Flashman And The Dragon fp-8

by George MacDonald Fraser

  You'd have thought that would teach 'em manners, but not a bit of it. Instead of realising that foreign trade had come to stay, they convinced themselves that we were only there on sufferance, and they could treat our traders and emissaries as dirt, evil-smelling foreign savages that we were. They knew China was the centre and master of the world, and that everyone else was barbarian filth, lurking on their outskirts plotting mischief, and needing to be brought to heel like untrained curs. What, admit us as equals? Trade freely with us? Receive our ambassadors at Pekin? (The Chinese for "ambassador" is "tribute-bearer", which gives you some notion of their conceit.) It was unthinkable.

  You have to understand this Chinese pride—they truly believe they have dominion over us, and that our rulers are mere slaves to their Emperor. Haven't I heard a red-button Mandarin, a greasy old profligate so damned cultivated that his concubines had to feed him and even carry him to the commode to do his business, because he'd never learned how—haven't I heard him lisping about "the barbarian vassal Victoria"? As for the American President—a mere coolie. (And you won't teach John Chinaman different by blowing his cities apart with artillery, or trampling his country underfoot. Well, if a footpad knocks you down, or a cannibal eats you, it don't follow that he's your superior, does it? Fiercer and stronger, perhaps, but infinitely lower in the scale of creation. That's how the Chinese think of us—and damn the facts that stare 'em in the face.)

  So, even after we'd licked them, and gained a trade foothold in the Treaty Ports, they continued as arrogant as ever, and finally over-stepped the mark in '56, boarding the British ship Arrow (though whether she was entitled to fly the Union Flag was debatable) and arresting her Chink crew because one of 'em was believed to be a pirate (which some said he wasn't, but one of his relatives might be). The usual Chinese confusion, you see, and before you could say "Snooks!" we had bombarded Canton, and the local Mandarin was offering thirty dollars for British heads.

  I believe it might have blown over if the clown Cobden, abetted by Gladstone and D'Israeli (there's an unholy alliance, if you like), hadn't worked himself into a sweat in Parliament, saying it was all our fault, and it was a scandal the way our opium-traffickers abused the Chinese, who were the most saintly folk on record, while British bounce and arrogance were a byword, and we were just picking a quarrel, more shame to us. This had Palmerston spitting his false teeth all over the shop; he damned Cobden and the Chinks for rascals both, said our honour had been flouted, and anyway we had only bombarded Canton with the "utmost forbearance" (good old Pam!), and was Cobden aware that the Manchoos had beheaded 70,000 folk at Canton in the past year, and were guilty of vices that were a disgrace to human nature, hey?

  Fine Parliamentary stuff, you see, and when Pam lost the vote and had to go to the country, he won a thumping majority (which was what the old scoundrel had been playing for all along) and the Chinese war was on with a vengeance. It was a scrappy business, but after we took Canton the Chinks had to climb down and agree to a new treaty, admitting us to inland trade, with Ambassadors at Pekin. But being still as arrogant as ever, they dragged their heels about signing, and when we sent a fleet up the Peiho to persuade 'em, damned if they didn't have a sudden burst of martial valour, and handed us a splendid licking at the Taku Forts. So now, in the spring of '60, with an uneasy truce between Britain and China, Hope Grant was coming with an army of British and Frogs, to convoy our ambassador to Pekin, and make the Emperor sign.'

  You must bear with my historical lecture, for I have to show you how things stood if you are to understand my tale. For all the official coolness between Pekin and ourselves, commerce was still going on between our traders and Canton (which we continued to hold) but the Carpenters were right to wonder how long it might continue, with our invasion imminent. Which brings me back to the point where I agreed to escort their cargo of poppy up the Pearl, with the prospect of a jolly river cruise, sixteen hundred sovs, and a fine frolic with dear Phoebe when I got back to Hong Kong.

