Читать книгу Patrick O’Brian 3-Book Adventure Collection: The Road to Samarcand, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore - Patrick O’Brian - Страница 12

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

‘No, sir,’ said Derrick, ‘I rather think the Mongols must have stolen it.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘We shall have to go round the north of the swamp, then?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Had you got far?’

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

‘What happened?’

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

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

‘Well, I got two buckets over my head, one for being a swab and the other for being an American citizen, and they damped my ardour for the moment. They put a rope into my hand, and I heaved as tame as Mary’s little lamb. But after a while I began to feel better, and when I had got some duff into me and had managed to keep it down, I said to this fellow – his name was Lars Gunnar, and he was second mate – “You can’t do this to me,” I said, “I am an American citizen.” When he had knocked me down again he picked me up and leaned me against the rails and addressed me in these words, “Listen,” he said, “you poor bum, you’re a citizen of this ship now, and a hundred brass-bound consuls won’t keep you alive if you don’t work.” He was quite right. Every time I got in the least uppish or made a landlubber’s mistake right up in the to’garn-stuns’ls, way up in the air miles above the deck, Lars Gunnar would beat me up; and if it was not him, it would be the master or the first mate. I was never a very timid fellow, but they knew how to keep their footing on a heaving deck, and how to crack a man with a belaying-pin, and I did not: anyhow, each one was as big as the side of a house, and I got weary of skinning my knuckles on their heads with no effect at all. They were terribly short-handed, and they drove their crew like blacks, but, even so, we were too late to slip round the Horn easily, and we beat to and fro for what seemed like years. It was a very bad passage, and two of the men were lost overboard, but somehow I survived, and by the time we dropped anchor in Antofagasta roads I had learnt a wonderful lot about being a sailor.

‘Now they sound tough, from what I have said, and they were tough: but they were not a bad lot of men at all. If you worked hard – and I did, when I understood how badly it was needed coming round the Horn – they treated you very well. They had shanghaied me because they felt that their ship’s need was more important than my comfort, and they beat me up so that I should be some use to the ship, not out of any personal spite against me – it was just like hammering a horseshoe into the right shape, no ill-will in it at all.

‘By the time we reached Chile I had come to the conclusion that I liked the sea. I had started out a weedy, lanky young chap, but at the end of this voyage, and it was a very long one, I had filled out and put on weight. When we were ashore in Antofagasta I beat the daylights out of Lars Gunnar and helped him back to the ship more dead than alive. They were still short-handed, for they had been able to pick up nothing more than a decrepit old Portuguese in Antofagasta, and they were desperate about their return passage. Lars and the Old Man asked me as civilly as they could – and to see them being civil was a wonderful sight, like two polar-bears trying to behave as if they were on a Sunday-school outing – to ship back with them, as a favour. Well, I had no people to worry about: there was only my sister, and I wrote to her to say that I was going on a voyage to see the world – I knew she would not worry in the least, as she was used to my comings and goings, and I signed on with them. It was a wonderful voyage, down to Australia with nitrates, and then with grain to Helsinki, where we paid off. I crossed the Atlantic again in a Cunarder, as a passenger this time, and very queer it felt; but when I got home everything seemed dull and flat. I fooled around on shore for some time, and then I took to studying navigation and so on and got my ticket. Some of my relatives said that it was a waste of an expensive classical education to be a nasty, low, common sailorman, but my sister thought it was fine, and so did your great-uncle Simon, who in spite of being a professor of pastoral theology was quite a rich man.

‘He was a dear old gentleman, and although he knew nothing about the sea at all, except that he rather suspected it was the sharp end of a ship that went first, he left me enough to buy my own schooner after I had risen to the dizzy height of a master-mariner’s certificate.’ He suddenly stopped and cocked his head, listening intently. ‘No, they won’t be moving yet,’ he said, after a minute. ‘What was I talking about? Oh, yes, I was telling – by the way, do you know whether your horrible dog can retrieve in water?’

‘Chang will do whatever he is told,’ said Derrick. ‘He is a very intelligent dog.’

Chang, hearing his name, stood up and waved his tail.

