All the Tea in China

by Kyril Bonfiglioli

  The Captain’s face went white and, through his closed teeth, he said “Cattermole.” I did not understand.

  Peter said, diffidently, “Yes, Sir, from what I could see of her she might well be the Martha Washington.” I still did not understand.

  “Belay that course, Quartermaster,” snarled the Captain, “steer nor-nor’east until I give you a true course. Mister, kindly wear ship.” He stumped off to the little chart-room in his sleeping-cabin. The quartermaster’s face was blank as he span the wheel, the men went uncheerily about their business of wearing ship and even Lubbock seemed to have no heart for chivvying them in his usual coarse way.

  “What in the devil’s name …?” I murmured to Peter.

  “The ship astern of us,” he explained in an unhappy voice, “is almost certainly the Martha Washington, skippered by Micah Cattermole, Captain Knatchbull’s most deadly rival. He is young and fearless and, if he has had her bottom scraped, she has the legs of us by quite two knots. If she rounds Cape Comorin before us she will be in Calcutta three tides before us.”

  “Is that important?”

  “Very. The first at the opium auctions will pick up a raft of bargains and so will have cash to spare for the better quality chests at the end of the auctions. Worse, he will be in the Canton River before us and will skim the cream of the hungry market, have his bar-silver and new teas aboard and will be refitting for the voyage home before we have dropped our hook below the Two Islands.”

  “I see,” I said vaguely. “And this change of course which seems to be so unwelcome to the crew?”

  He took a deep breath.

  “You see, Karli, in the ordinary way we would have taken the safe, comfortable, Eight Degree Channel, leaving Minicoy on our port and the Maldivhs on our starboard. But, now that we are being pressed by the Martha Washington our –” he looked about him cautiously “– our old maniac of a Captain is going to venture the Nine Degree Channel to the north of Minicoy Island. It is most hazardous. Captain Knatchbull reckons himself the only salt-water skipper who knows its little ways.” He fished out his watch. “We should be entering it just as night falls – and the wind is strengthening from the sou’west.”

  I did not like the sound of any of this.

  “Why is he doing this, do you suppose, Peter?”

  “Because young Micah Cattermole is a dashing and hare-brained young fellow who will think that where one man can go another can follow. If he can win close enough to follow our lights he may succeed but our Captain is unlikely to help him in that way.”

  “But …”

  “Wait and see, Karli, and above all make no comments in the Captain’s hearing – he is a little, well, irrational, in matters concerning Micah Cattermole.”

  The Captain emerged onto the poop and we heard him giving a more precise course to the quartermaster at the wheel, then bidding Lubbock have two reefs shaken out of our top-sails – reefs which had been made only an hour before on account of the freshing wind. One of the watch, as he scrambled aloft, made an audible sound of displeasure and Lubbock snarled at him, but without his usual fury. The wind was rising fast and ever larger waves began to chase our poop. The rigging began to whine and thrum and dusk gathered with the rapidity I had become so used to in those latitudes. Our ordinary sea-lights were lit and the Captain, to everyone’s mystification, ordered an extra light to be put at the mizzen-mast-head.

  “And, comprador,” he said, “I want lamps burning in all cabins aft; see to it.”

  I exchanged glances with Peter. He said nothing.

  Soon the Captain gave a fresh course to the helmsman and the deck was an organised riot of men bracing the sails around. The wind was now, of course, on our starboard quarter and imparting an unpleasant roll and yaw to the vessel, which nevertheless flew on at unabated speed.

  Peter was sent to the fore royal yard and reported that he descried the Martha Washington’s lights abaft and still, he thought, fore-reaching on us. This did not seem to displease the Captain.

  The First Mate hovered, as though awaiting an order.

  “Shorten sail, Sir?” he said at last, in a more diffident voice than I had ever heard him use. We were now, it was clear even to me, well into the perilous channel.

  The Captain glared at him evilly. “Thankyou for your advice, Mister,” he whispered, “but giving advice to the Master of a vessel is not part of a First Mate’s duties. Pray call all hands on deck: I’ll have both bower anchors cock-a-bill and six men at the bill-boards of the sheet anchor. In exactly eight minutes I shall give orders to bring the ship up into the wind and, at precisely that moment, I’ll have every light in the ship dowsed.”

