Dismissed, Peter and I joined forces and he offered to be my cicerone. I checked him.
“First,” I said, “we eat.”
“Well now,” he began, “there are numerous …”
“No,” I said. “Be guided by me.” He gaped, then grinned sardonically and thrust his hands into his trowsers-pockets.
“Very well, Karli. Lead on, I am in your hands.”
Taking a mental bearing on the flagstaff which I had seen over the wall, I soon found the entrance to the Dutch Factory and we sauntered into the great counting-house, where a dozen pairs of eyes, and as many eyebrows, rose from desks and ledgers to meet us. I studied these people rapidly and selected a youngish man who seemed to be of middle rank and, although his eyes were blue and his hair yellow, was clearly of my own race. Introducing myself courteously, I gave him some vague story of a long-lost uncle who had last been heard of on the China Coast. It was wonderfully pleasant to speak – and to hear again – the good Dutch tongue and he seemed no less pleased to converse with someone fresh from home. Soon everyone in the room was gathered around the desk, gossiping freely. A gong sounded for dinner and we were carried in to a veritable feast, a wonderful blend of Dutch and Chinese food – and great store of it. Peter, at first a little huffed, soon succumbed, for his nature was generous, and winked at me across the mounds of rijsstaffel. Afterwards, for I had been at pains to make myself agreeable, a splendid bedroom was pressed upon us – the place at that time of the year was half empty – and I changed my draft for several smaller drafts and a little gold and silver for pocket money. It was arranged that a Chinese dealer in fine porcelains would be summoned to wait upon me that evening with his wares and that I should pay one half of one per centum on any transaction in exchange for the services of their interpreter.
“Now,” I said, linking arms with Peter as we emerged into the sunlight and stink, “I have exhausted my little skills, please take command and let me follow.”
“Do you mind if I call you a bastard, Karli?”
“Not in the least,” I replied smugly, “for I know that it is not literally true and that you would not say it if you thought so.” He roared with laughter, for he was as full of food and wine and schnapps as I was.
“You are a pompous bastard, then, Karli, a crafty bastard and, I suspect, a lucky bastard. Also, you are drunk.”
“Not yet, but the suggestion is a good one. Where shall we go?”
First we went a-sightseeing the length of Thirteen Factories Street, past the English, Parsee, “Old” English, Swedish, Imperial and Paou Shun Factories until we came to the corner of Old China Street, where the American Factory and the Hong warehouses faced each other. To the right, Peter pointed out an elegant building which was the Consoo Hall, which was a sort of Council Chamber for the Hong and the office of their mutual-assistance-against-bankruptcy fund. (True to the quirkiness of Chinese humour, this was funded not by brotherly co-operation amongst themselves but by an arbitrary ad valorem charge of four or five per centum on all Western goods passing customs, so that the “Western Ocean Barbarians” were, willy-nilly, protecting the Hong merchants against their own rashness in business (God save the mark!) to the tune of some third of a million sterling each year. Although I have no Chinese blood, I could relish the irony of this.)
Strolling a little further, so as to see the fine French Factory, we turned down New China Street between the Spanish and Danish Factories, which flew no flags because they were no longer staffed by Spaniards and Danes, but let out as offices and bedrooms to all sorts of minor commerce-venturers. At the end of this street we entered a sort of square called Respondentia Walk or, after the nearest feature of the river-bank, Jackass Point. This was an alarming place, thronged with pimps and pedlars, whore-masters and hucksters, beggars, loafers, cripples, madmen; drunken sailors from our own ship and a knot of a Chinese policemen who were laying about them with seven-foot staves in their twice-daily pretence of clearing this promenade of undesirables. We made haste to turn left into the thoroughfare between the English and Parsee Factories: this was called by a string of crack-jaw Chinese syllables which meant “Green Pea Street” but was known to all English-speakers as “Hog Lane”.
It was indeed a hoggish place, devoted to drunkenness, the selling of caged birds, threatening demands by able-bodied beggars, the telling of fortunes by professional liars, carneying pleadings by shifty fellows who had failed to pass the examination for mandarin because of enemies in high places, pimps, ponces, perverts and minor civil servants with secrets to sell. Had the street been broader and the faces white, one would have thought oneself to be in Fleet Street.
