It would seem that his conversation with the engineer has not finished yet.
Ah! Here he is coming from the front of the luggage van.

He comes out of it and shuts the door; he remains for a moment and is about to take a seat.

A hand which holds a cigar, is stretched out toward him.

Popof smiles and soon his perfumed puffs are mingling voluptuously with mine.
For fifteen years I think I said our guard had been in the Transcaspian service.

He knows the country up to the Chinese frontier, and five or six times already he has been over the whole line known as the Grand Transasiatic.
Popof was on duty on the section between Mikhailov and Kizil Arvat when the line opened--a section which was begun in the December of 1880 and finished in ten months, in November, 1881.