three o'clock in the morning
`` They are not obliged to wait until they reach Pekin ! '' `` Quite so , Kinko ; but it seems to me that a marriage under such conditions is not likely to be lasting ! But after all , that is the couple 's lookout . '' At three o'clock in the morning we stopped forty minutes at Tchertchen , almost at the foot of the ramifications of the Kuen Lun . None of us had seen this miserable , desolate country , treeless and verdureless , which the railway was now crossing on its road to the northeast . Day came ; our train ran the four hundred kilometres between Tchertchen and Tcharkalyk , while the sun caressed with its rays the immense plain , glittering in its saline efflorescences . When I awoke I seemed to have had an unpleasant dream .