The First to Land (1984)

by Reeman, Douglas

  It was strange to think that the countess was aft in Masterman’s quarters while the captain had retreated to his sea cabin on the bridge. He had not seen her since that brief meeting in Shanghai and yet he could always feel her presence in the ship.

  Perhaps she was playing with him. A game to amuse herself while she waited to rejoin her husband. But that was impossible after what she had seen and endured. I am deluding myself. If she uses me then I am willing.

  Fox watched him narrowly. ‘There is another reason, sir.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The platoon sergeant, sir, Kirby.’ He waited for Blackwood to pick the man from his thoughts before adding, ‘’E’s bin actin’ a bit strange. Used to be a very calm bloke, sir. Good NCO.’

  ‘Comes from your part of London if I remember?’

  Fox grinned. ‘Right, sir. Sunny Shoreditch. Just three streets from my lot. ’E enlisted about a year after me. A real Marine.’

  There was no higher praise from Fox.

  Fox added, ‘’E’s put two men up for punishment since we come aboard Mediator. Not like ’im. A good thump round the ear when no officers are about is more ’is style.’

  Blackwood smiled. ‘Anything else?’

  Fox pouted. ‘No, sir. I’ve detailed the men, an’ inspected the weapons an’ equipment. Little as possible, like you said.’

  Blackwood looked at the map by his elbow. As Mediator’s navigating officer had pointed out, the Hoshun River was narrow and twisting, and very low at this time of the year. A small coasting paddle-steamer named Bajamar had sailed from Shanghai three days ago. With luck they could leave it until the final rendezvous at the Hoshun before transferring their passengers and Royal Marines detachment.

  ‘Good. There’ll be little enough water under the keel without taking extra stores and ammunition.’ He frowned. ‘It should be simple enough.’ The river was nothing to the ones they had tackled in Africa. If the German gunboat was already downriver they could make the transfer of passengers at once. He knew immediately that he was praying it would not be so. That he would meet and speak with the countess again. I must be mad, he thought. A million miles separate us. She is married to a powerful and successful man. She had a castle and great estates, according to Commander Wilberforce. Blackwood gave a rueful smile. He had almost begun to hate Wilberforce because of his knowledge about her.

  He said, ‘I want one of the second lieutenants to come with my detachment. Good experience.’

  Even Fox flinched. ‘One ’as already volunteered.’ He hesitated. ‘Mr Earle.’

  ‘I see. Thank you.’ He could not conceal his disappointment. He had been hoping it would be Ralf.

  ‘So be it. You can carry on, Mr Fox.’

  ‘One last thing, sir.’

  Blackwood looked at him gravely. Here it comes. Perfectly timed as usual.

  ‘I should like to come with you, sir. Colour Sar’nt Chittock is due for promotion if ’e keeps ’is nose clean, so I’d not be missed if things get a bit lively.’

  It was easily said but Blackwood knew it was very important to Fox. And why not? Neil had been killed by an unknown sniper but how long would he have been missed? It was not the way in the Corps. Not until it happened to you. He had wanted Ralf to volunteer, but for whose sake? His own or Ralf’s dead father’s?

  Fox persisted, ‘You’ll ’ave some good blokes, sir, but you’ll need someone with service. Just to be on the safe side like.’

  Blackwood stared at him. It had never occurred to him that the ramrod, taciturn sergeant major wanted to go because of him. He was suddenly moved, like that day on the square at Hong Kong when neither of them had been able to face each other.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Fox. It will be an honour.’

  Fox marched out and Blackwood heard him speaking with his crony, the colour sergeant. As thick as thieves, and yet Fox always kept his position, just that step apart from his comrades.

  He glanced around the ship’s office and tried to think if he had forgotten anything.

  The rendezvous would be during the forenoon tomorrow. After that it was anyone’s guess. He thought suddenly of Hawks Hill, of his mother and the General. He had written to them, but it was strange, it might be months before his letter reached the old house. He felt himself shiver. The General might even have died and Hawks Hill would be without the guiding hand it needed. He stood up and walked to a scuttle to watch some small fishing boats bobbing abeam. Like an old watercolour. What would he do then? Resign the Corps and take his place at Hawks Hill. He felt his lips tighten. Leave the Corps? That he would never do, unless he was kicked out.

