The White Rajah (1961)

by Monsarrat, Nicholas

  ‘I see a kind of causeway,’ he answered.

  ‘It connects this part of Makassang with the mainland to the north. It is a half-mile wide, no more.’

  ‘It could be easily held,’ said Richard, half to himself.

  ‘It could be as easily cut … Now turn westwards to the Shwe Dagon.’

  He had no trouble in finding the Golden Pagoda; it seemed suddenly to blaze out at him, lustrous and brilliant in the evening sunshine. He marvelled at its size. It was not a single building, but a whole spreading cluster of them, clinging to the hillside, multicoloured, jumbled in dimension and shape, crowned by the great dome of burnished gold. There were gateways, and flights of steps, and a vast stone statue of the Buddha sitting smiling in the shade.

  Richard straightened up; it was almost as if he had to rest his eyes, such was the brilliance of the Shwe Dagon.

  ‘I have not seen anything to compare with it,’ he said slowly. ‘Is it very old?’

  ‘The central pagoda is indeed ancient,’ answered the Rajah. ‘The rest of it has grown with the passage of time … Now you have but two more things to look at … First, look just below the Shwe Dagon.’

  Richard inclined the eyepieces a fraction upwards. Within his view there was now another town, smaller than Prahang the capital, clinging to the edge of the coast almost in the shadow of the Golden Pagoda.

  ‘It is called Shrang Anapuri,’ said the Rajah, observing that Richard had it in his view. ‘That is, the foster child of the Anapuri. It was a fishing village, long ago; now it has grown, as the Shwe Dagon has grown. Its people are for the most part Land-Dyaks.’

  But Richard was scarcely listening to him. His eye had been caught by something – a thin flash of white against blue – in the sea close to Shrang Anapuri; and when he inclined the telescope further, the flash of white gained sudden substance. It was a furled topsail, and it belonged to a ship anchored in deep water offshore.

  She was a big ship, bigger than the Lucinda D; a three-masted barque with a black hull and yellow topsides. She was crowded with men, and there was a constant clustering of sampans and prahus around her. She was a strange focus of activity in a peaceful seascape. But to Richard, there was something about her which was familiar, and foreboding. This was a ship he had seen before.

  He studied her carefully. She was at least twenty miles away across the bay, but the powerful telescope brought her within an easy glance. There was something recognizable in the sheer of the bows, and the ornate rail surrounding the afterpart … As he watched, the barque swung slowly to her anchor, and the counter, turning, caught the sun now low in the west. Richard drew in his breath sharply. He could not see all the gold lettering on the stern, but he could make out enough.

  ‘You know this ship?’ the Rajah’s voice came gently from beside him.

  ‘Certainly I know her!’ exclaimed Richard loudly, propriety and deference forgotten. ‘That’s the Mystic! By God, it’s Black Harris of Boston!’

  Black Harris … Though it was over a year since it had happened, yet Richard Marriott still remembered it vividly, and cursed the memory. It was the first and only time, during his captaincy of the Lucinda D, that he had trusted another human being with his life – not to speak of his profits; it was the first and only time that he had been rewarded with total treachery. Black Harris had made a bargain, sworn to keep it, and then – as he had hoped and planned – thrown Richard to the wolves in order to escape with the plunder. In Richard’s private calendar, there was no more hated name.

  Black Harris was a Far East freebooter like himself, though with a greater fame for villainy, more men at his command, and certainly a stronger ship. He was a small and cruel man, given, not to violent rages but to cold hatred; it was said that he could never forget a grudge until he had buried both grudge and enemy in the same grave. The two of them had met by chance at Sourabaya, and agreed on a joint enterprise. It required two ships, and the enormous prize which was their target was to be evenly divided at the close.

  Briefly, it was a matter of human corruption. There was a Dutch ship sailing from Batavia to the mainland of Cochin China, carrying a rare prize – fifty thousand rix dollars in gold coin, to set up a new banking house at Saigon. The transfer was highly secret, but the Dutch captain, who was in financial straits, had been bought – bought by Black Harris. At a preconcerted place and hour, his ship was to be set upon by an overwhelming force – the Mystic and the Lucinda D – and cruelly robbed of her cargo. The gold would be transferred to the Mystic while the Lucinda D kept watch. Then the two robbers would repair to their agreed rendezvous in the Lingga Archipelago, while the Dutch ship, nursing a score of honourable scars, would limp back home to Batavia with her tale of outrage.

