by Porter Hill
Horne was tired and unable to raise much enthusiasm for Jingee’s news.
‘Congratulations. You’ve had more luck than I,’ he admitted.
‘Fanshaw’s gone to Whampoa, Captain sahib,’ Jingee continued. ‘Exactly as Governor Pigot suspects.’
He waited for Horne to take a seat. ‘I learned from my cousins that an Englishman has been secretly hiring crewmen to sail to … Canton!’
Jingee had never before mentioned to Horne that he had relatives in Madras. But there was no place in India where the little Tamil did not seem to have a cousin or an aunt or some distant uncle.
‘Was the ship the China Flyer?’ asked Horne.
Jingee held up the palms of both hands. ‘I do not know, Captain sahib. The family who gives this news to my cousins is Vaisya. Very good caste. Very honourable. But they do not know enough about boats to realise that boats have names like people.’
‘Is there any way to meet the family—?’ Horne began.
He stopped as Jingee raised his hand and beckoned to someone at the door.
Horne turned and saw Groot moving towards the table.
‘Sorry I’m late, schipper,’ the Dutchman apologised as he looked around the crowded tavern. ‘But I made friends with some Austrians and they told me a few things I thought we could use.’
Horne ordered ale for the three of them, then he and Jingee gave Groot their undivided attention.
‘Lothar Schiller. That’s the man who’s sailing the China Flyer, I think, schipper,’ said Groot, hands folded on the plank table. ‘Schiller’s from Hamburg. He’s a soldier-of-fortune but found work recently aboard British ships. A few months ago he got a job he didn’t want to talk about to his friends. He would only say he planned going to the South China Sea.’
‘Is he a big man, this Schiller?’ asked Jingee.
‘Tall and—’ Groot shrugged. ‘—about as big as Babcock, as far I can understand.’ The question puzzled him.
‘What colour’s his hair?’ asked Jingee.
‘Yellow. Like mine. Why?’
Jingee turned to Horne. ‘This Schiller man must be the same person my cousins’ friends spoke about.’
Groot looked inquisitively from Jingee to Horne. ‘You two know something you’re not telling me?’
Jingee hurriedly repeated the story he had heard from his cousins’ friends, the family whose son had been hired to sail to China with an Englishman who had told him to keep his destination a secret.
‘The family only knew that the captain of the ship on which their son would be sailing spoke German,’ he said, ‘and had hair—’ He pointed at the tavern’s low ceiling. ‘—bright like the sun.’
‘It’s not much of a clue,’ said Horne. He held up his tankard, adding, ‘But it’s a start.’
* * *
The coconut oil lamps of Fort St George twinkled in the night as Babcock stood aboard the Huma in her anchorage in the Madras Roads.
Despite the majestic sight of the turreted fortress stretching along the moonlit shoreline, Babcock was feeling dejected. The sensation was unusual for him, but he knew it was serious because he did not even miss his pet monkey. When Monkey couldn’t make him laugh, something was seriously wrong.
Horne no longer reproached Babcock for fighting the Malagasy pirate in Bombay. Babcock thanked the Lord that nobody had been killed in the sea encounter. He would have blamed himself for any casualties suffered aboard the Huma. When would he ever learn to keep his big mouth shut and avoid getting into brawls?
Was that what was bothering him? Fighting with the Malagasy? Being responsible for the poor devil getting his throat slit and being thrown overboard in the open boat?
Perhaps his recent nightmares were at the root of his problem.
For the past fortnight, Babcock had been dreaming about brawling with his father. Halfway through the fisticuffs, his father would turn into Adam Horne and Babcock would stop fighting, always refusing to strike his Captain. Covering himself with both arms, he would beg Horne not to hit him. But in the dream Babcock called him ‘Pa’ rather than ‘Horne’—‘Don’t hit me, Pa. Don’t hit me.’
A sign of cowardice? Was that what those dreams meant? Was he frightened of fighting Horne?
