It was also, Alan learned, against his Celestial Majesty's law to teach foreign-devils Chinese, so trade was carried on in a mix of Portugee, Chinese and English called "pidgin," the closest the Chinese could come to saying "business."
Anything, anything that upset the touchy mandarins could bring a total cessation of trade, which hurt everybody, so merchantmen had to obey "tremblingly," as the Chinese officials concluded their documents. Yet, at the same time, a lively and illegal trade went on down-river at Lintin Island and at Nan'ao. Brainard had even told of mandarin boats ordered to enforce the ban against smuggling, and the opium trade, which contracted lucrative deals, and smuggled the stuff up to Canton themselves!
"Tonight, this lorcha'U be receiving a government mandarin on her decks," Brainard explained. "He'll get his tobacco and wine, warn about lingering in the estuary instead of going direct to Whampoa, and then he'll get down to brass tacks. 'How many chests?' he'll ask, and we'll tell him outright. Then he'll figure out what he thinks we're worth and ask for his singsong."
"He'll want a serenade?" Alan grinned. "God help him if Mister Twigg takes his bagpipers along, then."
"No, his sing-song is his cut. His cumshaw … his custom. 'Allee same same sing-song, allee same custom.' " Brainard laughed. "After he's been feted and bought off, that's the signal for the real traders to come aboard and purchase. Then the lorcha comes back to Macao full of silver. Taels and taels of the bloody stuff, maybe five or six lac with the amount of opium we have on board, young sir. A lac, let me inform you, is worth about ten thousand pounds."
"Merciful God!" Alan gasped in awe.
"And you'd better believe the custom official ashore yonder in Macao knows exactly what we're doing here, and our 'chop' will conveniently not arrive aboard 'til we've disposed of the opium, so we can sail up-river innocent as newborn babes. Gad, what a country!"
"So what are the chances of our suspected French privateers being at this Lintin Island, sir?" Alan asked.
"Depends on whether they've arrived or not. We may ask about, but not too much, else we'd raise too much suspicion. Might even affect the price of our cargo." Brainard frowned. "If they've looted all the ships we suspect they have, what they didn't have to share out to their native associates, they might already be up-river off Whampoa, pie-faced innocent as any other merchantmen."
"Then they'd be a big ship, like us, sir?" Alan pressed.
"Possibly. Something fast, like one of their latest seventy-four-gunned Third Rates converted to a merchantman, like us. But that pretty much describes half the ships in the world that could get here. If they came here at all."
"Well, sir," Alan speculated, "they'd have to dispose of their ill-gotten gains somewhere. Why not here?"
"Oh, I'll grant you that. Sooner'r later, they'd be stuffed bung to the deck-heads with loot," Brainard snorted. "But, they could drop it at He de France in the middle of the Indian Ocean, at Pondichery or Chandernargore, and ship it home on a Compagnie des Indies ship with no one the wiser."
"But they've taken Indiamen and country ships loaded with silver or opium. The silver they could keep, maybe load it into a second vessel. But the opium would have to be sold here. Where else is there such a market for it, and where else on the Chinese coast would the mandarins collude with 'em?"
"Which is why we're here, young sir. We may not be right, but it is a strong chance. Once we're up at Whampoa, and at Canton, I'll warn you to keep a weather-eye peeled for anything out of the ordinary."
"As if China isn't enough out of the ordinary, sir," Alan said with a shrug. "I doubt if I'd know what to look for."
"I leave that to our super-cargoes, Twigg and Wythy. They know the trade well as anybody."
"And pirates," Alan muttered under his breath.
"I know, that cut a bit rough on you, to see what Twigg did," Brainard said comfortingly. "But they'd have gotten the same after an Admiralty proceeding, stretched by the neck by 'Captain Swing.' Wish we'd had the time to hunt down their anchorage and chastise 'em just a bit more."
"I was thinking more of the way he got his information, sir."
"And not much of that, either. I've spent years out here in the Far East and the Great South Seas. It's the way of things out here. Something to leave behind you once you get back into the Bay of Bengal, or the Cape of Good Hope. Don't fret on it."
"If you say so, sir," Alan replied. "But seeing that made me feel a lot less guilty about my own faults. I don't think I could ever torture a man to death. Or feed him to the sharks for the fun of it."
"Wasn't 'fun,' Mister Lewrie," Brainard sniffed. "Just business."
Chapter 3
Whampoa Reach was so densely crowded with shipping when they dropped the hook after a four-day voyage up the teeming Pearl River that they barely had room to swing. The river had narrowed from a wide estuary to a proper river at the Bogue after the first two days. The river pilot that guided them had gone hoarse cursing the sampans and junks full of fishermen, mendicants and permanently poor to get out of their way. And the closer they got to Canton, the more it seemed that the Pearl River had been cruelly inaptly named. It stank worse than the Old Fleet Ditch, the Hooghly or the Thames, bearing as it did the ordure and the garbage of untold millions of Chinese from its mountain birthplace to their anchorage.
