Читать книгу Patrick O’Brian 3-Book Adventure Collection: The Road to Samarcand, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 11

The battle was soon over. The decimated rebel army fled in the wildest confusion and Hsien Lu was left the victor, with hardly a man wounded and the richest booty that he had ever won.

They marched on to the city of Hai Lin, the capital of Hsien Lu’s province of Liao-Meng. The rebel garrison yielded without a blow, and from the Tu-chun’s palace Sullivan sent word to Olaf and the Mongols to join them: within a few days the Professor’s archaeological expedition was re-formed and stood ready to continue its peaceful and scientific progress. Olaf brought Chang with him. The poor dog was a bag of skin and bone: he had been trying to find Derrick for days and days, and in all that time he had not eaten; it was only by the greatest good fortune that he had returned to Chien Wu the evening before Olaf set out. Chang welcomed Derrick with boundless delight, and within a few days he began to fill out again to something like his former sturdiness.

The Professor was his former academic self again; he had got over his transient thirst for blood, and he was eager to continue with his journey. But he had reckoned without Hsien Lu. The war-lord would by no means allow them to depart until he had shown his gratitude. Every day they sat down to immense banquets, rich with the strangest and most sought-after delicacies. In time Derrick grew weary even of the nests of sea-swallows; he was tired of eating, and he never wished to see another meal again. Li Han, however, was in his element: for years he had cooked for others, and now others were cooking for him; he had acquired a great deal of face, and he sat among the lesser officials, growing almost as stout as a mandarin. They gave him the nick-name of Jelly-Belly Wary – Jelly-Belly for his rapidly increasing girth, and Wary for his caution in war.

Olaf, too, ate like a starving man, day after day. ‘Ay reckon you can’t never have too much to eat,’ he said greasily. ‘Ay ban so long at sea, Ay ban right sick of hard tack. Fill up against the next long voyage, Ay say: there ain’t no telling when you’ll have the next chance.’ He sighed with repletion and looked enviously at a pile of crimson prawns. ‘Ay t’ink,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘that Ay could manage one more.’

Derrick watched him demolishing the heap of prawns. ‘You’ll surely burst if you go on,’ he said.

‘Well, Ay reckon that ban a hero’s death,’ replied Olaf, skewering another prawn. ‘You make a long arm, now, and sling along the fried noodles.’

Chingiz and his brothers scorned the endless feasting. They preferred horse-flesh and koumiss; but they were deeply interested in the weapons that had been captured from Shun Chi.

The tanks did not interest them: they thought them greatly inferior to horses; but they spent many hours with the machine-guns before regretfully deciding that they were no use on horseback. They were charmed with the bombs, but Sullivan would not let them have any.

‘These Mongols,’ he said, ‘are good enough at murdering one another as it is, without giving them the power to wipe out whole tribes at a time. They must forgo the advantages of modern civilisation.’

At length Hsien Lu could no longer keep them from the road. He loaded them with presents and sent them on their way with an escort large enough to guard the ransom of a king. He gave them many things, and he would have given them more if Sullivan had not pointed out that they could not cross the Gobi with seven enormous wagons. The Professor had three brass Buddhas, made in Birmingham, a cuckoo-clock and some bronzes. As he was showing them to the others he observed, ‘These four bronzes are recent forgeries; these here are also forgeries, but they were made in the Sung dynasty to represent Han bronzes. Think of that: well over a thousand years ago they were already forging antiquities when our kings could hardly read and write, and went about knocking people on the head.’

‘As for knocking people on the head, Professor,’ said Ross, who was suffering badly from indigestion, and was feeling somewhat liverish and argumentative, ‘you have shown a very pretty talent for that. And as for forging antiquities, that does not seem to me a very creditable sign of civilisation.’

