The East Indiaman

by The East Indiaman (retail) (epub)

  ‘Keep a sharp lookout.’

  Had Kite, detecting his nervousness, given him a task to take his mind off his fear? McClusky feared so, but it would do not good to admit the matter and in any case the task was a necessary one. Turning his head he strained his eyes into the impenetrable darkness. After a moment or two it was not so impenetrable. He saw the loom of the hills against the dark grey of the cloudy sky, and caught the faint, intermittent gleam of the surf along the pallid crescent of the shore-line.

  Still, it was difficult to orientate himself within the great curve of the bay and he wondered how Kite steered with such confidence, for he never looked once at the boat-compass. McClusky tried to recall the last seen disposition of the junks. They had all been lying at anchor, their sails lowered, in full possession of the bay. But how could they locate them now when the schooner’s boat seemed adrift and purposeless upon the vast ocean? The land breeze was getting up all the time, slapping small waves against the bow of the boat and making her rock and dip. Occasionally an injudicious oarsman, in leaning forwards and propelling his oar-blade forward, would slap one of these little wave-caps, making a noise that, McClusky thought, would betray them all. As he stared ahead McClusky perceived the matter of heroism as more complex than he had first imagined.

  Then, quite close, McClusky saw the long pendant trailing from a junk’s main mast truck elevate itself above the rim of the hills. Silently he seized Kite’s arm and silently pointed.

  Kite had taken his bearings carefully that afternoon as soon as the resolution not to abandon his anchor had formed. It was not a matter of ‘face’ for Kite, it was a mater of dire necessity. The Spitfire carried only three anchors, her two bowers and a light kedge, so the loss of one of the bowers in so remote a location was serious. In extreme conditions one never knew when an anchor might not be the difference between life and death. Kite had noticed the tidal drift along the Hainan shore as they had stood to seaward. He had also lain anchored for long enough to have determined the times of high and low water and, although the offshore stream did not necessarily conform to the local culmination of the tidal range, he was confident that, even after dropping the junks over the horizon and waiting for the end of twilight, he could return Spitfire sufficiently close to anchorage to launch the boat with a fair prospect of relocating the junks. He was less confident about what he would find the commander of the junks had done, but he guessed that the Chinese officer would have established possession of the bay beyond doubt and that his chief concern would be to ensure the foreign devils had been driven out to sea. This would mean that he would not hurry away, even though he had a trophy to prove his diligence in the imperial cause. The certainty with which Rahman had advised Kite of the importance of the anchor to the Chinese had impressed Kite and it was Rahman’s hunch that he was now banking on. Kite knew that the recovery of the anchor would take some time, for the Chinese, though Rahman had told him they possessed a sophisticated windlass, would not find it easy to adapt this to accommodate the heavy cable that Spitfire had slipped. It was therefore Kite’s assumption that the Chinese commander would delay its recovery until he was confident that the foreign devils were not going to return. Only then could he assign one of his three vessels to the task of weighing the anchor and he could not do this until daylight the following morning. From what he had observed, Kite was almost sure that one of the junks had however picked up the end of the cable and, instead of using her own anchor, now lay to that of the Spitfire.

  With this as the basis of his plan, Kite had ordered the boat away, instructing Harper to follow them in after an hour and now McClusky clasped his arm at the very same moment that Kite himself saw the junk’s masthead. He leaned against the tiller and swung the boat’s head away from the junk. First he must determine which of the three Chinese vessels actually lay to the Spitfire’s anchor. The bulk of the junk’s hull loomed alongside as the men pulled with admirable doggedness and Kite tried to see under her bow, but this proved impossible as they pulled past. No sound came from the junk’s darkened deck and Kite took the boat ahead and then whispered the command, ‘oars!’ The men ceased rowing, the oars came up horizontally; the boat lost way and the wind swung her broadside. Kite judged their leeway as it accelerated and, leaning forward, tapped the stroke oarsman’s hands. ‘Two strokes,’ he whispered and the single oar dipped twice, adjusting the drift a little. Kite peered to larboard. In the darkness he could just make out the line of the junk’s cable. He thought it had a slender, spiky appearance and instantly ordered the oarsmen to give way. The junk’s cable was twisted of bamboo strands, not made of Riga hemp like Spitfire’s. As the oarsmen bent to their task and Kite swung the boat away in search of the second junk he was assailed by three fears. The first, that they were too close and would fall athwart the junk’s bow, was soon proved groundless as the men tugged the boat clear; the second, that their proximity to the craft and their almost desperate attempts to pull away would alert any watch left on deck, took a little longer to dwindle. But the third, that they would be unable to find the other junks, or that having done so none would be secured to Spitfire’s anchor and cable, lasted a good deal longer.

