The Road to Samarcand

by Patrick O'Brian

  “That’s all it was that was moving, sir,” he said to Ross. “I’m afraid the man was dead.”

  “Humph,” said Ross, eyeing the dog.

  “Well, that’s a fine bit of salvage,” said Sullivan, when Derrick hauled it aboard the schooner. “A measly pie-dog. And a yellow one with the mange at that.”

  Li Han came up from the galley and looked at the dripping beast. “Animal of small value,” he said, having considered it from all angles. “Of no value at present, but might furnish succulent stew if fattened.”

  “That ain’t no dog,” said Olaf. “That’s an infant dromedary, that is.”

  “You’d better disinfect your hand, Derrick, and sling the pie-dog overboard. I doubt if it would live, anyway.”

  “Och, I don’t know,” said Ross, who felt partially responsible for the dog, “the poor beastie might recover.”

  “Can’t we give him a chance, Uncle?” asked Derrick. “I don’t think he’s a pie-dog—his tail doesn’t curl.” The waterlogged creature seemed to know that they were discussing him: he looked from one to another with a mournful countenance, and wheezed.

  “Well, it’s your dog by rights,” said Sullivan, “and if you think he will be any good, keep him by all means. You’ll catch rabies and mange from him, of course, but you won’t be able to say that I didn’t warn you when you start running about foaming at the mouth and biting people.”

  Derrick took the dog and stowed it in the chain-locker. It feebly tried to bite, but it swallowed a little food from the dish he brought.

  The next morning, when Derrick went to feed it, the dog was on its feet. It backed into the locker, growling continuously, with its hackles up, but it did not go for him or bite when he put the dish down. It was days before it would come out of the locker at all, and even then it would only dart out to eat voraciously, glaring suspiciously from its dish before it backed quickly away into the shadows. For a long while there was far too much to do on board the Wanderer for Derrick to spend much time with the dog, or to think of it very often. There were ropes in plenty to splice, new sails to bend, all the shambles left by deck-house to repair and a hundred other jobs before the Wanderer looked anything like her old trim self again. But there was plenty of time for all this work, for the typhoon had blown the schooner a great way off her course, and then for days and days on end the wind blew steadily from the west, so that with all her fine sailing powers the Wanderer could not make up the distance lost.

  It was after a long day’s work with a paint-brush, slung over the side in a bosun’s chair, that Derrick noticed for the first time that the dog seemed pleased to see him. It moved its tail uncertainly from side to side and came half out of the locker as he approached. It looked like a dog that had never been treated kindly enough to have learnt how to wag its tail or how to express pleasure, and it was still almost sure that it was going to be kicked or beaten.

  Then, a day or two after that, when there was at last time for a make and mend, when Derrick was squatting on the deck, repairing the heel of a sea-boot stocking, he saw the dog slowly creeping towards him, stopping, going back, creeping on, gradually approaching nearer and nearer: he took no notice, but went on darning, and at last he felt a hesitant nose touch his elbow. The dog was standing there, looking sheepish, wriggling all over, grinning hideously, and in two minds whether to run or stay. He talked to it quietly for a long time, and gave it a name. “Chang, Chang,” he said, slowly putting his hand over its head: Chang looked frightened for a moment, but as Derrick patted it it lay down and eventually went to sleep at his feet. After that it suddenly began to advance in friendliness, and by the time they came in sight of land the dog followed him wherever he went. Chang was a large dog, a very large dog, and now that at last he had found a human being who would treat him decently, his pleasure was larger than the pleasure of most dogs; he kept as close to Derrick as his own shadow, and attached himself to him as only a dog can.

  And even before they had made their landfall and were working up the coast towards Tchao-King, the others had withdrawn their unkind remarks about Chang.

  “It seems to me, young Derrick,” said his uncle, “that you might make something out of that object, after all.” He inspected the dog as it stood at Derrick’s heel, and suddenly he made a quick swipe with his hand, as if to clout his nephew’s ear: at the same moment he sprang backwards, but it was too late. Chang had pinned his white duck trousers, and there was a tear from knee to ankle: the dog stood there, bristling with fury, but waiting for a word from Derrick to go in and kill the aggressor.

  “No, no, don’t be angry with him,” said Sullivan. “That’s just what he should have done. Only I wish he hadn’t done it quite so quickly.”

