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Updated: June 4, 2025
As to the rails, the scoundrels have simply thrown them onto the sand, and by replacing them end to end it would be easy to get the train over to the uninjured track. It would not take a day to do this, and five hours afterward we should be at Tcharkalyk." Excellent notion, at once approved of by Popof, the driver, the passengers, and particularly by the baron.
Sometimes the train runs through thick jungles, amid which Popof assures me tigers are numerous. Numerous they may be, but I have not seen one. And yet in default of redskins we might get some excitement out of tiger-skins. What a heading for a newspaper, and what a stroke of luck for a journalist!
A certain snoring proved that Kinko was inside as usual, and sleeping peacefully. I did not care to wake him, and I left him to dream of his adorable Roumanian. In the morning Popof told me that the train, which was now traveling about as fast as an omnibus, had passed Kargalik, the junction for the Kilian and Tong branches.
There we shall stop a quarter of an hour before proceeding towards the Amu-Daria. Popof will then retire to his den, and I shall be able to slip into the van, without fear of being seen. How long the hours appear! Several times I have almost fallen asleep, and twice or thrice I have had to go out into the fresh air on the platform. The train enters Tchardjoui Station to the minute.
Popof was right; he must be the son of some family of distinction who has been spending some years in Paris for education and amusement. He ought to be one of the most regular visitors at the Twentieth Century "five o'clocks." Meanwhile I will attend to other business. There is that man in the case. A whole day will elapse before I can relieve his anxiety. In what a state he must be!
I asked Popof to discover the name of the defunct. He ought to be some mandarin of mark. As soon as I knew it I would send a telegram to the Twentieth Century. While I was looking at this van, a new passenger came up and examined it with no less curiosity than I did.
All that I saw on the left as I went out of the station, was the gloomy outline of the Turkoman Fort, dominating the new town, the population of which has doubled since 1887. It forms a confused mass behind a thick curtain of trees. When I returned at half-past three, Popof was going through the luggage van, I know not why.
Popof smiles and soon his perfumed puffs are mingling voluptuously with mine. For fifteen years I think I said our guard had been in the Transcaspian service. He knows the country up to the Chinese frontier, and five or six times already he has been over the whole line known as the Grand Transasiatic.
These same fragments, three in number, were reproduced by Count Anatole de Segur in the biography of his ancestor, of which we have spoken. Aside from these extracts nothing was known of Rostopchine's memoirs until Popof had made his researches. To verify the memoirs Popof quotes long passages which he compares carefully with other documents of that epoch.
Now the road is clear to Tcharkalyk; what do I say? to Pekin. We resume our places. Popof gives the signal for departure as Caterna trolls out the chorus of victory of the admiral's sailors in Haydee. A thousand cheers reply to him. At ten o'clock in the evening the train enters Tcharkalyk station. We are exactly thirty hours behind time.
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