  For almost a quarter of an hour the boat pulled round in a widening circle as Kite strove to keep the first junk as a reference point. In fact several times he lost her and then found her again before finally realising that she had vanished in the gloom to seaward. But at almost the same instant that Kite began to consider giving up his quest, McClusky grabbed his arm again and hissed a warning.

  They had worked their way inshore and were almost under the bow of a second junk before Kite reacted. The next moment there was a tumbling noise forward, a suppressed curse and the boat heeled dangerously as the men, all muttering nervously, strove to keep her from over-setting. They had run foul of the very cable they were seeking and as the oar-blades were swept aft and the looms ran forward, one man was hit in the face.

  As the boat steadied and the men began to sort out the muddle, Kite waited for the intervention from the deck above and he hissed for silence. His anxiety communicated itself to the rest of the boat’s crew and they all sat there like statues, their hearts beating with fear. But nothing happened; it appeared that the crew of the junk were all fast asleep. Realisation permeated the boat slowly. Kite was unwilling to accept it as fact until he was certain; the men, persuaded sooner, grew restless at their commander’s inactivity and he was compelled to hiss a second time for silence. But at last he gave the order in a whisper. ‘Pass the stopper.’

  A three-inch rope was clapped about the heavy cable with a rolling hitch and led forward to the bow thwart where it was made fast. As soon as this had been accomplished Kite ordered the cable itself cut. Reaching up as high under the bow of the junk as possible, the carpenter began a cautious sawing of the hemp hawser. It took some minutes but at last the final strands parted of their own accord under the weight of the junk. The end of the cable dropped into the water with a heavy splash, there was a moment’s hiatus while the three-inch rope, acting as intermediary between the weight of the sinking cable and the boat, was slackened away, lowering the heavy cable to the seabed. When the bowman felt it go slack, he caught a turn; with a jerk the rope tugged the boat’s bow head to wind. Kite peered astern. The high square bow of the junk was drifting away and he could see her larboard side as she swung broadside to the wind. Someone on board might notice the change of motion but with luck she would drift out to sea before anyone was alerted to the fact that they were cast loose.

  Carefully Kite stood up and, his back to the junk in an attempt to obscure her from the light, he raised the lantern and uncovered it.

  ‘I hope to God Harper sees this,’ he muttered to no-one in particular, voicing his thoughts without knowing it. Silent amens were added to this plea by those who heard it. When he had stood for a moment or two, Kite resumed his seat.

  ‘Well, we must wait for Mr Harper now,’ he said in a low voice.

  Ch
apter Nineteen

  The Pearl River

  Kite felt an unwonted lightness in his mood as he contemplated the scene before him. The estuary of the Pearl River was hemmed to the north by the uneven outline of the coast of Kwangtung that rippled along the horizon from west to east like a recumbent grey-green dragon. The prospect gripped his imagination for a moment in so fanciful a fashion as make him chuckle to himself. Then, mindful of his dignity, he raised his glass again. The sea, rippled by the light breeze, seemed filled with craft. These varied from tiny sampans to large junks whose tasks and function Kite could only guess at, varying from fishing to the carriage of coastal cargoes. Two large ship-rigged vessels were also standing north under easy sail, either East Indiamen or Country ships from Bengal or Bombay, they were too far distant for him to make out their ensign with confidence. The former would, he knew, wear the gridiron ensign of John Company, whereas the latter would wear the plain and undistinguished red ensign of Great Britain. Perhaps, however, they might bear the flags of Austria or Denmark, their owners entrepreneurs, their status that of interlopers, as he was himself.