  Mind you, as I leaned on the rail of the lead lorcha bearing up beyond Lintin Island two days after our picnic, with the rising sun rolling the fog-banks up the great estuary, I could honestly say it wasn't either the cash or the lady that had made me turn opium-runner. No, it was the fun of the thing, the lure of sport-without-danger, the seeking for fresh sights and amusements, like this magnificent Pearl River, with that wondrous silver mist that I suppose gave it its name, and its fairy islets beyond the Tiger's Gate and the dawn breeze rippling the shining water and filling the sails of the stubby junks and lorchas and crazy fisher-craft—and the pug-nosed, grinning Hong Kong boat girl rolling her poonts on the thwart of a sampan and shouting: "Hi-ya, cap'n! Hi-ya! You wanchee jiggee no wanchee jiggee? You payee two hunner' cash, drinkee samshu? Jolleejollee!"

  "Who you, Dragon Empress?" says I. "Come aboard, one hunner' cash, maybe all-same samshu." They're the jolliest wenches, the Hong Kong boaters, plump little sluts who swim like fish and couple like stoats. She squealed with laughter and plunged in, reached the lorcha in a few fast strokes, and was hauled inboard, all wet and shiny and giggling in her little loin-cloth. Anything less like an angel of Providence you never saw, but that's what she was; if I'd guessed, I'd ha' treated her with more respect than I did, slapping her rump and sending her aft for later. For the moment I was content to muse at the rail, enjoying the warm sunshine and the distant green prospect of Lintin, where the coolies could be seen languidly pursuing the only two occupations known to the Chinese peasant: to wit, standing stock-still up to the knees in paddy-water holding a bullock on a rope, or shifting mud very slowly from one point to another. Deny them these employments, and they would simply lie down and die, which a good many of them seemed to do anyway. I'm told that Napoleon once said that China was a sleeping giant, and when she awoke the world would be sorry. He didn't say who was going to get the bastards out of bed.

  I put this to Ward, the skipper commanding the two lorchas which made up our little convoy. He was a brisk, wiry, bright-eyed little Yankee about ten years my junior, and though he hadn't been in China more than a month or two, you couldn't have wished for a smarter hand at the helm of a lorcha, or a sharper tongue when it came to keeping the Chinese boatmen up to the mark; he was a young terrier, and had learned his trade on American merchantmen, with a mate's ticket, damn-your-eyes, which was fair going at his age. For all that, he had an odd, soft streak; when one of the Chinks was knocked overside by a swinging boom, and we lost way fishing him out, I looked to see Ward lay into him with a rope's end for his clumsiness, or hang him from the rail to dry. But he just laughed and cuffed the Chink's head, with a stream of pigeon, and says lo me:

  "I fell overboard on my first voyage—and what d'ye think I was doing? Chasing a butterfly, so help me, I was! Say, I was a Iot greener than that Chink, though! C'mon, ye blushing Chinese cherubs, tailee on makee pull! Pullee, I say! Tell ye what, colonel, it takes an awful lot o' these beggars to do one man's work!"

  That was when I observed that the Chinese were the idlest rascals in creation, and he frowned and chuckled all together.

  "I reckon," says he. "But they could be a fine people, for all (hat. Give 'em some one to lead 'em, to drive 'em, to show 'em how. They got the prime country in creation here—when they find out how to use it. Say, and they're smart—you know they were civilised while we were still running around with paint on? Why, they had paper an' gunpowder centuries before we did!"

  "Which they use to make kites and fireworks," says I. It was plain he was an old China hand in the making—and after a few weeks' acquaintance, too. "As for their civilisation, it's getting rottener and more corrupt and decadent by the minute. Look at their ramshackle government —"

  "Look at the Taipings, if you like!" cries he. "That's the new China, mark my words! They'll stand this whole country on its head, 'fore they're through, see if they don't!" He took a big breath, smoothing his long black hair with both hands in an odd nervous gesture; his eyes were shining wit
h excitement. "The new China! Boy, I'm going to get me a section of that, though! Know what, colonel?—after this trip, I might just take myself a long slant up the Yangtse and join up with 'em. Tai'ping tieng-kwow, eh? The Kingdom of Heavenly Peace—but can't they fight some? I guess so—and you may be sure they're on the look-out for mercenaries—why, a go-ahead white man could go right to the top among 'em, maybe make Prince even, with a button on his hat!" He laughed and slapped his fist, full of ginger.

  "You're crazy," says I, "but since they are too, you'll fit right in, I dare say."

