Patrick O’Brian 3-Book Adventure Collection: The Road to Samarcand, The Golden Ocean, The Unknown Shore
Uncle?’ asked Derrick. ‘I don’t think he’s a pie-dog – his tail doesn’t curl.’ The water-logged creature seemed to know that they were discussing him: he looked from one to another with a mournful countenance, and wheezed.
‘Well, it’s your dog by rights,’ said Sullivan, ‘and if you think he will be any good, keep him by all means. You’ll catch rabies and mange from him, of course, but you won’t be able to say that I didn’t warn you when you start running about foaming at the mouth and biting people.’
Derrick took the dog and stowed it in the chain-locker. It feebly tried to bite, but it swallowed a little food from the dish he brought.
The next morning, when Derrick went to feed it, the dog was on its feet. It backed into the locker, growling continuously, with its hackles up, but it did not go for him or bite when he put the dish down. It was days before it would come out of the locker at all, and even then it would only dart out to eat voraciously, glaring suspiciously from its dish before it backed quickly away into the shadows. For a long while there was far too much to do on board the Wanderer for Derrick to spend much time with the dog, or to think of it very often. There were ropes in plenty to splice, new sails to bend, all the shambles left by deck-house to repair and a hundred other jobs before the Wanderer looked anything like her old trim self again. But there was plenty of time for all this work, for the typhoon had blown the schooner a great way off her course, and then for days and days on end the wind blew steadily from the west, so that with all her fine sailing powers the Wanderer could not make up the distance lost.
It was after a long day’s work with a paint-brush, slung over the side in a bosun’s chair, that Derrick noticed for the first time that the dog seemed pleased to see him. It moved its tail uncertainly from side to side and came half out of the locker as he approached. It looked like a dog that had never been treated kindly enough to have learnt how to wag its tail or how to express pleasure, and it was still almost sure that it was going to be kicked or beaten.
Then, a day or two after that, when there was at last time for a make and mend, when Derrick was squatting on the deck, repairing the heel of a sea-boot stocking, he saw the dog slowly creeping towards him, stopping, going back, creeping on, gradually approaching nearer and nearer: he took no notice, but went on darning, and at last he felt a hesitant nose touch his elbow. The dog was standing there, looking sheepish, wriggling all over, grinning hideously, and in two minds whether to run or stay. He talked to it quietly for a long time, and gave it a name. ‘Chang, Chang,’ he said, slowly putting his hand over its head: Chang looked frightened for a moment, but as Derrick patted it it lay down and eventually went to sleep at his feet. After that it suddenly began to advance in friendliness, and by the time they came in sight of land the dog followed him wherever he went. Chang was a large dog, a very large dog, and now that at last he had found a human being who would treat him decently, his pleasure was larger than the pleasure of most dogs; he kept as close to Derrick as his own shadow, and attached himself to him as only a dog can.
And even before they had made their landfall and were working up the coast towards Tchao-King, the others had withdrawn their unkind remarks about Chang.
‘It seems to me, young Derrick,’ said his uncle, ‘that you might make something out of that object, after all.’ He inspected the dog as it stood at Derrick’s heel, and suddenly he made a quick swipe with his hand, as if to clout his nephew’s ear: at the same moment he sprang backwards, but it was too late. Chang had pinned his white duck trousers, and there was a tear from knee to ankle: the dog stood there, bristling with fury, but waiting for a word from Derrick to go in and kill the aggressor.
‘No, no, don’t be angry with him,’ said Sullivan. ‘That’s just what he should have done. Only I wish he hadn’t done it quite so quickly.’
And Olaf said, ‘Ay reckon they was all wrong about this so-called pie-dog of yours, eh? Ay said at the time, that’s something like a dog, that is, Ay said. Ay ban’t so sure it ain’t some kind of a special breed, at that.’
Only Li Han was still of the same opinion. ‘Animal is becoming a little fatter,’ he said. ‘Yes: soon adequately obese now. Very succulent stew, he will make, very nourishing; and dog-chops, almost the same as chow, for the feast of the Lotus Flowers, very savoury, very unctuous.’
All the way along the coast they met with calms or contrary winds, and the Wanderer, instead of the two hundred and seventy miles which she had logged in the first day and night after leaving Kwei Hai, now crept along, making no more than ten sea miles for a long day’s arduous tacking. Sullivan was particularly worried about their meeting with Professor Ayrton. ‘When I wrote,’ he said, ‘I underlined the words “God willing and wind and tide permitting,” but I don’t know whether he will understand the kind of winds that we have been having – and even if he does understand, I am not sure whether he will be able to wait. At this rate we shan’t make Tchao-King before Christmas. Derrick, go on deck and try whistling for a spell, will you?’
Derrick whistled. Olaf whistled. Li Han beat a gong and the Malays sang their wind-song: Chang howled: but still the sails flapped idly, and far away on the starboard quarter a small junk which had been in sight since dawn came nearer and nearer, propelled by the immense sweeps that her sweating crew pulled to the sound of conchs and drums. ‘Ay wish my old grandma was here,’ said Olaf, pausing for breath. ‘She’d blow us to Frisco if we was to ask her polite. If the Old Man was to go to her and tip his hat and say, “Good morning, marm,” or “Good afternoon,” as the case might be –’
‘You don’t suppose that’s a pirate, do you, Olaf?’ interrupted Derrick.
Olaf stared at the junk. ‘Could be,’ he said, indifferently, shading his eyes. ‘They come like wasps after honey along this coast. But they won’t meddle with us, not unless they was three, four war-junks all together. They tried that once, only two of them, off Tai-nan.’ He laughed reminiscently. ‘They won’t meddle with the Wanderer no more. No sir. Besides,’ he added, ‘there’s that destroyer on the horizon.’
‘What destroyer?’
‘Ain’t you got no eyes?’ asked Olaf, impatiently, as he pointed to the north-west. Derrick made out a low smudge that might have been smoke.
‘How do you know it’s a destroyer?’ he asked.
‘How do I know that’s my hand in front of my face? Ay look at it, see? Ay got eyes, see? Of course she ban a destroyer, U.S.N., and she’s bound for Manila.’
The day wore on, a hot and sticky day without a breath of wind: Derrick sat in the shade of the mainsail, trying to comb Chang’s coat into something like respectability. He was an ugly dog, it could not be denied; and if anything the combing made his appearance worse. He had enormous feet, and from his feet and his clumsiness Derrick judged that he was not nearly fully grown: Chang already weighed a good fifty pounds, and if he went on filling out he would soon be more like a lion than a dog. Derrick looked up from his hopeless task, and saw the destroyer bearing down on them. Olaf had been quite right: she was an American destroyer, belching smoke from her four funnels and cutting a great furrow through the oily sea with her high bows. The junk far behind had turned long ago, and was now creeping painfully over the horizon, still sweeping arduously.
‘What ship?’ hailed the destroyer. ‘Where bound?’
‘Schooner Wanderer,’ answered Sullivan, his great voice roaring over the water. ‘Thirty days out of Macao for Tchao-King.’
‘What ship?’
‘Schooner Wanderer, Terence Sullivan master,’ he answered louder still.
The destroyer made a sharp turn to port and came alongside. ‘Captain Sullivan, I’ve got a message for you,’ hailed the officer on deck. ‘It reads, “Ayrton at Tchao-King to Sullivan, schooner Wanderer: am waiting at Tchao-King until 31st, then moving to Peking by way of Tsi-nan.” Have you got that?’
‘Yes,