The Road to Samarcand

by Patrick O'Brian

  “What is it, Professor?” asked Sullivan. “It looks pretty good to a layman.”

  “Pretty good! Why, my dear sir, this is the finest piece of jade of the Chou dynasty that I have ever set my eyes upon.” He gasped, incapable of expressing his emotion, and hurriedly began to unwrap the next package on the ground. The others joined in, and presently a triple line of superb pieces of jade stood before him. Sullivan lugged one of the other Buddhas over on to its side: underneath there was a cunningly hidden panel; he prised it open, and from the cavity slid dozens of heavily padded bundles. The third Buddha contained as many more. Soon the ravine was littered with silk wrappings and pieces of wadding, and the ranks of jade in front of the Professor had swollen threefold.

  “It is the Wu Ti collection,” said the Professor, in an incredulous voice, “or else I am dreaming.” He sat on a rock and wiped his spectacles. “How dull of me!” he exclaimed, after a pause during which he carefully dusted each piece with his handkerchief. “How blind I was. When that most excellent Hsien Lu gave me those hideous brass images, had said that I would find that they had a certain inner worth—those were his very words—and I never . . . Well, well. Of course, he knew that I would refuse them as a present, so he chose this ingenious way of making me take them.”

  “It certainly was very handsome of him,” remarked Sullivan.

  “And I insulted his taste by thinking that he admired those horrible images. How glad I am that I shall be able to take photographs and detailed notes upon them before I give them back.”

  “If you give them back you will hurt his feelings beyond all measure,” said Ross, decidedly.

  “You could not possibly do that,” said Sullivan. “It would be like grinding his face in the mud. He gave you this collection because you were a scholar, and could appreciate it, as well as because you had done him a great service.”

  “And he knows very well,” said Ross, “that a valuable collection like that is in great danger of being lost, broken or dispersed in times like these. He would certainly like them to be in a place of safety—after all they have been looted twice already.”

  “Do you really think so?” asked the Professor, his face lighting up.

  “Don’t you agree with me, Sullivan?” asked Ross, and Derrick could have sworn that he saw a wink pass between them, although their faces were very grave.

  “Of course I do,” replied Sullivan. “I would have mentioned that point about the collection being in safety now, only I thought it was obvious.”

  “Well,” said the Professor, with an uncontrollable smile creasing his wrinkled face, “that is a very sound argument, a very good argument indeed. I do not know that I have ever heard a better argument—so well expressed, so forcible.” But he still seemed to be wavering, and Derrick said, “Do you remember how they chucked things into that lorry, sir? And how nearly Shun Chi blew the whole thing up when he dispersed himself all over the landscape? That might happen again.”

  “Good heavens, yes,” cried the Professor, clutching at the nearest piece with a protective hand. “What an appalling thought. The collection must certainly be guarded from such barbarous mishandling in the future. You are a very intelligent fellow, Derrick, probably the most intelligent boy of your age I have ever seen. I am very much afraid that it begins to look as if I shall be obliged to accept this princely—nay, more than princely—this imperial gift. Li Han, my good friend, be so good as to pass me the silk and cotton wrappings. And to think,” he said, carefully enveloping a small jade toad, “that I so grossly injured the worthy Hsien Lu by considering him, in the recesses of my mind, as a speechless clock.”

  “Speechless clock,” cried Li Han, “is most poetical and philosophical image.”

  “What does it mean?” asked Derrick.

  “My poor boy,” said the Professor kindly, “before you visit your mother’s country you really must remind me to give you a little course in Americanisms. You will be quite lost if you do not understand widely accepted figures of speech of this nature. Speechless clock is a term on the lips of every free-born star or stripe: it is the most current of usages. Am I not correct, Sullivan?”

  “Well, Professor, I rather believe that it is a little more usual to say dumb cluck.”

