Chapter 25

And I, who wanted "incident," who feared the weariness of a monotonous
voyage of six thousand kilometres, in the course of which I should not
meet with an impression or emotion worth clothing in type!

I have made another muddle of it, I admit! My lord Faruskiar, of whom I
had made a hero--by telegraph--for the readers of the _Twentieth.
Century_. Decidedly my good intentions ought certainly to qualify me as
one of the best paviers of a road to a certain place you have doubtless
heard of.

We are, as I have said, two hundred yards from the valley of the Tjon,
so deep and wide as to require a viaduct from three hundred and fifty
to four hundred feet long. The floor of the valley is scattered over
with rocks, and a hundred feet down. If the train had been hurled to
the bottom of that chasm, not one of us would have escaped alive. This
memorable catastrophe--most interesting from a reporter's point of
view--would have claimed a hundred victims. But thanks to the coolness,
energy and devotion of the young Roumanian, we have escaped this
terrible disaster.

All? No! Kinko has paid with his life for the safety of his fellow
passengers.

Amid the confusion my first care was to visit the luggage van, which
had remained uninjured. Evidently if Kinko had survived the explosion
he would have got back into his box and waited till I put myself in
communication with him.

Alas! The coffer is empty--empty as that of a company which has
suspended payment. Kinko has been the victim of his sacrifice.

And so there has been a hero among our traveling companions, and he was
not this Faruskiar, this abominable bandit hidden beneath the skin of a
manager, whose name I have so stupidly published over the four corners
of the globe! It was this Roumanian, this humble, this little, this
poor fellow, whose sweetheart will wait for him in vain, and whom she
will never again see! Well, I will do him justice! I will tell what he
has done. As to his secret, I shall be sorry if I keep it. If he
defrauded the Grand Transasiatic, it is thanks to that fraud that a
whole train has been saved. We were lost, we should have perished in
the most horrible of deaths if Kinko had not been there!

I went back on to the line, my heart heavy, my eyes full of tears.

Assuredly Faruskiar's scheme--in the execution of which he had executed
his rival Ki-Tsang--had been cleverly contrived in utilizing this
branch line leading to the unfinished viaduct. Nothing was easier than
to switch off the train if an accomplice was at the points. And as soon
as the signal was given that we were on the branch, all he had to do
was to gain the foot-plate, kill the driver and stoker, slow the train
and get off, leaving