Looking across the crashing Madras surf, Babcock’s mind went back to the days when Horne had first brought his Marines to Fort St George. Babcock had travelled overland with Bapu, Mustafa, and Groot in a dung cart. Bapu, an Indian, had subsequently been killed at sea—the first of Horne’s Marines to die. The next casualty had been Mustafa the Turk.
Only Groot and Babcock himself were left from that overland party. Babcock turned his back on the fortress. Leaning against the railing, he looked at the stars twinkling in the east and wondered where Horne would next take his Marines. Which one of them, this time, would not return to Bombay?
Part Two
THE PURSUIT
Chapter Eleven
LOTHAR SCHILLER
The winds off the Philippines raised waves around the China Flyer, tossing the deck and yawing the masts in wild circles. A storm must be brewing, Lothar Schiller predicted. But, worse, he worried about the anger growing inside him at the Englishman, George Fanshaw.
‘Reduce sail,’ he ordered his Indonesian lieutenant, Looi. ‘Topsail and spanker—double reefs.’
In these waters of the South China Sea a wind could fall as quickly as it rose, but Schiller decided not to take a gamble. The precaution of having the sails clewed and furled also gave him time to cool his temper. He did not want to spend another day quarrelling with Fanshaw. In the two months since they had left Madras, it seemed they had done nothing but argue. The disagreements had begun a few days out of Madras when Fanshaw had ordered Schiller to divert from the course to Canton. Determined to find opium to present as a cumshaw in Canton, he had directed Schiller on a meandering course around Borneo, through the Sulu Sea, north to the Philippines and back to the south, risking attack from Sulu pirates. After six weeks of search, they had located a storehouse of opium on the Sulu island of Cherang. Fanshaw had persuaded the natives to sell but, when the last chest had been stowed aboard the frigate, he had ordered Schiller’s men to fire on the village.
Hearing footsteps behind him on the quarterdeck, Schiller turned and saw Fanshaw approaching him.
Speak of the devil, he told himself.
‘A storm brewing?’ asked Fanshaw, face upturned to the clear blue sky. ‘Or merely a lively gust to help us on the last leg of our journey to Canton?’
‘Better be prepared for trouble than sorry,’ answered Schiller in his heavily-accented English.
‘Safe, perhaps. But—’ Fanshaw kept his back to Schiller as he studied the nut-brown hands swinging from the masts. ‘—will not orders to furl sails also slow us down in reaching Macao, Mr Schiller?’
‘We go even more slow, Mr Fanshaw, if we lose all our masts in a storm.’ Schiller’s accent become thicker as anger boiled inside him. If the Englishman did not approve of the way the ship was being sailed, why did he not come right out and say so? Why did he hint and talk in circles, always making sly criticisms?
‘We cannot afford to lose time, Mr Schiller,’ reprimanded Fanshaw, ‘merely because you suspect a storm. We spent more time sailing through the Sulus than I had intended. We’ve already been two months at sea.’
‘I do only what I think best for the ship, Herr Fanshaw.’
‘You would also do well to concentrate on getting us to Canton as quickly as possible.’
Schiller brought up a subject he had raised time and time before. ‘The voyage might go faster, sir, if you let me study all the charts. Not just bits and pieces. One chart today. One chart tomorrow. One chart the next day.’
‘I don’t see how that could speed our passage, Mr Schiller.’
‘Sir, you’ve made this passage up the South China Sea many times, but this is my first venture here. If I could study the islands ahead of us, sir, I might organise the men for sailing; fast
er time, the right currents. You see, ja?’
‘You have got us this far, Mr Schiller, have you not?’
What the hell! Schiller decided to speak his mind.
‘Why do I feel, Mr Fanshaw, you do not trust me? You don’t even pay me a penny yet. You promised me a fortune if I sailed this ship for you. But you still don’t give me a penny. I cannot even pay the men a little something.’
‘Pay the men? Good heavens, Mr Schiller! Where are these men going to spend money?’
‘Men work better with a few coppers in their hands, Mr Fanshaw.’
Fanshaw’s voice hardened, his diction becoming more clipped. ‘Your men can go back to the gutters of the Black Town where you found them, Mr Schiller, if they don’t like my arrangements.’