‘I should say that that remark showed a very superficial reflection,’ said the Professor, who was also a little liverish, ‘if it might not be thought ill-mannered. I shall content myself with observing that the forgery of antiquities proves the existence of a widely spread appreciation of them. I would further add, sir, that I have seen Han forgeries of Chow ritual vessels, made, I repeat, at a time when we were painted blue and ran about howling like a pack of savages. Confucius takes notice of this in the seventh chapter of –’

‘But, Professor,’ interrupted Sullivan, ‘if they appreciate art so much, how do you account for these horrible brass Buddhas?’

‘Well, there I must admit that you puzzle me. The cuckoo-clock can easily be accounted for as a Western curiosity, but I confess that I am surprised by these deplorable brass objects. It is strange that even a soldier, a man of violence,’ he said, with a sideways look at Ross, ‘should be so wanting in artistic taste. It puzzles me, particularly when I look at these remaining bronzes, these three incense-burners on the right, which are certainly Han, genuine Han, beautiful things, every day of two thousand years old.’ As he contemplated the incense-burners his good humour came back, and he said, ‘With the exception of one bronze that I saw in Moscow when I was a young man, and another in a private collection in America, those are the finest I have ever seen. Quite apart from their beauty, their inscriptions are of extraordinary interest.’

‘It is odd,’ said Sullivan, who was still looking at the Buddhas, ‘because Hsien Lu is no fool. No sort of a fool at all. I noticed that when he gave them to you he said that in spite of their appearance you would find in time that they had a certain inner value.’

‘True. He was referring, no doubt, to their religious significance. But to return to these bronzes, I will stake my reputation that they are genuine. This version of the familiar extract from the Great Wisdom, for example, runs …’

The Professor would have gone on indefinitely, but he was interrupted by the arrival of the carpenter who had come to make special cases to fit the incense-burners, and while the Professor was giving his instructions the others escaped. The Professor had each of the bronzes swathed in silk before they were packed: he did the same for the Buddhas, in order not to hurt the Tu-chun’s feelings, and he had them all loaded on one particular camel, where he could keep his eye on them.

After one last gargantuan banquet which lasted all night the expedition set out. They were bloated and weary – Chang was so fat that he could hardly run – but the new and excellent horses and pack animals that Hsien Lu had given them covered the ground at a great pace, and even on the first day they travelled a long stage. A little before nightfall a galloping messenger caught them up with a letter from the war-lord to say that he had caused the Professor’s enormous stelae to be uprooted and that they would be sent down to the nearest port to be shipped off as a trifling token of his esteem.

The next evening a second messenger pursued them with several jars of ginger and medicinal rhubarb, in case they should need it on their journey. And on the day after that no less than five arrived with presents of fur-lined clothing, as the Tu-chun thought they might take cold on the high plateau. Silk, weapons, antique porcelain, ivory, wonder-working pills, felt boots, remedies against old age, tooth-ache and jaundice, small patent stoves, charcoal burners and a catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores (which Hsien Lu believed to be in verse) raced after them over the high and dusty roads of Liao-Meng, until their spare baggage animals were loaded down to the ground, and every evening they would scan the horizon apprehensively for the cloud of dust that would herald the coming of a new alarm-clock or an incredibly fragile set of Imperial egg-shell china.

They rode for day after day through Liao-Meng, and at last the fields thinned out, the vegetation grew more sparse, they passed no more trees, and finally they left the last dwelling behind them. They entered upon a vast plain, covered thinly with brown grass and extending to the rim of the horizon all round the uninterrupted bowl of the sky.

Three times, as they crossed this huge expanse, armed bands appeared in the distance: once the advance guard of their escort had a brush with the bandits, and once they passed a heap of bones, among which still blew the torn remnants of plundered bales of merchandise, fluttering in the desolate wind; but they were not seriously molested, although they were travelling through a district infested by all manner of disbanded soldiers from broken armies, brigands and embryonic war-lords trying out their hands on stray passers-by or caravans that were weakly armed and irresolute.