  "Fred T. Ward fits in anywhere, mister!" cries he, and then he was away along the deck again, chivvying the boatmen to trim the great mainsail, yelling his bastard pigeon and laughing as he tailed on to the rope.

  Not only China-struck, but a well-fledged lunatic, I could see. Of course he wasn't alone in having a bee in his bonnet about the Taipings; even the European Powers were keeping an anxious eye on them, wondering how far they might go. In case you haven't heard of them, I must tell you that they were another of those incredible phenomena that made China the topsy-turvey mess it was, like some fantastic land from Gulliver, where everything was upside down and out of kilter. Talk about moon-beams from cucumbers; the Taipings were even dafter than that.

  They began back in the '40s, when a Cantonese clerk failed his examinations and fell into a trance, from which he emerged proclaiming that he was Christ's younger brother—a ploy which, I'm thankful to say, I never tried on old Arnold after making a hash of my Greek construes at Rugby. Anyway, this clerk decided he had a God-given mission to overthrow the Manchoos and establish "the Tai'ping"—the Kingdom of Eternal Peace or Heavenly Harmony or what you will. He went about preaching a sort of bastard Christianity which he'd picked up from missionary tracts, and in any normal country he'd either have been knocked on the head or given a University Chair. But this being China, his crusade had caught on, against all sense and reason, and within a few years he'd built up an enormous army, devastated several provinces, thrashed various Imperial generals, captured dozens of cities including the old capital, Nanking, and come within an ace of Pekin itself. Getting madder by the minute, mark you, but among the millions of peasants who'd rallied to him and swallowed his religious moonshine, there were some likely lads who plotted the campaigns, fought the battles, and imposed his amazing notions of worship and discipline on a sizeable slice of the population.

  This was the famous Taiping Rebellion*(* See Appendix I), the bloodiest war ever fought on earth, and it was still going great guns in '60. Countless millions had already died in it, but neither the Imperials nor the rebels looked like winning just yet; the Imps were besieging Nanking, but not making much of it, while various Taiping armies were rampaging elsewhere, spreading the gospel and piling up the corpses, as not infrequently happens.

  There was some sympathy for the Taipings among those Europeans (missionaries mostly) who mistakenly thought they were real Christians, and a few enthusiasts, as well as rascals and booty-hunters, had enlisted with them. Meanwhile our government, and the other foreign states who had some trade interest in China (and hoped to have a lot more) were watching uneasily, afraid to intervene, but devilish concerned about the outcome.

  So there you are: a Manchoo government with an idiot Emperor who thought the world was square, fighting a lethargic war against rebels led by a lunatic, and preparing to resist a Franco-British invasion which wasn't to be a war, exactly, but rather a great armed procession to escort our Ambassador to Pekin and persuade the Chinks to keep their treaty obligations—which included legalising the opium traffic at that moment personified by H. Flashman and his band of yellow brothers3 . And in case you think I was incautious, heading up-river at such a time, take a squint at the map, and be aware that all the bloodshed and beastliness was a long way from Canton; you'd not have caught me near the place otherwise.

  We were into the Bocca Tigris, where the estuary narrows to a broad river among islands, before I started to earn my corn. Out from Chuenpee Fort comes an Imperial patrol boat with some minor official riff-raff aboard, hollering to us to heave to; Ward cocked an eye at me, but I shook my head, and we swept past them without so much as "good day"; they clamoured in our wake for a while, beating gongs and waving wildly, but gave up when they saw we'd no intention of stopping. Ward, who'd been anxiously scanning the big forts on the high bluffs overlooking the channel, shook his head with relief and grinned at me.

  "Is it always so easy?" cries he, and I told him, not quite, we'd meet more determined inquiry farther on, but I would talk our way past. Sure enough, in late afternoon, when we were clearing Tiger Island, up popped a splendid galley, all gold and scarlet, with dragon banners and long ribbons fluttering from her upper works, her twenty oars going like clockwork as she steered to intercept us. She had three or four jingals*(* Heavy muskets mounted on tripods and worked by two men.) in her bows, and fifty men on her deck if there was one; under a little canopy on her poop there was a Mandarin in full fig of button-hat and silk robe, seated in state—and flying a kite, with a little lad to help him with the string. Even the most elderly and dignified Chinese delight in kites, you know, and no city park is complete without a score of sober old buffers pottering about like con-tented Buddhas with their airy toys fluttering and swooping overhead. This was a fine bird-kite, a great silver stork so lifelike you expected it to spread its wings as it hovered hundreds of feet above us.