  The First Mate gaped.

  “And Mister, I’ll have all these manoeuvres carried out in silence, d’ye hear?”

  “Aye aye, Sir.”

  In just seven and one half minutes the man in the chains with the lead sang out that he had “by the mark” eight fathoms “and shoaling fast”.

  To me, we were in the midst of a torrent of tearing waters buffetted by fearful winds but the Captain seemed as at home as if he were in his own parlour. Every light was dowsed in an instant; the ship came up into the wind and all three great anchors roared out together, bringing the ship up into the wind with a wrench which one would have thought would jar the very masts out of her.

  There was, suddenly, no sound but the smash of the waves on our bows, no sight but the phosphorescence at our bows.

  “A barrel of oil from the bows,” growled the Captain. In a minute the phosphorescence had gone and the crashing of the seas onto our stem became a mere schlipp-schlopp. We waited. We waited perhaps an hour, I cannot tell at this remove of time. Suddenly, like a ghost, a tall and lovely ship came storming past, like a vision. Her creaming bow-wave and the radiance of her wake were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen: it was like looking at a lovely, naked woman in the prime of her beauty.

  She did not see us and soon vanished into the dark, leaving a dwindling wake of phosphorescence. Later, the Captain ordered the galley-stove to be re-lit and the lamps in cabins and forecastle; but not the great riding lights. Soon the watch below was piped but they were already on deck, muttering in groups.

  In a wonderfully short time the cook had hot supper ready for the watch relieved but there was not the usual rush of mess-men to the galley. Indeed, I had to send an “idler” to find Orace before I could get my supper: he, like most of the men, was far forward, still staring into the darkness where the Martha Washington had sailed. I was not in the least hungry, but those in peril on the sea have a natural duty to keep up their strength, you understand. The meal was, as I recall, a “bindalooh” or sour-pork kari; very good except that the rice was over-moist. I had become a connoisseur in these matters by then.

  I was lying on my bunk, meditating on the frailty of the human spirit, especially in the fair sex, when Orace rushed into the cabin without rapping and said that Lord Stevenage sent his compliments and would I join him on deck. Sighing, I struggled into a pair of trowsers and a hat (the latter was essential: the Captain insisted on his “gentlemen” saluting the quarterdeck in a proper fashion) and sought out Peter. He was in what seemed to be a heated altercation with the Captain.

  “No, Mr Lord Stevenage,” the Captain was growling, “I shall not weigh anchor, nor set sail. You have, I fancy, enough seamanship to know that these waters are perilous at night and I know my duty to my owners and my crew. What you think you see may or may not be the Martha Washington: it is just as likely to be a lure set by wreckers for our destruction. If it were the Martha, we could not reach her until she were burned out and in this darkness and sea we could do nothing for survivors. You have now had more explanation than I commonly give to junior officers. Pray attend to your duties. Clear the decks of the watch below, who should be getting their sleep. Write on the watch-slate that the ship is to be ready to weigh anchor and set sail at first light.”

  Just as he turned on his heel I heard P
eter whisper something to him of which I could hear nothing except, it seemed to me, the word “murder”. The Captain stood still. Then he said:

  “I shall make an entry in the log that I have reprimanded you, Sir.”

  “Aye aye, Sir,” said Peter. The words were commonplace but they fell slowly from his lips like a curse, or perhaps a challenge.

  The Captain ignored his insubordinate tone and turned on his heel; as he entered his cabin I heard him say “Blanche!”

  “What in the name of God …?” I began to say.

  “Go forrard, Karli, go forrard,” said Peter in a choked voice.

  I jostled my way to the bows through the throng of men who had been ordered below. Over on the starboard bow there was a great glow in the sky – I could not tell how far off. Peter was at my elbow although, having the watch, he should have been aft.

  “That ‘may or may not be’,” he said bitterly, “the Martha Washington. Go to bed, Karli.”

