by V. E. Ulett
The steward shook his head with a withering look in Captain Thorpe’s direction, and closed his fist around the coins. As the steward withdrew, Thrax leaped from Miriam’s basket and slid out the cabin door.
Thrax leaving, and something in the set of Captain Thorpe’s shoulders as he leaned over to close the cabin door, warned Miriam of an attack. In one practiced motion she lifted her skirt and withdrew the three and half inch blade from her stocking, meeting Captain Thorpe in a fighting stance, with the sgian dubh held firmly in an underhand grip.
He lunged toward her and instead of backing away, Miriam stepped into him and drove the blade in its wooden sheath up toward Captain Thorpe’s belly.
Captain Thorpe spun away to avoid the blow. “Well done, Miss,” he whispered. “More force next time, a man’s skin is tough like hide, tight like a drum. Thrust the knife in with all your weight behind it.”
He came at her again and Miriam mimicked stabbing him on one side and then the other, underneath his last rib and up into his vital organs. It was perfectly understood that he could neither attack her realistically nor she defend fiercely, but they still went through the motions. At last they stood close together, both panting slightly from their exertions and the effort of fighting without making a sound.
“You have flipped your wig, Doctor,” Miriam said.
Captain Thorpe snorted. It had come off first thing and lay on the deck like a strange hollowed out creature. He took her hand and led her to sit side by side with him on the berth.
“How I shall miss your good cheer,” Captain Thorpe said, “and in truth, everything about you.”
Miriam gave in to a desire to lean upon him, her head on his shoulder, their hands still clasped.
“Nay, I don’t know how I am to part with you, nor keep from coming after you directly you sail.”
The British strategy called for Captain Thorpe to wait a fortnight before following Miriam into the South China Sea, to give the pirates ample time to strike.
“I hope...” Miriam’s throat went dry. She swallowed with difficulty. “With all my heart, I hope it will be a short separation. But there is no sense in supposing what may happen.”
She looked down at their joined hands and began to gently pull hers away. Captain Thorpe did not resist.
He nodded his head. “We Scots say supposing is not sense, nor is talk love.”
Miriam gripped his hand one last time and then let go. Captain Thorpe asked her to repeat the details of the exit strategy aloud—Navy fashion—and together they checked over the accoutrement that were part of the plan.
“You are a brave woman,” Captain Thorpe said, his voice full of emotion. “Better not begin than stop without finishing, is your way of thinking. Stay alive, Miss Miriam, and I shall find you.”
The attack happened at night and in light winds, just as when Nonesuch came down from that last glorious ascent. Miriam, lying fully clothed in her berth, heard the first shouts from the crew on deck, the sound of the pirate craft bumping against Caldera, and the thuds and guttural cries as the attackers gained her deck. A furious rapping started up on her cabin door. Miriam rose and flung the door open for Captain Clooney.
“God help us, Miss,” Captain Clooney cried, rushing in. “It’s happening again! Put these on and come with me. I can’t believe it’s happening again!”
He gave her a set of men’s clothing, trowsers and jacket, to disguise herself as a ship’s boy.
“Hurry, Miss, there’s not much time. There are three great junks grappled to us! The watch on deck won’t be able to keep off so many. If they spend their fury while we take refuge in the hold, we might go unmolested.”
Miriam thanked Captain Clooney in a distracted halting way, and then stared purposefully at the door of her cabin.
“Oh! Yes, ma’am,” he said, and hastened outside.
Thrax was perched on Miriam’s berth, staring at her intently. Miriam pulled the trowsers on, tucked in the skirt of her gown, and secured the whole with a number of scarves knotted round her waist. She donned the jacket and gathered her hair beneath the cap Saramago made her. Miriam peered past Thrax at her reflection in a small square looking glass positioned above the cot. Thrax bumped her aside, and for a moment its reflection replaced her own in the glass. The animal lifted its lips and hissed with menacing intent.
They turned with one accord to the door. Miriam yanked it open and Thrax rushed out. The Hell-Cat was no larger in size as it disappeared into the bowels of the ship than the Hong Kong rats it used to bring into Goh Cheng Cheng’s gardens. There it would sit happily crunching away, the perpetrator of a scene of gore in the most beautiful setting.
