We rounded Cape Comorin as neatly as any seaman could wish and were soon making long slants up the Coromandel Coast under all plain sail and sometimes with royals set, accordingly as the wind veered from the east through south to the west. It was an easy, leisurely time, even for the common sailor-folk, but it was plain even to me that they no longer went about their business with their usual “cheerily-oh”.
One night, when we had left Madras’s lights on our port quarter and had no landfall to look for until Vizagapatam, Peter fished out from under his bunk a black, fat-bellied bottle of something called “Van Der Hum’s” which he had prudently laid in at the Cape. It was too sweet for my taste but rich, rich; also as strong as the thighs of a Griqua girl – Peter warned me to turn my head away from my glass when lighting a cheroot, lest my breath should ignite. I was, even in those my salad days, abstemious in all things, but on that night I felt his need to be joined by a friend in becoming a little drunk, and could not deny him so small an act of amity.
“The men,” I said in an off-hand fashion, when Peter had drunk quite one third of the potent bottle, “the men seem to have lost some little of their, ah, zest. Is it not so?”
He looked at me owlishly.
“Seamanship, Karli, is a sort of Freemasonry – are you at all familiar with the word?”
“I have heard it,” I answered guardedly, for I had long ago “tried” him in a veiled way and knew that he was not of our Craft.
“Well, d’you see, Karli, although those Yankees aboard the Martha Washington were, in a way, our deadly rivals, nevertheless many of our people had sailed with many of theirs and there is scarcely a man aboard who has not caroused or brawled with a Martha Washington man in one or another port of the Seven Seas.”
He paused a long while, drinking some more of the villainous Van Der Hum. I did not, for once, say anything, although I wished to tell him about my talk with the Irishman O’Casey.
“So you see, Karli, they feel that our Captain’s little ruse, which lured them onto a coral reef and sent them flaming down to hell, does not seem to them a legitimate ruse de guerre, for there is, you see, no war in progress – only a sordid struggle for commercial advantage in selling poison to heathens. Their sullenness probably arises from a belief that our Captain is a murderous, fucking little maniac.”
I thought about this carefully; slowly, too, for I had drunk my share of the Van Der Hum. At last I said, “And Peter, is our Captain, in fact, a murderous, fucking little maniac?”
Peter rose to his feet, stoney-faced, his eyes like ice.
“Mr Van Cleef,” he said, in a thin, unpleasant voice, “I shall, since you are my mess-mate, pretend that I did not hear that question. However, I cannot promise that I shall overlook any future impertinences of the kind.”
After collecting my thoughts, I too rose. I bowed, but only from the neck, as I had seen Lord Windermere bow.
“I apologise, Lord Stevenage,” I said stiffly. “Pray believe that it was the wine which spoke and not I.”
“Sit down, Karli, there’s a good fellow. And my name’s Peter. And let us kill this bottle before it kills us.”
We drank – in perfect friendship. I shall never understand the English. (There was a time when I thought that I would never understand women, but now, after having owned and trained perhaps twenty spaniels, the female mind is an open book to me. All they ask from life is something to adore and fear: it is as simple as that. But the English men – no one will ever understand them, least of all their women. It is, of course, possible that there is nothing to understand and perhaps, too, that is their great strength. Who can tell?)
By the time Orace entered to put me into my nightshirt I was in the mood to throw pieces of Italian sausage at him and he stalked out, looking very English although but a bastard and small of stature. Peter and I finished the bottle and fell asleep in our clothes. He probably washed his face first, for he was English, English.
The last leg of our passage to Calcutta was “sailed large” for we caught the first of the hot, south-west monsoon and snored up the Coromandel Coast in great style, the sea making a pleasing hiss under our forefoot as it shored through the swell. Not a reef would the Captain allow in her sails although, when the wind stiffened at nightfall, he would sometimes reluctantly have the royals stowed.