  Harper had the deck and was coaxing every quarter-knot he could out of the Spitfire as she lifted gently to the low swell, the last remnant of the typhoon. It had taken them four days of frustratingly light breezes that had beset them since they left the bay on the coast of Hainan. Kite watched as three men forward prepared the starboard bower anchor for dropping, the same anchor that had so lately been a trophy of the Chinese.

  They had had to wait for three quarters of an hour for Spitfire to reach them after cutting the Chinese war junk adrift, by which time moonrise was a bare half an hour away and every moment they expected to hear shouts of alarm as the crew of the drifting junk woke to their predicament. But she had been wafted out to sea and by dawn her crew would have found themselves alone on the ocean, the coast under which they had been anchored the previous evening a blue bruise on the horizon. As for Spitfire, as soon as Harper had located them and taken the end of the messenger attached to the cable to the windlass, Kite and his boat’s crew had clambered aboard, the boat had been streamed astern and they had bent all their efforts to heaving in the cable and its anchor. The moon had been rising as they finally broke the anchor out of the sandy bottom of the bay and, filling their sails, stood out to sea.

  The two other junks were illuminated in the moonlight but no sound or movement came from them as they were finally swallowed up in the general obscurity of the coast astern. Daylight found them alone at sea once more. To the west the hills under which they had found shelter had given way to a low coast extending northwards as far as Hai Nan Point and the strait between Hainan Island and the mainland peninsula of Lui Chow. That forenoon they had had time to heave-to and hoist in the towed boat. Moreover the following days of light breezes and calms, frustrating though they were to their progress north east, had nevertheless allowed them the opportunity to lower the sails and repair them properly after the brief action with the war junks.

  Rahman was certain the three junks were imperial craft and not pirates. He cited the yellow colouring of their upperworks and the dragons wrought about them as indicating official status, but confessed that many such devices were ‘borrowed’ by less legitimate operators along the coasts of Hainan, Kwangsi and Kwangtung. It was the horse-tail streamers flying from the mastheads of the junks that clinched it, Rahman asserted.

  ‘They were probably on a tax-gathering voyage,’ he amplified, ‘and came upon us by chance, or as a result of some fishing-boat’s report. Although we saw no people, many will have moved inland while the typhoon raged along the coast and it is certain we were seen.’

  Kite was glad to have this information after leaving the bay, but he still nursed a slight anxiety over their escape. Sooner or later the commander of those junks would report to his superiors and they in their turn might come looking for a strange schooner. He voiced this concern to Rahman.

  ‘It is possible, Kite Sahib, but you can be certain of one thing, that the matter will be reported in a manner favourable to the Chinese mandarin in command. He will not want to lose face and he will remain attached to his story that he drove you out of the bay. After all, Kite Sahib,’ Rahman said with a wide smile, ‘he does not know it was you who cut him adrift. Indeed he will have told his officers that the cable parted, and that this proves the inferiority of your ground-tackle.’ Rahman seemed delighted with this explanation, but Kite, having no such knowledge of the oriental turn of mind, remained sceptical. He had much to concern him, for the matter of the keel bolt still undermined his confidence in Spitfire and they had yet to deliver themselves of the cargo of opium.

  It was odd therefore, that he felt so cheerful as they approached their destination. But the sun was warm on his back, the sky was blue and the sea a limpid green. Sarah and Nisha were on deck in their finery and he was faced with the prospect of profit after so long and arduous a voyage. Kite could not quite admit to himself that his mood of elation was the brittle unreasonable excitement of the gambler seduced by the prospect of his stake yielding him a prize. Why should he? He had been too much beset by worry not to enjoy the freedom of unconcern, no matter how transitory.

