Derrick hauled Chang on to his knee, and the roar grew loud again. It stayed loud and high, and in a minute the Professor leaned forward and asked nervously, “Do you suppose, Mr. Ross, that the machine will rise? I am very willing, if there is too much weight——”
“She has risen,” interrupted Ross. “We have been a couple of feet off the ground for some time. I am just getting the feel of it.”
As he spoke the ground slid sideways and down. Chingiz gave a gasp and closed his eyes. Derrick wormed his way to the side and saw the whole valley lying out below them, with the lamasery and the pass clearly in view.
Gently the helicopter tilted forward and began to rush at an astonishing speed for the pass. “Shall you clear it? Shall you clear it?” asked Sullivan, clutching his fists as he stared forward at the ground as it swept towards them.
“We may,” said Ross coolly, “or we may not. I am not well acquainted with these machines, though I understand the principle. As I see it, we have little possibility of gaining much more height. Perhaps I’ll go round again.”
In a somewhat jerking curve the helicopter circled and rushed for the pass again. “It’ll be a close thing on the starboard bow,” observed Ross. “Do you see all those people coming up from the other side?”
“Yes,” said Sullivan. “They were due a little while ago. They’ll stop us if they can.”
“I wonder if they have guns,” said Ross. “However, we shall soon see. Stop us, will they? The contumelious dogs. I’ll shave their heads.”
He brought the helicopter upright a hundred feet from the pass, steadied it, and then, with the concentration of a man steering between two rocks in a high wind and a heavy sea, he tore towards the pass again. The angry faces swept nearer with shocking velocity. “Watch the starboard bow,” he cried, and plunged at the thick of them. There was a shriek, a distant bang and a scrape as a lance scratched across the undercarriage. Then below them was a vast expanse of cloud, with a few peaks rising through it.
“The contumelious dogs,” cried Ross again. “Shall I go back and give them another dose?”
“No, no, I beg you will go on,” shouted the Professor above the roar. “I cannot tell you what pleasure it gives me to look down on these clouds on the other side of the pass. Pray do not turn back, Mr. Ross.”
“Well, it’s as you wish,” said Ross, a little discontentedly. “What’s the course, Sullivan?”
“West-nor’-west,” said Sullivan, consulting the compass. “What’s your log reading?”
“About a hundred knots,” said Ross. “A couple of hours, or maybe three, will show a very different face of things.”
THEY HAD BEEN cruising steadily for hours. They had all got used to the steady, well-nourished roar, and they had exchanged their news. Olaf and Li Han had indeed got snowed up, but they had been snowed up in a shallow crevasse. They had caught the yaks almost as the blizzard hit them, and trying to lead the beasts back they had felt the snow give way under them, and the next minute they were ten feet under the surface. But their feet were on rock, they were shaken, but unhurt, and best of all, they had the yaks with them. Very soon the snow re-formed its bridge over their heads, and with the warmth of the yaks they did not do do badly at all. They had plenty of food, and they piled snow between them and the ice to make them relatively snug. The great difficulty was getting out, but after dragging great quantities of snow into the shallowest part of the crevasse they gradually built up the floor. They finally emerged about twenty hours after they had been given up altogether, and hurrying to the camp they had found the note and the stores that were left for them.
They had pressed on, finding the markers left at almost every camp: they had once thought that they had seen a horrible shape among the rocks, and they had spent far too much ammunition on it. Then, by a wretched mischance, a commonplace hole in Olaf’s pocket, they had lost the rest: but otherwise they had had a very good journey. Three times they had come in sight of the others, when they were on straight stretches, but always at a very great distance, too far for hailing with the wind in the wrong direction. At first they had not gone as quickly as the others, because of the slowness of the yaks; but as Sullivan’s party slowed down from weariness, they had gained, so that they came up to the place where Ross was sitting not much more than ten hours after he had been left. They had had to stop quite a long time then, for he was in a very bad way. Olaf built him a snow-house over his yurt—the smaller yurt had come along with the yaks—which had kept him warm and dry while they fed him. His legs and feet were bad, very bad, but worse than that was his near-starvation. For days and days he had secretly been putting back more than half his ration into the others’ loads: he recovered very quickly when Li Han fed him with strong broth and when he was certain that there was enough and to spare for all. Then they had taken the strongest and most docile of the yaks and had arranged him as comfortably as they could on its back: from that time on their marches had been slow, but they had been quite confident that they would get through in time; the only worry was whether they could reach civilisation in time to save Ross’s left foot, which was the worst; and until they had reached the helicopter it had seemed not so much doubtful as impossible. More than once Ross had been on the point of deciding to have it off, to prevent the infection mounting. “And I believe,” he said, throttling back a little, “that if we had not met today, tomorrow you might have met with a wooden-legged mariner, instead of an interesting case for the nearest saw-bones. Do you think, Sullivan, that there would be one down there?” He tilted the helicopter sideways, pointing to a broad and straggling village or little town below them.
“I doubt it,” said Sullivan. “I doubt if it would have even so much as a single juke-box in it. But with this tearing wind following us, we should get you to all the comforts of civilisation in an hour or two. And that,” he said, turning round and talking to Derrick, “includes school.”
Derrick nodded, and looked out. Down below them, through the scattered patches of lower cloud, the hills were giving way to flatter country, all spread out like a map. A broad river, whose green banks they could see even at that height, showed up sharp and white; and all along its sides, spreading far out to north and south, there was the patchwork of fields. The cloud shadows floated below them, racing over the distant ground as the strong wind pushed them from behind: and here and there the drifting smoke of villages made a faint mist below the clouds.
The Professor was looking out beside him. “Yes, there it is,” he said. “Yes, I am sure that that is it. Down there, Derrick,” he cried, stabbing downwards with his pointing finger towards a thin, incredibly remote line that stretched as far as they could see, “there is the road to Samarcand.”
Copyright © 1954 by Patrick O’Brian
First American Edition 2007
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First published as a Norton paperback 2008
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O’Brian, Patrick, 1914–2000.
The road to Samarcand / Patrick O’Brian. — 1st American ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-393-06473-5 (hardcover)
1. Teenage boys—Fiction. 2. Americans—Asia, Central—Fiction. 3. Americans—China—Tibet—Fiction. 4. Asia, Central—Fiction. 5. Tibet (China)—Fiction. 6. Antiquities—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6029.B55R63 2007
823'.914—dc22 2007007988
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The Road to Samarcand Page 25