In what, seems like a few seconds, I found myself on a junk. A junk is a type of ancient Chinese sailing ship that is still in use today. Junks were used as seagoing vessels from times immemorial and developed rapidly during the Song dynasty (960–1279). They continued to evolve in the later dynasties, and were used throughout Asia for extensive ocean voyages.
Sky looked clear, water cleaner. The cabin in which I found myself was small and rather untidy. A youngish man with flaxen hair, a bristly straw-coloured moustache, and a dropping nether lip, was sitting and holding my wrist. For a minute we stared at each other without speaking. He had watery grey eyes, oddly void of expression. Then just overhead came a sound like an iron bedstead being knocked about, and the low angry growling of some large animal. At the same time the man spoke.
He repeated his question,—"How do you feel now?"
I think I said I felt all right. I could not recollect how I had got there. He must have seen the question in my face, for my voice was inaccessible to me.
"You were picked up in a Sampan, starving. A sampan is a relatively flat-bottomed Chinese wooden boat. The name on the boat was the Ying Yue, and there were spots of blood on the gunwale."
At the same time my eye caught my hand, so thin that it looked like a dirty skin-purse full of loose bones, and all the business of the boat came back to me.
"Have some of this," said he, and gave me a dose of some scarlet stuff, iced.
It tasted like blood, and made me feel stronger.
"You were in luck," said he, "to get picked up by a ship with a health specialist aboard." He spoke with a slobbering articulation, with the ghost of a lisp.
"What ship is this?" I said slowly, hoarse from my long silence.
"It's a trader ship on the pacific route.", he answered.
I knew the "pacific route. Thanks to my interest in the subject of geography.
When taking the Pacific route, the ships will go through the south of the East China Sea. Then they go northward through the Sea of Japan through the Okhotsk to enter the North Pacific Ocean. Via this route the ships can reach the west of Latin America, the west of the U.S., New Zealand, Australia and western Canada.
However, I had no idea if the there were any civilizations living in the mentioned countries at the present time i.e 2000 years back during the time of Emperor Qin.
I never asked where he came from in the beginning,— out of the land of born fools, I guess. I'm a time traveller myself, from the nation which is going to be 2000 years from present. The silly ass who owns him,— he's captain too, named Zhang Wei,— he's lost his certificate, or something. You know the kind of man,— calls the thing the Ipecacuanha, of all silly, infernal names; though when there's much of a sea without any wind, she certainly acts according."
(Then the noise overhead began again, a snarling growl and the voice of a human being together. Then another voice, telling some "Heaven-forsaken idiot" to desist.)
"You were nearly dead," said my interlocutor. "It was a very near thing, indeed. But I've put some stuff into you now. Notice your arm's sore? Injections. You've been insensible for nearly thirty hours."
I had no idea injections were used 2000 years back. We were told that they were invented a few decades back. I thought slowly. (I was distracted now by the yelping of a number of dogs.)
"Am I eligible for solid food?" I asked.
"Thanks to me," he said. "Even now the mutton is boiling."
"Yes," I said with assurance; "I could eat some mutton."
"But," said he with a momentary hesitation, "you know I'm dying to hear of how you came to be alone in that boat. Damn that howling!" I thought I detected a certain suspicion in his eyes.
How am I supposed to explain him all - My passion for terracotta army (which may not be of terracotta in present), my time machine, traveling 2000 years back and landing in an old broken boat.
He suddenly left the cabin, and I heard him in violent controversy with some one, who seemed to me to talk gibberish in response to him. The matter sounded as though it ended in blows, but in that I thought my ears were mistaken. Then he shouted at the dogs, and returned to the cabin.
"Well?" said he in the doorway. "You were just beginning to tell me."
I told him my name, Wang Shu, and how I had taken to science after my interest in medical sciences. I told him that I'm a scientist.
He seemed interested in this. "I've done some science myself. I have studied human body and animal body." he said. I did not take his words very seriously. We were always taught that it is the 21st century alone when humanity has excelled in science. And I assumed that science was non existent 2000 years back. I was about get the surprise of my life.
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