  He left the office and almost collided with his cousin Ralf. The latter had managed to avoid him since his return from the Delhi Star except for matters of duty. But now he seemed unusually eager and pleased with himself.

  Blackwood asked, ‘Where have you been?’

  Ralf touched his thin moustache and smiled gently.

  ‘I have been taking tea with the Countess Friedrike von Heiser, er, sir. It was most enjoyable.’

  Blackwood nodded. Ralf was watching him. Taunting him.

  And why not? He had asked for it.

  Blackwood turned on his heel. ‘Something it appears you are better suited to.’

  It was a childish remark but he felt strangely hurt and that angered him even more.

  Fox saw him stride past and glanced at the slim second lieutenant. He was actually laughing.

  You’ll laugh on the other side of your face one of these days, Fox thought. When that time comes I want to be there.

  Captain Masterman walked out on to the bridge wing and peered down at the small paddle-vessel alongside. She was narrow-beamed and of such shallow draft that her paddle-boxes were built high on either side, as if she was hunching her shoulders.

  Masterman looked down at the water. With the ship riding to her anchor the sea looked very clear and unhealthily shallow. It was safe enough for the paddle-steamer. As he had heard the yeoman of signals explaining earlier to a young seaman, ‘She draws so little water she can float in spit!’

  The marine detachment were already climbing down, watched by their comrades and the unemployed hands along the guardrails. Further abeam the land was misty blue, and the narrow entrance to the river marked only by a sluggish ripple on the surface. The mainland looked solid and lifeless and yet Masterman felt that his ship had been watched since first light when they had exchanged signals with the anchored Bajamar. She was a real veteran of these waters. Commanded by a massive, untidy Norwegian, and crewed by the worst collection of rogues Masterman had ever laid eyes oh, she was hardly what Masterman would have chosen.

  But Pitt, the consul in Shanghai, had spoken highly of the vessel and her ability to drive off pirates on many occasions. There were some ancient swivel guns mounted in her bow and stern, probably loaded with rusty nails, Masterman thought, but deadly at close quarters.

  Wilberforce stepped into the sunlight and saluted.

  ‘Detachment all aboard, sir. Passengers about to leave.’

  The captain grunted. There was no sign of a German gunboat, but there was no more time to wait. His ship might already be needed to help reinforce the legations or to evacuate refugees.

  It was a great pity about the countess, he thought. Women always complicated things.

  He said, ‘I shall go down.’

  The last of the luggage had been lowered to the Bajamar and had been taken below. Masterman walked slowly across his quarterdeck to the accommodation ladder. The countess was all in white, with another wide-brimmed hat with a matching ostrich feather. She looked ready for a reception at an embassy or Buckingham Palace rather than a cramped passage upriver in the little steamer.

  He touched his cap. ‘I hope that everything goes well for you, Countess.’

  It was all wrong. The scruffy little vessel and the marines in their white rig instead of scarlet and blue. Masterman had definite standards no matter what the circumstances might be.
But he had left the arrangements to Blackwood. He must know what he was doing.

  She smiled. ‘I thank you for your concern, Captain.’ She held out her gloved hand. ‘It will not go unnoticed, I think.’

  She gestured to her maid. ‘Go down, child.’

  The maid looked at the smartly dressed side-party and the long-barrelled guns. Above it all the White Ensign rippled slightly in the offshore breeze. Security, power and safety. A stark contrast to the little hull alongside.

  The man who had been married to the countess’s sister was turning to leave. Masterman had learned that he was a commercial attaché to the German trade mission in Peking and had been sent to Hong Kong to attend a conference. But for that his wife, a good deal younger than himself, would still be alive. He had not spoken since Blackwood had brought him aboard. He seemed quite lost, as if unaware of what was happening about him.

  Masterman brought her hand to his lips. He could smell a delicate perfume, and could sense her eyes watching him.

