The Road to Samarcand. Patrick O’Brian

woman all right.’

      ‘How did she do that?’

      ‘Ay don’t rightly know. We was up in the north of Norway, visiting a sick relation, see? And this relation, he went on keeping sick, in spite of my grandma. So she went out into the tundra and called in the reindeer – a good many Lapps can do that – and she made some kind of a spell then; but still this man, he could not get any better no way. So then she bawled him out and swore so that we all got frightened and asked her to stop, very polite. “Stow it, Grandma,” we said. “Stow it, marm, if you please.” And she stopped. She sat by the fire and smoked her pipe for a long while. It was very cold, Ay remember: up there the winters go on seven, eight months, and there ain’t no sun. The fjords were frozen deep, too, and the wolves, they came so close you could hear them breathe. After a long while she got up and looked out: there was a double ring of the Northern Lights flashing up all colours in the sky, and she went out. Soon there was a wolf howling close by outside, and another answered in the tundra. My father, he said, “That’s your grandma, son, talking to the wolves.”

      ‘Well, nothing happened for a long while, and they all ban gone to sleep when Ay took a look outside, because Ay wanted to see. And Ay saw my grandma going down across to the fjord. So Ay slipped out and followed her in the moonlight, see? She went right on to the ice and squatted down. She took out a knife, an old stone knife like some of the Lapps have, and she cut runes on the ice. Then she called out across the sea, and far away there was an answer. Ay can’t make the proper noise, but it was something like this – Haoo, haoo. She called six, seven times with her hand like that, see, up to her mouth, and each time the answer came nearer. She held her knife by the blade and beckoned with it. And over the ice I see a great white bear coming slow, with his head turning from side to side on his long neck. Eh! He was a big one. Sometimes Ay could not see him against the snow on the ice, because he was white too, see? But there was his shadow there all the time. And Ay was so frightened Ay could not move my little finger, and Ay was cold: cold to the heart. Soon he come right up to her, and he sit down on the ice, and they talk, grunting and nodding. Suddenly something seems to crack in me, and Ay up and run like mad for the house, hollering all the way. I hear the white bear roar as I slam the door, and they all wake up and ask what’s biting me? Have I had a bad dream, maybe?

      ‘But soon my grandma comes in and she swear at me and clout my head and say Ay have spoilt everything: but that night this relative got better.’

      ‘Was it your grandmother that did it, Olaf?’

      ‘Of course it was. The doctor from Kjelvik, he said it was his physic, but we knew it was Grandma. Oh, she was a wise woman, all right, my grandma, and they was all afraid of her because of her learning. When she died, they found she got hair on the soles of her feet, like an ice-bear.’ He stared up at the sails for some moments, and then said, ‘If you can get learning like that, you go to school and learn all you can. Otherwise you stay on board and leave it for these ship’s chandlers, eh?’

      ‘I wish I could, Olaf. But they seem set on educating me.’

      ‘Hm. Well, Ay reckon the Old Man knows best. Still, an albatross can fly clean round the world without learning out of no books, and maybe a sailor can do just the same without being learned no Greek or this so-called Latin.’

      ‘That reminds me. I haven’t seen the albatross this afternoon, nor any gulls.’

      ‘Ain’t you? That’s funny.’ Olaf looked over his shoulder to the western rim of the sea. ‘She don’t look quite right, neither,’ he said. ‘And the wind dropped a bit too quick. Ay don’t like it, not in these seas. Ay t’ink Ay know what it means, without no book-learning.’

      Derrick looked at the bright horizon where the sun had set. ‘It looks all right to me,’ he said.

      ‘You look close. Don’t you see no sort of a haze up there?’

      Derrick looked again. Yes, there was a haze; not quite a cloud, nor yet a mist. It was strange.

      Down below Sullivan finished writing his log. He looked at the tell-tale compass, cast an automatic glance at the brass ship’s clock and the barometer and was preparing to refill his pipe when his eye shot back to the barometer. He sprang up, made sure that the barometer was not broken, and let out a long whistle. The thick column of mercury had dropped as if the bottom had fallen out of the glass. He moved aside to let Ross see, and without a word they ran up the companion-way. Olaf jerked his thumb over to the west and they stared at the sky: they gazed up to the sails, flapping wearily in the dying breeze. They looked at one another and nodded.

      ‘Derrick, take the wheel,’ ordered Sullivan. ‘Olaf, bear a hand.’ He ran to the foremast winch, shouting for the two Malays in the fo’c’sle as he ran. Ross hurried about on deck, battening and lashing everything movable.

      ‘What is it, sir?’ asked Derrick, as he passed.

      ‘Bit of a blow coming up, lad,’ answered Ross, making all fast.

      Li Han hastened by with an anxious expression on his face. Derrick felt uneasy. Soon the Wanderer showed no more than a scrap of canvas, a single jib; her decks were cleared as though she were going into action, and she had so nearly lost steering-way that the wheel was lifeless in his hands.

      On the western horizon a strange cloudbank was forming rapidly. There was a heavy swell running, but no wind at all. In reply to a shouted order Derrick had put up the helm, and slowly the Wanderer came round to face the east. The long swell, which he had not noticed before, took her from behind, and her bare masts groaned as she worked heavily on the sea. Ross and Sullivan stood watching the growing patch of darkness on the sky.

      ‘I think we’ll just about get the full force of it,’ said Sullivan. ‘The glass is still falling.’

      ‘Aye,’ said Ross. ‘It won’t be long now. I’ll take the first trick at the wheel. We’ll run before it?’

      ‘Surely. The Wanderer can stand very nearly anything.’

      Ross dived below, and reappeared in his oilskins and seaboots. The light of the day was fading with every minute, a menacing, unnatural fading of the light. The cloudbank was now a stretch of darkness covering a quarter of the sky. Suddenly Derrick realised what it was: there is nothing in the world like the coming of a typhoon.

      ‘You go below, Derrick,’ said his uncle. ‘And don’t come on deck without orders.’

      The swell increased, and Derrick in the saloon had to hold on tight to prevent himself from bowling up and down as the Wanderer pitched. There was still no breath of wind to stir the sails, and the schooner seemed to have lost all her life and strength; she wallowed like a log.

      Soon the light was obscured as if by a thick fog: a hot, oppressive darkness filled the air, and the send of the waves grew stronger. The Wanderer laboured in the huge, smooth seas, creaking and groaning. Suddenly, and for the first time in his life, Derrick felt sea-sick: he was cold and clammy one minute; much too hot the next. He was very anxious not to disgrace himself, but he knew that if the ship went on bucketing much longer there would be no help for it.

      At last there came a little singing in the rigging; the single jib filled and drew, and life came back into the schooner. Then, after one minute of easy riding, the typhoon struck. In a split second the singing in the rigging mounted to a loud, high-pitched, angry shriek. The schooner leapt and quivered: for one moment she seemed to be staggered by the blow, but the next she was racing before it. Huge seas towered behind her, threatening to poop her at any second, but she fled before them unscathed.

      Sullivan plunged head-first into the saloon, followed by a sheet of spray.

      ‘What’s it like on deck, Uncle?’ asked Derrick.

      ‘Pretty tough,’ gasped Sullivan. ‘Not what you would choose for a Sunday-school outing.’

      ‘Are we in the storm-centre?’

      ‘I think so. Not far from it, anyhow. You’re not worried, are you?’ he asked, with a kind smile.

      ‘No,’