From time to time, when no one could observe, I made something of a friend of the strange Irish O’Casey. (I say “when no one could observe” because I was, you see, an officer and he but a common seaman and, to boot, not even English, although he spoke a tongue of which many of the words seemed to be English.) His gift of language was enviable; he could hold me spellbound by the hour although I did not understand one half of what he said. Better, he had great store of mournful ballads, all evincing a terrible homesickness for his land, which is an island off the coast of England, just as England is an island off the coast of Holland. Although, whenever he had a few pounds in his pocket after a voyage, he would go to his home and lord it as long as the money lasted, he would always sing of it as though he was an eternal exile. I remember, but indistinctly, many of these sad songs; in particular one in which he vowed to cross the sea to Ireland even at the closing of his days in order to see the women in the uplands dropping praties on the gossoons making water in the bog. I did not understand this wish but it never failed to bring tears to my eyes. There will one day be an Irish Empire, you may depend upon it.
There was, in truth, little else to keep my mental faculties awake: one day of scudding through a tropical sea is much like another; one balmy, breathless tropic eve, spangled with improbably large stars, is hard to distinguish from its fellows and one hot, tossing, sleepless night spent lusting after a woman who is in bed with a Sea-Captain a few yards above one’s head is only a little more hellish than the last. Having exhausted the tepid pleasures of “Jane Austen” and vainly attempted to woo sleep with the incomprehensible logic of Norie’s Seamanship, I was at last forced to borrow a tattered copy of the Bible from the fo’c’sle.
I learned to love this book. There is no finer compendium of factual and fictional lore to be had, with the possible exception of Captain Burton’s translation of the Arabian Nights, which is unexpurgated. I took care to eschew the more inflammatory passages, such as the Song of Solomon and certain parts of Ezekiel, but my state was such that even when trying to drug myself with the lists of the ancestors of Abraham, I found myself not so much marvelling that Nahor begat Terah but wishing that I could be relishing the begetting-act myself. Such is the magic of the written word.
Our course often took us within sight of shore but this was rarely more than a smudge on the horizon to port, although sometimes we could glimpse white, sandy beaches and palm-trees. Once, when we were in shoaling water and about to change course to starboard, the look-out bellowed “Shipwrecked mariner clinging to wreckage, five cables distant, fine on the starboard bow!” The Captain used his telescope and held course until we came up with the wretched fellow, then had the yards backed and hove-to. This surprised me for by then it was evident that the mariner was by no means shipwrecked, but the master of the most primitive craft you can imagine: he was seated astride a log, half awash, which was attached to a smaller log by means of a sort of basket-work structure which supported a large stone and a length of line.
“A pearl-fisher, Mr Van Cleef,” said the Second curtly, in answer to my question. “Ancient, pre-Dravidian race; ugly. The stone gets him down to the oyster-beds, d’ye see. Bad life. Never make old bones.” The fellow was by now swarming up a rope which had been tossed to him and soon stood on our deck in a puddle of water. He was, indeed, notably ugly and of a deep, blue-black hue. His features could only have been acceptable to others of his race. He was entirely naked and, after one glance (which lasted quite five seconds) Blanche fled modestly from the scene. His male member was pitifully small, resembling nothing so much as a wrinkled hazel-nut but this, I supposed, was due to long immersion in the water. He wru
ng out his long hair onto the deck but this elicited no more than a low growling sound from Captain Knatchbull who, clearly, was determined to show the man civility.
“Greet him,” he growled to the comprador, who addressed a few words of some lingua franca to the fisherman, with an air of great disdain such as you might see in the demeanour of an English parlourmaid bidden to do some task which was “not her work”. The black man’s face burst open into an enormous smile, made the more interesting by the lack of his front teeth and the fact that the remaining ones were of a rich scarlet colour.
He rattled off some words in what must have been a language because the comprador made shift to understand them. A pannikin of fresh water was brought and the man drank it off with every sign of relish.
“No fresh water on this coast,” vouchsafed the Second. “They have to catch the dew.”