  “But …”

  “No, Karli. Go to bed.”

  I stirred in my sleep at the sound of the great anchors being weighed at first light and at the thunder and rush of bare feet on the deck above me as sail was made and set. I slept again until Orace brought me my morning drink: bitter coffee sweetened only with rum, for the cow had died some days before. I huddled on some clothes and went on deck. The whole ship’s company, it seemed, was staring and peering at the breakers smashing and creaming on the reef outside a low-lying island. There was nothing to see.

  Then, a bellow from the look-out: “Object one point on the port bow! Piece of flotsam and what looks like a corpus, Sir!”

  The Captain, who had been staring fixedly aft, received this news from the Second Mate, who had the watch. He did not look up.

  “Do your duty,” he said, “take in sail, lower a boat, you know what to do, you have an Extra Master’s ticket, I believe.” He said it as though an Extra Master’s Certificate was a token for a soup-kitchen.

  Within ten minutes a half-charred timber was gently swayed aboard with a shockingly charred human being adhering to it – whether lashed to it or clinging by some primal rigour it was hard to say.

  The man was alive; that is to say, he was not dead. One of our fellows cried his name as “Jack Cherry of Salem!” and the man’s face split in what may well have been a smile. They brought him to the break of the poop and the Captain, for he was a Christian, came to look; bent down and asked, “What ship are you from, my man?”

  The charred man eyed him with his left eye – the unroasted one – then raised himself with infinite difficulty on one elbow. A horrible noise came from his chest – I thought it was the death-rattle, but he was only gathering phlegm – then he spat full in the Captain’s face.

  Bully Lubbock reached to the back of his belt for his rope’s end “starter” but the Captain checked him with a gesture.

  “You’ll not lay a finger on this man!” he cried. “Have him taken to an officer’s cabin and see that the doctor and the loblolly-boy give him the best of food and care, for he is a brave fellow.” He reached behind him for the napkin, which his Chinese servant had ready, and wiped the mucus from his face.

  “When he is well he may sign with us at one rating higher than on his – ah – last ship” (he could not name the Martha Washington) “or we shall put him ashore at any place he chooses between Pondicherry and Calcutta with five golden guineas in his pocket. See to it, Mister.”

  They carried the man away with the tenderness which only coarse, rough men know how to exercise towards their mates. When he had gone, I looked up and saw Blanche smiling her enigmatic smile at me. That I found disgusting.

  The Captain’s charity and forbearance cost him little in guineas for the man died that very evening. Next morning he was sewn up in tarpaulin with a forty-pound lump of pig-iron ballast at his foot and the sailmaker, at the end, passed the ritual last stitch through his nose, lest he were not quite dead. The Captain, despite his desperate lust for making sea-miles, had the ship hove-to and the yards cock-billed and read the Service with some colour of sincerity. The sail-maker had cobbled up a Yankee flag and the canvas parcel slid out from under it in quite the proper fashion. But the men, I noticed, were not watching the committal to the deep; their eyes were on the Captain. I looked at Peter but could not catch his eye. I looked at the Second: he looked in my direction, certainly, but his eyes were fixed on something quite one hundred miles away. I detected an uncomfortable feeling throughout the ship’s company. Even the Doctor, who, being but a black man, could not attend a Christian burial – if that is what it was – lurked plainly to be seen in the entrance of his galley and his big, red lips, which I had never before seen without a grin upon them, were pursed and puckered into an expression which I could not read at all.

  That evening I was loafing on the quarterdeck and trying to draw the taciturn Second into conversation.

  “Why,” I asked pettishly after exchanging a few commonplaces, “are my toes so sore? I have never suffered from soreness of the toes in my life.”

  “Sleep in socks or sea-boots,” he said and crossed to the weather-rail. Baffled, I followed him.

  “I confess I do not understand,” I said meekly. He did not turn his head but gave me a sidelong stare with his pale eyes. He was a sidelong sort of man.

  “Cockroaches,” he said. “They love the hard skin on a man’s feet but, after a few days at sea, you’re thoroughly pedicured and must protect your feet or the little buggers will munch their way up to your ankles.”