In the passage outside her cabin, it was not Captain Clooney but Goh Cheng Cheng that awaited her.
“You see why I do not countenance cats?” Goh Cheng Cheng jerked his head in the direction Thrax had pisamdeared, as Saramago would say. “This way, madam. The captain and the watch below did not feel they could wait longer, before hiding themselves in the hold.”
Much good it did them. Goh Cheng Cheng led Miriam down and down, to the furthest recesses of the hold where the goods of his merchant house, as well as those of many others, was stacked and packed with great precision. Holding up a dark lantern, Goh Cheng Cheng guided Miriam to a hiding place among crated porcelains. Many pairs of wide eyes near them reflected the lantern light before Goh Cheng Cheng extinguished it.
An anxious wait ensued there in the dark, with the heavy respiration of frightened men round her, hoping the pirates would be too distracted to find and loot them. Miriam touched the dagger strapped in her half boot. Only in the last exigency did she feel she could use it. It was hot and airless in the hold.
Miriam suspected any resistance the crew on Caldera’s deck offered the pirates was probably overcome by the time she and Goh Cheng Cheng were descending the ladders. Over their heads, in that calm sea, Miriam and her companions listened to a fearful carouse. It sounded as though the pirates were dancing and drinking, and throwing and dragging the furnishings about.
“What is going on?” she breathed to Goh Cheng Cheng.
“Just a little sport, madam, do not concern yourself,” Goh Cheng Cheng replied in Cantonese, which Miriam understood thanks to Jugma Bora. “They will find us out soon enough. And take everything away.”
Goh Cheng Cheng’s resigned and despairing tone caused Miriam the first chill of fright. Why she wasn’t afraid before this Miriam could not say, ass-like stupidity probably. Somehow the practical old merchant’s cold certainly made clear to her the chaotic, dangerous situation she was in.
A half dozen men came noisily down the ladder to the hold, casting lantern light in wide circles round them, hooting as they found each new section of goods. Tea, silks, sugar, rice, coffee, indigo, and opium. At last they worked their way back to where Miriam and her companions hid, among the crates of chamber pots.
“Here’s the Captain!” cried one of the men, striding up to Captain Clooney and knocking him in the head with the lantern in his fist.
“Name your ransom price,” Goh Cheng Cheng said, “to let the ship and her cargo and crew pass, and I shall pay it.”
The pirate sprang on Goh Cheng Cheng with fists and feet, knocking the older man to the deck. Miriam and Captain Clooney shrank back.
“Enough of that!”
A tall man of commanding air, bent over in the enclosed space, issued the order.
“You never know which ones will bring the best ransom,” the tall man said.
“Yes, Khun.”
“Or which will interest the Golden Dragon.” The khun, or chief, paused and ran his eye over Miriam in a chilling, appraising way. “Bring them on deck with the others. Get started on this cargo without delay.”
Miriam went over to where Goh Cheng Cheng was rising, supporting himself against a barrel. She gave him her shoulder to lean on as the captives made their way through the hold to the ladders.
On deck Miriam, the seamen who�
��d survived the night, Captain Clooney, and Goh Cheng Cheng, remained shivering all night. They were surrounded by three large junks and a dense fog covering the calm—but oh! nowhere near peaceful sea. Throughout the night, during which the pirates worked steadily to relieve Caldera of the merchandize in her hold, cursing and the sound of fists broke out among the men of the junks. They would occasionally leave off their labors to brutalize one of the crew, Captain Clooney, or Goh Cheng Cheng, with the flat of their fearsome kris. They seemed to be under orders not to beat Miriam, but periodically her cap or outer garments were pulled and tweaked.
Miriam shuddered at each touch. No one was more aware than she how much gender is a performance. She knew her men’s clothes didn’t fool the khun of the pirates, or any of them, because she chose not to change the way she walked, her mannerisms, her distinctly feminine carriage. On deck Miriam stayed near Captain Clooney and Goh Cheng Cheng, rather than try to blend in with the seamen as a ship’s boy should do.
