It wasn't the first time I had tackled that kind of business, and I hadn't much to learn about steam cranes.

I told him I was going on to Constantinople and would take Peter with me, and he was agreeable.

He would have to wait at Rustchuk to get his return cargo, and could easily inspan a fresh engineer.
I worked about the hardest twenty-four hours of my life getting the stuff ashore.

The landing officer was a Bulgarian, quite a competent man if he could have made the railways give him the trucks he needed.
There was a collection of hungry German transport officers always putting in their oars, and being infernally insolent to everybody.

I took the high and mighty line with them; and, as I had the Bulgarian commandant on my side, after about two hours' blasphemy got them quieted.
But the big trouble came the next morning when I had got nearly all the stuff aboard the trucks.
A young officer in what I took to be a Turkish uniform rode up with an aide-de-camp.