He then put a cordon around the posts on the hills, lest the men should escape in the night, and, having prepared for an assault the next morning, sent us word to join him.

He promised to send us horses for the journey at daylight, and we went to the rendezvous breakfastless, not to lose time, but he forgot us, and, after waiting for the horses till past 8 A.M., we set out on foot.
The snow lay a few inches deep, but the sun had come out strong, and it was melted in patches, so that we stepped alternately in mud and in snow, slipping and picking our way in the best haste we might until 2 P.M., when we arrived at Vukovich, a tiny village where Peko had his headquarters for the moment, the entire population having taken refuge across the frontier.

Here the Russians had established an ambulance, and we found the wounded coming in, and some young Russian medical students dressing the wounds.

We could hear the firing, and the echoes of it rolling around the hills, and even the shouting of the chiefs in the, to us, inarticulate insults to the enemy and encouragement to their own men.

One of the surgeons took his rifle and offered himself as guide to the battlefield.
Vukovich is in a deep hollow, and, as we rose on the ridge that separated it from the higher land on which the fight was going on, a rifle ball sung over my head and went on into the village.