‘If he is,’ said Sullivan, ‘he conceals it very well.’ He knocked out his pipe, packed it carefully and re-lit it. For some time he was silent: then he began again, ‘Yes. I had my own schooner. I had been a good many voyages in steam, but it was not the same thing. There is nothing like sail; nothing like it at all. I knocked about all over the place in her, chiefly in the South Seas – pearling and copra – but I was going to tell you how I became a pirate, and that started in South America, in the Republic of Rococo. I had got mixed up with one of their revolutions, but if I were to tell you all about that the dawn flighting would be over before I had begun. The long and the short of it was that my friend, Porfirio Broll, came out on top: he wasn’t a bad chap at all; we used to call him Little Brolly at college, and I believe he really did have some sound notions about liberty. Anyway, he was President, and he made me a full-blown admiral. Now that was very kind, and it would have been kinder still if Rococo had ever got around to building a navy, but it had not. I pointed this out to Porfirio, and he gave me the choice of being Postmaster-General, Ambassador to Luxemburg or Minister without portfolio: I said that we would call it quits if he would give me the right to work a guano island that I had sighted off the coast. He jumped at the idea, and gave me a nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-year lease of the island, all written out on a fine piece of parchment and covered with seals.

‘As soon as I had got my lease I set sail for my island. It was only a couple of sheer rocks stuck in the sea a hundred miles from anywhere, and nothing lived on it but sea-birds. There was no anchorage to speak of, and there was no water, but the guano had never been touched, and it lay twenty feet thick all over the island – it is the droppings of gulls, you know, and the best fertiliser in the world. It was a very valuable find indeed, and I was in a fair way to make my fortune. I put some convicts ashore – Porfirio had provided me with his predecessor’s cabinet – and left them to provide a cargo against my return while I went off to arrange about selling the stuff. The first cargo was all ready according to plan, and I began to work out how many voyages it would need before I could buy Long Island and the county Mayo, where we came from.

‘But the next time I went back to the island for a fresh cargo I found a ship lying there, and all my convicts busy loading her up to the Plimsoll line with my guano. In Rococo, Porfirio had got in the way of a bullet, and he had stopped being a president the moment he had begun on his new career as a corpse and a national martyr. There was a new president – they can’t rest easy without one in those parts – and he had leased the island to a group of businessmen in El Liberador. All this seemed very unjust to me, so I waited until their ship was laden, and then in my capacity as Lord High Admiral of Rococo I confiscated ship, cargo and all. It is true that I did it in the dead of night, in rather an unofficial way, but it was foolish of them to get so annoyed. They called me a wrong-doer and a man of wrath and all sorts of unkind things, including a pirate, until I persuaded them to stop with a belaying-pin: I put them ashore on the Spanish main and told them to consult a lawyer. They would find one, I said, by marching through the jungle for a month or two towards the north: but I assured them that it was hardly worth the trouble and expense, because I had a perfectly good and legal lease, which could not be upset by their President, who was only an upstart rebel.

‘Some time later I heard that they had got home, and that the rebel government had proclaimed me a pirate. They had even offered a reward to anyone who should catch me, and they had ordered the entire navy of Rococo, which consisted of the Presidential pleasure-launch and one confiscated dinghy without a bottom, to search for me on the high seas. I wrote to them and said that my nine hundred and ninety-nine years was not up yet, but that when it was, I would resign the islands to the next comer: I thought that was fair enough. But the new company fitted out another vessel, stuck guns all over it, and came back to my island. I lay hull down on the horizon, watching them from my cross-trees, and when they had loaded her and fixed her hatches I confiscated her again. It was rather more boisterous, but I had a mixed crew of Solomon Islanders and Irishmen, and we overcame their objections.

‘When the company heard about this, they were hopping mad: they hired a tough skipper with his own crew to get the guano. I had heard a good deal about this man. They called him the Hellbender, and they said he used railroad ties for toothpicks.

‘He came to my island a good while before I was expecting him, and half my men were ashore when he hove up out of the mist. I had to cut and run for it, leaving the cargo ready on the little wharf we had made. I slipped round behind the island, got my men off in the night, and then came round to try conclusions with him. But the current was setting very strong, and the wind was against me, so I was delayed longer than I could have wished, and by the time I had worked round the island I could only see his tops’ls over the rim of the sea to the west. That made me think a bit, for nobody but a first-rate sailor could have picked up my guano and turned around so quickly. I cracked on everything we had, and by the evening he ran into a calm, so that I could see his vessel clearly in the distance. She was a tops’l schooner, with lovely lines, and she was being very well handled. My ship, the one I had then, was a good sort of a ship in her way, comfortable and beamy, but she would not come as close to the wind as he could, being in ballast; and with a weedy bottom too, having been so long at sea, we were as slow as a dead porpoise compared with him. Presently he got the wind again, and it was our turn for the calm: he went away straight into the eye of the breeze, and we were left there without a sail drawing.

