The Road to Samarcand Page 5

  Half an hour later Derrick was still listening.

  “There, you see?” said the Professor at last. “Is it not extraordinary that just as I reached that point you should have come in with the intention of beginning a conversation too? Tell me, what was it to be about?”

  “I was going to ask if Li Han and Olaf could come on the expedition. Li Han is a very good cook, and he says he would come without any pay for the privilege of cooking for a—for a worthy philosophical scholar. Those were the words he used. But he hasn’t the nerve to ask. And Olaf is very keen, too. He is a wonderful seaman. Please could they come, sir?”

  “Olaf is the very large person with a voice like a bull in pain, is he not?”

  “Yes, that’s him.”

  “That is he, Derrick. And Li Han is the cook. Did he cook our dinner when first I came aboard the Wanderer, and all the wonderful meals since?”

  “Yes, sir. And he can read and write English as well as I can.”

  “Really, as well as that?”

  Derrick went red. “No, I mean—but really, he is very clever. He told me what archaeology was right away, when I asked him.”

  “Did he, indeed? Do you remember his definition?”

  “He said it was disinterment of ancient fragments.”

  The Professor smiled. “Well, upon my word,” he said, “an erudite sea-cook—and such a cook, too. Hotcha,” he added, after some thought.

  “Hotcha, sir?”

  “Yes. Hotcha. It is an expression that denotes vehement approval.”

  “Then they can come? Oh, gee, Professor, thanks a lot.”

  “Come? Where?”

  “Why, to Samarcand, with us.”

  “Oh, yes. Of course. You refer to the expedition. I remember now: you mentioned it before. But, my dear boy, that has nothing to do with me, has it? You must suggest your plan to Mr. Ross, or to your uncle. I am sure that he will be delighted. But before you go, let me read you a fascinating passage that I chanced upon this morning.” He hunted through the pages and up and down the close-packed columns of Chinese print, but before he could find his place Ross and Sullivan came in.

  “Ah, here you are,” said Professor Ayrton. “We were just talking about you. Derrick was asking me whether we should not take some of your crew along, and I proposed that he should refer the question to you.”

  “He was, was he?” said Sullivan. “Derrick, perhaps you will have the kindness to wait for me in the saloon.”

  As Derrick passed the galley Li Han popped his head out and asked, “Bad news?” Derrick nodded, and rapidly outlined the situation. Li Han passed him a small mat, saying, “Provision against wrath to come.”

  The wrath came, very quickly, and a great deal of it. Sullivan was a big man, with red hair and blue eyes; but when he was angry he seemed to be a great deal taller, his hair blazed, and his eyes emitted sparks that were very disagreeable to behold. He picked Derrick up by the shoulder with one hand, held him there for some time on a level with his face, then put him down and said quietly, “Listen to me, young fellow. Suppose an ordinary seaman were to go to the owner and say, ‘My dear sir, don’t you think it would be an excellent idea if the main to’garns’l were struck? It is blowing rather hard.’And then if he were to go to the captain or the mate and say, ‘Mr. Mate, the owner would like the main to’garns’l struck,’ what do you think the mate would say? If I were the mate, the man wouldn’t walk for a week, if he ever walked at all: but in your case, young fellow, I think I can promise you that you won’t sit down for a week.”

  Afterwards, he said: “It may comfort you to know that we were going to take Olaf and Li Han anyway: you can go and tell them, if you like.”

  Li Han greeted him with an anxious face. “Soothing embrocation?” he said. “A little Tiger Balm? A cup of nourishing tea? Repose the weary frame in this chair.”

  “Thank you, Li Han, but I think I’ll stand up for the moment. You’re coming, and so is Olaf. And I heard them say that we shall start for Peking on Thursday morning.”

  SULLIVAN AND ROSS had a strange knack of knowing people in the most unlikely places: Derrick had almost ceased to be astonished when his uncle was greeted with open arms by odd-looking men of all races and colours—there had been the Portuguese monk in Macao, the Dyak chieftain on the Limpong river, the enormously wealthy Armenian merchant in Canton, the one-eyed Ibn Batuta navigating his Arab dhow through the Hainan Strait—but here in Peking he was astonished once more, for instead of leading him to some walled-in, many-courted Chinese house, his uncle stopped at a neat, trim villa that would have looked perfectly in place in the suburbs of Lausanne, but which looked wildly incongruous in the shadow of a pagoda and surrounded on all sides by the upward-curving tiles and dragon-trimmed roofs of its Chinese neighbours. It was a Swiss boardinghouse, and Sullivan walked in as if he had known it all his life. It stood just under the walls of the Inner City of Peking, the Tartar City, but once you were inside you found it hard to believe that you were in China at all. Everything, from the meals to the eiderdowns and the shining brass bedsteads, was entirely European. Li Han was immensely impressed, and Derrick suspected him of burning joss sticks in front of the steel-engraving of President McKinley that adorned his room; but this he was never able to prove.