  What Richard Marriott did not know was that the Dutch captain’s reward was to be the Lucinda D herself. Black Harris had privily agreed to sacrifice one ship, in order to furnish the Dutchman with some convincing evidence of valour, as well as a sizeable prize of his own.

  It went according to plan – Black Harris’s plan. The Dutch ship was waylaid in open water north of Singapore, menaced, holed by gunfire, boarded with more noise than execution, and plundered. The Lucinda D stood off, guarding the scene of battle, while the Mystic’s longboat made five laborious journeys to transfer the boxes of gold coinage. Then, when it was done, Black Harris hailed Richard Marriott, his Boston twang sounding sharp across the water.

  ‘We played that scene too well!’ he shouted. ‘He reports he is in danger of sinking.’

  ‘Let him sink, then,’ returned Richard hardly. ‘We can take some prisoners for good measure.’

  Black Harris, standing on the Mystic’s taffrail, his speaking trumpet in hand, shook his head. ‘We owe him more than that.’ he called out. ‘He will try to make Singapore roadstead. Stay with him tonight, till he is nearer land.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Richard after a moment. It was true that they had reason to be grateful to the Dutchman – fifty thousand reasons, in fact. ‘But what then?’

  ‘We meet at Lingga, as we planned,’ said Black Harris. His voice was growing fainter as the Mystic and the Lucinda D drew apart. ‘Three days from now.’

  Richard waved his hand, in agreement and dismissal. It was an extra task, but it was not an unreasonable one. So far, save for fierce looks and a threatening salvo, he had scarcely earned his share of the plunder. This would cost him little save twenty-four hours of slow sea time.

  He did not know Black Harris.

  At dawn next day the Dutch ship closed the Lucinda D, and her captain, a tall shifty fellow who looked as though he would sell his own grandmother for the price of birdseed, hailed him urgently.

  ‘We are making too much water,’ he said. ‘We cannot reach Singapore.’

  Richard examined the splintered hull of the Dutch ship, wallowing in the long South China swell. ‘You are no lower in the water than last night,’ he reassured him. ‘You will make it, have no fear.’

  The Dutchman shook his head, violently. ‘We are sinking! I tell you, the water has gained nearly a metre in the night! I wish to transfer my crew to your ship.’

  Richard considered. The change of plan did not greatly matter. If the Dutchman thought he was sinking, and wished to abandon his ship, then he could be accommodated without too much head scratching. The prisoners could be landed at some point near Singapore, and the Lucinda D would be fifty miles away before the alarm was raised.

  He gestured with his free hand. ‘Come aboard, then,’ he shouted. ‘I will heave-to.’

  The Dutch crew came across the water in three boatloads – nearly sixty men, laden with clothing and spare gear, bearing their arms … The first that Richard knew of their treachery was when he was greeting the Dutch captain and the next dozen men to clamber aboard. While he was still speaking, his arms folded, there was a shouted command, a flash of weapons, and a musketball, fired at point-blank range, missed his ear by a hair’s breadth.

  It was a bloody fight
– first muskets, and then pistols, and then brutal hacking work with knives and cutlasses. He did not lose his ship, because his crew was wildly enraged and fought like demons; but he lost eight good men before the fight went out of the Dutchmen, and they changed their tune and began to beg for their lives.

  He spared none of them – and each one he killed was Black Harris of Boston. For the Dutch captain, mortally wounded by a cutlass thrust which had pierced his lungs, gave Richard Marriott the plot of the story, in a single sentence which welled up sluggishly with his bubbling blood.

  ‘It – was – the – wish – of – your – friend,’ he managed to gasp out, staining the deck atrociously with each word. Then he died.

  ‘Black Harris, of Boston,’ repeated the Rajah, in precise tones. He was nodding to himself, as if Richard Marriott, a model pupil, had answered some simple question which could only have baffled a stupid man. ‘That accords with our own information … You know this Harris?’

  ‘I know him well.’

