Chapter 22

I, who wanted an incident, have had one to perfection. I am thankful
enough not to have been one of the victims. I have emerged from the
fray safe and sound. All my numbers are intact, barring two or three
insignificant scratches. Only No. 4 has been traversed by a bullet
clean through--his hat.

At present I have nothing in view beyond the Bluett-Ephrinell marriage
and the termination of the Kinko affair. I do not suppose that
Faruskiar can afford us any further surprises. I can reckon on the
casual, of course, for the journey has another five days to run. Taking
into account the delay occasioned by the Ki-Tsang affair that will make
thirteen days from the start from Uzun Ada.

Thirteen days! Heavens! And there are the thirteen numbers in my
notebook! Supposing I were superstitious?

We remained three hours at Tcharkalyk. Most of the passengers did not
leave their beds. We were occupied with declarations relative to the
attack on the train, to the dead which the Chinese authorities were to
bury, to the wounded who were to be left at Tcharkalyk, where they
would be properly looked after. Pan-Chao told me it was a populous
town, and I regret I was unable to visit it.

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. Besides, he was repaid for his good offices by the
deference shown him by the staff at the railway station.

At three in the morning we arrived at Kara Bouran, where the train
stopped but a few minutes. Here the railway crosses the route of
Gabriel Bonvalot and Prince Henri of Orleans across Tibet in 1889-90, a
much more complete journey than ours, a circular trip from Paris to
Paris, by Berlin, Petersburg, Moscow, Nijni, Perm, Tobolsk, Omsk,
Semipalatinsk, Kouldja, Tcharkalyk, Batong, Yunnan, Hanoi, Saigon,
Singapore, Ceylon, Aden, Suez, Marseilles, the tour of Asia, and the
tour of Europe.

The train halts at Lob Nor at four o'clock and departs at six. This
lake, the banks of which were visited by General Povtzoff in 1889, when
he returned from his expedition to Tibet, is an extensive marsh with a
few sandy islands, surrounded by two or three feet of water. The
country through which the Tarim slowly flows had already been visited
by Fathers Hue and Gabet, the explorers Prjevalski and Carey up to the
Davana pass, situated a hundred and fifty kilometres to the south. But
from that pass Gabriel Bonvalot and Prince Henri of Orleans, camping
sometimes