"I don"t think so."
"Then come on," said I to my companions. But if the imperial treasure was a matter of indifference to us, it did not seem to be so to Faruskiar. But whether this van started or did not start, whether it was attached to our train or left behind, what could it matter to him?
Nevertheless, he and Ghangir seemed to be much put about regarding it, although they tried to hide their anxiety, while the Mongols, talking together in a low tone, gave the governor anything but friendly glances.
Meanwhile the governor had just heard of the attack on the train and of the part that our hero had taken in defence of the treasure, with what courage he had fought, and how he had delivered the country from the terrible Ki-Tsang. And then in laudatory terms, which Pan-Chao translated to us, he thanked Faruskiar, complimented him, and gave him to understand that the Son of Heaven would reward him for his services.
The manager of the Grand Transasiatic listened with that tranquil air that distinguished him, not without impatience, as, I could clearly see. Perhaps he felt himself superior to praises as well as recompenses, no matter from how great a height they might come. In that I recognized all the Mongol pride.
But we need not wait. The treasure van may remain here or go on to Pekin, but it makes no difference to us! Our business is to visit Lan-Tcheou.
What we did briefly I will more briefly tell.
There is an outer town and an inner one. No ruins this time. A very lively city, population swarming like ants and very active, familiarized by the railway with the presence of strangers whom they do not follow about with indiscreet curiosity as they used to do. Huge quarters occupy the right of the Hoang Ho, two kilometres wide. This Hoang Ho is the yellow river, the famous yellow river, which, after a course of four thousand four hundred kilometres, pours its muddy waters into the Gulf of Petchili.
"Is not its mouth near Tien Tsin, where the baron thinks of catching the mail for Yokohama?" asks the major.
"That is so," I reply.
"He will miss it," says the actor.
"Unless he trots, our globe-trotter."
"A donkey"s trot does not last long," says Caterna, "and he will not catch the boat."
"He will catch it if the train is no later," said the major. "We shall be at Tien Tsin on the 23d at six o"clock in the morning, and the steamer leaves at eleven."
"Whether he misses the boat or not, my friends, do not let us miss our walk."
A bridge of boats crosses the river, and the stream is so swift that the footway rises and falls like the waves of the sea. Madame Caterna, who had ventured on it, began to turn pale.
"Caroline, Caroline," said her husband, "you will be seasick! Pull yourself together; pull yourself together!"
She "pulled herself together," and we went up towards a paG.o.da which rises over the town.
Like all the monuments of this kind, the paG.o.da resembles a pile of dessert dishes placed one on the other, but the dishes are of graceful form, and if they are in Chinese porcelain it is not astonishing.
We get an outside view of a cannon foundry, a rifle factory, the workmen being natives. Through a fine garden we reach the governor"s house, with a capricious a.s.semblage of bridges, kiosks, fountains and doors like vases. There are more pavilions and upturned roofs than there are trees and shady walks. Then there are paths paved with bricks, among them the remains of the base of the Great Wall.
It is ten minutes to ten when we return to the station, absolutely tired out; for the walk has been a rough one, and almost suffocating, for the heat is very great.
My first care is to look after the van with the millions. It is there as usual behind the train under the Chinese guard.
The message expected by the governor has arrived; the order to forward on the van to Pekin, where the treasure is to be handed over to the finance minister.
Where is Faruskiar? I do not see him. Has he given us the slip?
No! There he is on one of the platforms, and the Mongols are back in the car.
Ephrinell has been off to do a round of calls--with his samples, no doubt--and Mrs. Ephrinell has also been out on business, for a deal in hair probably. Here they come, and without seeming to notice one another they take their seats.
The other pa.s.sengers are only Celestials. Some are going to Pekin; some have taken their tickets for intermediate stations like Si-Ngan, Ho Nan. Lou-Ngan, Tai-Youan. There are a hundred pa.s.sengers in the train.
All my numbers are on board. There is not one missing. Thirteen, always thirteen!
We were still on the platform, just after the signal of departure had been given, when Caterna asked his wife what was the most curious thing she had seen at Lan-Tcheou.
"The most curious thing, Adolphe? Those big cages, hung on to the walls and trees, which held such curious birds--"
"Very curious, Madame Caterna," said Pan-Chao. "Birds that talk--"
"What--parrots?"
"No; criminals" heads."
"Horrible!" said the actress, with a most expressive grimace.
"What would you have, Caroline?" said Caterna. "It is the custom of the country."
CHAPTER XXIV.
On leaving Lan-Tcheou, the railway crosses a well-cultivated country, watered by numerous streams, and hilly enough to necessitate frequent curves. There is a good deal of engineering work; mostly bridges, viaducts on wooden trestles of somewhat doubtful solidity, and the traveler is not particularly comfortable when he finds them bending under the weight of the train. It is true we are in the Celestial Empire, and a few thousand victims of a railway accident is hardly anything among a population of four hundred millions.
"Besides," said Pan-Chao, "the Son of Heaven never travels by railway."
So much the better.
At six o"clock in the evening we are at King-Tcheou, after skirting for some time the capricious meanderings of the Great Wall. Of this immense artificial frontier built between Mongolia and China, there remain only the blocks of granite and red quartzite which served as its base, its terrace of bricks with the parapets of unequal heights, a few old cannons eaten into with rust and hidden under a thick veil of lichens, and then the square towers with their ruined battlements. The interminable wall rises, falls, bends, bends back again, and is lost to sight on the undulations of the ground.
At six o"clock we halt for half an hour at King-Tcheou, of which I only saw a few paG.o.das, and about ten o"clock there is a halt of three-quarters of an hour at Si-Ngan, of which I did not even see the outline.
All night was spent in running the three hundred kilometres which separate this town from Ho Nan, where we had an hour to stop.
I fancy the Londoners might easily imagine that this town of Ho Nan was London, and perhaps Mrs. Ephrinell did so. Not because there was a Strand with its extraordinary traffic, nor a Thames with its prodigious movement of barges and steamboats. No! But because we were in a fog so thick that it was impossible to see either houses or paG.o.das.
The fog lasted all day, and this hindered the progress of the train.
These Chinese engine-drivers are really very skilful and attentive and intelligent.
We were not fortunate in our last day"s journey before reaching Tien Tsin! What a loss of copy! What paragraphs were melted away in these unfathomable vapors! I saw nothing of the gorges and ravines, through which runs the Grand Transasiatic; nothing of the valley of Lou-Ngan, where we stopped at eleven o"clock; nothing of the two hundred and thirty kilometres which we accomplished amid the wreaths of a sort of yellow steam, worthy of a yellow country, until we stopped about ten o"clock at night at Tai-Youan.
Ah! the disagreeable day.
Luckily the fog rose early in the evening. Now it is night--and a very dark night, too.
I go to the refreshment bar and buy a few cakes and a bottle of wine.
My intention is to pay a last visit to Kinko. We will drink to his health, to his approaching marriage with the fair Roumanian. He has traveled by fraud, I know, and if the Grand Transasiatic only knew! But the Grand Transasiatic will not know.