Patrick O’Brian 3-Book Adventure Collection: The Road to Samarcand, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore. Patrick O’Brian
day at noon she raised the high cape of Tchao-King, by the evening she had threaded her way through the junks and the sampans to the inner harbour, and she was tied up at the wharf of the Benign Wind-Dragon, by the European godowns.
Derrick was standing in the saloon in a high state of preparedness, brushed, gleaming and nervous. His uncle gave him a final inspection, and said, ‘It’s a pity you look as if you had the mange, but otherwise your rig is trim enough. Have you tied up that monstrous beast?’
‘Yes, sir,’ answered Derrick, who could hear Chang’s desperate scratching at the closed hatch: he noticed that his uncle had dressed with more than usual care, and that Ross, huge and splendid in his best shore-going ducks, was nervous too.
‘I feel just like a nursemaid who’s got to display her charge to a crew of critical relations,’ said Sullivan, fingering Derrick’s tie. ‘You won’t behave like a roughneck shell-back, will you? Or go roaring about as if we were in a gale of wind? Or hurl the soup down your shirt?’
‘Perhaps it would be better if Derrick were not to keep his mouth ajar,’ suggested Ross. ‘He might look brighter with it closed. More intelligent.’
‘Yes, it looks better closed,’ said Sullivan, looking anxiously at his nephew. ‘Now the great thing to remember is not to be nervous, Derrick,’ he added, leading the way on deck.
The three rickshaws threaded their way through the bullock-carts, wheelbarrows and ancient lorries that crowded the streets of Tchao-King: they went slowly, for it was a market-day as well as the feast of Pong Hsiu, but they went too fast for Derrick, and when he arrived at the steps of the Kylin Hotel he felt that he would rather go for a swim with a tiger-shark than face the remainder of the evening.
Yet a few hours later, when their dinner was done and they were all sitting in long cane chairs on the verandah, he was talking away to Professor Ayrton as if he had known him all his life. His cousin turned out to be a tall, thin, frail-looking man, far older than Sullivan and Ross, with a face the colour of yellowed parchment and a somewhat Chinese cast of countenance that was accentuated by the large, horn-rimmed spectacles that he wore. If he had been dressed in a robe rather than a very old tweed jacket and a pair of disreputable flannel trousers he might have passed for a north-Chinese scholar. He had a thoroughly benign face that entirely matched his kind way of speaking: he was as unlike a tiger-shark as could be imagined, and he completely won Derrick’s friendship by welcoming Chang, who appeared ten minutes after their arrival, still dripping wet and trailing his broken leash. Chang did not behave as well as Derrick could have wished: the porter tried to keep him out, but was utterly routed; as Chang blundered at full speed down the long verandah he bowled over one waiter and two low tables, and when he reached them it was instantly apparent that he had been swimming in the horribly malodorous waters of the harbour.
‘Never mind, never mind,’ cried Professor Ayrton, as Derrick tried to induce Chang to go quietly away. ‘Let him stay. I should like him to stay very much. He looks a most interesting creature.’ He put out his long, thin hand to pat Chang’s head, and with a thrill of horror Derrick thought that Chang would have it off: hitherto no one had touched Chang without bloodshed, except Derrick. But Chang only looked amazed, then rather pleased, and finally he put a large and muddy paw on the Professor’s knee. ‘You’re a fine fellow,’ said Professor Ayrton, addressing the dog and pulling his ears. ‘You are a – what is the term? A bum pooch. I am sure you are a very swollen guy, and we shall be great budlets.’ He turned to Derrick. ‘I have been learning some Americanisms,’ he said, ‘to make you feel at home.’
Derrick burst into a wild laugh that he tried to disguise as a cough. ‘Uncle Terry has been laying for me with a rope’s end if I said so much as okay,’ he said, wiping his eyes when he could speak again. ‘Gee, sir, I certainly never thought I should hear you call Chang a swell guy.’
‘Swollen, my dear boy. Swollen, or perhaps swelled. In the adjectival use we must employ the past participle, must we not?’
‘Yet it seems to me that I have heard the expression swell guy,’ observed Ross.
‘Have you indeed? Perhaps it was some local variant – an elision of the terminal -ed? But I am persuaded that the general usage is swollen. I cannot cite the text of my authority at the moment, but I flatter myself that on this question I am an unusually hep cat. There were several American novels in the boat, and on the way over I perused them diligently: there was an American, a most respectable scholar from Harvard, who assured me that I had a greater command of these idioms than he had himself – indeed, that he had never even heard of some of them. It is a fascinating spectacle, don’t you think, Captain Sullivan, this development of a new language? I am no enemy to neologisms, and although I am no philologist it gives me a feeling of intense excitement to see an old language renewed and enriched by countless striking and even poetic expressions. There was an elderly gentlewoman on the boat, from some provincial town in the States – I believe it was Chicago – who referred to the Atlantic, which she had recently traversed, as “the herring-pond”. I was so moved by the noble simplicity of her remark that I noted it down in my diary that evening.’
‘Well, Professor, I must say that it had never struck me quite that way. But you wouldn’t have him chewing gum and addressing you as “Hi, Prof,” surely?’
‘Were the young man to address me as Prof, he would speedily learn the difference between liberty and licence,’ said Professor Ayrton. ‘But as for chewing-gum, for my part I find it a great help to meditation – I almost said to rumination – and an excellent substitute for nicotine. Allow me to offer you a piece.’
The Professor was a very agreeable relative to find after such dismal forebodings, and Derrick liked him very much; but he was adamant on the need for school. He thoroughly sympathised with Derrick’s longing to go to sea, and he entirely approved of the Wanderer, which he visited for dinner the next day – a dinner that an emperor might have admired, so hard had Li Han and three imported cook-boys laboured in the galley – but although he said nothing definite for quite a long time, Derrick felt sure that he had made up his mind. The Professor was closeted with Ross and Sullivan for days on end, and Derrick began to hope against hope that these long, unusual absences might mean that his uncle was putting up a lively opposition.
But in the end Derrick was summoned to the presence, and Professor Ayrton addressed him in these words: ‘My boy, we have been discussing your future, and your uncle, Mr Ross and I have all come to the same conclusion. We are all agreed that school is necessary.’ Sullivan nodded, and the Professor continued, ‘We feel that although for training in seamanship the Wanderer could hardly be improved upon, yet nevertheless you should not be loosed upon the world without a firm grounding of more general instruction. You may not suppose that a helmsman would steer any the better for being able to decline gubernator, but you are young, and absurd as it may seem to you now, you will find in time that such is the case.’
Derrick did his best to smile, for he knew that the Professor meant this as a joke to take away the sting of his decision.
‘You will always be able to come back to the Wanderer when it is all over,’ said Sullivan.
‘Aye,’ said Ross, in a comforting tone, ‘you’ll come back with a dozen new-fangled modern ways of sinking a ship, and we’ll have them out of you with a rope’s end in a week.’
‘Furthermore,’ said the Professor, ‘I intend, with your uncle’s consent, to gild the pill of education by a suggestion that may be new to you. How would you like to go to the school by way of Samarcand?’
‘Samarcand,’ said Derrick. ‘Do you know where it is, Olaf?’
‘Samarcand? That ain’t no port,’ replied Olaf. ‘But I heard of it. Samarcand, that’s where the Old Man left his fingers. It’s somewhere inland.’
‘Was that where it happened?’ asked Derrick. His uncle lacked two fingers of his left hand, and Derrick had never