  “Oh, come,” said the Professor, “are we not making a distinction without a difference. Speechless and dumb are synonymous, are they not? And of the two speechless is to be preferred, seeing that it more nearly approaches the Greek—and the locution is obviously a play on the Greek alogos, with its double meaning of speechless and without reason. As for your suggestion of cluck, I am afraid that it must be rejected out of hand. We use the onomatopoeic word cluck for the noise made by the domestic hen when she is pleased: at this moment I would cluck myself, were I a domestic hen. But if we qualify cluck by an adjective that implies soundlessness, we fall into an absurdity. No: clock is the word, Sullivan. Early clocks, as no doubt you are aware, told the time solely by the ringing of a bell—indeed, you have retained the custom on board ship—and the very word itself is derived from the late Latin cloca, meaning a little bell. Now a clock, therefore, that is speechless, is the very type and example of a useless, stupid thing, and thus we have the exceptional force and bite of this valuable expression. I am sure, my dear sir,” he said, looking benevolently at Sullivan over his spectacles, “that after a moment’s reflection you will discard your meaningless corruption—the perversion of an untutored Redskin, no doubt, that you must have heard in your impressionable childhood—and that in future, if ever you have occasion to reprove your shipmates, you will refer to them as speechless clocks.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “IF THE LATITUDE were marked as clearly on the earth as it is on the map,” said Sullivan, “this would be an easy journey. We would just have put our noses down on the fortieth parallel at Peking, and we would never have lifted them until we reached the neighbourhood of Samarcand. But as it is—well, can you see the fortieth parallel anywhere, Derrick?”

  “No, sir,” said Derrick, “I rather think the Mongols must have stolen it.”

  They were in the middle of a bed of giant reeds, and although they could not see it, there was a wide stretch of open water before them. They had left the main party some way to the north while Sullivan tried to find a shorter way through the swamps of Ulan Nor: he had passed this way once with the father of the Mongols, but that was some years ago, and the way through the vast marshy depression, devoid of landmarks, was difficult to find. From the steppe all they had been able to see was a vast fringe of reeds, with winding arms of white water leading through it, and beyond, mud-banks and the surface of the enormous lake. But now that they were in the reeds they could see nothing at all.

  Derrick knew that his uncle was a few feet ahead of him, but he could see nothing of him, and if he had not known that Sullivan was steering their course by compass he would have felt lost indeed.

  “We should not have very much farther to go now,” said Sullivan: his voice was more distant now, farther over to the right, and Derrick pushed strongly through the reeds towards the sound. He was knee-deep in evil-smelling mud, and he knew that if he broke through the tangle of submerged roots he would sink down and never be seen again. It was disagreeable knowledge, and he struggled through as quickly as he could. But before he could reach his uncle there was a sudden prodigious roar, a noise higher than thunder, yet not unlike it: then a second later the sky was darkened, and he heard his uncle shouting, “Do you see that?”

  Derrick stared up, and there, above the high reeds, were countless thousands of duck, close-packed and rising quickly through the air, which trembled under the beating of their wings. He watched them for a moment, and then scrambled through to join his uncle, who was standing in the ooze on the water’s edge. As Derrick broke through the reeds still another great raft of duck lifted from the farther end of the water, lashing the surface and then sweeping up into the wind to gain height. The first multitude passed over the l
ake again, still rising and weaving in a close-knit skein, and the second joined it: soon they vanished like a cloud, and on the chill waters of the lake there was nothing but a few floating feathers and a single unmoved diving-bird, something like a grebe, that continued to bob about near the farther shore.

  “Well, here we are,” said Sullivan. “This is the right place, all right: do you see that stake standing in the water there? Old Hulagu Khan’s brother planted it there to guide me years ago, and it is still standing. But I am afraid that the kachak yol—that is what they called this route—is no use to us. We would never get the camels across that in a month of Sundays. It was not so bad when I came this way last: that stake was on dry ground then. The swamp has been filling up. It’s a pity: it would have saved us five days at least.”

  “We shall have to go round the north of the swamp, then?”

  “Yes. Even if we could get the camels through this, there’s worse beyond. No: it’s a nuisance, but it was worth trying, and at least we have got this compensation—we’ll have a few hours of the best duck-shooting in the world before we go back and join the others.”

