The Road to Samarcand. Patrick O’Brian

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 incomplete. All three were armed with rifles slung over their backs and long knives in their belts: they wore bandoliers criss-crossed over their chests, and they walked awkwardly in their long felt boots as they came over to salute Sullivan. Sullivan answered them with a flow of guttural words, and the leader handed him a piece of red silk, a brace of partridges and a small object closely wrapped. Sullivan turned to the car, brought a box from under the seat, and gave the Mongols a piece of red silk, three automatic pistols and a charm in the shape of a bronze horse.

      The presents having been exchanged, the Mongols lit a fire in the lee of the ruined arch and began to prepare a meal. Speaking quietly to Derrick, Sullivan said, ‘These are the three sons of Hulagu Khan, the chief of the Kokonor Mongols. I sent to ask his help for transport animals, and perhaps for a tribesman or two, if he could spare them. Now he has sent his three sons with orders to do everything they can to help, in memory of a good turn that I did him long ago. It’s a way they have in these parts, and a very good way, too. I’ll introduce you, but remember that they don’t like a young man – and you’re a man by their reckoning – to talk unless he is spoken to.’

      He spoke to the Mongols, obviously explaining who Derrick was, and then he said to Derrick. ‘This is young Hulagu, this is Chingiz, and this is Kubilai.’ The Mongols, hearing their names, bowed each in turn to Derrick, and Derrick bowed back, wondering what was going on behind their impassive, expressionless faces. The eldest broke a piece of bread, dipped it in salt and handed it to Derrick.

      ‘Don’t say anything,’ murmured Sullivan. ‘Bite it clean in half and give it back.’

      Derrick did so; the Mongols gave a hint of a smile and divided the remaining piece among themselves. Then there was a silence until their fire had blazed away to glowing embers: one of the Mongols went back to the tethered horses, took some strips of dried horse-flesh from under the deep saddle, impaled them on the long iron skewers that he carried threaded in his felt boot and burnt them roughly on each side over the fire. He handed them round, and Sullivan whispered, ‘It would be a good thing if you could eat your piece in seven bites.’

      It nearly choked Derrick, the raw, warm flesh, but he got it down, and immediately afterwards the Mongols scattered the ashes of their fire, remounted, and stood by while Sullivan attacked the car. Derrick marvelled to see how they controlled the half-wild ponies: they seemed to fit the saddles as though they grew from the horse. Chingiz, the youngest, sat on his madly bucking mount – it had never seen a car in its life, and it was terrified – as though it were no more than a wooden rocking-horse. By something not unlike a miracle the car started at once, and they went back to Peking in a cavalcade.

      The next day the Mongols began their active assistance. They stayed in the Ka-Khan serai in the Tartar City, and they sent out word for horses, camels and ponies: the dealers flocked to them; they selected, judged, chaffered with unwearying patience; and at the same time they sent out messages with the caravans all along the route to their friends, warning them to have more beasts ready in due time.

      Often when Sullivan was busy he would send Derrick to the serai with some message: he made Derrick repeat it over and over again until he was sure that it would be understood, and although the eldest of the Mongol brothers could make himself quite well understood in Chinese, Sullivan insisted that Derrick should stick to their language through