The Special Correspondent quotes

Bah! When certain guide books tell you how to explore Paris in two days, Rome in three days, and London in four days, it would be rather curious if I could not do Tiflis in a half day.

Either one is a correspondent or one is not!

It goes without saying that my newspaper would not have sent me to Russia, if I could not speak fluently in Russian, English and German.

There would be interpreters on the road, and I did not expect to lose a detail of my run on the Grand Transasiatic. I knew how to see, and see I would. Why should I hide it from myself?

I am one of those who think that everything here below can serve as copy for a newspaper man; that the earth, the moon, the sky, the universe were only made as fitting subjects for newspaper articles, and that my pen was in no fear of a holiday on the road.

Before starting off round Tiflis let us have done with this passport business. Fortunately I had no need for a poderojnaia, which was formerly indispensable to whoever traveled in Russia.

The porters try to stop him.

Try to stop a bomb in the middle of its trajectory!

Once again has right to give place to might.

“

A fool asks more questions in an hour than a wise man in a year.

”

“Really, captain, I did not know—”

“You ought always to know, sir!”

These words are uttered in a dry, cantankerous tone a few feet away from me.

Mademoiselle Zinca Klork, Avenue Cha-Coua, Peking, China.

Fragile, my wild beast! Keep from damp, my lion!

Quite so! But for what does Miss Zinca Klork, this pretty—for the Romanian ought to be pretty, and she is certainly a Romanian—for what does she want a wild beast sent in this way?

Suddenly there is a new sound. This time I am not mistaken. A half-stifled sneeze shakes the side of the case.

Never did an animal sneeze like that!

Is it possible? A human being is hidden in this case and is being fraudulently carried by the Grand Transasiatic to the pretty Romanian! But is it a man or a woman? It seems as though the sneeze had a masculine sound about it.

“Not at all. To rival Miss Nelly Bly. He is trying to get around the world in thirty-nine days.”

“Thirty-nine days!” exclaimed Caterna. “You should say a hundred and thirty-nine!”

And in a voice like a husky clarinet the actor struck up the well-known air from the Cloches de Corneville:

You must take care of the stray dogs, hungry brutes with long hair and disquieting fangs, of a breed reminding one of the dogs of the Caucasus, and these animals—according to Boulangier the engineer—have eaten a Russian general.

“Not entirely,” replies the major, confirming the statement. “They left his boots.”

In the commercial quarter, in the depths of the gloomy ground floors, inhabited by the Persians and the Jews, within the miserable shops are sold carpets of incredible fineness, and colors artistically combined, woven mostly by old women without any Jacquard cards.

But how fanatic and bloodthirsty he was! History affirms that at Delhi he massacred a hundred thousand captives, and at Baghdad he erected an obelisk of eighty thousand heads.”

“I like the one in the Place de la Concorde better,” said Caterna, “and that is only in one piece.”

At this observation we left the mosque of Gour Emir, and as it was time to “hurry up,” as our actor said, the arba was driven briskly toward the station.

… had been placed among other packages, if the porters had not deposited it with the precautions due to its fragility, he would not have been able to work the panel, and would have had to make a friend somehow before the end of the journey.

Fortunately, there is a special Providence for lovers

, and divine intervention in favor of Kinko and Zinca Klork was manifested in all its plenitude. He told me that very night he had taken a walk either in the van or else on the station platform where the train had stopped.

“Eh!” I answer. “That shows that peaches are rather common in this country. That is the Asiatic apple and it was one of those apples that Mrs. Adam took a bite at—”

“Then I excuse her!” said Madame Caterna, munching away at one of these delicious peaches.

After leaving Tashkent the railway had curved toward the south, so as to reach Khodjend; but after leaving town it curved to the east in the direction of Kokhan.

“And it was in this manner that the illustrious Cornaro lived from the age of thirty-six, so as to leave himself enough strength of body and mind to write his fourth treatise when he was eighty-five, and to live to a hundred and two.”

“In that case, give me my fifth cutlet,” said Pan-Chao, with a burst of laughter.

There is nothing more agreeable than to talk before a well-served table; but I must not forget to complete my notes regarding Kokhan. We were not due there till nine o’clock, and that would be in the nighttime.

But the best thing was said by the Reverend Nathaniel Morse, who had joined the train at Kachgar.

“It is never comfortable to be dragging a powder magazine after one!”

Nothing could be truer, and this van with its imperial treasure was a powder magazine that might blow up our train.

“Yes, I know, time is money.”

“No! Time is time, simply, and I do not care to lose a minute of it.”

Ephrinell clasped my hand, and as I had promised, I went to take the necessary steps regarding the witnesses necessary for the nuptial ceremonial.

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.

“But that is a good deal for you!” whispered Caterna in my ear.

The marriage for a moment was in check for five percent!

But all is arranged. The interests of the two houses have been safeguarded. The Reverend Nathaniel Morse repeats the question.

“In China,” said Pan-Chao, “it is not the bullfinch but the mandarin duck that symbolizes fidelity in marriage.”

“Ducks or bullfinches, it is all one,” said Caterna philosophically.

The ceremony is over. We compliment the newly married pair. We return to our occupation, Ephrinell to his accounts, Mrs. Ephrinell to her work. Nothing is changed in the train. There are only two more married people.

“

Practical, Mr. Reporter? You Westerners are never without that word in your mouth. To be practical is to be the slave of time, work, money, business, the world, everybody else, and one’s self included.

I confess that during my stay in Europe—you can ask Doctor Tio-King—I have not been very practical, and now I return to Asia I shall be less so.

“And what can he do? No; there is only one way—”

“Rouse up the fire,” says Kinko, calmly; “shut down the safety valves, and blow up the engine.”

And was that the only way—a desperate way—of stopping the train before it reached the viaduct?

A network of scaffolding appears confusedly in the darkness, above the piers which were to carry the viaduct across the Tjon valley.

Two hundred yards further the train would have been lost in the abyss.

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.

“Nor have I, Mrs. Ephrinell,” replied the Yankee.

Mr.! Mrs.! And not so long ago they were calling each other Fulk and Horatia.

And then, without taking each other’s arm, they walked out of the station. I believe he turned to the right and she to the left; but that is their affair.

And what a double explosion of joy there would have been when Kinko jumped through the panel to fall into the arms of the fair Romanian!

But no! When the box arrives it will be empty⁠—empty as a heart from which all the blood has escaped.

I leave the Hotel of Ten Thousand Dreams about eleven o’clock, I call one of those Chinese carriages, which look like palanquins on wheels, I give the address of Mademoiselle Klork, and I am on the way.