  ‘What sort of a man is he?’

  ‘He is a thief and a rogue!’

  The Rajah nodded again. ‘So … We have also heard that not long ago he cheated you in some enterprise, and put your life in danger.’

  Richard turned, staring in surprise. He was about to ask how the Rajah could possibly have learned this, but he forebore. In these waters, such news travelled miraculously, on invisible wings; as in mysterious Africa, so in the Far East – stories seemed able to grow feathers and to take flight, spanning oceans, penetrating jungles, reaching alien or friendly ears in the same whispered breath. Mere bazaar talk could be borne swiftly on the wind, could veer to and fro, could fall like stray seed upon an island a thousand miles distant. It was of no use to ask of a man: ‘How do you know this?’ when the man himself could scarcely tell how a close-kept secret had become common gossip. Instead of asking, therefore, Richard assumed an air of indifference, and replied: ‘We had a rendezvous at Lingga, but Harris did not keep it. I have not seen him for more than a year.’

  ‘You have searched for him?’ asked Amin Bulong.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But he tried to kill you, did he not?’

  ‘He cheated me,’ said Richard slowly. He did not like the cross-examination, and would have ended it if he could. ‘It is not so uncommon in these parts … I will know better than to trust him in the future.’

  ‘But surely he is your enemy?’ inquired the Rajah.

  After a moment, Richard answered: ‘Yes. He is my enemy.’

  ‘He is my enemy, too.’

  There was a pause between them, while Richard fingered the polished mechanism of the telescope, and the two old men regarded him with sharp attention. In truth, it was difficult to say how he felt about Black Harris; there was hatred, certainly, and a desire for revenge, but he had no notion how to go about it, and he had ceased to give much thought to the matter. Harris had a stouter ship, and more men; only time and chance could bring Richard the advantage, and in the meantime, there was more profitable employment than plotting and scheming to square accounts with an enemy who, in almost all circumstances, could laugh at his efforts. And if that seemed to make him a coward, then he was a coward – a live and prudent coward, with other work to do and other battles to win.

  Aware of the silence, and of their critical interest, Richard put his own question: ‘What is Black Harris doing here?’

  ‘I will tell you what he is doing,’ answered the Rajah, with sudden energy, ‘and then you and I, who have this same enemy, will decide how to defeat him … He is plotting to overthrow my government, and to kill me – he, and the High Priest Selang Aro, and the Anapuri priests, and the Land-Dyaks!’ The Rajah’s voice, though controlled, was shrill with the force of his feeling. ‘You saw his ship, and you saw what she was doing. Or, if you did not see, I will tell you. She is embarking, not stores, but men! It is common talk already that he has made some compact with Selang Aro, and now it is easy to guess what their plan is. The Mystic will bring men across the bay to attack the palace, and the Anapuri will cut the causeway and prevent help from reaching us. This is what we have always feared!’

  ‘But surely,’ said Richard, interested in spite of his prudence, ‘you are strong enough to fight off this attack. You have the palace guard, and the royal regiment. What is so terrible about a single ship?’

  ‘It is what we have always feared,’ repeated the Rajah. ‘To be cut off from the northern garrisons – they are the royal regiment – and then to have a big ship, and a company of men armed with modern weapons, to storm the palace. We are not strong enough for this.’

  ‘What guns has his ship?’ asked Amin Bulong.

  It was a question which Richard could easily answer. ‘She has sixteen guns,’ he said. ‘More than any other private ship in these waters.’

  ‘And how many men?’

  ‘Above a hundred.’

  ‘And their weapons?’

  Richard shrugged. ‘Pistols and muskets. It is a well-armed crew.’

  ‘This is what we have feared,’ said the Rajah, for the third time. ‘Trained men in league with the Anapuri, guns fighting against spears, and a ship which could bring the palace down in ruins before we could score a single hit with our own cannon!’ He was now looking at Richard Marriott with fierce, intent eyes. ‘I say again, this man is your enemy. He is ours, too. Help us to destroy him!’

