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After so rude a task, how rude the appetite! We met in the dining car without distinction of classes. There was no scarcity of provisions, and a large breach was made in the reserves. Never mind! We can fill up again at Tcharkalyk. Caterna is particularly cheery, talkative, facetious, communicative, overflowing.
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.
"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.
It is a hundred and fifty kilometres from Tcharkalyk station, in the middle of the desert, amid the plains which are traversed by a little stream which flows into the Lob Nor. For twenty leagues there is no station, and the ceremony is not likely to be interrupted by any stoppage. It need hardly be said that at half-past eight I and Caterna were ready for the call.
The company sent off immediately a gang of workmen to repair the line and set up the telegraph posts; and in a day everything would be clear again. I need scarcely say that Faruskiar, with all the authority of the company's general manager, took part in the different formalities that were needed at Tcharkalyk. I do not know how to praise him sufficiently.
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.
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.
"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 "
It is agreed that as soon as we arrive at Sou-Tcheou, the telegraph being repaired at the same time as the line, I will send off a despatch, which will reveal to the admiration of Europe the brilliant name of Faruskiar. We are seated at the table. Ephrinell has done the thing as well as circumstances permit. In view of the feast, provisions were taken in at Tcharkalyk.
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