  They forced their way back through the reeds, a long, long path with very heavy going, and returned to the place where they had left the horses and Chang by the black felt tent, the yurt, in which they were to sleep.

  Derrick was awake well before the dawn, but his uncle was up before him, already sorting out the ammunition and filling his belt by the light of a small Mongol lamp—their electric torches had given out long before—whose flame hardly flickered, in spite of the wind that was bowing in the wall of the yurt, for the felt let in no air at all. It was a cold night outside, and the hoar-frost showed under the waning moon: the sky was clear, but a strong wind blew from the north-east, and Derrick was glad to be moving.

  “We must get there before the moon goes down,” said Sullivan, as they set off, “or I shall not be able to find the place I have in mind.”

  Chang raced in the faint moon-shadow of Derrick’s pony as they rode swiftly over the silvery steppe: they went gently downhill all the way towards the remote, whitened fringe of reeds that hid the lake. Presently the ground became boggy underfoot, and the horses slowed down: Sullivan swung over to the right, aiming for a slight rise in the ground where a few ghostly alders stood bowed against the wind. The horses picked their way with care, but soon their riders’ high boots were splashed with mud. The trees, the only trees they had seen for weeks and weeks, grew nearer, and suddenly the ground was firm again.

  “We’ll leave them here,” said Sullivan, dismounting and strapping his blankets well over the horse’s back, “and we’ll go the rest of the way by foot.” They tethered the horses and plunged into the reeds. Almost at once they were sheltered from the wind: it sang through the tops of the reeds like a half-gale in the rigging of a ship, but Derrick, well below the top, was soon warmed through and through as he pushed along behind his uncle’s back. He welcomed the warmth, for it had been perishingly cold on the steppe, as it always was at night, even in the height of the summer, but very soon he began to feel that he was warm enough. His boots were heavy and clogged with mud, and he panted with the effort of keeping up with the strong, broad back in front of him: he thrust on and on through the reeds, as hot and sticky now as if he had been running under the noon-day sun. Just when he was beginning to feel that he could not carry his gun any farther, and that he would have to stop and take off his boiling boots, he saw the gleam of water through the thinning reeds ahead: in another moment they were through, and Sullivan already had out his long knife.

  “Hurry up,” he said. “There are no duck down yet, and we have got time to make ourselves a butt.” He began cutting the reeds in great swathes and laying the bundles criss-cross on the mud: Derrick imitated him, and he was glad to do so, for in a moment the wind had whipped away his heat, now that he was out of the shelter. Using the thinner reeds for rope, they lashed the reeds in bundles to form walls, and in a little while they had a dry and wind-proof little pen. Sullivan planted a few tall reeds round it to screen it from view and then crept in, sat on a bundle of reeds and lit his pipe. It had been getting darker fast as the moon dipped down, and the flare of his match showed all round the butt. “There we are,” he said, in a contented voice, “all set up with an hour to spare. They will start flighting a little while before the dawn, and if this wind does not change they will all come up the lake from over there, right across the butt. I hope that animal of yours will be able to retrieve. I suppose you didn’t think to bring any food with you, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t think of it,” said Derrick. He had not thought about food at all in the hurry and excitement of getting away, but now it occurred to him that he was ravenously hungry.

  “Well, it’s a good thing that somebody thinks of these things,” said Sullivan, feeling in the bottom of his game-bag and bringing out a parcel. “There. That’s cold roast sand-grouse: an emperor could not ask for a better breakfast.”

