The Road to Samarcand. Patrick O’Brian

      ‘But we passed through the storm-centre, didn’t we?’ asked Derrick, in a disappointed bellow.

      ‘No. Nothing like it. We skirted the edge after all. Now if you’ve done with admiring the view, go for’ard and bear a hand.’

      Derrick hurried along the deck as fast as his aches and bruises would let him. To a landman’s eye the ship looked derelict, but in fact everything was well in hand. The Malays were at the pumps, and Ross was reeving new halliards: already the essential had been done, but it needed a more experienced eye than Derrick’s to know it.

      ‘Good morning, lad,’ said Ross, as Derrick came up. ‘Are you fit for a spell of hard labour now?’

      ‘Well, sir, I think I could manage a little gentle exercise,’ said Derrick, grinning.

      ‘Very good. Then just take a wee look at the shrouds and ratlines yonder, where the spar tore through them. See if you can set that to rights.’

      ‘But –’ gasped Derrick, with his smile fading as he gazed up into the endless tangle.

      ‘Och, lad, I can see you need a few years of schooling. A sailor would have set about that in no time. Ah weel, I’d best do it myself.’

      ‘No, no. I just meant I was wondering where to begin.’

      ‘Humph. The best plan is to begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end.’

      Derrick swung himself up and started at the nearest dead-eye. ‘I’ll show him,’ he muttered, jabbing away with a marlin-spike. It was a difficult, tedious job, and Ross knew it well: he was testing the boy. Piece by piece Derrick unravelled the tangle, and presently the ratlines began to assume a reasonable shape. The wind was blowing itself out, and by noon it was easier to work. They ate, enormously, at mid-day, and after the meal Derrick came on deck again, surveyed his work with satisfaction, and was just beginning to start on the frapping when there was the cry of a sail on the port bow.

      ‘She looks to me like the remains of a junk,’ said Ross, focusing his glasses.

      The Wanderer came about on the other tack, and soon they were within hail of the junk. No answer came from her as she wallowed in the dying swell: her decks were awash, and she had been battered almost out of recognition. The high poop had been completely torn away, and only a gaping hole showed where the main-mast had been wrenched bodily out of her.

      ‘There’s no one alive on board,’ said Sullivan, scanning her ravaged decks. ‘She’ll not last the day.’

      The derelict rose and fell: each time she vanished into the trough of a wave it seemed impossible that she should reappear, but she did, time and time again.

      ‘There’s something moving in her bows,’ cried Derrick, from the rigging. ‘I saw it twice.’

      Lowering the only boat that had survived was a tricky job, but there was no broken water, and they managed it. Ross and the old Malay stayed in the boat while Derrick stepped aboard the junk: she was so low in the water that he did not have to climb.

      ‘Look lively, boy,’ cried Ross. ‘She’ll be going any minute now.’

      In the bows Derrick found a drowned Chinese sailor and a living dog. It was very weak; it could only just move, but it growled and snapped as Derrick shifted the broken planks to reach it. It was a large dog, rather of the build of a mastiff, but with longer legs and a shaggy yellow coat: a thick leather thong held it to the deck. As Derrick tried to cut it free, the dog turned and sunk its teeth into his hand.

      ‘Oh, you –,’ cried Derrick, remembering some of Olaf’s choicer words. He clouted it and cut through the leather. The dog made as if to stand, but it could not. Derrick grabbed it by the scruff, dragged it to the broken gunwale and dropped it into the boat, where it lay snarling.

      ‘That’s all it was that was moving, sir,’ he said to Ross. ‘I’m afraid the man was dead.’

      ‘Humph,’ said Ross, eyeing the dog.

      ‘Well, that’s a fine bit of salvage,’ said Sullivan, when Derrick hauled it aboard the schooner. ‘A measly pie-dog. And a yellow one with the mange at that.’

      Li Han came up from the galley and looked at the dripping beast. ‘Animal of small value,’ he said, having considered it from all angles. ‘Of no value at present, but might furnish succulent stew if fattened.’

      ‘That ain’t no dog,’ said Olaf. ‘That’s an infant dromedary, that is.’

      ‘You’d better disinfect your hand, Derrick, and sling the pie-dog overboard. I doubt if it would live, anyway.’

      ‘Och, I don’t know,’ said Ross, who felt partially responsible for the dog, ‘the poor beastie might recover.’

      ‘Can’t we give him a chance, 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,’