we got in touch with the old lady who ran the pirate organisation called the Benign Chrysanthemum. We knew that if we could get into her confidence we would learn about the hide-out of the Fraternal Lotuses; and I may say that we had a long score to settle with the Fraternal swabs, quite apart from the bo’sun. She took us on, and after she had tried us out with a few legitimate voyages, all above-board, she began to come round to thinking that perhaps we would do as full-blown Benign Chrysanthemums: but she did not want to hurry about it, and as we did not want to linger in those waters for very long, we thought the best thing to do was to impress her with some pretty hearty doings. All that we had been able to learn was about the society called the Everlasting Wrong: they were long-shore pirates, and they did not interest us very much, but they were a thorough-going pest to peaceful coast-wise ships, and we thought they would be as well out of the way as not, especially as they would serve our turn. So when there was a very big feast going on in their harbour Ross and I went and blew the bottoms out of their junks – it would be a long story to tell you all about it, but in fact it was quite simple, and it impressed the old lady immensely. It was rather irregular, of course, because the two societies were supposed to be at peace, but they were rivals in their trade, you see, and old Yang Kwei-fei – that was our old lady’s name – was really as pleased as Punch. She suddenly conceived the idea that trade would be much better all round if she had no rivals at all, and she told us all she knew about the Fraternal Lotuses, and in a week the Lotuses had withered to the extent of having to work for their living, which was something that no Fraternal Lotus had done for generations. That was what Hsien Lu had heard about, no doubt; and if he said that we were pirates, he certainly thought that he was telling the truth, because in the days before we had dealt with the Lotuses we stalked about boasting about how we had sunk this ship and that ship, murdering every man-jack aboard, and drowning the women and children and so on, like the biggest villains unhung. I am sure he thought it was a compliment when he said it, but I am afraid I must admit that we were never quite such great men as Hsien Lu believed. We never even made anyone walk the plank, and to tell the truth, I don’t think that I should enjoy the entertainment very much – I haven’t really got the makings of a really good bloodthirsty pirate. If some swab starts knocking my ship around, I’ll sink him if I can, but I am such a mild-natured creature that I have to be hit first before I begin to get sore – not cast in the heroic mould, as you might say.’ He had been gazing at the horizon for some time, and now he reined in and shaded his eyes with his hand. ‘What do you make of that?’ he asked.
Derrick made out a single horseman on the skyline. ‘It is not one of our people,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Sullivan. ‘It looks to me more like a Kazak, from his lance. It is strange to see one here. We are a long way from their country.’
Through the bleak lands beyond the great marshes the column pursued its steady road. Day after day they went straight over the high steppe or the half-desert where the cold sand blew perpetually over the dun earth: they no longer dug in the minor sites that the Professor had marked, and although he said that there were still three or four places where they must certainly stop, he said it without conviction. He was in a ferment about the jade, and his chief wish was to get it safely back to the museum: he carried the pick of the collection about his person, and the rest he confided to Li Han, who sewed the pieces into his quilted cotton clothes and walked about as though he were treading on eggs. The Professor had already begun a rough catalogue of the jades, and every night the lamp burnt until after midnight in his yurt. He said, ‘Our aim must now be to reach Samarcand as early as possible: fortunately, the worst of our journey is over, and we have only the Takla Makan to traverse or to circumvent, and then, I understand, the rest of the road is comparatively simple.’
‘Only the Takla Makan!’ exclaimed Sullivan, thinking of that howling desert. ‘Only the Takla Makan.’ But seeing the Professor’s anxious face he added, ‘Yes, you are quite right. Once we have got that behind us, the rest should not be too difficult.’
When he was alone with Ross he said, ‘Are they still there?’
‘I saw them at break of day,’ said Ross, ‘but I have not seen them since. It may be that we are wrong – growing over-anxious and seeing boggles behind every door, like bairns.’
‘I hope so,’ replied Sullivan, scanning the horizon. Ever since they had left the swamps he had had the impression that they were being followed. Sometimes it was a group of horsemen who kept so far away that they might have been antelopes or the tall wild asses of the steppe, and sometimes it was a single rider; but Sullivan and Ross had powerful glasses, and the form that might have been a distant antelope to a naked eye showed up as a Tartar in the binoculars, a Tartar with the head-dress and the lance of a Kazak.
Yet when some days later they met with the immense herds of the Churungdzai and camped for the night with the tribesmen, they heard nothing of the Kazaks; they felt that their suspicions had been mistaken, and they were glad that they had not mentioned them to the others. The Churungdzai were a tribe related to the Kokonor horde: they were as friendly as could be, and they gave news of Hulagu Khan. He was a week’s journey to the north, on the edge of the Takla Makan, and they thought that he might come south to cut their route near the place called the Kirgiz Tomb.
It took them nearly the whole of the next day to pass through the innumerable herds of the Churungdzai, although they were but a tenth part of the tribe’s wealth, but by the evening they were alone on the steppe again, and in the days that followed, the old, calm routine settled down as though there had been no change.
Derrick had traded some ammunition for a hawking eagle with one of the Churungdzai, and with the great bird on his arm he rode out with Chingiz to see what they could find for the pot. The eagle was big enough to strike down an antelope, and Derrick, at intervals of working out the problem in trigonometry that Ross had set him for his morning’s task, had thought that he had seen some on the far edge of the sky.
‘You must ride with your right arm across your saddle-bow,’ said Chingiz, and Derrick quickly realised that he was right. He had been trying to imitate the Mongol’s way of carrying his falcon with his arm free at his side, and each time that his arm had moved under the much greater weight of the eagle, the huge talons had gripped his muscles through the thick glove that he wore as the hooded eagle stirred to keep its balance.
They had gone almost out of sight of their caravan, and Derrick was riding more easily, when they heard the drumming of horse’s hooves: it was Sullivan, coming up fast to join them.
‘I thought I would come and see how your new purchase behaves,’ he said, drawing alongside. ‘Is it any good, Chingiz?’
‘I hope so,’ said Chingiz, looking at the eagle with his beady eyes narrowed still further. ‘But it is very small.’
‘Small!’ cried Derrick, thinking of the steely grip of those talons, and how they had gripped him to the bone when the bird was merely sitting there, with no intention of doing harm. ‘Small! What do you think we are going to hunt? Elephants?’
‘My father has an eagle twice that size,’ said Chingiz, stroking his little peregrine.
‘Yes,’ said Sullivan, ‘but your father is a Khan, and drinks the milk of white mares. Naturally he has a larger eagle than anybody else.’
‘And my ancestor,’ said Chingiz, who was not altogether pleased about Derrick’s eagle, ‘had one four times the size of my father’s.’
‘That must have been difficult to carry,’ observed Derrick.
‘Not for my ancestor,’ replied
