Patrick O’Brian 3-Book Adventure Collection: The Road to Samarcand, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore
navigating his Arab dhow through the Hainan Strait – but here in Peking he was astonished once more, for instead of leading him to some walled-in, many-courted Chinese house, his uncle stopped at a neat, trim villa that would have looked perfectly in place in the suburbs of Lausanne, but which looked wildly incongruous in the shadow of a pagoda and surrounded on all sides by the upward-curving tiles and dragon-trimmed roofs of its Chinese neighbours. It was a Swiss boarding-house, and Sullivan walked in as if he had known it all his life. It stood just under the walls of the Inner City of Peking, the Tartar City, but once you were inside you found it hard to believe that you were in China at all. Everything, from the meals to the eiderdowns and the shining brass bedsteads, was entirely European. Li Han was immensely impressed, and Derrick suspected him of burning joss sticks in front of the steel-engraving of President McKinley that adorned his room; but this he was never able to prove.
Once they were installed, Ross and Sullivan were busy most of the day with the preparations for the journey, Professor Ayrton spent nearly all his time in the library of a Chinese archaeological society, where he was an honoured guest, and Olaf disappeared into one of the disreputable haunts which sailors always manage to find; Li Han was actively engaged in learning the correct Mandarin dialect of Peking, for he was from Foochow, and he could hardly make himself understood here in the north; so Derrick explored Peking on his own. He would close the green front door behind him, walk down the three whitened steps, and he would instantly find himself in another world, the noisy, smelly world of China, with its hordes of blue-clad people, coolies carrying great loads on a long bamboo pole, barbers operating in the street, dignified citizens being carried past in covered chairs, old men going to fly their kites in the open spaces and young men with little bamboo bird-cages in their hands, walking to air their birds. He would go a few hundred yards through these people, turn to the left through the enormous gate-house, and find himself in a different world again, the world of the Tartar City. Here in the great serais and market-places there were far-wandering Persians and Arabs, Mongols of every tribe, Turkis, Uzbegs, Manchus, Tibetans with their fierce mastiffs, as big as Chang, and obviously of the same original breed. There was a continual roar of voices in a hundred languages and dialects, and here a Chinese looked almost as foreign as Derrick did himself: but there were so many strange figures, from the green-turbaned hadjis from Shiraz to the fur-clad Siberians and the Koreans with their white top-hats, that nobody took any notice of him, and he could wander about at his ease. Here, for the first time, he saw the hairy, two-humped camels of Central Asia, the shaggy, nimble ponies of the Kara Altai and the Kirghiz Steppe, and here, for the first time, he saw the Tartars drinking the fermented milk of their mares. His uncle had given him a list of the most important Mongol words, and as he walked about he both memorised them and tried to hear them as they should be said, in the conversation that surrounded him on every side.
But soon the first excitement of discovery died down, and although he had Chang with him all the time, he began to feel lonely, and to long for a companion: he was very glad, therefore, when after their usual prim and orderly breakfast, his uncle said that he had a journey in front of him, and that Derrick could come.
There was an ancient and disreputable Ford outside the boarding-house, and with some surprise Derrick saw his uncle crank it and climb into the driving seat. It seemed a strange vehicle to carry them through the crowded streets of Peking and of the Tartar City. But after a few minutes Derrick noticed with delight that his uncle was unsure of himself for once. At the wheel of the Wanderer and in any other place where Derrick had ever seen him, he had been calm, competent and almost infallible; but now he betrayed a strong tendency to take advantage of every changing breeze and to tack up the street in a zig-zag calculated to strike terror into the mind of the beholder. He had some difficulty with the gears, too, and he appeared to have only two speeds, either a boiling crawl at five miles an hour, or a hair-raising dash at sixty-five or more. At the first speed they raised bitter complaints from the bottled-up traffic behind them, and at the second they scattered the pedestrians like chaff before a hurricane. They left a wake of furious oaths behind them, but by extraordinarily good luck no corpses.
‘That’s better,’ said Sullivan, in a voice hoarse with replying to the compliments that had been addressed to him throughout Peking. They were well out of the city now, speeding along the empty road to the north. ‘That’s much better now,’ he repeated, mopping his brow. He peered down at his feet. ‘This one is the brake,’ he said, pointing it out to Derrick. ‘And this one …’ he was saying as the car left the road and cut a huge swathe through the tall millet that was growing alongside. Derrick ducked under the windscreen: he felt the car give a violent bound as it leapt the ditch and regained the road without stopping, and he raised his head to hear his uncle continue, ‘… is the accelerator. When I press it, we go faster.’ He pressed it, and the keen air whistled past the car in a rising shriek.
‘What happens if you take your foot off, Uncle?’ bellowed Derrick, as the car began to rock violently from side to side.
‘Nothing, apparently,’ said his uncle, peering down again. ‘It’s always the same with these contraptions. First they won’t go, and then they won’t stop.’
‘Perhaps if you were to try the other foot?’ suggested Derrick, clinging to his seat.
‘Now I don’t want any advice on driving a car,’ said Sullivan, testily. ‘I happen to be a very good driver – not like those inconsiderate road-hogs in Peking.’
‘There’s a sail ahead,’ said Derrick, after ten miles of the road had flown by. There was, indeed. A heavily laden wheelbarrow with its high rattan sail was creeping slowly along the middle of the road a quarter of a mile away.
‘I can see it, can’t I?’ said Sullivan, experimenting with various levers.
‘I only meant perhaps it would be a good thing to slow down – so as not to startle the man, and to give him time to get out of the way.’
‘Nonsense. There’s plenty of room on his windward side. You can give a toot on the siren, if you like.’
Sullivan rushed down upon the wheelbarrow with a fixed, set expression: Derrick hooted and then closed his eyes. But the crash never came: there was only an enraged bellow that died rapidly away behind them, and when Derrick opened his eyes again he saw that the countryside was passing at a more normal speed.
‘I’ve got the hang of the thing now,’ said Sullivan, in a pleased voice. ‘This one is the accelerator. The other one controls the lights, or the heating, or something. Very unusual car, this: not the rig I am used to at all.’
They passed a temple, and Sullivan turned round to look at it. ‘Luff, luff,’ shrieked Derrick, as the car headed straight for a high stone wall.
‘I was going to luff,’ said Sullivan, wrenching the indestructible car back on to the road, ‘and if you don’t pipe down, Derrick, you’ll find yourself overboard before you can say knife.’
The fields had given way to open grassland, and in the distance there appeared a ruined triumphal arch. With an unholy crash of gears Sullivan plunged off the road and the car bounded over the dried-up turf towards the arch.
‘Did you hear me change down?’ he said. ‘I knew I would master the old musical box before long.’
As they hurtled towards the arch he said mildly, ‘This brake doesn’t seem to be holding. Just try that lever in the middle, will you?’
Derrick heaved upon it with all his force; his head crashed violently against the dashboard, and the car came to a shuddering stop, its nose one inch from the arch.
‘Very neatly docked, though I say it myself,’ said Sullivan, getting out.
They waited by the slowly cooling car in the shade of the arch, and presently they saw a distant plume of dust in the north. It came nearer, and soon Derrick could make out the three horsemen who were approaching them. The drumming of hooves on the hard earth came nearer and nearer, and in another minute the three Mongol ponies dashed up. Their riders pulled them to a dead stop and leapt to the ground: they were short, squat Mongols, with bowed legs and high-cheekboned faces. They were no taller than Derrick, and once off their horses they looked strangely