Chapter 2

We were three minutes late in starting; it is well to be precise. A
special correspondent who is not precise is a geometer who neglects to
run out his calculations to the tenth decimal. This delay of three
minutes made the German our traveling companion. I have an idea that
this good man will furnish me with some copy, but it is only a
presentiment.

It is still daylight at six o'clock in the evening in this latitude. I
have bought a time-table and I consult it. The map which accompanies it
shows me station by station the course of the line between Tiflis and
Baku. Not to know the direction taken by the engine, to be ignorant if
the train is going northeast or southeast, would be insupportable to
me, all the more as when night comes, I shall see nothing, for I cannot
see in the dark as if I were an owl or a cat.

My time-table shows me that the railway skirts for a little distance
the carriage road between Tiflis and the Caspian, running through
Saganlong, Poily, Elisabethpol, Karascal, Aliat, to Baku, along the
valley of the Koura. We cannot tolerate a railway which winds about; it
must keep to a straight line as much as possible. And that is what the
Transgeorgian does.

Among the stations there is one I would have gladly stopped at if I had
had time, Elisabethpol. Before I received the telegram from the
_Twentieth Century_, I had intended to stay there a week. I had read
such attractive descriptions of it, and I had but a five minutes' stop
there, and that between two and three o'clock in the morning! Instead
of a town resplendent in the rays of the sun, I could only obtain a
view of a vague mass confusedly discoverable in the pale beams of the
moon!

Having ended my careful examination of the time-table, I began to
examine my traveling companions. There were four of us, and I need
scarcely say that we occupied the four corners of the compartment. I
had taken the farthest corner facing the engine. At the two opposite
angles two travelers were seated facing each other. As soon as they got
in they had pulled their caps down on their eyes and wrapped themselves
up in their cloaks--evidently they were Georgians as far as I could
see. But they belonged to that special and privileged race who sleep on
the railway, and they did not wake up until we reached Baku. There was
nothing to be got out of those people; the carriage is not a carriage
for them, it is a bed.

In front of me was quite a different type with nothing of the Oriental
about it; thirty-two to thirty-five years old, face with a reddish
beard, very much alive in look, nose like that of a dog standing at
point, mouth only too glad to talk, hands free and easy, ready for a
shake with anybody; a tall, vigorous,