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A few flowers bought at Tchertchen had been arranged in the corners of the car, which was large enough to hold nearly all who wished to be present and those who could not get inside could look on from the gangways. That all the passengers might know what was going on, we had put up a notice at the doors of the first and second-class cars, couched in the following terms: "Mr.
The train kept on at its moderate speed of forty kilometres an hour, an average that would have been raised to eighty had they listened to Baron Weissschnitzerdörfer. The truth is that the Chinese driver had no notion of making up the time lost between Tchertchen and Tcharkalyk. At seven in the evening we reach Kara Nor, to stay there fifty minutes.
"Ah!" said he, with a sigh. "They are not obliged to wait until they reach Pekin!" "Quite so, Kinko; but it seems to me that a marriage under such conditions is not likely to be lasting! But after all, that is the couple's lookout." At three o'clock in the morning we stopped forty minutes at Tchertchen, almost at the foot of the ramifications of the Kuen Lun.
After shaking hands, he showed me a Mongol in the second-class car, and said to me, "That is not one of those we picked up at Douchak when we picked up Faruskiar and Ghangir." "That is so," said I; "I never saw that face in the train before." Popof, to whom I applied for information, told me that the Mongol had got in at Tchertchen.
"Train attacked between Tchertchen and Tcharkalyk by the gang of the celebrated Ki-Tsang; travelers repulsed the attack and saved the Chinese treasure; dead and wounded on both sides; chief killed by the heroic Mongol grandee Faruskiar, general manager of the company, whose name should be the object of universal admiration." If this telegram does not gratify the editor of my newspaper, well
"When he arrived," he said, "the manager spoke to him for a minute, from which I concluded that he also was one of the staff of the Grand Transasiatic." I had not noticed Faruskiar during my walk. Had he alighted at one of the small stations between Tchertchen and Tcharkalyk, where we ought to have been about one o'clock in the afternoon?
The place where we had been stopped was halfway between Tcharkalyk and Tchertchen, the only two stations from which we could procure help. Unfortunately they were no longer in telegraphic communication, Ki-Tsang having knocked down the posts at the same time as he lifted the rails. Hence a discussion as to what was the best thing to be done, which was not of long duration.
The passengers were only too glad to help Popof and the officials who had at their disposal a few tools, including jacks, levers and hammers, and in three hours the engine and tender were again on the line. The most difficult business is over. With the engine behind we can proceed at slow speed to Tchertchen. But what lost time! What delays!
None of us had seen this miserable, desolate country, treeless and verdureless, which the railway was now crossing on its road to the northeast. Day came; our train ran the four hundred kilometres between Tchertchen and Tcharkalyk, while the sun caressed with its rays the immense plain, glittering in its saline efflorescences. When I awoke I seemed to have had an unpleasant dream.
"The object of stealing the imperial treasure," said Ephrinell. "Do you forget that those millions would be a temptation to scoundrels? Was it not for the purpose of robbing the train that we were attacked between Tchertchen and Tcharkalyk?" The American could not have been nearer the truth. "And so," said Popof, "after Ki-Tsang's attempt, you think that other bandits "
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