There came a day when, in the far distance, a low building appeared. On this flat plain it showed for miles and miles, and it seemed as strange and remarkable there as a ship in full sail. They reached it early the next morning, and the column halted. Derrick saw a broad, rough road running straight as an arrow from one edge of the world to the next, and the building stood at its side. They were on the Old Silk Road at last, a road of immeasurable antiquity, once used by innumerable caravans, but now almost deserted.

Here they were beyond the range of the Chinese bandits, and here the escort turned back, carrying the expedition’s last presents and letters to Hsien Lu, now far away in the east. It seemed strange when the soldiers were gone: they had grown used to their company.

Derrick explored the low stone building with Chingiz. It appeared to have been built solely for the convenience of horses: there were magnificent stables, but only a few bare rooms for men.

‘I wonder why they built this?’ said Derrick.

‘He had it made for horses and messengers,’ replied Chingiz.

‘Who?’

‘Why, my ancestor, of course,’ said Chingiz, looking surprised.

‘You often speak of your ancestor,’ said Derrick, ‘as if you only had one. Who was he?’

‘He was Khan of the Golden Horde, Emperor of China and Lord of the World.’

‘Hm,’ said Derrick, looking sideways at Chingiz. He was almost sure that the Mongol was either boasting or pulling his leg; but when he mentioned it to Sullivan, his uncle said, ‘Oh, yes. He is descended from the great Khan, all right. Chingiz Khan, or Gengis, as some say, took one of his wives from among the Kokonor Mongols before he was a great man at all: if I remember rightly, it must have been when he was about your age.’

‘And was he Emperor of China and Lord of the World?’

‘Well, he broke through the Great Wall and took Peking, but I rather imagine that it was his grandson Kubilai who was the first Mongol emperor of all China. As for being Lord of the World, well, he certainly didn’t rule in Kansas City – nor in Dublin, for that matter – but he certainly made a good attempt at it. He did rule from Peking to Persia, and maybe beyond: but you ought to ask the Professor if you want to get all the details straight. All I know is that he built this house, and hundreds more all along to beyond Samarcand, and that he had good horses in every one of them and men ready to go out at a moment’s notice to carry messages at a full gallop to the next place, so that he could pass the word from one end of his empire to another in no time at all – or not much, anyway.’

‘Yes,’ said the Professor, when they talked about the Great Khan that evening, ‘he was a very successful man in his way. That is to say, in his wars he caused the death of eighteen million people. He made at least eighteen million homes miserable, and he ravaged a larger tract of country than any man before or since: he did it so thoroughly that what was once useful land is now desert, and will be desert for ever. He was a very successful man in that he accomplished all that he set out to do. But if I were descended from him, I should regard it as my greatest shame, and I should conceal the fact. You may smile, Derrick,’ he said very seriously, ‘but suppose you had a small house of your own, and some fields that gave you your living, and suppose that you belonged to a country that threatened no one. And then suppose one morning you found a troop of savage, hostile men feeding their horses on the crops that were to keep you through the winter, taking away and slaughtering your cattle and then coming to your house, bursting in, stealing all the things you valued and had possessed, perhaps, all your life – things that had been earned or made by your father and grandfather and handed down to you – robbing and then burning the house for fun. Then suppose they killed your children and your wife, and carried you away to work or fight for them for the rest of your life. You would not consider those men very admirable characters, would you? No, nor do I. However hard you try to imagine that misery you will not realise a hundredth part of it: but if you do your best, and then multiply that wretchedness by eighteen million, you will have a remote hint of a conception of how much misery a man who wages aggressive war can cause, and you will begin to understand why I should not be proud of being descended from Chingiz Khan, or any other aggressive barbarian, whatever century or nation he may belong to.’

‘But what about Hsien Lu, sir?’

