Читать книгу The Road to Samarcand - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 4

The Wanderer ran faster with the freshening of the breeze; her bows cut into the choppy sea, throwing white hissing spray into the sunlight. The schooner was carrying every stitch of canvas that she could spread, and she was so close into the wind that the boy at the wheel kept glancing up at the sails, watching for them to shiver and spill the breeze; but they remained taut and full, and presently his attention wandered. His gaze went up past the dazzling white triangles of the sails to the great albatross above them.

‘How does it manage to keep up without moving its wings?’ he wondered, craning over to the left to see it more clearly. ‘It has never –’

‘Keep her on her course, you young idiot,’ roared an unseen voice, and at the same moment the Wanderer yawed a little. The lee scuppers vanished under a cloud of foam, and Derrick gripped the wheel; it bucked under his hands, but he held it firm; the compass steadied, and the Wanderer’s bowsprit pointed to Tchao-King again. Derrick stood there, square to the wheel, his eyes fixed on the binnacle, the picture of a model helmsman; but he was red in the face, and he felt acutely conscious of the head that had appeared on deck. The rest of his uncle’s tall, lean body followed the head and stood there easily on the sloping deck, swaying to the send of the waves as the captain looked up at the sky, the windvane and the rigging.

‘If you do that again,’ he said, coming aft, ‘I’ll drown you with my own hands, and then you’ll be put on half-rations for the rest of the voyage. Now listen, Derrick, you hand over to Olaf at six bells and come down to the saloon. We want to have a talk with you.’

‘Okay – I mean, aye, aye, sir,’ replied Derrick, grinning. But when his uncle had gone below, he frowned. ‘I wonder what they want to talk to me about,’ he muttered, changing his grip on the spokes. He turned it over in his mind for some time, but he could think of nothing: soon he gave it up, and concentrated his whole attention on steering the Wanderer as she ran through the China Seas.

He heard the ting-ting of the ship’s bell, three times repeated, and a moment later Olaf Svenssen came out of the fo’c’sle. He was a big, fair Swede with a face as broad and as red as a side of beef, and like Captain Sullivan he stood for a moment gazing up at the weather and the sails.

‘How’s she steering?’ he asked, coming to the wheel.

‘Due north-west by north,’ replied Derrick, handing over.

‘Nort’-vest by nort’ it is,’ said Olaf, taking the wheel.

‘Do you think the wind will get up any more, Olaf?’

‘Not till after sundown. The sun’ll swallow it up, Ay reckon. Maybe in the night we’ll have a blow, Ay dunno. But the Wanderer can take it, eh?’

Derrick went below. His uncle and Mr Ross, a tall, raw-boned Scot, were in the saloon, working out the Wanderer’s position on the chart.

‘Is the sun over the yard-arm, lad?’ asked Ross.

‘Yes, sir, just over,’ answered Derrick. The schooner had no yards at all, but he knew what the question meant.

‘Good. Li Han! Coffee and rum.’

‘Coffee and rum on the spot one time,’ cried the Chinese cook, bringing in a tray.

‘Now then, Derrick,’ said Sullivan, finishing his coffee, ‘we want to talk to you.’

‘Aye, we want to talk to you,’ repeated Ross, solemnly. ‘Have a wee tot of rum.’

‘It’s like this,’ went on Derrick’s uncle. ‘When you joined us in Wang Pu after …’He paused. He didn’t like to say ‘after your mother and father died’, and while he was seeking for a better phrase he thought of that sudden death far away in Chang-An, and of those two kind, gentle missionaries who had been Derrick’s parents. He coughed and went on, ‘… after the funeral, we had no time to make any arrangements, so we took you along on the Wanderer while we considered what ought to be done with you. That is quite a time ago now, and so far we’ve done precious little about it. But we have come to the conclusion that you ought to go to school. The only question is where, the States or England.’

‘Or Scotland,’ put in Ross.

