Patrick O’Brian 3-Book Adventure Collection: The Road to Samarcand, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore. Patrick O’Brian
or ours.’
They worked hard. They soon grew accustomed to the machine-guns, and by nightfall they had successfully wrecked every one of them. The Professor attended to the bombs by the light of a hurricane-lamp, and by midnight the serried racks of bombs were all set to explode as soon as their pins were pulled. The Professor put the last one in its place and got up to stretch. ‘I never hope to spend a more thoroughly uncomfortable evening,’ he said. ‘It quite surprises me that I am still in one piece. Never again shall I permit myself to come into such a position that I am obliged to handle these infernal machines. They are utterly revolting in cause, effect and appearance.’ With these words he lay down and tranquilly composed himself to sleep.
Derrick listened to his even breathing and wondered how he could possibly sleep. He knew that he would never go off himself, and his mind ran busily over the possibilities of the coming day, the great number of things that could go wrong, and those which might go right. They were to keep to the extreme right of the gorge, he repeated: he must remember that.
Yet somehow he must have gone to sleep, for there was the Professor shaking him awake. ‘It is the hour of the Rat,’ he said.
The first part of the column was already moving off towards the hills when the Professor and Derrick came from their tent. Shun Chi was waiting for them with his staff. ‘You shall come with me,’ said the Tu-chun, after greeting the Professor: he pointed to a light tank that stood drawn up immediately in front of a lorry containing all the rebel’s most valuable loot.
Shun Chi was a firm believer in leading his army from the rear: he had no intention whatever of running into any danger that he could possibly avoid, and he offered this place in his tank to the Professor as the most valuable favour that he could devise.
Derrick’s heart sank as he followed the Professor into the cramped and stuffy tank: he had thought of a great many possibilities, but not of this one. Now there would be the whole body of the army to get through if ever they were to reach their friends.
The Professor, too, looked worried; but he could not refuse without arousing the war-lord’s suspicions, and he sat down with a calm, thoughtful expression.
The tank jerked into motion with a roar: the whole column was in motion now; there was a vile smell of oil and of petrol fumes, and the infantry kicked up a cloud of dust so dense that it drifted thick through the slits and eye-pieces of the tank.
Derrick sat awkwardly on a box on the floor of the tank, wondering just what would happen to them when the engine gave out and it became obvious that the machine-guns had been doctored. He noticed that one of the guns was in position on the tank, and that a rack of bombs stood close at hand and ready. ‘The moment anyone grabs one of those,’ he thought, looking at the bombs, ‘it’s all up with us.’
Very quickly, it seemed to Derrick, they drew nearer to the hills. He could see quite well out of one of the traverse slits, and long before he expected it he saw the opening of the valley of the Three Winds. This was where the road started to climb at a very steep angle, and this was where things ought to start to happen. The gorge came nearer and nearer. He heard one of the lorries farther up the line spluttering and backfiring. He looked apprehensively at the Professor, and passed his tongue over his dry lips. The Professor smiled back at him calmly, and then leant casually over to Shun Chi, pointing to the heavy revolver at his belt.
‘That is an unusual pattern,’ he remarked. ‘May I look at it?’
‘Certainly.’ The war-lord handed it over. ‘I took it from the body of Tzu Mo. I have shot seventy-three men with it, and fourteen women.’ He smirked with pride; but he did not mention that of the seventy-three, sixty-nine had had their hands tied behind their back.
The Professor turned it over in his hands, and released the safety-catch. The front of the column was well into the gorge: Derrick heard several motors misfire and stop. One exploded, and in the silence that followed he heard the sharp crack of a rifle.
‘Seventy-three men and fourteen women,’ repeated the Professor. ‘Indeed?’ Then, without any change in his voice, he said, ‘I shall kill you, you evilly minded scoundrel, if you make the slightest movement. Put your hands up in the air at once. Derrick, take away the disgusting fellow’s weapons.’
The driver looked round to say that the engine was misfiring, and he looked straight down the barrel of the automatic that the Professor was holding in his other hand. ‘Stop the engine,’ said the Professor, ‘and come in here.’ The man obeyed, and the Professor made him creep low between himself and the war-lord to the far end, where Derrick disarmed him and tied his hands behind his back. The driver lay with his face to the ground, and there only remained the man in the turret. ‘Pull him by the leg,’ said the Professor. But when Derrick pulled there was no reply. He pulled again, harder, and the man slid gently down into the body of the tank: he had already received a bullet between the eyes.
The sound of firing was general now. All along the column the machine-guns crackled into action: each fired three or four rounds and then jammed. More than one blew up, and soon nearly all the firing was coming from the other side. A solid iron cannon-ball came trundling briskly down the line and bumped heavily into the tank: Hsien Lu’s artillery was finding the range. A spatter of rifle bullets ricochetted off the tank, making a din like a gong.
Several more bullets hit the tank, and there was a deafening bang as one whipped in and flattened itself behind Derrick’s head. Some marksman at close range was finding the slits and eye-holes.
‘I think we would be prudent to leave this place,’ said the Professor, mildly. ‘Can you see any reasonable shelter outside, Derrick?’
‘Yes, there’s a rock jutting out about twenty yards away, sir, and there is a path leading up to where Hsien Lu’s men are firing from.’
Another bullet made the inside metal ring. ‘Perhaps we had better hurry,’ said the Professor. ‘It would be intolerably vexing to be hit by our friends at this juncture.’ Derrick fumbled at the screw handles of the steel door. ‘You know,’ said the Professor. ‘I have half a mind to shoot this loathsome fellow before we leave. I have taken a prodigious dislike to him.’
‘You aren’t going to, are you, sir? He’s unarmed.’
‘No. I am not. But it would be a taste of his own medicine, and one so rarely has the opportunity of expressing one’s dislike so forcibly. It makes one feel quite bloodthirsty, you know.’ A hail of bullets struck the tank: the din was unceasing now.
‘I’ve got the door open,’ said Derrick.
‘It would be rash to go out now,’ said the Professor, shouting above the racket. ‘Perhaps you had better wave something out of the turret, as a sign.’
The noise of battle increased farther up the gorge, as the men of Hsien Lu’s army who had no rifles – the majority – put down their umbrellas, put on their hideous masks, drew their swords and rushed down the slope, shrieking out blood-curdling threats: but in the immediate neighbourhood of the tank the fire diminished. When no bullets had hit the tank for some minutes, the Professor reluctantly abandoned the idea of shooting Shun Chi and backed out of the steel door. He slammed it, and they raced for the shelter of the rock. The next moment the door flew open, and Shun Chi appeared with a bomb in his hand. He grinned savagely. They were within easy range: he was sure of them. He ripped the pin out with his teeth and flung up his arm. Instantly there was a blinding flash, a shattering explosion, and the tank lurched over in a cloud of acrid smoke. Derrick and the Professor were flung to the ground by the blast, and when they looked round the tank had already caught fire. From the shelter of the rock they looked again, but they saw no sign of Shun Chi, for there was not a square inch of the Tu-chun left.
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.
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