  And Olaf said, “Ay reckon they was all wrong about this so-called pie-dog of yours, eh? Ay said at the time, that’s something like a dog, that is, Ay said. Ay ban’t so sure it ain’t some kind of a special breed, at that.”

  Only Li Han was still of the same opinion. “Animal is becoming a little fatter,” he said. “Yes: soon adequately obese now. Very succulent stew, he will make, very nourishing; and dog-chops, almost the same as chow, for the feast of the Lotus Flowers, very savoury, very unctious.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  ALL THE WAY along the coast they met with calms or contrary winds, and the Wanderer, instead of the two hundred and seventy miles which she had logged in the first day and night after leaving Kwei Hai, now crept along, making no more than ten sea miles for a long day’s arduous tacking. Sullivan was particularly worried about their meeting with Professor Ayrton. “When I wrote,” he said, “I underlined the words ‘God willing and wind and tide permitting,’ but I don’t know whether he will understand the kind of winds that we have been having—and even if he does understand, I am not sure whether he will be able to wait. At this rate we shan’t make Tchao-King before Christmas. Derrick, go on deck and try whistling for a spell, will you?”

  Derrick whistled. Olaf whistled. Li Han beat a gong and the Malays sang their wind-song: Chang howled: but still the sails flapped idly, and far away on the starboard quarter a small junk which had been in sight since dawn came nearer and nearer, propelled by the immense sweeps that her sweating crew pulled to the sound of conchs and drums. “Ay wish my old grandma was here,” said Olaf, pausing for breath. “She’d blow us to Frisco if we was to ask her polite. If the Old Man was to go to her and tip his hat and say, ‘Good morning, marm,’ or ‘Good afternoon,’ as the case might be——”

  “You don’t suppose that’s a pirate, do you, Olaf?” interrupted Derrick.

  Olaf stared at the junk. “Could be,” he said, indifferently, shading his eyes. “They come like wasps after honey along this coast. But they won’t meddle with us, not unless they was three, four war-junks all together. They tried that once, only two of them, off Tai-nan.” He laughed reminiscently. “They won’t meddle with the Wanderer no more. No sir. Besides,” he added, “there’s that destroyer on the horizon.”

  “What destroyer?”

  “Ain’t you got no eyes?” asked Olaf, impatiently, as he pointed to the north-west. Derrick made out a low smudge that might have been smoke.

  “How do you know it’s a destroyer?” he asked.

  “How do I know that’s my hand in front of my face? Ay look at it, see? Ay got eyes, see? Of course she ban a destroyer, U.S.N., and she’s bound for Manila.”

  The day wore on, a hot and sticky day without a breath of wind: Derrick sat in the shade of the mainsail, trying to comb Chang’s coat into something like respectability. He was an ugly dog, it could not be denied; and if anything the combing made his appearance worse. He had enormous feet, and from his feet and his clumsiness Derrick judged that he was not nearly fully grown: Chang already weighed a good fifty pounds, and if he went on filling out he would soon be more like a lion than a dog. Derrick looked up from his hopeless task, and saw the destroyer bearing down on them. Olaf had been quite right: she was an American destroyer,
belching smoke from her four funnels and cutting a great furrow through the oily sea with her high bows. The junk far behind had turned long ago, and was now creeping painfully over the horizon, still sweeping arduously.

  “What ship?” hailed the destroyer. “Where bound?”

  “Schooner Wanderer,” answered Sullivan, his great voice roaring over the water. “Thirty days out of Macao for Tchao-King.”

  “What ship?”

  “Schooner Wanderer, Terence Sullivan master,” he answered louder still.

  The destroyer made a sharp turn to port and came alongside. “Captain Sullivan, I’ve got a message for you,” hailed the officer on deck. “It reads, ‘Ayrton at Tchao-King to Sullivan, schooner Wanderer: am waiting at Tchao-King until 31st, then moving to Peking by way of Tsi-nan.’ Have you got that?”

  “Yes, thank you very much.”

  “You missed the typhoon, then?” asked the officer, looking curiously down at the gleaming, orderly decks and the spotless canvas.

  “We had a little blow,” said Sullivan. “Do you want to pick up a pirate junk? There’s one bearing south by east, just about hull-down at this minute. A gentleman by the name of Wu San-kwei, by the cut of his jib.”