‘Or Scotland. But wherever it is (and I had thought of Ireland too) a school it must be.’

‘Just so,’ said Ross. ‘A school first, and then the university, to be bred up to one of the learned professions.’

‘Exactly,’ said Sullivan. ‘Knocking about the China Seas with a lot of rough-neck sailors is not the thing for a boy who ought to be hard at his books, not at all, at all.’

‘But, Uncle,’ cried Derrick, ‘I’ve had all the education I want, and I want to be a sailor. Can’t I just stay on the Wanderer with you and Mr Ross? It’s much better than school for a sailor. I’m learning to navigate, and I can splice a rope as well as Olaf.’

‘No, my boy,’ said his uncle, firmly. ‘It won’t do at all. I don’t say that you aren’t very useful – you’ve got all the makings of a sailor – but it won’t do. There are hundreds of reasons. To begin with, you’ll have to train in steam to get anywhere nowadays: I doubt whether you would ever get a mate’s ticket with this kind of training. And, besides, you have got to be properly educated. Your English cousin on your father’s side thinks just the same.’

‘Just so,’ said Ross. ‘Get a good grounding in the classics, mathematics and geography, and then you’ll be ready for sea training.’

‘But, sir, didn’t you say that you ran away to sea when you were younger than I am? And everyone knows that you are the best master mariner in the Yellow Sea.’

‘Weel, lad, that’s as may be. Humph. But that’s another case altogether. Days were different then. And let me tell you this, when I was a wee laddie I was a great headstrong fule: I did not know the wisdom of my elders. But when I had been first mate of the Indus just three years, I saved my pay and I went to Saint Andrew’s. I realised that my elders were not so stupid as I had thought when I could walk under a table without bending my head, and so I took my degree.’

‘Couldn’t I do the same, sir? Look, Uncle Terry, just let me stay aboard the Wanderer until I’m old enough to go to college, and I promise you I’ll –’

‘No, no, my poor boy. School it must be, so pipe down and make up your mind to it. You must go and learn how to parse, and the Kings of Israel, and how many beans make five. Besides, the matter is not entirely in my hands – there’s your English cousin, and he has a big say in the affair.’

‘That would be Professor Ayrton, I suppose,’ said Derrick, gloomily. ‘My father often talked about him. He was coming out to see us this year.’

‘Yes, that’s the one. He’s a great authority on oriental archaeology, a very learned man, and I don’t suppose that you will be able to escape the advantages of a liberal education with him on your track. We shall be seeing him a few days after we reach Tchao-King, and we’ll have another talk about it then. Now cut along and give Li Han a hand at checking over the stores.’

Derrick left the saloon with a heavy heart and made his way to the galley. The idea of being a schoolboy again after the freedom of the schooner was not a pleasant one.

In the saloon Sullivan leaned back and lit his pipe. ‘I sympathise with the boy,’ he said. ‘I’d feel just the same myself in his place. And there’s a lot in early training: nothing like it for a deep-sea sailor. Still, I suppose he must be educated.’

‘Aye,’ said Ross, ‘though I don’t know anything to beat an apprenticeship under sail to make a sailorman. But this Professor Ayrton probably will not see eye to eye with us there.’

Derrick found Li Han counting piles of bags and tins, trying to make them tally with the total in the store-book.

‘They want to send me to school, Li Han,’ said Derrick, sitting on a tea-chest.

‘Thirty-nine piculs of rice: exactitude only approximate,’ said the Chinese cook. ‘Do they? Very proper too. Thereby you will have inestimable privilege of becoming first-chop scholar.’

‘I don’t want to be a first-chop scholar. A master mariner is good enough for me.’

‘You are talking jestily. Who wishes to be a meagre sailorman if he can be a learned and enter the government service? Why, in time you might be an official and never do anything for remainder of earthly existence. You could grow long fingernails, and become obese and dignified.’

‘I don’t want to be obese and dignified. I’d rather be a meagre sailorman.’