  The appeal was very strong, and the moment very persuasive; but already Richard was hardening his heart against it, for many reasons. It was an affair which he had not the least wish to engage in; it would take too long, it was too complicated, it had too many facets, both of danger and of unwanted involvement. Even with the arrival of Black Harris, this was still a tribal quarrel, in which Richard could have no interest; he did not care a jot who sat on the ivory throne of Makassang, and if an ageing Rajah were not strong enough to hold it, then he deserved to have it snatched from him … In addition, the Lucinda D was in bad enough case already; there was no reason why he should put her into further hazard, to secure a throne for a stranger and to checkmate an old enemy – an enemy who must also see this affair as a commonplace venture, and who cared as little as did Richard what the outcome might be.

  He began to muster some formal sentences, by way of excuse, so that the matter need not proceed further. The visit, and the proposal, had cost the Rajah a carved elephant tusk; the price to himself had been a musical box which he did not want, and a day’s idleness which mattered not at all. Now they could call it quits, and go their several ways, with no dangling strings and no hard feelings.

  But it was not to be so easy. He had scarcely begun to make his excuses, pleading other plans which would take him far from Makassang, before the Rajah broke in. Clearly, to be refused anything was a novelty which the old man did not relish; he was ready to become angry, and ready also to use any pressure and any weapon to gain his ends.

  It was a matter of taunting to start with, and then of naked threats. Richard Marriott found the taunting harder to endure – as perhaps the Rajah guessed already.

  ‘But what is this?’ asked the old man, with an air of astonishment almost theatrical. He was looking at Richard as if the latter were some strange animal – something in a man’s shape which had turned out to be less than a man, and more of a freak in nature. ‘You tell us that this Black Harris is your enemy, that he cheated you and tried to kill you. Then you say that urgent matters call you away … One would have thought that you could not resist this chance to meet him again.’ And as Richard said nothing: ‘The truth is, then,’ he continued, ‘that you do not wish to meet him at all?’

  ‘I will meet him at my own time and choosing,’ said Richard curtly.

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘You will never have a fairer chance than now.’

  ‘I do not agree.’

  ‘Perhaps Captain Marriott does not wish to have a fair chance,’ said Amin Bulong,
joining in the goading. ‘Perhaps, as your Highness suggests, he would be happier never to hear of Black Harris again.’

  ‘Why are you afraid of this man?’ asked the Rajah, with contempt.

  ‘I am not afraid of him,’ answered Richard. ‘But I do not choose to be caught up in this affair.’

  ‘Harris is only a pirate, after all,’ said the Rajah. ‘You should be a match for him, since you are a pirate, too – a pirate in a stolen coat. But perhaps you are a smaller pirate. A picaroon, as we say.’

  Richard kept silence, though anger was thickening his blood intolerably.

  ‘A smaller pirate,’ said the Rajah, ‘with a ring in his ear. What does the ring signify, pirate? Is it the badge of a slave?’

  ‘Doubtless it was stolen, along with the coat,’ said Amin Bulong.

  ‘It should be worn in the nose, not the ear,’ said the Rajah viciously.

  With an enormous effort, Richard Marriott controlled his rage and his tongue. He was not going to change his mind, and it would take more than the insults of two taunting old men to persuade him otherwise. Thus he faced them, with as level a glance as he could muster.

  ‘Your Highness is welcome to enjoy this sport,’ he said coldly. ‘I must inform my friends how guests are treated in Makassang … However, nothing that you can say will alter my decision. I will not fight Black Harris, and I will leave as soon as my ship is seaworthy.’

  ‘You are not in a position to refuse to fight, and you are not in a position to leave, either.’ The Rajah’s tone had changed subtly, from gross insult to a harsher note of command. Outside the bower of flame trees in which they stood, a peacock screamed angrily; the sound was not more cruel than the look in the old man’s eyes. ‘I need not remind you that you are powerless, and your ship as dead as any hulk … We could send a message to Black Harris which would bring him here within two hours, ready and eager to finish off an enemy who is fast aground and cannot escape. Or we could take our own measures.’ The Rajah’s eyes glittered, as if he saw the prospect laid out in bright detail before him, and could scarcely resist its lure. ‘There are a hundred war-prahus surrounding your ship. They could take her, and burn her, and sink her, before you were halfway down the Steps of Heaven. You would be here, watching the battle – as long as you had the eyes to see it.’