Schiller bristled at the remark, forgetting discretion in his resentment.
‘Last week, Mr Fanshaw, you promised to pay the men if they fired on that village.’
‘You mean when you refused to obey my instructions to order them to fire, Mr Schiller?’
‘But the villagers had given us water and food. You got your cargo there. Why should I order their village to be destroyed?’
‘I intend to give the Sulu opium to the Co-Hung as a gift. But I have no intention of letting the Sulus tell everybody who comes along that I’ve been there.’
‘So you fire on them? Is that how you repay generosity and friendship?’ Schiller shook his head disbelievingly. ‘Who were they going to tell? Who is going to know you’ve been there?’
Slyly, Fanshaw answered, ‘Have you not thought, Mr Schiller, that the East India Company might send somebody after us? Have you not heard of the Bombay Marine?’
‘For that you destroy a village? Murder defenceless people?’
‘Your men were quite ready to act, Mr Schiller, when they found there was money in it for them.’
‘Blood money,’ Schiller said. ‘And you still haven’t paid them for that crime. You even fail to pay your … blood money, Mr Fanshaw.’
‘Mr Schiller, I refuse to discuss this any further with you. You would be wise to forget the past and concentrate on the future.’
‘Yes, Mr Fanshaw. What about the future?’ Schiller folded his muscle-knotted arms across his chest. ‘You and I have still not discussed what happens after we leave China. Where do we sail from Canton? Do we collect cargo there and return to Madras? Have you signed to join a convoy to England? What are your plans?’
‘I’ll explain everything to you in good time.’
‘You say one thing, then another, Mr Fanshaw,’ Schiller persisted. ‘You tell me to think about the future and then do not tell me what the future is.’
‘Everything in good time, Mr Schiller,’ Fanshaw repeated smugly. Again, he raised his head, studying the flapping canvas.
Hell! Schiller cursed himself for ever getting mixed up with a cad like Fanshaw. He had inquired about the man in Madras before agreeing to sail him to China. Fanshaw enjoyed a good reputation as a Company merchant but had no personal friends. Schiller’s doubts about his integrity had started when Fanshaw had begun demanding complete secrecy over the forthcoming voyage. He had even refused to tell Schiller the name of the ship he would be sailing, or the nature of the voyage, until a fortnight before they were to leave. When Fanshaw had finally confided that he wanted Schiller to commandeer the China Flyer, the latter had refused to be part of the venture. Who needed to spend the rest of his life in gaol? His resistance had collapsed, however, when Fanshaw had promised him more gold than he had ever dreamt of. He had co-operated with the criminal plan.
Schiller was as angry with himself as he was with Fanshaw.
* * *
Damned lumbering German! George Fanshaw slammed the door of his cabin, furious at Lothar Schiller’s badgering questions. Why couldn’t an underling take orders and keep his peace?
Fanshaw considered all the members of a ship’s crew—from the captain down to the lowest loblolly boy—to be no different from grooms, ostlers, porters or footmen. All were servants in his view.
Fanshaw knew about servants. His family had been in domestic service for five long, abject generations. Only through hard work and dedication to self-improvement had Fanshaw himself been able to climb out of subserviency and carve a niche for himself in, if not the gentry, at least the merchant class.
The transformation had been systematic and of long duration.
First, changing his surname from Fykes, Fanshaw had found employment far away from England, in India. As a clerk for the East India Company, he had developed an educated accent, watched the mannerisms and dress of his social betters, and spent every free minute studying the dialects of the people with whom the Company traded.
Now he moved across the cabin’s pitching deck, undoing his stock and peeling off his frock-coat in the stifling heat as he gloated over what was to be the most important step in his climb to a higher class.
At present, the East India Company had a trade monopoly with China. No other British company had ever successfully challenged its exclusive trade with Canton. The families of the Company’s founders were now entrenched in England’s highest society—as well as enjoying great wealth.