‘Ah, but think of the excessive perils and discomforts of seafaring life. Very often sea is unnecessarily agitated by heavenly blasts, and seafaring persons are plunged beneath surface. It is much better to be the meanest official with firm chair under seat. And maritime persons enjoy no prestige, no face, while government officials are very dignified. You should go to school with rejoicement, labour with unremitting zeal, and become pensionable civil servant. Please excuse.’ He stowed away the chest on which Derrick had been sitting, and went on, ‘Observe the classics: in the Shih King it says, “It is the business of scribes and scholars to correct the government of the people.” You pursue ancient advisement, and correct the government. What face! What daily bribes! What squeeze!’

‘Yes, there’s glory for you,’ said Derrick. ‘But as for me, I’d rather be master of a schooner like the Wanderer.’

‘You like some lichees now?’ asked Li Han. ‘Just one or two?’

‘As many as you like, Li Han. There won’t be any at school, I dare say.’

Li Han piled the fruit on a plate. ‘Exceedingly peculiar thing,’ he said, ‘I run after learning all the time, chasing it in adverse circumstance, and you run away from it when it comes on a tray.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘This morning I reach the letter S in my dictionary.’

‘Gee, Li Han,’ said Derrick, finishing the lichees, ‘you thought it would take you another week to work through R, didn’t you? At this rate you’ll come to Z and the abbreviations before the end of the year. That’s swell. Is there anything I can do to help, apart from eating the lichees? Because if not, I think I’ll vamoose.’

‘Vamoose?’

‘I shall move my person with distinguished agility from this place to another,’ explained Derrick, slipping into the Chinese that he had learned before ever he spoke English.

‘Vamoose – to skip away. Thank you. Will make instantaneous note – colloquial knowledge of English most valuable.’

Derrick came on deck and stood watching the Wanderer’s wake for some time. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in the calmer sea he could see the schooner’s trail stretching far behind her. He looked down, and there, sure enough, was the great dark, torpedo-shaped form of the tiger-shark that had been following since the ship left port. Li Han came up with a bucket of rubbish: he threw it over the side, and at once Derrick saw the little pilot-fish dart forward and follow a lump of spoiled salt pork as it sank. The shark shot out from the shadow of the schooner, and Derrick saw the white gleam of its belly as it turned; there was a swirl in the water, and it was gone. The pilot-fish snapped up the scrap that remained and joined the shark under the stern. Derrick shuddered: sharks were the only things in the sea that he hated. There was something appallingly sinister about the great fish’s silent voracious rush.

He looked away and searched the sky and the horizon for the albatross that was nearly always there, a particularly fine one, with such a vast wing-span that it seemed impossible that it should ever be able to fold them and walk on the ground. But it was not there: nor were the gulls which usually appeared to swoop on the scraps that Li Han threw overboard.

Presently he went along to have a word with Olaf. ‘I say, Olaf,’ he began, ‘if you wanted to be a sailor, would you go to school?’

‘Well, I am a sailor, ain’t I?’ said Olaf. ‘What do you think Ay look like? A film-star, maybe, or a guy that dances on a tight-rope?’

‘No, I mean do you think school is a good thing?’

‘A good thing?’ said the Swede, watching the compass and considering. ‘Well, Ay reckon they wouldn’t teach me much out of a book, eh? Ay can’t read only big print, see? And Ay don’t want to be squinting down my nose at a lot of words Ay can’t understand.’

‘I mean if you were young and wanted to be a ship’s captain.’

‘Hum. That’s another thing. You got to know how to navigate, of course: but Ay don’t know that anything else ban much use to a sailor, except the nautical almanac.’

‘I think you’re right, Olaf. They want to send me to school.’