‘The next day we never saw him at all, nor the next, and I had to resign myself to the loss of that cargo. But it galled me. It galled me very much, and the more I thought of it, the more it galled me. It was my island: I had discovered it and I had first worked it, and I dare say that an international court, working on the broad principles of equity, would have upheld my lease. Anyway, I was determined to uphold it, and I set a man ashore to tell me when the tops’l schooner next set out.

‘When I got the signal I kept her just in sight, and then I doubled back to the mainland. I hid the ship up a lonely creek, and we marched overland to the mouth of the river – El Liberador is some way up the Rococo river, you know, and they have a tug to bring vessels up the narrow part to the city. I had kept her in sight until she had started loading, so I knew we would not have long to wait. Sure enough, three tides later, the tug came down. We stopped her in mid-stream and invited her crew to take their ease under hatches for a while.

‘Then, when the tide began to flow, the tops’l schooner came in over the bar. It was pitch-black night when we went down into the estuary and hailed her. They never suspected a thing, and threw us a line: we got the tow aboard and made all fast. Then, very gently, and stopping every now and then as if we were having trouble with our engines, we edged her round and towed her out across the bar. I had arranged to have the shore-lights doused – a few dollars can work wonders there – and I reckoned that a man who did not know the river very well would never know that he had been turned about. But we had not got very far before a great voice came bawling through the night, telling us to heave to. We did not reply, and presently we heard them working on the hawser. I flashed the searchlight on to them, and said that I would shoot the first man who touched the tow: that stopped them for a bit, but then a bullet came whipping across and smashed the searchlight. I rigged up another, but by that time they had brought a hatch up for’ard as a shield, and they were busy casting off the tow, so we boarded them.

‘They were a tougher crew than I had expected, but we were fairly evenly matched. There was no light for shooting, which was a good thing, or we should have destroyed one another entirely, like the Kilkenny cats. It was their skipper who gave us the most trouble. He rushed up and down the deck with a capstan-bar in each hand, laying about him like a man threshing beans in a hurry – only the beans were my men, and by the time the moon rose they were getting a little discouraged. I got at him once or twice, but each time we were pushed apart by other swabs getting in the way: at last I did reach him, and we set to very briskly. He had either broken his capstan-bars or thrown them away by this time, and we went to it with our fists, hammer and tongs. He was a heavier man, I found, and he packed a terrible punch, but I had a longer reach, and I spoilt his face for him. But banging his face did not seem to do much good, and when he got in close he paid it back with interest. He had me up against the rails and thumped away at my ribs like a steam-engine. I knew I could not hold out much longer, so I grabbed him by the neck and flung myself backwards over the rails into the sea, still holding him. I had learnt to swim before I could walk, and I felt that maybe I could deal with him better in the water. I lay there for a moment, getting back my breath, and he floundered about like a grampus, blowing and bellowing. He went under once or twice, and as far as I could judge he was more concerned with keeping afloat than looking out for me. I came up behind him and gripped his head. He threshed about like mad, and I had a pretty business keeping free of him, but when I had ducked him a good many times and had filled him up with sea-water he began to weaken. Then I whispered in his ear, “You’re for the sharks in five minutes if you don’t give in, my man.” He said, “I’ll see you hanged first, you dirty pirate,” and he turned to bite my hand. So I began to drown him in good earnest – mark over.’

Sullivan reached for his gun. There was the sound of wings high overhead, and they listened tensely. The noise circled above them and came lower. Suddenly his gun leapt to his shoulder: two orange flames stabbed the darkness, and from out on the lake came two heavy splashes, one after the other, and a threshing in the water.

Sullivan waited for a moment, with his gun poised, to see whether the ducks would circle again, but they swung wide and high.

‘Now let’s see whether your animal can do his stuff,’ he said.

