The Road to Samarcand Read online

  “But soon my grandma comes in and she swear at me and clout my head and say Ay have spoilt everything: but that night this relative got better.”

  “Was it your grandmother that did it, Olaf?”

  “Of course it was. The doctor from Kjelvik, he said it was his physic, but we knew it was Grandma. Oh, she was a wise woman, all right, my grandma, and they was all afraid of her because of her learning. When she died, they found she got hair on the soles of her feet, like an ice-bear.” He stared up at the sails for some moments, and then said, “If you can get learning like that, you go to school and learn all you can. Otherwise you stay on board and leave it for these ship’s chandlers, eh?”

  “I wish I could, Olaf. But they seem set on educating me.”

  “Hm. Well, Ay reckon the Old Man knows best. Still, an albatross can fly clean round the world without learning out of no books, and maybe a sailor can do just the same without being learned no Greek or this so-called Latin.”

  “That reminds me. I haven’t seen the albatross this afternoon, nor any gulls.”

  “Ain’t you? That’s funny.” Olaf looked over his shoulder to the western rim of the sea. “She don’t look quite right, neither,” he said. “And the wind dropped a bit too quick. Ay don’t like it, not in these seas. Ay t’ink Ay know what it means, without no book-learning.”

  Derrick looked at the bright horizon where the sun had set. “It looks all right to me,” he said.

  ‘You look close. Don’t you see no sort of a haze up there?”

  Derrick looked again. Yes, there was a haze; not quite a cloud, nor yet a mist. It was strange.

  Down below Sullivan finished writing his log. He looked at the tell-tale compass, cast an automatic glance at the brass ship’s clock and the barometer and was preparing to refill his pipe when his eye shot back to the barometer. He sprang up, made sure that the barometer was not broken, and let out a long whistle. The thick column of mercury had dropped as if the bottom had fallen out of the glass. He moved aside to let Ross see, and without a word they ran up the companion-way. Olaf jerked his thumb over to the west and they stared at the sky: they gazed up to the sails, flapping wearily in the dying breeze. They looked at one another and nodded.

  “Derrick, take the wheel,” ordered Sullivan. “Olaf, bear a hand.” He ran to the foremast winch, shouting for the two Malays in the fo’c’sle as he ran. Ross hurried about on deck, battening and lashing everything movable.

  “What is it, sir?” asked Derrick, as he passed.

  “Bit of a blow coming up, lad,” answered Ross, making all fast.

  Li Han hastened by with an anxious expression on his face. Derrick felt uneasy. Soon the Wanderer showed no more than a scrap of canvas, a single jib; her decks were cleared as though she were going into action, and she had so nearly lost steering-way that the wheel was lifeless in his hands.

  On the western horizon a strange cloudbank was forming rapidly. There was a heavy swell running, but no wind at all. In reply to a shouted order Derrick had put up the helm, and slowly the Wanderer came round to face the east. The long swell, which he had not noticed before, took her from behind, and her bare masts groaned as she worked heavily on the sea. Ross and Sullivan stood watching the growing patch of darkness on the sky.

  “I think we’ll just about get the full force of it,” said Sullivan. “The glass is still falling.”

  “Aye,” said Ross. “It won’t be long now. I’ll take the first trick at the wheel. We’ll run before it?”

  “Surely. The Wanderer can stand very nearly anything.”

  Ross dived below, and reappeared in his oilskins and sea-boots. The light of the day was fading with every minute, a menacing, unnatural fading of the light. The cloudbank was now a stretch of darkness covering a quarter of the sky. Suddenly Derrick realised what it was: there is nothing in the world like the coming of a typhoon.

  “You go below, Derrick,” said his uncle. “And don’t come on deck without orders.”

  The swell increased, and Derrick in the saloon had to hold on tight to prevent himself from bowling up and down as the Wanderer pitched. There was still no breath of wind to stir the sails, and the schooner seemed to have lost all her life and strength; she wallowed like a log.