‘What for, eh? You can read and write and figure, can’t you? Ay never was a one for falals and doodads. My old man, he was the master of a whaler, see? And he never knew any more than navigation by rule of thumb.’ He turned the wheel two spokes, and went on. ‘Now Ay knew a man in Baltimore, could read out of books in Greek and what you say? Uh, Latin, ain’t it? Yes. Well, it worn’t any manner of use to him. He fell in the sea and drownded just the same.’

‘But that might happen to anyone, however much they knew.’

‘Ay don’t know. My old grandma, she was a Finn. Half Lapp, they say; and she was a wise woman. She could read the runes. You know what Ay mean? The old heathen writings, eh? And she could put good luck on a ship with what she knew, and she could sell you a nice little wind if you asked polite. If you went and tipped your hat to her and said, “Good morning, marm, I’ve come for a nice little wind like you can make, marm, if you please,”’ – Olaf imitated himself being polite, with a horrible smirk and a bob of his head – ‘Why, then you’d maybe get it. But if you was to say, “Hey, old girl, give us a wind yust one point off of east and make it snappy,” why, then you would get something more then you bargained for, eh? What she knew, my old grandma! Ay don’t reckon she would have drowned in any sea. Ay t’ink she must have been ninety when Ay remember her. Old, she was, with a beard like a man, and she was a little creature you could of broken like that …’ he snapped his fingers. ‘But they was all afraid of her, even the old pastor, though he hated her worser’n poison. She used to be able to tell the day when a man was going to die, and she could charm the whales out of the sea. But Ay reckon you can’t get that sort of learning in no school. If you could, maybe it’d be some use, eh?’

‘Could she really tell when you were going to die, Olaf?’

‘Well, maybe. There was only two or three ever asked her, and they died all right. After that, nobody wanted to know. But Ay seen her call an ice-bear over the sea. She was a wise woman all right.’

‘How did she do that?’

‘Ay don’t rightly know. We was up in the north of Norway, visiting a sick relation, see? And this relation, he went on keeping sick, in spite of my grandma. So she went out into the tundra and called in the reindeer – a good many Lapps can do that – and she made some kind of a spell then; but still this man, he could not get any better no way. So then she bawled him out and swore so that we all got frightened and asked her to stop, very polite. “Stow it, Grandma,” we said. “Stow it, marm, if you please.” And she stopped. She sat by the fire and smoked her pipe for a long while. It was very cold, Ay remember: up there the winters go on seven, eight months, and there ain’t no sun. The fjords were frozen deep, too, and the wolves, they came so close you could hear them breathe. After a long while she got up and looked out: there was a double ring of the Northern Lights flashing up all colours in the sky, and she went out. Soon there was a wolf howling close by outside, and another answered in the tundra. My father, he said, “That’s your grandma, son, talking to the wolves.”

‘Well, nothing happened for a long while, and they all ban gone to sleep when Ay took a look outside, because Ay wanted to see. And Ay saw my grandma going down across to the fjord. So Ay slipped out and followed her in the moonlight, see? She went right on to the ice and squatted down. She took out a knife, an old stone knife like some of the Lapps have, and she cut runes on the ice. Then she called out across the sea, and far away there was an answer. Ay can’t make the proper noise, but it was something like this – Haoo, haoo. She called six, seven times with her hand like that, see, up to her mouth, and each time the answer came nearer. She held her knife by the blade and beckoned with it. And over the ice I see a great white bear coming slow, with his head turning from side to side on his long neck. Eh! He was a big one. Sometimes Ay could not see him against the snow on the ice, because he was white too, see? But there was his shadow there all the time. And Ay was so frightened Ay could not move my little finger, and Ay was cold: cold to the heart. Soon he come right up to her, and he sit down on the ice, and they talk, grunting and nodding. Suddenly something seems to crack in me, and Ay up and run like mad for the house, hollering all the way. I hear the white bear roar as I slam the door, and they all wake up and ask what’s biting me? Have I had a bad dream, maybe?

‘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 seaboots. 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 mill-stream, 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 deck-house. 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 mid-day, 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.

‘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 water-logged 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 unctuous.’