‘My dear boy, do you not see the essential difference between aggression and self-defence? I have a high regard for the character of a soldier – not that Hsien Lu is a very shining example of that character, perhaps – but none at all for the character of a bully and a thief. A man has a right and a duty to defend his home and his country from attack: if his country is attacked he must defend it, and if he defends it well he is worthy of the highest praise. But if, on the other hand, he sets out to conquer other people – and he will always choose what he considers a weaker nation – then, for all I can see, he instantly degrades himself to the level of a destructive pest, a kind of vermin that should be destroyed as quickly as possible.’

‘I entirely agree with you,’ said Sullivan. ‘Aggressive war is the great crime of the world.’

‘You’re right. And in my opinion much too much fuss is made about bravery,’ said Ross, who was as brave as a lion himself. ‘A man without it is precious little use; but a man may have any amount of it and still be a mean, base creature, a gangster or a half-witted, illiterate barbarian.’

‘Like Chingiz Khan,’ said Sullivan, with a smile. ‘That settles your hero’s hash, Derrick. Now you had better go below – cut along to bed, I mean – or you will never be up in time.’

The road led on and on, climbing very gradually until they were on a high plateau, and the air was hard and keen.

‘We are coming into my own country,’ said Chingiz, sniffing the wind.

Every day or so they passed one of the Great Khan’s relays, and often they camped in them for the night. The sides of the road were littered with the white bones of horses and camels, and sometimes the picked skeletons of forgotten men, bones that had accumulated through the centuries until now a traveller could hardly go a mile without a grim reminder of his mortality. It was a striking proof of the road’s antiquity and of the great numbers it once had carried. If there had been much vegetation, the bones would hardly have been seen, but there was almost none. Now and then a few patches of low thorn bushes broke the monotony of the even plateau, but there was never a tree to be seen at all, and, as Olaf remarked, a man would be hard put to it to hang himself there.

It was a strange, deserted world. Sometimes they saw great herds of wild horses, turning and wheeling like cavalry regiments at a distance, but they never approached, any more than the rare steppe-antelopes. They rode day after day without seeing a single trace of a man, and it almost seemed that the rest of humanity had perished, leaving them in a deserted world. Smoke on the horizon or the track of camels that had passed recently became an event.

Derrick, as the Professor had promised, embarked on the delights of Greek as they rode steadily along in the early morning, and twice a day, under the supervision of Ross, he shot the sun and worked out their precise position, as if they were navigating a ship; he was also unable to escape his mathematics, but in spite of that he spent most of his time with the Mongols. He knew his chestnut pony very well by now, and by dint of hard riding all day and every day, he could almost hold his own with Chingiz as a horseman. He dressed as a Mongol, for their clothes were far and away the most practical for their own country, and he grew to fit the deep Mongol saddle and to feel entirely at home in boots with felt soles several inches thick – the only boots that would really be comfortable in the strange Mongol stirrups. He now habitually greased his face as they did against the biting wind, and he rolled in his walk without having to think of it. He acquired a taste for koumiss, and although he still found it hard to repress a shudder, he could eat horse-flesh with the best of them. What was more important, he grew, by continual practice, to speak Mongol with such fluency that he no longer had to think of the words. His Mongol was very far from correct, but it came easily, and it improved every day.

On and on they went, day after day. The grass of the plain became more and more sparse: it no longer covered the ground, and between the tussocks lay sand that deadened the footfall of their beasts and swirled up to fill their eyes and throats in the wind of the afternoon. But for the stones that marked its sides, the road would often have been lost under the sand-drifts: they had entered the Gobi, and the whitened bones showed far more often.

Derrick, plotting their position on the map, added one more red dot to the thin line of them, a line that marked their passage and that was now wriggling slowly onwards into the heart of the great desert. Each day’s travel was but a tiny advance on the map, but the days had mounted up, and already the red dots extended for hundreds of miles behind them to the Great Wall of China. Before them on the map stretched a much longer pencilled line that showed the route that they intended to follow: here and there small arrows pointed to the places where the Professor hoped to work, to disinter his ancient fragments and to investigate the possibilities of further excavation for a later full-scale expedition from his university, that was to be equipped with much more money, many experts and a large number of workmen for the digging.