  They ate in silence for some time, and now that he was thoroughly satisfied, warm and comfortable, with his feet buried under Chang, who served as a foot-muff, Derrick began to wonder how he could ask his uncle a question that had been worrying him for some time. Ever since the three of them, the Professor, Ross and Sullivan, had talked to him so strongly about the wrongfulness of war, Derrick had been thinking about what Hsien Lu had told him—about Ross and Sullivan having been pirates in the China Seas. If they had been pirates, Derrick thought (and he knew very well that there were hundreds of pirates on the China coast, some of them with European skippers), then they had no right to talk in that way: unless, of course, it was just a grown-up manner of speech which did not mean anything. Yet it seemed impossible that they should have spoken so sincerely, if they really did not think as the Professor did. And, on the other hand, if they had agreed with him so heartily without believing it . . . it was difficult to know what to think. But then, of course, Hsien Lu might have been mistaken.

  It was a difficult question to ask. He looked across the butt: all he could see was the intermittent glow of his uncle’s pipe as he drew on it. Suddenly he blurted out, “Uncle Terry, were you ever a pirate?”

  “A pirate?” asked Sullivan, taking his pipe out of his mouth and ramming the bowl with his thumb. “A pirate? Yes. Certainly I have been a pirate, and pretty nearly everything else on the high seas. I was a stowaway once, too.”

  “When was that, Uncle Terry?” asked Derrick, with his heart sinking: he meant, when had his uncle been a pirate.

  “A stowaway? Well, it must have been when I was five, or maybe six—before we left Ireland, anyhow. I stowed away aboard a steamer in Queenstown. They didn’t find me for twelve hours and more.”

  “Had you got far?”

  “Not very. You see, it was a ferry going to and fro across the harbour. Some wicked old swab had told me that they were bound for the South Seas. I was determined to lie doggo until they had gone too far to put back, and then, thought I, they would be obliged to take me along as a cabin-boy. I had told my sister—your mother, of course, but she was a little girl then—and she had given me a jar of treacle, by way of provisions for the voyage. But they took it away from me in place of my fare for having crossed the harbour eight times without paying. I regretted that jar of treacle, and perhaps it was that sorrow that kept me from going to sea, except as a passenger, until I was a man, years and years later. And even then I did not go of my own free will.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, it’s a long story. I was in a water-front bar. I had gone down there to see how the simple sailormen enjoyed themselves when they were ashore: I think I expected them to sing shanties and to dance the horn-pipe, or something like that, but all I found was a few Blue-noses and a melancholy Dane, a great whale of a man who was sitting at the same table as I was. He told me that he was off a barquentine in the harbour—a lovely vessel: I had already seen her and thought how nice it would be to go for
a picnic up the coast in her in the summer—and that he was looking for some of his crew who had deserted. I remember saying that I wondered how anybody could desert such a fine-looking ship: then we had a few drinks together, and I began to feel rather queer. I remember how they stood looking at me in a curious way, and how the man at the bar nodded to the Dane. Then, when I woke up, there was a foul taste in my mouth, and I found that I was lying in a dark bunk. It was heaving underneath me, which was scarcely odd, because we were at sea, two days out of port. They had put a knock-out drop in my drink, and they had shanghaied me, being several men short of a full crew. They had been unable to sign on any of the sailors on shore, as it was known that the ship was bound round the Horn to Chile for nitrate, and that she had a bucko mate aboard, so they had picked up what men they could as best they could.

  “Presently a man came below and had a look at me. He was the big Dane I had been talking with, but now he did not seem nearly so pleasant as he had on shore. Instead of wishing me a good morning and asking after my head, which was aching as though there were a wedge driven into it somewhere, he said, ‘Get up on deck, you.’ Well, I was young and foolish in those days, and I told him that I did not like his manners or his face, or anything about him at all. He murmured, ‘Fractious, eh?’ and pulled me out of the bunk by the scruff of my neck. I took a crack at his jaw, and the next second I was flat on my back, wondering what had hit me. I got up, and let him have a good one on the end of his nose just before he laid me out again. Then he picked me up and threw me bodily on deck. ‘Throw me a bucket of water over this swab,’ he said, ‘and put him to work.’ ‘I’m an American citizen,’ I said, feeling good and sore, but not getting up—I was learning wisdom fast—‘and you can’t do this to me.’ ‘Throw me a bucket of water over the American citizen,’ he said, ‘and show him how to heave on a rope.’