  Once they were installed, Ross and Sullivan were busy most of the day with the preparations for the journey, Professor Ayrton spent nearly all his time in the library of a Chinese archaeological society, where he was an honoured guest, and Olaf disappeared into one of the disreputable haunts which sailors always manage to find; Li Han was actively engaged in learning the correct Mandarin dialect of Peking, for he was from Foochow, and he could hardly make himself understood here in the north; so Derrick explored Peking on his own. He would close the green front door behind him, walk down the three whitened steps, and he would instantly find himself in another world, the noisy, smelly world of China, with its hordes of blue-clad people, coolies carrying great loads on a long bamboo pole, barbers operating in the street, dignified citizens being carried past in covered chairs, old men going to fly their kites in the open spaces and young men with little bamboo bird-cages in their hands, walking to air their birds. He would go a few hundred yards through these people, turn to the left through the enormous gate-house, and find himself in a different world again, the world of the Tartar City. Here in the great serais and market-places there were far-wandering Persians and Arabs, Mongols of every tribe, Turkis, Uzbegs, Manchus, Tibetans with their fierce mastiffs, as big as Chang, and obviously of the same original breed. There was a continual roar of voices in a hundred languages and dialects, and here a Chinese looked almost as foreign as Derrick did himself: but there were so many strange figures, from the green-turbaned hadjis from Shiraz to the fur-clad Siberians and the Koreans with their white top-hats, that nobody took any notice of him, and he could wander about at his ease. Here, for the first time, he saw the hairy, two-humped camels of Central Asia, the shaggy, nimble ponies of the Kara Altai and the Kirghiz Steppe, and here, for the first time, he saw the Tartars drinking the fermented milk of their mares. His uncle had given him a list of the most important Mongol words, and as he walked about he both memorised them and tried to hear them as they should be said, in the conversation that surrounded him on every side.

  But soon the first excitement of discovery died down, and although he had Chang with him all the time, he began to feel lonely, and to long for a companion: he was very glad, therefore, when after their usual prim and orderly breakfast, his uncle said that he had a journey in front of him, and that Derrick could come.

  There was an ancient and disreputable Ford outside the boarding-house, and with some surprise Derrick saw his uncle crank it and climb into the driving seat. It seemed a strange vehicle to carry them through the crowded streets of Peking and of the Tartar City. But after a few minutes Derrick noticed with delight that his uncle was unsure of himself for once. At the wheel of the Wanderer and in any other place where
Derrick had ever seen him, he had been calm, competent and almost infallible; but now he betrayed a strong tendency to take advantage of every changing breeze and to tack up the street in a zig-zag calculated to strike terror into the mind of the beholder. He had some difficulty with the gears, too, and he appeared to have only two speeds, either a boiling crawl at five miles an hour, or a hair-raising dash at sixty-five or more. At the first speed they raised bitter complaints from the bottled-up traffic behind them, and at the second they scattered the pedestrians like chaff before a hurricane. They left a wake of furious oaths behind them, but by extraordinarily good luck no corpses.

  “That’s better,” said Sullivan, in a voice hoarse with replying to the compliments that had been addressed to him throughout Peking. They were well out of the city now, speeding along the empty road to the north. “That’s much better now,” he repeated, mopping his brow. He peered down at his feet. “This one is the brake,” he said, pointing it out to Derrick. “And this one . . .” he was saying as the car left the road and cut a huge swathe through the tall millet that was growing alongside. Derrick ducked under the windscreen: he felt the car give a violent bound as it leapt the ditch and regained the road without stopping, and he raised his head to hear his uncle continue, “ . . . is the accelerator. When I press it, we go faster.” He pressed it, and the keen air whistled past the car in a rising shriek.

  “What happens if you take your foot off, Uncle?” bellowed Derrick, as the car began to rock violently from side to side.

  “Nothing, apparently,” said his uncle, peering down again. “It’s always the same with these contraptions. First they won’t go, and then they won’t stop.”