Only once, as they crossed the worst part of the Gobi, did they see any human beings. In the middle of the day a caravan of Tibetans met them, travelling slowly towards China with their yaks and ponies. Some months later they would reach the western Chinese towns, where they would exchange their goods for tea, spend the worst of the winter, and return, after nearly a year’s absence, to their high, cold homes behind the Kunlun mountains. The travellers stopped to take stock of one another and to exchange the news of the road. Derrick looked curiously at them, and at the great mastiffs which walked at the heels of the black, heavily laden yaks. In many ways the Tibetans resembled the Mongols – most of them spoke some Mongol, too – but they were taller men. In some ways their manners were alike, and it seemed to him that the main difference was that the Tibetans were not horsemen, as the Mongols were, and that they were much more concerned with their religion. They were Buddhists of a sort, and every one of them had charms, amulets and prayer wheels stowed somewhere in the greasy clothes which swaddled them about.

They were not lovely objects, the Tibetans, and they smelt very strongly indeed; but they were friendly and hospitable, and as Derrick sat by their fire, drinking the thick Tibetan tea, full of butter and other curious things, he felt a strange thrill, for there was a certain mystery about these men from the most remote of all the countries in the world, something that set them apart from other men.

Chang did not care for the Tibetans, or their mastiffs. These were very big dogs, half wild and uncontrollably savage. After Chang had had a set-to with three of them, Derrick tied him up out of harm’s way until the morning, when he awoke to find the Tibetans already gone. They had left in the dark, and but for the smouldering fire of dried yak-dung they might have been a dream.

The worst of the desert passed under their feet, and they came to the Green Tomb: here they found the thin grass again. The country was just a little less blasted and sterile, and there was enough grazing for wild asses and a few shy antelopes. It was here that they made their first big detour, a long southward curve to the bed of a dried-up lake, where men had once lived in the distant past, although it seemed incredible. The Professor found his site, and he set them all to digging, all except the Mongols, who would have nothing whatever to do with what they considered women’s work.

It was hard and tedious work, and nobody but the Professor and Li Han cared very much for the results of the long hours of digging: there was nothing but a small heap of dusty, unrecognisable clay objects and bits of broken pot. The Professor was pleased, however, and labelled them all. ‘This,’ he said, holding up a particularly brutish fragment, ‘may well have been a quern.’

‘A quern,’ cried Li Han, rapturously. ‘Oh, sir!’

The Professor wrapped it up with care, and they moved off to the next place, three days’ march away. The second site was a repetition of the first: a few barely traceable remnants of wall, dust flying in the cold wind, and at the end of the work a small collection of reddish potsherds and one villainous little broken lamp of primitive design. But this time Olaf did at least find a piece of jade, which excited them all. But when he ran to show it, the Professor gave it a cursory glance and said, ‘No. I am afraid it has nothing to do with the site. It is quite modern, a hundred years old at the most. Probably some wandering hunter took shelter here and dropped it.’ Olaf’s face fell. ‘But at least,’ continued the Professor, not wishing to disappoint him, ‘it might bring you luck. The characters on it form a charm.’ Olaf brightened, breathed heavily on the jade, polished it on his sleeve and put it away in an inner pocket.

‘Ay reckon a man ban a fool who throws away luck on a long voyage,’ he said. Olaf persisted in regarding the expedition as a voyage, although they were by now well over a thousand miles from the nearest ocean.

‘It is strange how they have taken to green jade these days,’ said the Professor, over supper. ‘They used to despise it. In the older graves you will find nothing but mutton-fat jade. Take the most famous of all the Chinese collections, the Wu Ti, for example: there is not a single piece of green jade to be found in it. Or, at least, so they tell me. I have never seen it, of course, nor any other European. But the Chinese scholars who have seen the Wu Ti collection assure me that it is quite unrivalled, even in China. What a curse these strong nationalistic feelings are: I am sure that Wu Ti and I would get along wonderfully together, if only he would admit any foreigner to his house. Dear me, I would give a great deal to see that collection.’