After more exchanges the man reached behind him and began to explore the terminus of his digestive tract, bestowing on us all the while that nightmare smile. One of the Captain’s Chinese boys fetched a bucket of sea-water, into which the fisherman dropped the fruits of his rummaging. After rinsing, the nasty nuggets proved to be three pearls. I knew little of such things at the time, but still, perhaps, more than most Gentiles. One was a very fine rose-coloured stone, one a large one but of bad colour and the third smaller but of a most perfect roundness and luminosity. The Captain proffered a half-guinea, somewhat worn and bent. The pearl-fisher gazed at it, horror-stricken, then threw himself upon the deck, patting the Captain’s boots and shrieking in a dignified fashion.
“Well?” asked the Captain of the comprador.
“He says, Sir, you are his father and mother and he is your dog.” The Captain brushed aside the interesting suggestions, ignoring their implications.
“What does he want?”
“He says, Sir, that he wants two whole guineas and a piece of cloth. Thick guineas, he says and new cloth.”
After more shrieking and growling a deal was struck: the blackamoor took two half-guineas, one of them thick, a sprinkle of small silver coins and a short yard of red flannel from the slop-chest. He also begged a wisp of cotton, in which he wrapped his bullion before committing it to the vault where he had kept the pearls. As soon as he was over side the Captain called all officers to the break of the poop. There was a custom in these affairs, it seems.
“Order of seniority,” rasped the Captain. “I claim the pink pearl at half a guinea.” He aimed his eyebrows at us. No one demurred.
Lubbock had next pick. He was, as I have told you, not clever and he claimed the large, ill-coloured stone at the cost of a guinea and a crown. The Second, with a gloomy air which, I fancy, concealed a certain pleasure, pouched the smaller, beautiful pearl for an outlay of half a guinea. The money was then ritually divided between the three, after deducting the initial outlay: each received six shillings and eightpence. It was a glum Carolus Van Cleef who sulked in his cabin that afternoon.
We took in sail and cruised slowly up that coast, taking soundings, for the rest of the day. Sure enough, just before evening another log-borne fisherman was sighted and taken aboard. He had four pearls. “Our turn this time, Karli,” murmured Peter.
The Captain claimed the finest for a half guinea again but then it was “reverse order of seniority” which meant that I had first choice. To everyone’s amusement I selected a large, misshapen pearl of varied colour and secured it for three half-crowns. Such “baroque” pearls are despised in England but I knew how much they were prized by jewellers in Augsburg and Amsterdam. (If ever you are privileged to call on my young friend Ferdinand de Rothschild at Waddesdon, his château, you will be shown wonderful examples, wonderful.) The remaining two might have been brothers, they were not large but perfectly matched. It was conceded that they might be considered a single lot and Peter gave two pounds. Dear fellow, he thought that I had stood back from them out of courtesy to him.
I supped heartily that night and with great contentment. I washed my pearl again, for I am a fastidious man, and admired it for an hour, while Orace sewed me a little bag made out of the tail of my silk shirt so that I could hang it about my neck. Pearls are happiest when close to the warmth and natural grease of the human skin, everyone knows that.
We reached the end of the pearling-coast and clapped on sail again until there came a day when we found ourselves at the Mouths of the Ganges and hove-to at the entrance to the Hooghly River awaiting a pilot, while our Captain paced up and down, munching his beard impatiently. Even he, let alone anyone in his senses, would not try to navigate the Hooghly unassisted, for the whole stretch of it is a treacherous maze of mud- and sand-banks, forever shifting. The pilot-cutter came dancing out to us the next morning and a little tea-coloured man skipped aboard, nodding and becking daintily but with a curious dignity, and introducing himself as “Mister Pilot D’Souza”.
“Well, Mister Pilot D’Souza,” growled our Captain, “pray take the conn and get this bucket up to Shalimar Point as soon as may be: I want my hook in Garden Reach before dark.”
The little man was wonderfully skilful; he rapped out orders to the helmsman in an unending succession all day long, leading our ship in the most improbable directions along and across the vast, muddy river. The Captain stood behind him for much of the time, sometimes snorting but never once contradicting an order. The pilot asked for a new helmsman every hour or so, for the work was testing, and this was not denied him. Sure enough, we dropped our anchor just before dusk and the Captain immediately called away his gig to set the pilot ashore. At the last moment, he decided to join him and bade the First Mate to join the party. I think he wanted to make sure that no other skipper in the trade was there before him.