We shouldered our way to Ben Backstay’s establishment, a gin-shop where Peter was remembered and greeted rapturously. Enough drunken people were kicked and thrown into the street to make a table clear for us. Delicate little dishes of shrimp and duck-skin appeared as if by magic and, as we munched, Peter ordered a bottle of gin, a loaf of sugar, a lemon, and a pot of hot water. This was not to my taste and I signified to the proprietor that I would have what the happily-drunk fellows at the next table were enjoying. This came in a bottle shaped like an Indian club and proved to be “First Chop Rum Number One Curio”, which promised well. Peter shook his head gravely.
“Better stick to gin, Karli, I promise you. That is not only a violent intoxicant but a most inflammatory genital vesicant. In other words, it will not only make you fearfully drunk but also desperately lustful.”
It certainly commenced to make me drunk but as to the other property I cannot honestly vouch because, to speak plainly, I was in those days desperately lustful all the time. I should be most interested to try that drink again, now that I am a little less full of sap.
As I plied my glass with a will, Peter grew more concerned.
“Karli, I beg you, take advice: that is no common puggle-pawnee or nose-paint, it is like firing a charge of dismantling shot into the brain.” I smiled at him reassuringly and sang a stave or two to show how little I had been affected.
“Listen, Karli. Listen, you booby. In an hour you have to do business with a Chinese dealer in porcelains. Business, Karli. Porcelains! For a great deal of money!”
That fetched me. With a magnificent gesture I swept everything off the table, gave Peter my purse and rose to my feet. After the third or fourth attempt I succeeded in rising to them. Peter lugged me to the booth of a Chinese apothecary, where they made me drink something to make me sick; then something else, hot and bitter, which cleared the fumes from my brain. I clearly recall that on the druggist’s counter there was a glass jar full of curious objects and I continued to drink the bitter drench until I could focus my eyes on all the little scraps of ivory, amber, jade, roots and pebbles in the jar. Amongst them was a tooth. It was a human incisor, but half the size of a playing-card, a sure proof that giants had indeed once walked the earth. I longed to buy it but Peter hustled me out. To this day I still wish I had bought it.
At the Dutch Factory I was again quite sober although a little exalted. A fat, richly-clad merchant awaited me in a side-room, accompanied by the interpreter and a disdainful person sitting at a window with his back to us. This last was a merchant of the Hong, for no commerce could take place except through such a person. The porcelains laid out for my approval were good, several of them of a quality such as I had never handled. I picked up the very best piece of all, which I sensed had been included to test my knowledge; it was a plain, undecorated bowl of the richest, deepest ox-blood colour and could not have been later than the fourteenth Century. I put it down again and turned on my heel. I knew nothing of Chinese practice in these matters but I have a deep, inherited knowledge of how to deal with Gentile antique-dealers.
I lit a cheroot and addressed the interpreter.
“Tell this old person that he is under a misapprehension. I am not a drunken sailor looking for trinkets to take home as presents for whores. I have serious funds to dispose of and wish to buy serious wares. Imp
erial wares. Wares with six-character marks. If he has nothing better than these earthenware beggars’ bowls, tell him to borrow some from a dealer of seriousness. I shall be here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.” He caught the small gold coin I flipped at him and bowed me out of the room. Peter was vastly impressed.
I was ill in the night, but not through trepidation.
The wares laid out the next morning were indeed of serious quality, I separated some two-thirds of them and asked a price. The dealer named one.
“Tell him,” I said to the interpreter, “that, when I wish my gravity to be relaxed, I go to where some professional story-teller has unrolled his mat, but when I am conducting business a certain heaviness of the spirit makes it difficult for me to unbend in merriment.” We began to deal. Twice the dealer began to re-pack his wares, thrice I began to walk out of the room with well-feigned impatience. At last we struck a bargain and the dealer put a little dab of ochre on my pieces. When I said that he should return that evening with more and better goods, his face went even blanker than it had been all through our chaffering.