  Suddenly he was glad he had agreed to send Blackwood. A gesture perhaps, but the right one.

  He would get no thanks from the far-off Admiralty in London if he allowed any harm to come to the wife of someone so prominent. But then the Admiralty always laid the blame equally with the responsibility on the senior officer present. In this case, Captain Masterman.

  Down on the Bajamar’s crowded deck Blackwood looked at the farewells on the light cruiser’s quarterdeck.

  He felt excited and yet apprehensive. The Bajamar might be of the right draught but there was little else in her favour once she was hemmed in by a narrow river. Most if not all her accommodation was above the waterline, even her engine, and her long boxlike superstructure with its thin black funnel was totally unprotected should they come under fire. It was unlikely that anything like that would occur, but if it did he would have to be ready.

  He glanced at the Bajamar’s skipper, a great block of a man. He had skin like mahogany, and tufts of ginger hair which poked beneath his stained cap like spun yarn. It was doubtful if he had worn his gold-braided jacket for some while, Blackwood thought. The brass buttons were strained to bursting-point across the Norwegian’s enormous belly.

  He thought of Major Blair. Yet another old China hand.

  His name was Lars Austad and Blackwood imagined he might look more at home in a longship and wearing a horned helmet.

  Fox stood beside him and said, ‘Comin’ aboard now, sir.’

  Blackwood watched her stepping carefully down the accommodation ladder, one hand on the rail, the other gripping a folded parasol.

  Fox muttered, ‘Strewth.’

  Most of the marines had already been packed in sweating discomfort in the afterpart of the superstructure, their uniforms already crumpled in the humid air. Masterman might not approve, but Blackwood recalled hearing a story about his uncle in Africa, when he had made his men stain their shirts to conceal themselves when they were besieged in a trading post by both slavers and savage natives.

  She allowed him to take her hand and guide her the last few paces on to the vessel’s deck.

  She smiled at the giant Norwegian and to Blackwood said, ‘How quaint.’

  He saw Swan’s red apple-face split into a grin.

  She nodded to the two Royal Marines officers, Lieutenant Bannatyre and Second Lieutenant Earle, and then paused by Fox who towered over her like a tree.

  ‘I need have no fear with such as you to protect me, I think.’

  She laughed, the sound fragile and out of place amongst the watching men and the neatly piled weapons.

  Clank – clank – clank. Mediator’s cable was already jerking through the hawsepipe, and the accommodation ladder began to rise up her side even as her screws beat the placid water into a lively froth.

  Blackwood looked at Austad. ‘Get under way, Captain.’

  The Norwegian’s eyes were like saucers before he began to bellow orders at his ragged crew. It was doubtful if he had ever been addressed as captain before.

  The deck swayed as Mediator moved slowly away, some of her people waving from the guardrails while Masterman’s impressive figure stood on the bridge wing and saluted.

  Austad cranked at a telegraph beside the wheel and the two paddles began to move, swinging the hull towards the shore.

  Blackwood followed the countess to the cabin which had been prepared for her. It was not much larger than a cupboard. He watched her reaction, and expected her to explode.

  He explained, ‘I am sorry about this, Countess. But it is the safest one aboard in my opinion. Steel bulkhead at one end, and the storeroom just forrard. Your maid is in the adjoining cabin with your luggage.’

  She turned and searched his face with her violet eyes. Then she tapped him gently on the shoulder with her parasol.

  ‘You think of everything, Captain.’

  Blackwood could feel her nearness and wanted to take hold of her. It was like physical pain. Worse, he knew that she understood exactly what he was thinking.

  ‘A bath perhaps?’

  Blackwood shrugged. ‘I am afraid that is impossible, Countess.’

  She watched him impassively. ‘Two days in this craft and no bath? That is impossible.’

  She touched her throat and dragged the high collar away from her skin. At any other time the gesture would have meant nothing, but Blackwood recalled with sudden clarity how she had looked in that other cabin, the blood on the deck, the tiny revolver in her hand. She had still had the strength, the will to take a bath after all that.