‘Fetch, Chang,’ said Derrick, pointing to the lake. Chang hurled himself in, and they heard him splashing in the distance.

‘I really believe there’s some good in the old flea-bag,’ said Sullivan. ‘It sounds as though he were trying to bring them both.’

‘Fetch them, Chang,’ called Derrick, hoping desperately that his uncle was right. Chang barked in answer, and they heard him surging towards them. He reappeared, dripping and charmed with himself: there was a large stick in his mouth.

‘That will be very useful for cooking the birds, no doubt,’ said Sullivan.

‘Ducks, Chang. Go and fetch the ducks. Birds on the water.’ For half a moment Derrick thought of flapping his arms and going quack, quack to help Chang understand. The dog looked worried, and offered the stick again. ‘No, not that,’ said Derrick, scarlet in the face. ‘Fetch the ducks, Chang. Ducks, there’s a good dog.’ Chang was very willing to please, and he plunged in again, but Derrick was almost certain that he would only bring back another stick.

‘Don’t blame him,’ said Sullivan. ‘You can’t expect beauty as well as intelligence. We’ll try and shoot them so that they fall over the land next time. They were widgeon, by the sound of them.’

Chang swam back. In his mouth, beautifully held by one wing, there was a fine teal.

‘Good dog,’ cried Sullivan, giving him a piece of meat. ‘Why, that’s strange, this is a teal.’

‘Perhaps there was just one teal among the widgeon,’ said Derrick, trying to conceal his triumph, and it appeared that he was right, for the next bird that Chang brought in was a widgeon, a lovely drake, with a sulphur-yellow crest.

‘How did you manage to hit them, Uncle Terry?’ asked Derrick, smoothing the widgeon’s feathers. ‘I never saw them at all.’

‘Nor did I,’ replied Sullivan. ‘You can’t wait to see them in this light. You have to shoot at the sound. It’ll be better in half an hour. These were probably the first birds to get moving.’

They stood in silence for a while, listening for the ducks. ‘Did you drown the man?’ asked Derrick eventually.

‘What man? Oh, Ross. No, I didn’t drown him, but I let him get thoroughly waterlogged, and then I towed him back to his schooner. By that time I found my crew had licked his – they were not much good without their skipper – and they hauled us aboard. At first I was afraid that I had overdone it: he looked too much like a corpse altogether. But when we had up-ended him and let the ocean out of him he came to. But he was very sick for a long while, and I had to nurse him carefully – it was touch and go with him for weeks. I ran his schooner up the coast and tied up alongside my ship for a while. I found that he had no great liking for his job, or for his employers, who had never paid him and never would, for by the time we had transferred the cargo we had news that there had been another revolution in Rococo. Well, to cut it short, we took a liking to one another, and we decided to ship together. I sold my cargo, ship and lease to a big American company, who could deal with the legal side of the matter better than I could, and we sailed for the Friendly Islands after copra. That sounds like mallard. They’re coming our way. Now you take the birds on the right, and shoot well ahead.’

The sound of the wings came down as the duck planed in to pitch on the lake. The four shots cracked out, and there were two splashes in the water. Chang stood tense and expectant.

‘You want to shoot well ahead as they are crossing,’ said Sullivan, reloading. ‘Wait for it, now, they are circling again.’ He knocked another bird out of the flight, but before Chang could bring it in there were more duck overhead, Muscovy duck this time, and from then on they stood there as the dawn came grey around them, shooting so often that the barrels of their guns were warm.

‘I think that will do,’ said Sullivan at last, surveying the pile of birds in the butt.

‘There’s another flight coming in,’ said Derrick, eagerly.

‘Well, get one more brace if you like,’ said Sullivan, ‘but we’ll finish then.’

‘Will that be the end of the flighting?’

‘No. They’ll go on for quite a long time still, but we have got all we can eat. You don’t want to kill for the sake of killing, do you?’

‘No, I suppose not,’ said Derrick, rather regretfully, as he watched the duck skim in and rise as they saw the movement in the butt.

‘I’m glad you don’t,’ said Sullivan. ‘I hate these big shoots where you kill a hundred brace or more just for the fun of it. Shooting for the pot is another matter.’

In the thin, cold light they made their way back through the reeds with their game-bags heavy on their backs, and when they had mounted again and had ridden a mile or so, Derrick said, ‘So you never were a pirate in the China Seas.’