She both feared and longed for the coming of day. Dawn broke and showed the deck of Caldera strewn with tea, coffee, sugar, and broken glass from the skylight the pirates crashed through during their excesses of the night. Peering over the ship’s side Miriam observed the junks grappled to Caldera. Men were filling large open stowage compartments on the junks’ decks with Goh Cheng Cheng’s cargo. At the same time a homely scene was taking place on the decks of the pirate craft—the cooking of breakfast, women and children, and even dogs and poultry gamboling about.
The sight of the pirates’ families struck Miriam oddly. Even robbery, assault and battery, could be a family business. When the mists began to lift with the advancing day, a great hue and cry arose from everyone aboard the junks. Coming at them at speed was a fleet of a dozen more pirate ships.
The khun threw down his bowl of rice porridge and pelted across to Caldera, cuffing and calling to his men as he came. He ran up and shouted in Captain Clooney’s face.
“He says, put this ship in motion,” Goh Cheng Cheng translated for the captain. “Sail this ship and follow him to those leeward islands, as you value your life!”
Shaking and trying to wet his parched lips, Captain Clooney stood up.
“None of the men had anything to eat or drink,” Miriam said to Goh Cheng Cheng. “Make them give the sailors rice and water, and then they may sail the ship.”
Goh Cheng Cheng turned to the khun, who cut him off with a wave of his hand. “I understood the farang, what do you take me for?”
The pirate captain eyed Miriam, a long considering stare, and shouted orders in harsh tones to his ship. Immediately a large pot of rice and one of tea was handed across. The sailors, Captain Clooney, and Goh Cheng Cheng, crowded in on the food. Miriam was stepping forward to claim her share, when her arm was gripped by the khun.
“Now you will learn how your kindness is answered, foreign devil.” The man hissed in Miriam’s ear. “Cry out if you want to see them die.”
The khun pulled her toward the stern of the ship. The last bundles of merchandize were being tossed aboard the pirate craft, no longer grappled to Caldera, before they made their escape. He pointed over the side at Caldera’s jolly boat.
“Into the boat, we are taking it too,” the khun said. “No shouts, no calls.”
From the stern of the boat, with the tall, brown, muscular khun sitting beside her on the thwart, Miriam watched the scene aboard Caldera. Captain Clooney and Goh Cheng Cheng, having once raised their heads from the trough, realized Miriam was not among them and raced for the lee rail. Goh Cheng Cheng was leaning over the bulwark, raising his clasped hands toward the boat and shouting, “No! Take me, take me!”
Poltroon was the word that rose to Miriam’s mind when Captain Clooney, seeing the boat at an irrevocable distance, came forward and added his pleas in a much louder voice than the poor abused supercargo.
“No!” Miriam screamed back.
Thrax was suddenly up on the lee rail, pacing forward and aft with rapid flicks of its tail at every turn. Its head was turned toward the water, concentrating on the surface.
“No!” Miriam cried again. “Oh stay!”
At that instant Thrax leapt overboard, went underwater, and came up stroking toward the jolly boat.
The boat was nearing the khun’s ship. Miriam’s heart pounded to see Thrax pursuing her across the divide, its delicate limbs pumping away under water.
“Go back! Oh!”
Miriam was crying in earnest, for the khun ordered the oars shipped to allow Thrax to come closer. Within reach of the boat Thrax raised its upper half above the surface, kicking wildly with its hind quarters. Bobbing its head, Thrax looked for a landing spot within the boat.
At an order from the khun an oar came thwacking down, aimed at Thrax’s skull. Miriam screamed. Thrax dove and surfaced next alongside the boat’s quarter. Weaving there in the water like an ancient sea creature, Thrax’s yellow eyes locked on Miriam. Another oar came down and Miriam heard a decided conk.
“No! My God, no! Thraaaax!”
Thrax went under and did not come up again. Tears blinded Miriam in the confusion that followed. The khun and his men in the boat were laughing in triumph over the cat. She was pushed up the side of the junk. The khun gave her into the charge of one of his women, who led her amidships to where the cargo was stowed. Before she was invited to get down into a stowage compartment, the woman handed Miriam a bowl of rice porridge and a bowl of tea.