It had occurred to Fanshaw a few years ago that, with ample financing and the correct political connections, some brilliant man—or group of men—could break the Company’s grip on trade with the Manchu mandarins. Then, two years ago, on a return visit to England, he had met Benjamin Cowcross, a stockholder in numerous ships sailing to the Orient. Cowcross had expressed casual interest to Fanshaw in making more than his usual seventy-five per cent from his investments with the Company. Private meetings ensued between the two men, Cowcross impressing Fanshaw as a coarse man but somebody with an adventurous business sense; Fanshaw impressing Cowcross with his knowledge of China and the lucrative trade with the Chinese.
Cowcross had listened avidly to Fanshaw’s plan for setting up a company to rival the East India Company. But he worried that the plot might be exposed. He did not want to be excluded from investing in further Company ventures. Finally, he had promised Fanshaw that he would make him a partner in a trade syndicate if an oath could be procured from the Manchu government that they would trade with a second British company.
The pitching of the cabin’s deck brought Fanshaw’s thoughts back to the present.
He gripped the edge of the desk, listening to the screech of the wind as it tore through the rigging.
Damn! That German lout was right. A storm was brewing.
Frustrated at the possibility of losing more time on this voyage, Fanshaw saw that he must persuade Schiller to press ahead, whatever the weather.
Before he left the cabin, however, he paused to put on his frock-coat and stock. A gentleman must always look the part, and never let the underlings see him improperly attired.
Chapter Twelve
THE DOLDRUMS
Six days south-east of Madras, the Huma passed the verdant island of Pulo Penang and moved through the Malacca Strait. Then, west of Borneo, without warning the sea became as smooth as glass, its blue surface unruffled by the slightest breeze. Horne waited for a gust to rise and speed them further into the South China Sea, but the sails hung limp from their yards.
The abrupt disappearance of all wind puzzled the crew. Horne tried to reassure them as they gathered amidships.
‘It’s not unusual, men, for the breeze to fall near the equator. One extreme follows another. A few days earlier we could have been tossed about by a storm.’
A hum passed through the half-naked seamen, the natives of the area confirming Horne’s words with nods of agreement.
‘We can’t sit around waiting for a breeze,’ Horne said more forcibly. ‘There’s work to do.’
Inventing chores to keep the men occupied, he ordered Jud and Groot to lead yard drills. Kiro was set to race gunners back and forth from larboard to starboard stations, Jingee to teach novices how to mend sails. Babcock took a work gang below deck to repa
ck the stores.
During the forenoon watch of the second windless day, Groot and Babcock reported to Horne’s cabin. ‘The men are beginning to feel restless and trapped, schipper,’ Groot announced.
Babcock stabbed a finger at the stern window. ‘Trapped in the middle of all this bloody salt water and worried about dying of thirst.’
‘Reassure the men we have ample fresh water supplies,’ said Horne.
‘They ask what do we do, schipper, when all our drinking water’s gone.’
‘During both the past two nights, Groot, there’s been a heavy downpour. Prepare the first and middle watch to catch rain-water.’
‘What about shade, schipper?’ asked Groot. ‘During the day there’s nowhere for the men to get out of the sun.’
Horne glanced at some drawings on his desk. ‘I’ve been making plans for temporary shelters.’
‘Schipper, the deck’s so hot we have to tie coverings on our bare feet.’
Babcock chorused, ‘Below deck it’s a bloody oven. I can’t work men down there for more than an hour at a stretch.’
Horne acted on Groot’s and Babcock’s report, cutting the watch hours. He also showed the men how to stretch canvas awnings along the ship’s railings. The makeshift shelters allowed protection from the sun as well as giving them a spot from which they could fish for the brightly coloured fish swimming unafraid near the water’s calm surface.
‘But don’t get any ideas about jumping overboard to cool off,’ Horne warned the crew.
‘Swim, swim,’ a Malayan sailor bragged, moving both brown arms in front of his naked chest, making the swimming gestures of a turtle.
‘No,’ Horne said firmly. ‘No swimming.’
He raised his forefinger and, moving it round and round in a circle, he pointed another finger at the mirrorlike sea, warning, ‘Sharks.’
