A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS 29 



car and found that his diagnosis was correct, he said 

 a few other things which ought to have relieved his mind 

 considerably. 



There was nothing to be done except to replace the 

 broken part with a spare rod. For three freezing hours 

 Gup and Coltman lay upon their backs under the car, 

 while the rest of us gave what help we could. To add 

 to the difficulties a shower of hail swept down upon us 

 with all the fury of a Mongolian storm. It was three 

 o'clock in the afternoon before we were ready to go on, 

 and our camp that night was only sixty miles from Urga. 



The next day as we passed Turin the Czech pointed 

 out the spot where he had lain for three days and nights 

 with a broken collar bone and a dislocated shoulder. He 

 had come from Irkutsk carrying important dispatches 

 and had taken passage in an automobile belonging to a 

 Chinese company which with difficulty was maintaining 

 a passenger service between Urga and Kalgan. As 

 usual, the native chauffeur was dashing along at thirty- 

 five miles an hour when he should not have driven faster 

 than twenty at the most. One of the front wheels slid 

 into a deep rut, the car turned completely over and the 

 resulting casualties numbered one man dead and our 

 Czech seriously injured. It was three days before an- 

 other car carried him back to Urga, where the broken 

 bones were badly set by a drunken Russian doctor. The 

 Cossack, too, had been shot twice in the heavy fighting 

 on the Russian front, and, although his wounds were 

 barely healed, he had just ridden three hundred miles 

 on horseback with dispatches for Peking. 