  Soon the light was obscured as if by a thick fog: a hot, oppressive darkness filled the air, and the send of the waves grew stronger. The Wanderer laboured in the huge, smooth seas, creaking and groaning. Suddenly, and for the first time in his life, Derrick felt sea-sick: he was cold and clammy one minute; much too hot the next. He was very anxious not to disgrace himself, but he knew that if the ship went on bucketing much longer there would be no help for it.

  At last there came a little singing in the rigging; the single jib filled and drew, and life came back into the schooner. Then, after one minute of easy riding, the typhoon struck. In a split second the singing in the rigging mounted to a loud, high-pitched, angry shriek. The schooner leapt and quivered: for one moment she seemed to be staggered by the blow, but the next she was racing before it. Huge seas towered behind her, threatening to poop her at any second, but she fled before them unscathed.

  Sullivan plunged head-first into the saloon, followed by a sheet of spray.

  “What’s it like on deck, Uncle?” asked Derrick.

  “Pretty tough,” gasped Sullivan. “Not what you would choose for a Sunday-school outing.”

  “Are we in the storm-centre?”

  “I think so. Not far from it, anyhow. You’re not worried, are you?” he asked, with a kind smile.

  “No,” said Derrick, going red.

  “Well, I wouldn’t blame you if you were. I was, in my first big blow. I went pea-green. But then I was in a Portuguese tramp.” He had to shout to make himself heard. “That was a different kettle of fish: feel how this old crate rides, and look at the give in her.”

  The Wanderer lifted to a monstrous sea, standing almost upright on her stern; she twisted and thrust like a living creature. “Look here,” shouted Sullivan, pointing to the angle of the bulkhead. The joint between two thick timbers opened and closed an inch at a time. “Teak and ironwood,” he said, “with oak backbone and knees. She was made to give so. She can whip anything made of metal.” He patted the wood, wedged himself into a bunk, and in two minutes he was asleep.

  Derrick, clinging precariously to his seat, watched him with astonishment. An enormous din pervaded the whole space; the ship was being hurled about like a chip in a millstream, but still Sullivan slept on, braced against the pitching and the corkscrew roll. Derrick had always wondered at his uncle’s ability to snatch a spell of sleep at odd moments, but never so much as now.

  The time passed, lost in the prodigious hullabaloo: Derrick hardly noticed that the hands of the clock had crept on and on. He had been rather alarmed: the word typhoon has a very ugly ring in the China Seas, but the sight of his uncle sleeping there, even more than his reassuring words, was wonderfully comforting. Now Derrick could concentrate on gathering the various objects that had broken loose from their fastenings and stowing them away, rather than on the dozens of stories that he had heard of ships lost without a trace—and he could stop thinking about the tiger-shark under the Wanderer’s stern.

  Suddenly, above the steady roar, there was a report like the firing of a gun. At once Sullivan was awake. “That would be the jib,” he said, forcing his way through the wind-locked door. “Stay where you are.”

  Derrick listening intently, fancied that he heard a change in the voice of the typhoon after some minutes; there seemed to be a shriller note in it, louder and more savage.

  A solid mass of water shot into the saloon as Sullivan staggered in with Olaf over his shoulder. “Lash him into a bunk,” he shouted, “and get into oilskins.” He disappeared. Derrick lugged Olaf to the bunk, waited for the Wanderer to roll, and slid him into it. He took off the Swede’s dripping clothes, covered him with a rug and lashed him into the bunk with a dozen turns of a rope. Olaf was unconscious;
his shoulder hung strangely, and there was a streaming gash on his forehead. Derrick did the best he could with the sleeve of a shirt by way of a bandage, and hurried into his oilskins and sea-boots. He was hardly ready before Sullivan came down again.

  “All fixed, Derrick?” he asked, looking at Olaf. “Ready? Good. You’ll have to give me a hand on deck. Olaf will be all right—collar-bone, that’s all, and a bang on the head. Now listen, we’ve got to clear away the wreckage of the deckhouse. There’s a lot of rigging loose, so watch your step. Hang on to the hand-line all the time, and watch for the green seas. Look out for yourself, and don’t let go the hand-line.”