‘What’s biting you?’ asked Sullivan, looking round at him curiously. ‘You’re very full of questions this morning, young fellow.’

‘Oh, it was only something that Hsien Lu said,’ said Derrick, going red, ‘and I thought that if it was true, then what you said about war – well, I mean, piracy is a kind of war, isn’t it?’

‘Oh, that’s the trouble. I see. Yes, real piracy is almost exactly the same as aggressive war, and it has got some of the same phoney glamour when you hear about it at a distance. Well, you can set your mind at rest about that. I have done some pretty queer things in my time: I did a good many things when I was young that I would not do now, but I never hung out the black flag in earnest. I think I know what Hsien Lu was talking about. You know that there are plenty of genuine pirates in the South China Sea? Some of them are ordinary merchant junks that will turn pirate if they find a weaker junk in the offing – sort of half-time pirates – and some are the real article. But both kinds like to get hold of a white captain if they can – I don’t mean the coast-wise pirates, the ones you hear most about, but the gentlemen who work on the high seas. That was what we had in mind when we cast around in Wang Tso for the leaders of the Benign Chrysanthemum. We had had a brush with the pirate junk belonging to the Fraternal Lotuses in which they had killed our bo’sun, a Kanaka who had been with us for years – we were very fond of him, and we thought our best way of dealing with the situation was to blow the Fraternal Lotuses out of the water. Perhaps what we ought to have done was to have lodged a complaint in the proper quarters, but I never knew any good coming of that in China, particularly in those days. So what we did was this: we told a good friend of ours, Suleiman ibn Yakoub, that he had bought the Wanderer – we had the Wanderer by then – and we hung about Wang Tso looking down-at-heel and miserable and poor, as like two master-mariners on the beach and out of a job as we could, until we got in touch with the old lady who ran the pirate organisation called the Benign Chrysanthemum. We knew that if we could get into her confidence we would learn about the hide-out of the Fraternal Lotuses; and I may say that we had a long score to settle with the Fraternal swabs, quite apart from the bo’sun. She took us on, and after she had tried us out with a few legitimate voyages, all above-board, she began to come round to thinking that perhaps we would do as full-blown Benign Chrysanthemums: but she did not want to hurry about it, and as we did not want to linger in those waters for very long, we thought the best thing to do was to impress her with some pretty hearty doings. All that we had been able to learn was about the society called the Everlasting Wrong: they were long-shore pirates, and they did not interest us very much, but they were a thorough-going pest to peaceful coast-wise ships, and we thought they would be as well out of the way as not, especially as they would serve our turn. So when there was a very big feast going on in their harbour Ross and I went and blew the bottoms out of their junks – it would be a long story to tell you all about it, but in fact it was quite simple, and it impressed the old lady immensely. It was rather irregular, of course, because the two societies were supposed to be at peace, but they were rivals in their trade, you see, and old Yang Kwei-fei – that was our old lady’s name – was really as pleased as Punch. She suddenly conceived the idea that trade would be much better all round if she had no rivals at all, and she told us all she knew about the Fraternal Lotuses, and in a week the Lotuses had withered to the extent of having to work for their living, which was something that no Fraternal Lotus had done for generations. That was what Hsien Lu had heard about, no doubt; and if he said that we were pirates, he certainly thought that he was telling the truth, because in the days before we had dealt with the Lotuses we stalked about boasting about how we had sunk this ship and that ship, murdering every man-jack aboard, and drowning the women and children and so on, like the biggest villains unhung. I am sure he thought it was a compliment when he said it, but I am afraid I must admit that we were never quite such great men as Hsien Lu believed. We never even made anyone walk the plank, and to tell the truth, I don’t think that I should enjoy the entertainment very much – I haven’t really got the makings of a really good bloodthirsty pirate. If some swab starts knocking my ship around, I’ll sink him if I can, but I am such a mild-natured creature that I have to be hit first before I begin to get sore – not cast in the heroic mould, as you might say.’ He had been gazing at the horizon for some time, and now he reined in and shaded his eyes with his hand. ‘What do you make of that?’ he asked.

Derrick made out a single horseman on the skyline. ‘It is not one of our people,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Sullivan. ‘It looks to me more like a Kazak, from his lance. It is strange to see one here. We are a long way from their country.’