Peter Stevenage had the anchor-watch and, after having the boarding-nets spread (for there are thieves in Calcutta), he retired to the taffrail for a snooze. The Second was in his cabin as usual, moodily pulling the wings off flies, I fancy. In the circumstances, my usual little meeting at the rail with Blanche was in more darkness than usual and more private. I taught her a new Dutch sentence in which one or two words were so close to English that I think she must have suspected that it cannot really have meant “Where is there a good milliner in this town?” This night my schoolmasterly kiss strayed to her lips and was answered warmly although it was clear that she had never been taught to kiss in the way that lovers do. I taught her. She had misgivings at first but was soon an adept pupil, so engrossed in this new art that she seemed unaware that my hand had firmly captured one of her delightful breasts. Her breathing quickened but all of a sudden she broke away, bade me goodnight and fled to her cabin. I was puzzled and chagrined as I stood by the rail alone, until I heard what she must have heard sooner: a boat approaching, the oars propelled by the long Navy-stroke which our Captain always insisted on.
I, too, fled, but to the galley to see what was for supper. The doctor had bought from a bum-boat some hens and coconuts and was confecting a kari-stew of these which ravished my nostrils. (How strange it is that language has words for being deaf, dumb and blind but no word for the shocking deprivation of being without the sense of smell! To speak plainly, I would rather be dumb, although not deaf, because I love to hear what certain grandchildren murmur behind my back: I should not like to write an ill-considered will.)
I found Peter on the poop and we leaned and gazed in silence at the thousands of little flickering lights which flowered and died in the great heathen city, listened to the strange sounds of drums and wailing music which wafted across the water to us and, when a little off-shore breeze arose, snuffed the scented air – an air laden with spices, woodsmoke, rotting fruit and shit. It was a magical moment and my spirits were exalted beyond the plane of mere human existence and its attendant lures of Captain’s wives.
“Are there many whores in Calcutta?” I asked Peter at last.
“More than you could pleasure in a life-time, Karli. The best and safest are the temple-prostitutes: to them it is a religio
us rite.”
“Do you mean that it is free?”
“Of course. But, of course, you must make a donation to the temple treasure, that is only civil. Besides, it does save your throat from being slit on the way home.”
“That seems prudent,” I said.
Later, I ate great store of the hens seethed in spices and coconut-milk but when I went to bed my thoughts turned again to Blanche and my supper lay surlily on my stomach like a hastily-chewed dead dog. Sleep was slow to come and, when it came, was visited with evil dreams. Peter woke me up once or twice, saying that I had been speaking unguardedly in my sleep. I took my bedding onto the deck but certain flies stang me so bitterly that I fled back to the hot and fusty cabin.
Promptly, as the ship’s bell struck to signify the end of the watch at noon, next day, the Captain made his appearance on the deck in a splendid uniform, gallooned with gold braid, that I had never seen before. Lubbock was awaiting him, also clad in some sort of marine finery which made him look quite gentlemanlike. They were attended by the comprador and the Captain’s two Chinese boys, all bedecked in silks and marvellous head-cloths. The Second glumly joined the glittering throng, wearing a rusty garb of antique cut, made all the more shabby-looking by the splendid sword at his hip. The Captain was off to inspect the first wares at the opium auction.
Peter, who once again had the anchor-watch – an undemanding chore – confided to me that he proposed to become a little drunk.
I do not much love to become drunk of an afternoon when the weather is hot, so I took but a glass with him before retiring to the lazaretto to check the slop-chest stores, the comprador being ashore, you see.
There Orace found me, fast asleep upon a pile of oilskins, an hour or two later. He looked at me curiously as I rubbed my eyes, for he was growing up fast, then delivered his message. “Mum” – by which he meant the Captain’s wife – “sends her compliments and wishes you to take a dish of tea with her in half an hour.”
All the Tea in China Page 17
