or
Guptil do not know about the "insides" of a motor and, moreover,
after a diagnosis, they both have the ingenuity to remedy almost any
trouble with a hammer and a screw driver.

Four days after our arrival in Urga we left on the return trip. As
occupants of his car Charles Coltman had Mr. Price, Mrs. Coltman,
and Mrs. Mamen. With the spiritual and physical assistance of Mr.
Guptil I drove the second automobile, carrying in the rear seat a
wounded Russian Cossack and a French-Czech, both couriers. The third
car was a Ford _chassis_ to which a wooden body had been affixed. It
was designed to give increased carrying space, but it looked like a
half-grown hayrack and was appropriately called the "agony box."
This was driven by a chauffeur named Wang and carried Mamen's
Chinese house boy and an _amah_ besides a miscellaneous assortment
of baggage.

It was a cold, gray morning when we started, with a cutting wind
sweeping down from the north, giving a hint of the bitter winter
which in another month would hold all Mongolia in an icy grasp. We
made our way eastward up the valley to the Russian bridge across the
Tola River and pointed the cars southward on the caravan trail to
Kalgan.

Just as we reached the summit of the second long hill, across which
the wind was sweeping in a glacial blast, there came a rasping crash
somewhere in the motor of my car, followed by a steady _knock_,
_knock_, _knock_. "That's a connecting rod as sure as fate," said
"Gup." "We'll have to stop." When he had crawled under the 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