  Derrick nodded. His heart was beating violently. Sullivan handed him an axe, and they went on deck. The moment Derrick left the shelter of the companion-way the wind knocked him clean off his feet, but the hand-line brought him up. The shrieking air was full of flying water: he could hardly see or breathe. Following his uncle along the hand-line he made his way for’ard. They came to the wreckage: it had been stove in by a piece of drift-wood, and some of the timbers were pounding furiously. It was plain that they must be cleared at once, before they could spring the deck planking.

  Derrick cleared some of the smaller debris: the moment it was free it shot away, carried by the wind. He came to a thick rope, a fallen shroud that held two heavy timbers threshing against the deck. He hacked and hacked at it, but it would not part: he could not hit it square. He let go of the hand-line, held the shroud with one hand and cut at it with the other. At the same moment a heavy sea broke over the stern, a wall of green water swept along the deck, caught Derrick as he cut through the rope and shot him along the deck. He found himself under a cloud of spray, with his back against the capstan. He was still holding the end of the severed shroud. The spray cleared: he saw that he was still alive, but immediately another surge of water buried him. He held tight, snatched a breath of air as the water poured over the Wanderer’s bows, and began to work his way aft. Then, as suddenly as he had been swept for’ard, he was swept back: the Wanderer was climbing the back of a huge wave, with her nose pointing at the sky, and the water on the fo’c’sle surged back and carried him with it. He was among the wreckage again almost before his going had been seen. He took a turn about the hand-line and went on cutting the loose wood free.

  Again and again the great following seas smashed over the schooner’s stern, and each time she wallowed under a sheet of water and spray. But each time, after the spray had half drowned them, she would rise, the water shooting from her scuppers, lighten herself and speed on. Derrick grew used to the rhythm of it: he would see the sweep of water out of the corner of his eye as he worked, hang on, hold his breath and crouch until it had passed. At last, as he emerged from a welter of spray, he saw that the whole of the wreckage had been swept away, and his uncle, on the other side of the deck, was pointing aft. Bent double against the furious blast they clawed their way along: they passed Ross and one of the Malays, lashed to the wheel. Derrick, held motionless by the wind, noticed that the big Scotsman had his useless pipe clenched in his teeth, and that he was grinning. Derrick had never seen him looking so cheerful before. Usually he wore a solemn, dour face, but now he had the uplifted expression of a man in a winning fight. He nodded to Derrick, and shouted with all the force of his lungs; but Derrick, who was within a yard of him, only saw his mouth open and close.

  Once they were below it seemed that they had passed from one world to another. The relief from the immense noise and the strain made the saloon feel like a peaceful, silent parlour on dry land. Derrick sank down and savoured the delight of breathing air that was not mixed with sea: he suddenly felt extremely weak. His uncle was speaking to him, shouting, but he could not hear, and he found that the infernal howling on deck had deafened him. Sullivan helped him off with his oilskins, pointed to a bunk, to the clock, held up four fingers, and went.

  By the madly swaying light Derrick saw that the clock said half-past two. “It can’t be right,” he thought. “It must be . . .” but before he could even finish the thought he was asleep.

  “It’s not half-past two,” he exclaimed, waking suddenly, as someone shook him by the arm.

  “No,” said Li Han, “this person did not suggest it was.”

  After hours of labour Li Han had managed to get a fire going in the galley, and the steaming mug of cocoa that he held out to Derrick was the result of his efforts. Derrick collected his wits as he sipped the sweet, scalding liquid. He felt horribly sore and stiff all over, as if he had been put through a clothes-wringer. There was a deep gash on the back of his left hand—he had never noticed it at the time—and one of his front teeth was gone. But the cocoa was wonderfully good: he had never liked the stuff before, but now it sent down a flood of warmth into him.

  “Gee, that’s good cocoa, Li Han,” he said, “you are a swell guy.”

  “Is approximately one-half rum,” replied Li Han, refilling the mug for Olaf. “Other half mostly Yellow Sea.”

  “That’s a good sea-cook,” said Olaf, thoughtfully, after Li Han had gone. “Although he’s only a poor heathen.”