“Safer for you.” The woman made a motion with her head that Miriam should step down, and then threw a meaning glance in the direction of the dozen junks coming up with a press of sail.
Sniffling and blubbering, and balancing the two bowls, Miriam climbed down into a rectangular wood box set into the deck of the vessel. The woman gave Miriam a pitying look before she and a companion fixed the lid over the compartment.
One and three quarters of a mile away, a wet and furious creature came up on the beach of the nearest of the atoll for which the pirates were fleeing. Tigers were not unknown on the mainland of that part of the world, but though this cat was the size of a tiger it had a coat the tawny color of the Thracian steppes. It shook sea water from its fur in brisk fashion, and proceeded to sniff about, ending with its muzzle in the air. The Hell-Cat’s lips pulled away from its fangs as it concentrated on tasting the wind. Swinging its great head down, it set off with a low snarling growl in the direction of the next islet in the atoll.
Chapter Twelve
Maximus had been dissatisfied and bedeviled ever since Miriam sailed in Caldera. On the desk before him in the great cabin were sketches and calculations of the optimum shape and angle of the stunsails during ascent and landing that he’d been working on, to save his sanity. For the last ten minutes, though, Maximus had been writing in a journal. He dipped his pen and began again in the mixture of Gaelic and English he used for this personal diary, to confuse the enemy.
“Saramago tiptoes round me, telling his mates, ‘Have a care and no cross the skipper, he fit to ’splode.’ I have been angry, damnably hipped, snappish, and frustrated, but it is with my own weakness. I should have prevented that dear woman from throwing herself in the way of danger, whatever it might have cost me in loss of her esteem. The truth is I was afraid to displease her. I only said she should go to live with my relations—my relations!—because I thought it was what she wanted to hear, nay needed to hear, for the sake of honour. Instead disappointment filled that lovely face, and how I have repented those words! Each hour and day that passes increases my grief and regret, for what might be happening to her, for not using the time I had with her in Hong Kong to better purpose. Do I deceive myself? Can it really be that dearest of women wants to live with me—and this motley crew of mine—aboard a crack ship?”
Saramago slid into the great cabin, and at sight of his steward’s eager face Maximus leaped up so forcefully he knocked over the desk chair.
“El capitán Americano, your honor,” Saramago said, righting the
chair. “The watch say it’s the Flincher, Sir, put in on native junk.”
As soon as Miriam sailed, Maximus caused a watch to be set at the quay. For Caldera, or any sight of Captain Clooney or a deputation sent to negotiate ransom.
“Second best hat and coat, Saramago.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Saramago knuckled his forehead, turned as though to obey, and stopped. “You no believe who captain de junk as brought the Flincher in, sir.”
Maximus pushed past his steward into his sleeping cabin, stowed his private journal, and came out with the uniform jacket and cocked hat under his arm.
Saramago called after Maximus. “That creature el Bora it was, sir!”
Maximus was in a muck sweat by the time he reached the building where the British Consul had his headquarters. Inside the spacious entryway, Maximus pulled his shirt away from his skin and stood for a moment beneath the ceiling fans. A system of belts, wheels, and servants kept the fans in constant motion. Maximus was collecting himself to go in to the Consul when out of Francis Blackwell’s private chamber issued Jugma Bora. Seaman Bora stepped out with a swagger and a pleased, self-satisfied smile on his lips.
“You there, hold hard!” Maximus said.
The smug look instantly left Bora’s face and he took fright, dashing forward and back, performing a dance with Maximus in the anti-chamber.
“This will nae do, ye great weasel.” Maximus punched Bora in the head, then moved round and caught him by the back of the neck on the rebound. “We will be revisiting his honor Mr. Blackwell now, sure.”
Maximus burst into the Consul’s private office without a knock or by your leave, clutching seaman Bora, whose eyes rolled in his head. Francis Blackwell and Captain Clooney started to their feet.
“What is the meaning of this, sir?” Captain Clooney cried. “Unhand the good Chinese. That man was the only one to speak for us, after the others stripped Caldera bare. They took our boats, sir.” Captain Clooney appealed to Francis. “Every scrape of canvas. Sheets, lines, and spars, even the rudder. Left us to grind away on our beef bones.”