  Feet thumped along the narrow side-decks. There was a lot to do before they reached the narrow river. The Bajamar might be quite at home in open waters. Once in the shallow river she would present an easy target.

  She said, ‘You may leave, Captain. Please send my maid to me.’

  She waited until he had slid open the narrow door. ‘I am grateful. You know that.’ She was watching him without emotion, but her tone made her attitude a defence, a lie.

  He replied, ‘Thank you.’ But he saw his cousin’s face, the look of triumph and amusement. ‘It is my duty.’

  Outside the door he pressed his shoulders against the sun-heated metal and cursed himself for his stupidity.

  Lieutenant Bannatyre hovered nearby. ‘I have stationed the first section as ordered, sir.’ He waited, suddenly alarmed by Blackwood’s angry silence.

  Blackwood clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Very well, Ian, show me their positions, will you?’

  He saw the little Chinese maid leave the cabin with her mistress’s gown over one arm. It was the same one she had just been wearing when she had been plucking it from her skin.

  He pictured her behind the door. Probably naked in the privacy of her cabin just a few yards away.

  ‘Something wrong, sir?’

  Blackwood sighed. ‘It’s the heat, I expect.’

  Bannatyre nodded gravely. ‘I see, sir.’

  You don’t, my lad. Blackwood turned to look for Mediator but she had already vanished around the headland leaving just a patch of funnel smoke to mark her passing.

  Two days? It was going to seem a lifetime, he thought.

  5

  Just Ten Good Men

  Blackwood stood by the starboard paddle-box and watched the night sky. The stars looked small and far away and added to the feeling of being shut in. Around and below him the Bajamar was very quiet after their first day crawling upriver. It was going to take longer than even the big Norwegian Austad had imagined. The river was extremely shallow and treacherous with uncharted sandbars and occasional clumps of rocks. Even a man of Austad’s obvious experience and skill could not be expected to run his ship aground merely because he was under government orders.

  Blackwood had just left him in his tiny chartroom. He had filled the space like a bear in a cave, the air thick with pungent smoke from a giant meerschaum pipe.

  He had commented in his thick voice, ‘You got your men posted, my ship is in dark, no more we can
do.’ It sounded final.

  It was fortunate that such small craft should carry two boats, flat-bottomed sampans. Blackwood had sent one to either bank where the pickets would be crouching and listening to every creak and rustle.

  Fox had made certain there was a fair sprinkling of old sweats amongst the recruits. All the same it must be nerve-racking to be landed in some unknown place with water at their backs. He nodded to the sentries, and continued right forward to where Lieutenant Bannatyre had sited the Maxim gun.

  It would have been better to mount it amidships, but the boxlike superstructure made that impossible unless you left it and its crew totally exposed on the upper deck.

  He heard Sergeant Kirby mutter, ‘All quiet, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ Blackwood stared at the black shoreline and wondered what had disturbed Fox about this stocky sergeant. He sounded normal enough. Blackwood had seen him in action when as a corporal he had rallied a handful of marines to charge a mob of savages and retrieve the flag from the grip of their dead colour sergeant.

  ‘We’ll relieve the pickets in half-an-hour. Men begin to imagine things after too long.’ He touched the Maxim gun. Austad’s cannon would be as much use in the dark.

  He groped his way aft again and stared with surprise as he saw the countess standing by the guardrails, her figure shrouded in a long gown like a boatcloak.

  ‘You should not be here, Countess!’ He lowered his voice to a fierce whisper. ‘It is not safe!’

  She did not turn but stared intently at the shadows.

  ‘China. The Tiger.’ She spoke so softly Blackwood had to lower his head to hear.

  She said, ‘I could not sleep. I kept thinking – my sister – the sounds of those poor people screaming.’

  Blackwood was afraid to move a muscle in case he broke the spell.

  All the pent-up strain and outward poise were no longer enough. She was reliving it as she must have been ever since the attack on the Delhi Star had turned that night into an unforgettable horror.

  Again he wanted to hold her but knew that her last reserves would turn her away from him.