  To complete this idyllic scene, the galley carried on its bows a huge wooden cage, crammed with about twenty wretched coolies so close-packed they could hardly stir—criminals being carried to their place of punishment, probably. Their wailing carried across the water as the galley feathered her oars and an officer bawled across, demanding our business.

  "Ruth and Naomi, lorchas from Hong Kong, carrying opium to the factories," shouts I in my best Mandarin, and he said he must come aboard and examine us. I told Ward to keep way on the lorchas, and on no account to heave to. "If those thieving bastards once get on our deck, they'll have the stoppings out of our teeth," I told him. "But if we keep going, there's nothing they can do about it."

  "Suppose they fire on us?" says he, eyeing the jingals.

  "And start another war?" I nodded at the Union Jack at our stern, and hollered across the water:

  "Our licence is in order, your excellency, and we are in great haste, and must proceed to Canton without delay. So you can bugger off, see?"

  This provoked a great screaming of instructions to heave to immediately, but no one moved to the jingals, so I jumped on the rail and pointed to our flag.

  "This is a British vessel, and I am a close friend of Pa-hsia-Ii, who'll have your yellow hide if you get gay with us, d'ye hear?" In fact, I'd never met Harry Parkes, who was our man at Canton—and pretty well lord and master of the place—but I guessed the mention of his name might cause 'em to think. "Sheer off, damn you, or we'll have half the oars out of you!" She was gliding in to head us off, not thirty feet away, and in a moment her oars would be crumpled against our hull; it was a question of who gave way. Suddenly she veered on to a parallel course, with the officer shrieking to us to heave to; I made a rude gesture, and he ran to the Mandarin for instructions.

  I was half-expecting what came next. There was a barked order, and a dozen of the galley's crew ran forward and seized on the wooden cage in which the criminals were packed like so many herring. On the order they heaved, sliding the cage until it was poised on the lip of the bow platform; her oars took the water again, keeping her level with us—and then they just looked across at us, and the officer repeated his demand to us to heave to. I turned away and told Ward to keep her going. He was gaping, white-faced; the poor devils in the cage were squealing like things demented and struggling helplessly.

  "My God!" cries he. "Are they going to drown them?"

  "Undoubtedly," says I. "Unless we heave to and allow our-selves to be boarded and plundered on some trumped-up excuse. In which case they'll certai
nly drown 'em later, just the same. But they're hoping we don't know that—and that being soft-hearted foreign devils we'll spill our wind and come to. It's a special kind of Chinese blackmail, you see. So just hold your course and pay 'em no heed."

  I le gulped, once, but he was a cool hand; he turned his back as I had done, and yelled to the helmsman to hold her steady. There was dead silence on our deck; only the creaking of the timbers and the swish of water along our side. Another yell to heave to from the galley … silence … a shrieked order … an awful, heart-rending chorus of wails and screams, and an almighty splash.

  "Fine people, with a prime country, as you were saying," says I, and strolled over to the rail again. The galley was still abreast, but in her wake there was a great bubbling and boiling to mark where the cage was sinking to the bottom of the Pearl. Ward came up beside me; his teeth were gritted and there was great heads of sweat on his brow.

  "Old China or New China," says I, "it's all the same, young Fred."

  "The goddam swine!" cries he. "The cold-blooded yellow bastard—look at him there, with his goddam kite! He hasn't even moved a muscle!" His face was working with rage. "God-dam him! Goddam him to hell!"

  "Amen," says I, and watched the galley slowly falling astern before turning back towards the shore, the silver stork-kite hanging in the air far above her. Suddenly a brightly-coloured object went whirling up the string, and then another—gaily-painted paper butterflies which were brought to a sudden halt by a twitch on the kite-string, so that they fluttered in the breeze, glinting and turning, just below the stork.

  "Would you have heaved to when they made to drown those poor beggars, Fred?" I asked.

  He hesitated. "I guess," says he, and looked at me. "That's why you're aboard, huh?"