‘Then why didn’t you ask Hsien Lu to show it to you?’ asked Ross. ‘It was in Shun Chi’s loot, you know.’

The Professor dropped his bowl of rice and stared at Ross without a word for some minutes. ‘Do you mean to say,’ he exclaimed at last, ‘that Shun Chi possessed the Wu Ti collection?’

‘Why, yes,’ said Sullivan. ‘He looted it when he took Chang Fu. Wu Ti had moved it there for safety, and hanged himself when he heard the news. It was the first thing that Hsien Lu looked for in the lorry behind Shun Chi’s tank.’

The Professor could not get over it. ‘That priceless jade was being jerked and banged about over mountain roads in that lorry,’ he said, ‘and exposed to the danger of bombs and bullets. Good heavens above. And I was within a few feet of it. And then I was in the same city with it, and on excellent terms with its new owner, and I never knew. How bitterly disappointing.’

‘I would have mentioned it,’ said Ross, apologetically, ‘but it never crossed my mind until this minute.’

‘I am very sorry, too,’ said Sullivan. ‘I ought to have told you. But I did not think you were interested in jade particularly.’

‘Not interested in jade!’ exclaimed the Professor, throwing up his hands. ‘It is my … well, well,’ he said, in a calmer tone, ‘it cannot be helped. And, after all, I have my Han bronzes, which are reward enough for all our pains and trouble. Let us not think about it any more.’ He smiled round the table to show that he was not at all downcast.

‘I could kick myself,’ said Ross. ‘I am very sorry. But I wonder that Hsien Lu did not think of it himself.’

‘But then,’ said the Professor, ‘if he had shown me the collection, I should certainly have been unable to conceal my admiration, and he would have felt obliged to offer it to me. Of course, I would never have accepted – its market value is truly incalculable – but it would have raised an awkward, disagreeable situation. No, it is all for the best, no doubt. And now let us dismiss the matter from our minds. Let me see, our march tomorrow should take us to this point on the map, should it not?’

It was three days after this that they came across a deep, rocky gully cut out by a stream that had dried up generations ago, and they had considerable difficulty in getting the camels across. When it came to the turn of the camel that carried the Han bronzes, Professor Ayrton skipped about like a cat on hot bricks. ‘Gently, now,’ he cried, as Olaf thumped the camel from behind, while Hulagu pulled in front. ‘Be very careful, if you please. Take care, the pack will slip! Drive the animal from the other side. No, no, Olaf; this way. Beware of the slope. Look out, look out! Hold it, quick. Derrick, run!’ But before Derrick could get there, he heard a slithering noise and then a series of bumps.

‘There,’ cried the Professor, wringing his hands, ‘the pack has slipped. Oh, you clumsy fellow.’ With these strong words the Professor sped nimbly down the gully after his bronzes.

The strong cases and the careful packing had saved them from injury, but the cuckoo-clock and the brass Buddhas were lying all abroad. The clock gave a last strangled crow as they reached it, and then became dumb for ever. The Buddhas, being heavier, had reached the very bottom of the ravine, and one of them had broken against a spur of rock.

‘Look,’ cried Derrick, scrambling down, ‘there is something inside.’

He knelt by the fragments of the image and picked up several objects, each wrapped over and over again with silk: it was obvious that they had been hidden in the hollow brass.

The others gathered round, and the Professor unwrapped one of the silken envelopes: it came off in a long ribbon. ‘They took good care of it, whatever it is,’ he said, unwinding steadily. Under the silk there was a piece of cotton wadding. He removed it, and there in his hand was a small tablet of mutton-fat jade covered with an inscription. The Professor gazed at it for a full minute without saying a word.

‘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.’