  There was the sound of a bell inside the destroyer, her screws whirled into violent life, and she shot off in a great curve, leaving the Wanderer rocking in her spreading wake.

  “Perambulating kitchen-stove,” said Ross, who had just come up from the hold. “Why don’t they clean their flues, or at least lie to leeward of a real ship?” He looked indignantly at the sails, grey from the destroyer’s smoke.

  “She brought us a message from Tchao-King,” said Sullivan. “Professor Ayrton will be there until the end of the month.”

  “Well, perhaps there’s some good in the navy yet,” said Ross, looking pleased. “Did you tell her about Wu San-kwei? He’s got a nerve, coming out after us with no more than a couple of brass nine-pounders: he must have lost what few wits he had.”

  The message was particularly welcome. Sullivan had been fretting for weeks about the appointment, but now he knew that even if they made no better pace than they had for the last few days, they would reach the port in time. In the evening he harked back to a subject that he had already discussed quite often. “Now listen, Derrick,” he said. “We want you to make a good impression on Professor Ayrton. Get Li Han to cut your hair in the morning.”

  “Okay,” said Derrick.

  “And don’t say okay.”

  “Gee, Uncle Terry. . . .”

  “And don’t say gee,” said Ross.

  “We don’t want him to get the idea that we have made a barbarian of you. You must brush your nails, and you must not eat with your clasp-knife. Have you got any gum?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then toss it overboard. I know what they think of gum at Oxford. And try to look intelligent.”

  “Like this?”

  “No. Not like that. No, perhaps you had better forget that: we don’t want him to think you’re sickening for something.”

  Just before dawn all the whistling for a wind had its effect, and by the time that Derrick was sitting in the galley having his hair cut, the Wanderer was racing along under all canvas, leaning from the wind so that with every thrust from the following sea her lee rails vanished under the flying spray. The chair slid on the canted deck, and the hair-cutting had proved a tedious and difficult operation.

  “Hope results of Western-style hair-dressing satisfactory,” said Li Han, anxiously. “Should not have made bald patch or cut ear, however. Please excuse.”

  “Oh, it’s okay,” said Derrick, mopping his bloody ear with his handkerchief. “You’re a swell barber, Li Han.”

  “Don’t say okay,” roared a distant voice.

  “Why not say okay?” whispered Li Han.

  “Because of my cousin, the one we are going to meet at Tchao-King. It seems that he wouldn’t like it. Li Han, do you know what an archaeologist is?”

  “Archaeology is disinterment of ancient fragments,” replied Li Han, promptly, “and piecing of same together to form harmonious whole. Very learned pursuit.”

  “That’s what my cousin does. He’s a professor of it.”

  “Your cousin a professor?” asked Li Han, in an unbelieving tone.

  “Yes, of course he is. Haven’t you heard them talking about Professor Ayrton?”

  “Is the same honourable person?” Li Han dropped his scissors. “Excuse please. Would never have cut ear. . . .”

  He was obviously deeply impressed, and he at once opened a can of lichees for Derrick. “Such face,” he murmured. “Such estimable learning. Such dignity.”

  “How would you make a good impression on an archaeologist?” asked Derrick, after thinking for some time.

  “Display intelligent interest, and ask acute ancient questions.”

  “Could you give me an acute question to ask him, Li Han? Just one or two really swell questions that will show him that I’ve already had enough education.”

  “Not knowing, cannot say. Regret lamentable ignorance.”

  “Now you’re really useful, aren’t you, Li Han?” said Derrick, bitterly. “You mean to say you don’t know a thing about archaeology, and you a sea-cook? Some of your hashes have been pretty ancient fragments, all right. You ought to know the subject backwards.”

  “If I had inestimable privilege of serving worthy learned gentleman,” said Li Han, with a sigh, “or even of beholding erudite face, it would be different. But, alas, sea-cook confined to maritime tossing existence is condemned to dog-like ignorance.”

  “Olaf,” said Derrick, going for’ard to where the Swede was sitting on the well-deck, tying a beautiful turk’s-head at the end of a short length of rope, “Olaf, if you wanted to impress an archaeologist, how would you set about it? I want some right good advice, now.”