“Wanchee see cash,” explained the interpreter. I showed him enough to convince. By the end of the afternoon I owned porcelain of a quality and quantity beyond my wildest dreams, and still possessed £200 in notes and gold. I was well satisfied. The merchant’s porters carried all away: it was explained to me that it would be at Whampoa, carefully packed and crated, before we sailed. Naturally, I hated to let it out of my sight, but I knew that no merchant with his knowledge would stoop to sharp practice once a deal had been struck.
As I left the room I heard the Hong merchant, who had stared silently out of the window for most of the day, stir in his chair and begin to click his abacus. He had made, no doubt, a pretty commission. For my part, I had made, at the smallest estimate, some twenty-five thousand per centum profit on my capital.
Chapter Fourteen
At Whampoa I found Blanche looking radiant, puzzlingly radiant. I could not help wondering whether she had been practising her late-found skill with one or another of the handsome young Europeans. I particularly wondered whether she had fallen in with any Dutchmen and perhaps tried on them the phrases I had taught her. But I was never a jealous man.
We made but a poor passage down towards the open sea: the winds were either dead foul – and often there was little sea-room for tacking – or else they were non-existent. The Captain’s temper deteriorated hourly; it erupted when the cooper, hat in trembling hand, reported that many of the water-casks were foul.
“Some of ’em’s salt, Sir, and some of ’em’s foul; there’s a liddle dead dog floating in one of ’em. I jest can’t understand it, I watched every one of ’em filled with me own eyes and lidded ’em with me own hands.” He held out his gnarled hands as though they were evidence.
The Captain’s face changed in the most terrifying way: it darkened and swelled until all around expected him to fall to the ground in an apoplexy. But he stepped forward and smashed his fist into the Cooper’s mouth. The Cooper scrambled to his feet and spat a bloody tooth into the scuppers.
“Begging your pardon, Sir,” he mumbled with a sort of dignity, “I signed to be flogged, but I never signed to be struck in the face.” The Captain was twitching all over, his face working, his hands clutching and clutching convulsively.
“Then flogged you shall be,” he whispered at last. “Flogged you shall be. Yes; yes, you shall. Just as soon as we have re-watered, for after the flogging that you are to have you won’t be fit to work for many a day. Oh, many and many a day.”
I must say that I felt a little sympathy for the poor fellow; he was fond of rum and had doubtless been deceived by some Chinese sleight-of-hand, but on the other hand he knew very well that all our lives depended upon his care for the water-casks. Had the spoiled casks not been discovered until we were many miles from a landfall we might have been in grave trouble.
As it fell out, although we were close to many landfalls, we were in the gravest trouble, although we thought it no more at the time than a vexing delay in our race to bring the new season’s teas to London.
A course was set for one of the smaller islands of the Ladrones group – but one where the Admiralty Directions said that there was a safe anchorage and sweet water. By manning the sweeps we reached this anchorage just at dusk and dropped our hook some six or eight cables’-length from the shore. There was nothing to see to landward except the glints of two or three driftwood fires, from the hearths of hovels pitched among the wind-stripped palms.
“Mister,” growled Captain Knatchbull to the Second (who was now, as I have explained, entitled to that form of address since the First was at death’s door and at Macao, whichever be the nearer), “Mister, I’ll have all hands, idlers and all, ready at first light to go ashore to scour and refill water-casks. You’ll see to it that every man who touches a cask will scratch his name or mark on a stave – and may Christ protect anyone who has handled a cask which proves foul, for he’ll get no mercy from me.”
“Aye aye, sir,” said the Second in a thin voice. He leaned over and plucked up the end of the smouldering length of punk which lay coiled in the tub, meaning to light his cheroot. The Captain chose to take this as a piece of nonchalance which, in his mood at that time, was the same as insolence.
“And Mister, secure the ship, if you please. No lights of any kind” – the Second flipped his cheroot over the side – “the galley fire to be out in five minutes. Two lookouts at the mast-head, each responsible for the other’s vigilance, on pain of flogging. I’ll write that on the watch-keeper’s slate and you’ll be so good as to initial it.”
“Aye aye, Sir,” said the Second in the most expressionless voice I have ever heard.
