Han grinned and bowed repeatedly. ‘Suggest wily approach,’ he said, in an agitated voice that betrayed his extreme eagerness. ‘Perhaps gifts of red silk, piece of first-chop jade? Sumptuous repast for learned Professor, and question popped with dish of rice-birds? Will devote entire savings to purchase of same.’
‘What could Ay do?’ asked Olaf, disconsolately. ‘Ay ban no good by land.’
‘You can ride horses and camels, can’t you?’
‘Horses, eh?’ Olaf scratched his head. ‘They steer by a tiller to the head-piece for’ard, ain’t it? But camels, no. Ay reckon camels is out. Ay had a camel once, with a hump.’
‘You had a camel, Olaf?’
‘Sure Ay had a camel. One camel with one hump. A hump like that …’ he sketched a mountain in the air with his finger.
‘How did you come by it?’
‘Well, it was peculiar, see? We was in Port Said – Ay was shipped aboard a Panamanian tanker then – and Ay went ashore to get me a drink. Ay was thirsty, because it was hot, see? Ay reckon it was the sun that done it, or maybe the night air. Or maybe it was the tinned crab, but anyways, Ay wake up on the quay with no clothes on and a camel. One camel. Leastways, there was a rope in my hand, and when Ay haul on it, Ay find this camel the other end. So Ay coax the camel aboard the tanker and go to sleep. Oh, they was joyful to find my camel in the morning. It bit the mate in five places. It clomb into the bridge. It fouled the steering-gear. Then it bit the master in the calf, although he was a Portuguee. Ay had to pay a coal-black Jew from the Yemen four piastres and a Straits dollar to take it off at Bahrein, but even then the master, he put me off at Muscat. Marooned me, see? And Ay sat on the shore without my dunnage waiting for a ship three months. No, Ay don’t want nothing to do with no camels.’
Before Derrick knew anything about it, it had been settled. The Professor spread out the map. ‘This, then,’ he said, making a dotted line with his pencil, ‘is our proposed route. We follow the Old Silk Road through the Gobi, travel north of Kunlun range, skirting Tibet, north of the Karakoram and the Pamirs, and so to Samarcand. Of course, we shall make several detours on the way, as there is a mass of untouched archaeological material waiting to be discovered. Imagine the importance of the Buddhist frescoes that the elder Ssu-ma describes, or the repository of jade objects mentioned by the Pandit Rajasthana … dear me, it makes me feel quite pale to think of it.’
‘I am afraid you will have to go south of the Kara Nor,’ said Sullivan, looking at the map. ‘There is a huge swamp that is not shown on the map – the whole region is very badly mapped – and that will mean an extra three days. But that is better than getting stuck in the middle.’
‘How glad I am,’ said the Professor, eagerly correcting the line. ‘How glad I am to have the benefit of your advice. I am new to this part of the world, you know, and if I were to have to make all the practical arrangements I should probably be unsuccessful. Besides, it would leave me very little time for archaeological work. But are you sure that you can spare the time and the energy? I am more than happy to avail myself of your kindness, for my knowledge of such things as transport is largely theoretical, but I do not wish to impose myself upon you.’
‘Oh, we will be able to manage that side of it quite easily, don’t you think, Ross?’
‘Aye. So long as there will be none of this modern business – caterpillar tractors, wireless and an army of porters. If we travel as the Mongols have travelled these thousand years and more, we’ll get there twice as soon and at a hundredth part of the cost.’
‘I quite agree with you, Mr Ross,’ said Professor Ayrton. ‘It would be much better in every way. I can almost picture myself riding forth like Genghis Khan and the Golden Horde already, making the steppe tremble under my horse’s feet.’
‘There is one thing that I think I should mention, Professor,’ said Sullivan, ‘and that is that this route leads through some very troubled country. The war-lords are always at it hammer and tongs on the Mongolian border, and farther on there might be all kinds of trouble with all manner of people who are having little private wars.’
‘Oh, yes,’ replied the Professor, ‘I have read about it; but surely a peaceful scientific expedition has nothing to fear? The Chinese of my acquaintance are all intensely civilised; in fact, the whole nation seems to me to be most advanced, and I am sure that their influence will make the journey safe for us. And I have all the necessary papers.’
‘Well …’ said Sullivan, and Ross said, ‘Humph,’ but the Professor was far away already, thinking of the discoveries that he would make in that archaeological paradise.
As Ross and Sullivan walked back to the ship, Sullivan said, ‘I wonder what kind of an idea Ayrton has of the Astin Tagh? Do you think he imagines a Chinese war-lord sits around sipping tea and composing verses to the T’ang Emperors?’
‘I’m sure he does. He should not be let out alone.’
After a while Sullivan said, ‘It would be very hard travelling for a man of his age, quite apart from the likelihood of trouble on the way. I believe he thinks it’s going to be a kind of picnic, or a country walk where you look for jade images instead of birds’ nests. I don’t know that we should not stop him.’
‘We couldn’t stop him without tying him up,’ said Ross. ‘If we don’t go with him he’ll go by himself, taking Derrick with him. Or else he’ll pick up one of these rascally White Russians, who’ll have his throat cut the first day they are out alone in the Shamo Desert. No, we’ll get him through safe enough. D’ye not remember how we got that little old Frenchman out of Urga?’
‘Yes. That was a close call. I wonder if old Hulagu Khan is still in the Town of the Red Knight? We could do worse than get one or two of his men.’
‘I was thinking of that too. They are good fighters, those Kokonor Mongols.’
‘Then I was wondering about Derrick. But perhaps I am making too much of it altogether. He’s a tough lad, and anyhow a Mongol boy is reckoned a man at his age.’
A few days later Professor Ayrton came aboard the Wanderer, and they sailed north along the coast to Tientsin. The voyage was uneventful, with prosperous winds, and the Professor, who had never sailed in anything but a liner before, came to understand their love for the schooner. He watched them for hours at a time, and he asked innumerable questions. Derrick noticed that he never asked the same thing twice, but each time he received a plain, clear answer he listened attentively, nodded his head, and stowed it away into his extraordinary memory, a memory that had never failed at any intellectual task but that of mastering what he fondly imagined to be the idiom of America.
Among other things he astonished them by an adequate, if hardly colloquial, command of literary Chinese, and when Sullivan asked him where he had learnt this most difficult of languages, he replied, ‘No, I have never been in China before. My life has been very cloistered – from college to museum and back again – but I have been looking forward to this expedition for years, and I thought it wise to make a few preparations.’
‘You must have the gift of tongues, Professor: managing the Chinese tones is beyond most Europeans, unless they are born to it.’
‘Och, it runs in the family,’ said Ross. ‘Did you never hear young Derrick talking Malay, or using the string of Swedish oaths he has picked up from Olaf?’
‘Talking of preparations,’ said Sullivan,