  As they crept closer to the land Rahman pointed out the distant landmarks: the hill tops above Macao and the vaguely delineated cleft in the summits which marked the entrance to the Pearl River, a narrowing of the river’s mouth defended by Chinese forts and known to the British traders as the Bocca Tigris. As interlopers, Rahman had advised, they should keep to the westwards, stand north past Macao Road and anchor off Keow Island. The Indiamen worked up to Whampoa, ten miles downstream from Canton, but their own discharge of so small a quantity of illegal opium would be better effected by a local arrangement.

  ‘You want cash, Kite Sahib, silver cash which you do not want to deposit with the Company for remittance to England.’

  But now Kite vacillated. He was not certain. Might not all Spitfire’s keel bolts be weakened and, if they were, might not a disaster ensue?

  He had kept these worries to himself, not troubling Sarah with his preoccupations. Nor did he express them to Harper, his closest professional confidant. In the end he agreed with Rahman’s presumption; he had little choice, for if Spitfire fell apart they would probably all drown and he shied away from making himself beholden to the East India Company. He agreed with Rahman.

  ‘And how will you negotiate a price, Mister Rahman?’

  ‘When we have anchored, we will be approached by a shaw-bunder from the Chinese Custom House. We will open negotiations with him.’

  ‘It is that easy?’

  ‘The shaw-bunder wishes to live, like all men, Kite Sahib, and the emperor is distant. We must pay squeeze, but a small consignment is attractive and will make him a fortune. We are not acting on behalf of the Company, the dues and duties will be kept to a minimum because we will appeal to his greed. He will keep the matter secret because it is in his interest to do so and he will seal the lips of his boat’s crew. The important thing will be to prevent pirates taking the vessel, for they will know that we are an interloper and have a private cargo, so we will insist upon a hostage.’

  ‘And how will that prevent the intervention of pirates?’ Kite asked.

  ‘Our shawbunder will buy them off.’

  So a large number of people will benefit from this transaction,’ Kite remarked wryly. ‘By heaven, Mister Rahman, such a trade is not without its ironies.’

  And so, as the day drew on they stood in amongst the craft thronging Macao Road, heading north for the narrow passage of Cum-Sing-Mun and, passing south of Keow Island in a series of short boards, rounded-to on its western side and dropped anchor in company with a quartet of small junks. The sun had already dropped below the land to the west and twilight was upon them. A village stood at the head of the bay from which, as it grew dark, several sampans shoved off, hoisting lanterns and fishing with cormorants. The birds were prevented from swallowing the larger
fish after which they dived as the creatures rose to feed by having a ring round their throats.

  Kite ordered the watches maintained, the guns loaded with langridge and run out. Loaded small arms were stacked about the deck and these preparations were conducted with a conspicuous activity to dissuade any would-be thieves of the folly of any predatory enterprise.

  Next morning they were surrounded by sampans selling chickens and fresh vegetables. Under broad straw hats and clad in loose ragged trousers, some with babies bound to their backs as they sent up their produce in woven baskets on lines, the smiling women of the islands trafficked with the Spitfire’s crew in wooden curios, exchanging them for coins and tobacco. The lively scene amused Sarah and Nisha who were anxious to purchase ivory figurines, of which they had heard, but the itinerant traders were too poor to deal in such items and the two ladies were disappointed. Sarah pleaded with her husband to proceed upstream in one of the boats but Kite was adamant no-one was to leave the schooner.

  ‘I am sorry my dear,’ he said, ‘but there are too many risks. You may well be taken as an hostage and God knows what might happen to you. Perhaps, in due course, we can persuade a trader down from Canton to offer you what you want…’

  ‘I should like to buy some silk…’

  ‘And so should I,’ Nisha added and Kite was obliged, despite the severity of his tone, to smile at the two women, for both were charmingly eager and they had been cooped up on board, unoccupied for a very long time.

  Announced by gongs at noon, a diversion offered itself as a large sampan approached. Sending for Rahman, Kite awaited its approach. Painted in bright yellow and red, a golden dragon formed its rail and two eyes marked the bow. A distant clang of gongs announced its approach and, without further ado, the sampans cast themselves off and paddled away, resting in a wide, irregular circle about the schooner and making way for the shaw-bunder.