  “Perhaps if you were to try the other foot?” suggested Derrick, clinging to his seat.

  “Now I don’t want any advice on driving a car,” said Sullivan, testily. “I happen to be a very good driver—not like those inconsiderate road-hogs in Peking.”

  “There’s a sail ahead,” said Derrick, after ten miles of the road had flown by. There was, indeed. A heavily laden wheelbarrow with its high rattan sail was creeping slowly along the middle of the road a quarter of a mile away.

  “I can see it, can’t I?” said Sullivan, experimenting with various levers.

  “I only meant perhaps it would be a good thing to slow down—so as not to startle the man, and to give him time to get out of the way.”

  “Nonsense. There’s plenty of room on his windward side. You can give a toot on the siren, if you like.”

  Sullivan rushed down upon the wheelbarrow with a fixed, set expression: Derrick hooted and then closed his eyes. But the crash never came: there was only an enraged bellow that died rapidly away behind them, and when Derrick opened his eyes again he saw that the countryside was passing at a more normal speed.

  “I’ve got the hang of the thing now,” said Sullivan, in a pleased voice. “This one is the accelerator. The other one controls the lights, or the heating, or something. Very unusual car, this: not the rig I am used to at all.”

  They passed a temple, and Sullivan turned round to look at it. “Luff, luff,” shrieked Derrick, as the car headed straight for a high stone wall.

  “I was going to luff,” said Sullivan, wrenching the indestructible car back on to the road, “and if you don’t pipe down, Derrick, you’ll find yourself overboard before you can say knife.”

  The fields had given way to open grassland, and in the distance there appeared a ruined triumphal arch. With an unholy crash of gears Sullivan plunged off the road and the car bounded over the dried-up turf towards the arch.

  “Did you hear me change down?” he said. “I knew I would master the old musical box before long.”

  As they hurtled towards the arch he said mildly, “This brake doesn’t seem to be holding. Just try that lever in the middle, will you?”

  Derrick heaved upon it with all his force; his head crashed violently against the dashboard, and the car came to a shuddering stop, its nose one inch from the arch.

  “Very neatly docked, though I say it myself,” said Sullivan, getting out.

  They waited by the slowly cooling car in the shade of the arch, and presently they saw a distant plume of dust in the north. It came nearer, and soon Derrick could make out the three horsemen who were approaching them. The drumming of hooves on the hard earth came nearer and nearer, and in another minute the three Mongol ponies dashed up. Their riders pulled them to a dead stop and leapt to the ground: they were short, squat Mongols, with bowed legs and high-cheekboned faces. They were no taller than Derrick, and once off their horses they looked strangely incomplete. All three were armed with rifles slung over their backs and long knives in their belts: they wore bandoliers criss-crossed over their chests, and they walked awkwardly in their long felt boots as they came over to salute Sullivan. Sullivan answered them with a flow of guttural words, and the leader handed him a piece of red silk, a brace of partridges and a small object closely wrapped. Sullivan turned to the car, brought a box from under the seat, and gave the Mongols a piece of red silk, three automatic pistols and a charm in the shape of a bronze horse.

  The presents having been exchanged, the Mongols lit a fire in the lee of the ruined arch and began to prepare a meal. Speaking quietly to Derrick, Sullivan said, “These are the three sons of Hulagu Khan, the chief of the Kokonor Mongols. I sent to ask his help for transport animals, and perhaps for a tribesman or two, if he could spare them. Now he has sent his three sons with orders to do everything they can to help, in memory of a good turn that I did him long ago. It’s a way they have in these parts, and a very good way, too. I’ll introduce you, but remember that they don’t like a young man—and you’re a man by their reckoning—to talk unless he is spoken to.”

  He spoke to the Mongols, obviously explaining who Derrick was, and then he said to Derrick, “This is young Hulagu, this is Chingiz, and this is Kubilai.” The Mongols, hearing their names, bowed each in turn to Derrick, and Derrick bowed back, wondering what was going on behind their impassive, expressionless faces. The eldest broke a piece of bread, dipped it in salt and handed it to Derrick.

  “Don’t say anything,” murmured Sullivan. “Bite it clean in half and give it back.”

