarter of the town Dick ran on efforts to understand what Europe herself has so long and so fatally failed to understand. The boys in his club began to ask for books on the Balkans. It was no uncommon thing to find the butcher or the grocer catechizing Czech or Serb or Greek, getting their point of view. And the stories they heard were repeated. Nikola Petr

g had been, intent on keeping the hot-headed little states in turmoil and in suspicion, watching their chance for a plausible excuse to pounce on them one by one and absorb them. Certainly this was as near the truth as you could get in regard to Serbia and Austria; and it ought to be stop