  “What’s happened?” asked Derrick, suddenly aware of a change in the ship’s motion.

  “The Old Man put her about at dawn. We’re riding it out now.”

  Derrick hurried on deck. “You take care,” shouted Olaf after him, “this ain’t no day for a swim.”

  He saw at once that the worst was over. There was still a huge sea running, and the wind was a full gale, but it was nothing to what it had been, and the Wanderer was riding it out with a high and buoyant ease.

  But the deck was a dismal sight. The ordinarily trim expanse of holy-stoned wood was a tangle of ropes and cordage, broken spars and storm-wrack: a gaping hole showed where the davits had torn out, and the deck-house was gone entirely.

  His uncle was at the wheel now, and Derrick shouted in his ear, “It was a proper typhoon, wasn’t it?”

  “No, only a little one,” said Sullivan.

  “But we passed through the storm-centre, didn’t we?” asked Derrick, in a disappointed bellow.

  “No. Nothing like it. We skirted the edge after all. Now if you’ve done with admiring the view, go for’ard and bear a hand.”

  Derrick hurried along the deck as fast as his aches and bruises would let him. To a landman’s eye the ship looked derelict, but in fact everything was well in hand. The Malays were at the pumps, and Ross was reeving new halliards: already the essential had been done, but it needed a more experienced eye than Derrick’s to know it.

  “Good morning, lad,” said Ross, as Derrick came up. “Are you fit for a spell of hard labour now?”

  “Well, sir, I think I could manage a little gentle exercise,” said Derrick, grinning.

  “Very good. Then just take a wee look at the shrouds and ratlines yonder, where the spar tore through them. See if you can set that to rights.”

  “But——” gasped Derrick, with his smile fading as he gazed up into the endless tangle.

  “Och, lad, I can see you need a few years of schooling. A sailor would have set about that in no time. Ah weel, I’d best do it myself.”

  “No, no. I just meant I was wondering where to begin.”

  “Humph. The best plan is to begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end.”

  Derrick swung himself up and started at the nearest dead-eye. “I’ll show him,” he muttered, jabbing away with a marlin-spike. It was a difficult, tedious job, and Ross knew it well: he was testing the boy. Piece by piece Derrick unravelled the tangle, and presently the ratlines began to assume a reasonable shape. The wind was blowing itself out, and by noon it was easier to work. They ate, enormously, at midday, and after the meal Derrick came on deck again, surveyed his work with satisfaction, and was just beginning to start on the frapping when there was the cry of a sail on the port bow.

  “She looks to me like the remains of a junk,” said Ross, focusing his glasses.

  The Wanderer
came about on the other tack, and soon they were within hail of the junk. No answer came from her as she wallowed in the dying swell: her decks were awash, and she had been battered almost out of recognition. The high poop had been completely torn away, and only a gaping hole showed where the main-mast had been wrenched bodily out of her.

  “There’s no one alive on board,” said Sullivan, scanning her ravaged decks. “She’ll not last the day.”

  The derelict rose and fell: each time she vanished into the trough of a wave it seemed impossible that she should reappear, but she did, time and time again.

  “There’s something moving in her bows,” cried Derrick, from the rigging. “I saw it twice.”

  Lowering the only boat that had survived was a tricky job, but there was no broken water, and they managed it. Ross and the old Malay stayed in the boat while Derrick stepped aboard the junk: she was so low in the water that he did not have to climb.

  “Look lively, boy,” cried Ross. “She’ll be going any minute now.”

  In the bows Derrick found a drowned Chinese sailor and a living dog. It was very weak; it could only just move, but it growled and snapped as Derrick shifted the broken planks to reach it. It was a large dog, rather of the build of a mastiff, but with longer legs and a shaggy yellow coat: a thick leather thong held it to the deck. As Derrick tried to cut it free, the dog turned and sunk its teeth into his hand.

  “Oh, you——,” cried Derrick, remembering some of Olaf’s choicer words. He clouted it and cut through the leather. The dog made as if to stand, but it could not. Derrick grabbed it by the scruff, dragged it to the broken gunwale and dropped it into the boat, where it lay snarling.