  Derrick did so; the Mongols gave a hint of a smile and divided the remaining piece among themselves. Then there was a silence until their fire had blazed away to glowing embers: one of the Mongols went back to the tethered horses, took some strips of dried horse-flesh from under the deep saddle, impaled them on the long iron skewers that he carried threaded in his felt boot and burnt them roughly on each side over the fire. He handed them round, and Sullivan whispered, “It would be a good thing if you could eat your piece in seven bites.”

  It nearly choked Derrick, the raw, warm flesh, but he got it down, and immediately afterwards the Mongols scattered the ashes of their fire, remounted, and stood by while Sullivan attacked the car. Derrick marvelled to see how they controlled the half-wild ponies: they seemed to fit the saddles as though they grew from the horse. Chingiz, the youngest, sat on his madly bucking mount—it had never seen a car in its life, and it was terrified—as though it were no more than a wooden rocking-horse. By something not unlike a miracle the car started at once, and they went back to Peking in a cavalcade.

  The next day the Mongols began their active assistance. They stayed in the Ka-Khan serai in the Tartar City, and they sent out word for horses, camels and ponies: the dealers flocked to them; they selected, judged, chaffered with un-wearying patience; and at the same time they sent out messages with the caravans all along the route to their friends, warning them to have more beasts ready in due time.

  Often when Sullivan was busy he would send Derrick to the serai with some message: he made Derrick repeat it over and over again until he was sure that it would be understood, and although the eldest of the Mongol brothers could make himself quite well understood in Chinese, Sullivan insisted that Derrick should stick to their language through thick and thin. He
said it was the only way to learn, and he was right: within a remarkably short time Derrick could understand the gist of much that was said to him, and he could bring back an answer as well as carry a message.

  A few days before everything was ready he went down to the Tartar City to tell Hulagu about a small alteration in the plans: but he found the serai deserted except for a few pie-dogs that ran when they saw Chang. It was a horse-racing day, but Derrick had not understood that when they told him some time before. He walked round the great hollow square of the serai, peering into the deeply-roofed verandah that ran clean round it, and looking for someone who could tell him where he might find the sons of the Khan. In the darkness of the stables he saw a dim figure squatting over a saddle-bag, and walking noiselessly over the trodden straw he went into the stable. He had left Chang far over in the other corner, sniffing about on the traces of a Tibetan mastiff. The man’s back was towards Derrick as he crouched over the saddle-bag, and until Derrick spoke he was unaware of his presence. Derrick greeted him in Mongol. The man froze, motionless for a second; then he turned and stared at Derrick without a word. Another man appeared from the shadows, and they both stared at Derrick. Derrick began to feel uneasy: he was beginning to repeat his greeting in Chinese when the first man grunted a word to his companion, and they both hurled themselves on Derrick. Derrick let out a yell and struck out wildly: his fist landed on the first man’s head—it felt like wood—and they fell in a writhing mass, with Derrick underneath. He felt crooked fingers gripping at his throat, and then heard a yell and felt the weight above him diminish as Chang wrenched one of the men off him.

  But the other was still on him: Derrick’s head was covered with the black cloth of his kaftan, and through the cloth the strong fingers were pressing deep into his throat. His breath was coming short, and there was a thundering in his ears. He relaxed utterly, went dead under the man’s weight, and then suddenly, with all his force, writhed, brought his knee up into the man’s belly and rolled clear. He could see now, but what he saw was the man coming for him again, with a long knife gleaming in his left hand. Derrick was in a corner: there was no escape, and a fleeting glance showed him that Chang was completely taken up with his enemy. The man came in with a quick, silent, purposeful rush, and Derrick threw himself on his back, kicking up with both his feet. One caught the man in the wind, but although he was winded he fell squarely on top of Derrick, pinning him down, and although he was gasping for breath he brought his right forearm across Derrick’s throat, pressing with all his weight. Derrick noticed, with a split-second of horror, that he had no right hand—the arm was a stump—but there was no time for horror: Derrick grabbed the man’s left wrist with both his hands and tried to twist the knife away. But the man was too strong by far, and twice he stabbed, driving the keen blade into the ground an inch from Derrick’s head. Derrick tried to bring up his knee again, and the man caught his leg in a wrestler’s lock. Slowly they strove and writhed together, glaring into one another’s faces with inhuman hatred, and then by a quick turn the man wrenched one of Derrick’s hands free and pinned it with his knee. Derrick lashed with his legs, vainly trying to unseat his enemy. But the man held firm, and with a furious backward jerk of his left arm he wrenched his wrist free from Derrick’s remaining grasp.