  The big Swede scratched his head and closed his eyes with the effort of thinking. “Well,” he said at last. “Impress, eh? An archaeologist, huh? Well, Ay reckon Ay would strike him just behind the shoulder with a twenty-four pound harpoon. Strike hard and fast, not too far back, see? My old man, he chanced on one of them things north-east of Spitzbergen in the fall of, lemme t’ink, 1897 was it, or 1898? Yes, Ay reckon it was 1898. It chawed up his long-boat something horrible, but they got fifty-three barrels of oil out of it.”

  “Olaf, you’re wrong. An archaeologist is a person who digs for ancient things.”

  “No. Ay ain’t mistaken, son. It’s a fish, it is, rather smaller nor a fin-whale, but mighty dangerous, and you don’t want to strike it too far back.”

  “Well, I’ve got to make a good impression on one, anyway.”

  “Hum. You watch your step, then. This one Ay talk about, he chawed up a long-boat, like I told you. Chawed it up,” he repeated, gnashing his jaws, “just like that.”

  “What’s that rope’s-end for, Olaf?” asked Derrick, changing the subject.

  “That’s for you, son,” said Olaf, with a happy smile. “The Old Man, he told me to pick out a nice whippy piece. ‘Put a right good knot in it, Olaf,’ he says. ‘I’ll learn the young —— to talk proper,’ he says.”

  “Is that what Uncle Terry said, Olaf?” asked Derrick, turning pale.

  “His very words. ‘I’ll larrup him,’ he says. ‘I’ll learn him to talk barbarious,’ he says. ‘And when I’m tired, you can take over, Olaf,’ he says. He’s going to lay into you like blue murder every time you say gee or okay,” said Olaf, heartlessly tightening the knot.

  “Why, gee, Olaf, what am I to say?” cried Derrick, appalled.

  “Well, you can say dearie me, or land’s sake—no, not land’s sake; that’s low. But you could say cor stone the crows. That’s English. I shipped along with a whole crew of Limeys oncet, and they all said cor stone the crows. There was this German submarine, see? Surfaced off Ushant and shelled us. ‘Cor stone the crows,’ said the Limeys, particularly the Old Man, who was hit by a splinter on the
nose. Then Ay rammed the —— and the Limeys all stood along the side and said, ‘Cor stone the crows, Olaf’s rammed the ——.’ ”

  “I never knew you had rammed a submarine, Olaf.”

  “Oh, it was just luck that time,” said Olaf, modestly. “The other ones was more difficult.”

  “You must have been quite a hero in the war, Olaf. Did they give you any medals?”

  “Oh, no. They wanted to make me an earl or a duke or something, but Ay never was one for falals or doodads, see?”

  “Cor stone the crows,” said Derrick.

  THE WANDERER FLEW ON, and the next day at noon she raised the high cape of Tchao-King, by the evening she had threaded her way through the junks and the sampans to the inner harbour, and she was tied up at the wharf of the Benign Wind-Dragon, by the European godowns.

  Derrick was standing in the saloon in a high state of preparedness, brushed, gleaming and nervous. His uncle gave him a final inspection, and said, “It’s a pity you look as if you had the mange, but otherwise your rig is trim enough. Have you tied up that monstrous beast?”

  “Yes, sir,” answered Derrick, who could hear Chang’s desperate scratching at the closed hatch: he noticed that his uncle had dressed with more than usual care, and that Ross, huge and splendid in his best shore-going ducks, was nervous too.

  “I feel just like a nursemaid who’s got to display her charge to a crew of critical relations,” said Sullivan, fingering Derrick’s tie. “You won’t behave like a roughneck shell-back, will you? Or go roaring about as if we were in a gale of wind? Or hurl the soup down your shirt?”

  “Perhaps it would be better if Derrick were not to keep his mouth ajar,” suggested Ross. “He might look brighter with it closed. More intelligent.”

  “Yes, it looks better closed,” said Sullivan, looking anxiously at his nephew. “Now the great thing to remember is not to be nervous, Derrick,” he added, leading the way on deck.

  The three rickshas threaded their way through the bullock-carts, wheelbarrows and ancient lorries that crowded the streets of Tchao-King: they went slowly, for it was a market-day as well as the feast of Pong Hsiu, but they went too fast for Derrick, and when he arrived at the steps of the Kylin Hotel he felt that he would rather go for a swim with a tiger-shark than face the remainder of the evening.