“And, Mr Van Cleef,” the Captain said to where I lurked in the shadows against the lee rail, “reassuring though it is to have your presence so continually on the quarter-deck, I fear we are depriving you of the opportunity to carry out your duties in the lazaretto and the specie-room.”
“Aye aye, Sir,” I said briskly. You cannot go far wrong on ship-board if you say “aye aye, Sir”: almost any other remark can be misconstrued.
As I slipped below I heard the Captain, while still on the companion-way, rasping out an order to Blanche to be ready in four and one half minutes. I gritted my teeth a little, for I was in love with Blanche, as I think I have made clear; moreover, there had been no time in Whampoa to meet any of the adept young ladies Peter had spoken of. My hand on the brass handle of my cabin door, I heard Knatchbull raise the sky-light and address the Second yet again.
“Mister, you understand that ‘secure ship’ means that boarding-nets are to be rigged, do you not?”
“Aye aye, Sir. The nets are being broken out now. They should be in place in precisely four and one half minutes.”
Who would have thought that the bloodless Second would have a sense of humour? It makes me happy to think that his last words were his first jest.
I closed the door of my cabin, kicked off my boots and reached for the plate of delicate eatables beside my bunk. I was at something of a loss as I lay down, for there was nothing to read except the Bible and nothing to think about except the Captain exercising his recondite connubial rites upon Blanche, a few feet above my head. As I munched the doctor’s “tabnabs” I strained my ears for the crack of the lash, the stifled scream, but all was drowned in the patter of bare feet upon the deck as the watch rove the boarding-nets into place, the occasional muffled curse and thud as a seaman lost his footing and a strangled cry of anguish as some clumsy fellow caught his finger, I supposed, in the tackle.
At a loss for pastime, I reached under the bunk and fished out the fat, flat mahogany box which contained my expensive revolving pistol. I drew the charges and loads and cleaned each chamber carefully. The watch on deck seemed to be making a great deal of noise about their task of rigging the boarding-nettings, they were yelling and blundering about like drunken men – woe betide them, I t
hought, if they disturb the Captain at his pleasure.
Yes, sure enough, there was the sound of his cabin door flung open, and a crash as (I hoped) he tripped over a chair and fell heavily. As I finished reloading and fitted the first percussion-cap onto its nipple, Peter flung open our cabin door. I looked up idly. Peter proved to be a huge yellow man with a shining naked head and a shining naked sword in his hand. There was a blood-curdling screech – from both us I fancy – then I shot him in the face. Just such another fiend took his place in the doorway, waving an even larger sword above his head. Time seemed to stand still as I carefully fitted another cap and shot him in mid-spring. His sword bit deep into the foot of my bunk and his blood hosed out in three or four great gushes: I must have severed the aorta. I dragged the two of them right into the cabin (so that they would not attract attention) then bolted the door and sat on my bunk, shaking uncontrollably. When I could master the use of my fingers again I reloaded the two expended chambers, re-capped all with infinite care, span the cylinder. Above my head, from the Captain’s cabin, came a frantic, rhythmical thumping and pounding, a sound that none but a nun could mistake for anything but what it was.
Inside my head the battle began: valour and honour strove to come to grips with and strangle slippery cowardice, who dodged and whined and hid behind the furniture of my mind. Was I a craven hound? Could I skulk behind a bolted door while the woman I loved was being abused and polluted by murderous savages?
Yes, I could. Yet there is some inner resource, deep inside us dastards, which rises up in times of terror and makes us ignore the commands of common sense. Somewhere, close by, a cannon roared; I was too bemused to wonder why or whence but the noise drove me to my feet. I unbolted the door, opened it a crack. Whooping, half-naked, blood-slobbered Chinese – some ten or a dozen – were pouring down the companion-way to the specie-room. I stole out and drew closed the water-tight teak door they had passed through and silently shot the great brass bolts. A-tiptoe, quaking, I mounted until I could just peer out, my nose at deck-level. Much of the tarry standing rigging of the main and foremasts was alight and by its gleam I could see a rabble of pirates forrard, crouched ready to storm the fo’c’sle and only held at bay by the occasional crack of a well-aimed pistol from its darkened recesses.
All the Tea in China Page 22