  I digested this revolting fact, then, since this was almost the longest sentence I had ever heard him utter, I was emboldened to confide that I was not wholly clear about the events of the previous night. Again he gave me that pallid stare; clearly, he was deciding whether to answer me or not. Finally he said,

  “Mr Van Cleef, do you know what a vigia is?”

  “No,” I said unhesitatingly, because this was true.

  “It is a mark on a map. A Portugee word, meaning ‘watch out’. The Frogs call it an ‘ouvre l’oeil’, which amounts to the same thing. It means that there’s a reef or shoal or some other hazard – or at least that the master of some ship, some time, has fancied that he’s seen something of the sort. Nine times out of ten it was just a dead whale or a raffle of unsunk wreckage or the sea breaking on some heavy-heeled floating spar; further south it may have been the last of a ’berg; off the West Coast of Africa just a floating island that some river has spewed out. Often as not it’s just the effect of too much rum.” He fell silent. I prompted him, asking why these interesting facts were connected with what I wanted to know. He heaved a deep, patient breath.

  “Our Captain,” he said, “has a passion for these waters we are in; his charts are a mass of pencilled-in vigias – you may have observed this morning that he was tacking about like a spaniel in a turnip-field. Captain Cattermole – the late Captain Cattermole we must now call him – was a dashing young man who believed in nothing but survey-proven shoals on clean charts. Also, he believed that he could follow where Captain Knatchbull led. Furthermore, as you must have noticed, Captain Knatchbull was not, in fact, leading. R.I.P.”

  “I have the impression,” I said carefully, “that Captain Cattermole was a well-liked man …?” But I had pushed too far.

  “Mr Van Cleef, I have the watch and must ask you to delight me with your conversation at some time when the safety and the working of the ship are not in my hands. If you wish to hear an encomium on Captain Cattermole I suggest you offer a glass of spirits to O’Casey, the red-haired top-man, who sailed with him through three voyages. His watch is below and he will have eaten by now. Indeed, that is the fellow, there, lounging with his pipe in the lee of the foremast-bitts. Goodnight.”

  I began to believe that our chat was at an end so I returned his goodnight and, consumed now with curiosity, I did indeed procure a tin cup of rum and strolled forrard.

  The man O’Casey was an Irish and so had a great gi
ft for speech, although some of this was not always easy to comprehend. I listened politely for a while as he extolled the beauties and virtue of a place called Tralee, then delicately raised the subject of Captain Cattermole.

  “Captain Cattermole?” he said, “Captain Cattermole? A fine raparee of a man: had he but been born in Kerry he would have been perfection itself.” Two fat tears rolled down his weathered cheeks. “A brave bull of a man,” he went on; “when he was in port you could see the women dancing round him like coopers round a cask. When the wind broke from his splendid, God-given arse it would part the thickest of thickets and topple the tallest forest tree. Did he but belch in a genteel fashion the foundations of the poor-house would mutter and crumble and all the old and needy would bless themselves, thanking God for such rich enjoyment. Did he but pick his teeth, why, every cur and cat for miles around would scramble to the feast, leaving their dinners. As to his coupling, when he could bring his lovely mind to it, he was like one of them great steam locomotives working off a grudge against the buffers. I had that from one of his very wives herself.”

  “A bigamist, then?” I asked idly.

  “God save ye, no, a good Cartholic, never more than one wife at the same time at all. It’s just that he was hard on wives, wasn’t I telling you? It might be four he wore out or it might be five and never a child could he get out of any one of them. There’s little scraggy fellers that have their cabins so full of gossoons that they’d splash out between your toes but Jack Cattermole could never get one out of a woman, bump away as he might.”

  “Indeed,” I said in a suitable voice.

  “ ‘Indeed’ is the very two words in it,” he replied.

  The Irish have a wonderful command of language, wonderful. If ever they learn to read and write there will, one day, be great literature from them, mark my words.

  I bade O’Casey goodnight and repaired to my cabin, there to chew reflection’s solitary cud until supper-time.

  Chapter Eleven