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It is a few minutes past eleven. Still two hours to Gheok Tepe. The moment has come. I glide between the seats to the door of the car. I open it gently and shut it after me without being heard by my companions, without waking any one. Here I am on the platform, which shakes as the train travels.
Labor cost little; forty-five francs a month for the men from the oasis, fifty centimes a day for those who came from Bokhara. It was in this way that Skobeleff's soldiers were taken to Kizil Arvat, and then eighty-four miles beyond to Gheok Tepe.
The train would not stop until it reached Gheok Tepe at one o'clock in the morning. During the run from Kizil Arvat to Gheok Tepe I reckoned that Popof would have a good sleep, and then, or never, I would put my plan into execution. Hold! an idea! Suppose it is Zeitung who makes a trade of this sort of thing and manages to make a little money out of public generosity?
It would be better for me to relieve his anxiety this very night. That is impossible, for the train will soon stop at Gheok Tepe, and then at Askhabad which it will leave in the first hour of daylight. I can no longer trust to Popof's going to sleep. I am absorbed in these reflections, when the locomotive stops in Gheok Tepe station at one o'clock in the morning.
The prisoner has suspended his respiration. I must reassure him. "Open!" I say to him gently in Russian. "Open " I cannot finish the sentence; for the train gives a sudden jump and slackens speed. But we cannot yet have reached Gheok Tepe? There is a noise outside. I rush out of the van and shut the door behind me. It was time.
"Stupid brute, then!" Before the train reaches Gheok Tepe I am back in the car. Confound this dromedary! If he had not managed to get smashed so clumsily No. 11 would no longer be unknown to me. He would have opened his panel, we would have talked in a friendly way, and separated with a friendly shake of the hand.
Is there not a justification for those fine words of Skobeleff after the capture of Gheok Tepe, when the conquered feared reprisals from the victors: "In Central Asian politics we know no outcasts?" "And in that policy," said the major, "lies our superiority over England." "No one can be superior to the English."
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