Chapter 19

When I awoke I seemed to have had an unpleasant dream. A dream in no
way like those we interpret by the _Clef d'Or_. No! Nothing could be
clearer. The bandit chief Ki Tsang had prepared a scheme for the
seizure of the Chinese treasure; he had attacked the train in the
plains of Gobi; the car is assaulted, pillaged, ransacked; the gold and
precious stones, to the value of fifteen millions, are torn from the
grasp of the Celestials, who yield after a courageous defence. As to
the passengers, another two minutes of sleep would have settled their
fate--and mine.

But all that disappeared with the vapors of the night. Dreams are not
fixed photographs; they fade in the sun, and end by effacing themselves.

In taking my stroll through the train as a good townsman takes his
stroll through the town, I am joined by Major Noltitz. 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. "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?

No, he and Ghangir were on the gangway in front of our car. They seemed
to be in animated conversation, and only stopped to take a good look
toward the northeastern horizon. Had the Mongol brought some news which
had made them throw off their usual reserve and gravity? And I
abandoned myself to my imagination, foreseeing adventures, attacks of
bandits, and so on, according to my dream.

I was recalled to reality by the Reverend Nathaniel Morse, who said to
me, "It is fixed for to-day, at nine o'clock; do not forget."

That meant the marriage of Fulk Ephrinell and Horatia Bluett. Really, I
was not thinking of it. It is time for me to go and dress for the
occasion. All I can do will be to change my shirt. It is enough that
one of the husband's witnesses should be presentable; the other,
Caterna, will be sure to be magnificent!

In fact, the actor had gone into the luggage van--how I trembled for
Kinko!--and there, with Popof's assistance, had got out of one of his
boxes a somewhat free-and-easy costume, but one certain of success at a
wedding: A primrose coat with metal buttons, and a buttonhole, a sham
diamond pin in the cravat,