There were ships of every nation there, crowded into the Reach as cheek-to-jowl as the thousands of native boats that made up floating suburbs, too poor to live on land. Dane and Dutch flags fluttered above vessels so beamy they looked like butter-tubs. There were Spanish and Portugese ships, Swedish ships, and a few merchantmen from Hamburg and the Baltic, even a pair of Prussians. There were British East Indiamen as lofty and trim as the stoutest "ocean bulldogs" of the Royal Navy, and country ships looking more rakish and piratical than something from a Defoe tale. There were Russian ships, even some Austrians, and lesser nations from the Mediterranean. And there were three or four racebuilt and over-sparred vessels, a little smaller than most, flying the new Stars and Stripes of the late Rebel Colonies, now graced by the name of the United States of America. And the French, huge merchantmen of the Compagnie des Indies, and their own country ships.
Whampoa Island, from September and the delivery of the first teas from inland, to the first of March when the Chinese would order them out and the Monsoon winds shifted to make faster passages home, would be a floating international city of its own below the distinctive island's pagodas and towers.
Alan Lewrie reckoned it would have to do for the next few weeks. With so many strictures on merchantmen as foreign-devil barbarians, there wouldn't be much in the way of recreation, except for the infamous Hog Lane ashore in the factory ghetto of Canton. Bumboats came alongside in a continual stream offering whores and gew-gaws, but no captain in his right mind would put his ship out of discipline in such an alien harbor, outnumbered as they were.
The hands eschewed these poorer offerings and waited their turn to visit Hog Lane, where they could swill and swive, no matter that the women would probably be peppered to their eyebrows with the pox. They heeded no warnings, and no captain could enforce celibacy without having a mutiny on his hands. The men had had enough of "boxing the Jesuit and getting cock-roaches," as they termed solitary stimulation.
There were other ships to visit, if one's idea of fun was going aboard another ship after spending up to six months aboard one already. Most provided what little entertainment they could, and Telesto was popular since she had bagpipers, the hand-bellows organ and some accomplished fiddlers and fifers to amuse her visitors, and her own hands. But even here, they were limited by the strictures of the host nation. Once at anchor, they had put out a ship's boat so the bosun could row about to see if the yards were squared away properly, and a mandarin's junk had been there in a twinkling, shouting pidgin orders against "boating for pleasure."
Alan suspected the mandarins got a cut from the many sampans that ruled the 'tween-ship traffic, who charged exorbitant fees to ferry fo
reign-devils about, their prices changing with no rhyme or reason, almost from one hour to the next.
The visiting back and forth would have made it easy to snoop and pry to find their suspected French privateers. Except that Alan wasn't allowed to. After their last encounter, he was pretty much in Twigg's bad-books again, and idled aboard ship most of the time. There was work to do, and he was made aware that he was, indeed, the fourth officer, the most junior, therefore the one most liable.
Twigg and his partner, Wythy, were thankfully out of his hair. They had gone ashore to take borrowed or rented "digs" at one of the established hongs in the factory-ghetto, doing arcane trading things, such as turning their lacs of silver into checques for safer transport, arranging the purchase of teas, silks, nankeens to be woven by hand from Indian cotton, and showing patterns for sets of china and lacquerware, and diagrams for the latest styles in furniture wanted back home in England so they could be manufactured in time for departure.
Their cargo of opium, the officers were informed in the captain's quarters, had fetched over eighty thousand pounds sterling above what they'd had to pay out to customs officials and mandarins as bribes. Which sum made every officer lift his eyebrows and make small, speculative, humming noises. "Hmmm, damn profitable work, for Navy-work, hmmm?" Made them wonder just what percentage would be Droits of the Crown, what part Droits of the Admiralty, and what precedent there would be about shares after the expense of the voyage was subtracted. In peacetime, there was no prize-money for fighting and taking a ship in combat, and there never was much profit in taking a privateer, which was why they flourished so easily. Made them wonder if anyone from the Crown would mind if they laid a few thousand guineas aside… "for contingencies"… and never reported it. Never reported any profit at all, perhaps, and pocketed the sum entire…?
Lewrie finally got shore leave after a couple of weeks. In company with McTaggart again, he went over the side and took his ease in a large bumboat, a scow or barge practically as wide as it was long, for the twelve-mile row to Canton. They were ensconsed in capacious chairs on the upper deck, while seamen had to idle on the lower deck in a herd of expectant and recently paid humanity. They sampled mao tai brandy and lolled indolent as mandarins, though the fussy, and Presbyterian, McTaggart had some qualms about being too comfortable in this life.
They wafted up the narrowing river between the mainland and Honam Island, a faerie-land of willows, delicate bridges, parks and ponds, where the Joss House was, and the homes of some of the richest Chinese merchants of the Co Hong. But Honam Island, to larboard, was not their destination. They were landed at Jack Ass Point, next to one of the customs houses. The sailors from several ships gave a great cheer and dashed to the right of the huge square for Hog Lane, leaving McTaggart and Lewrie to descend and alight.
"There's mair commerce in this ain place than the Pool of London!" McTaggart exclaimed as they goggled at the piles and piles of goods, the hordes of coolies fetching and toting and the sampans being loaded and unloaded. On the far side of the square, there was a long row of factories, broken only by Hog Lane, China Street and a creek. On the other side of the factories, or hongs, there was a wide boulevard, and the Consoo House, the headquarters of the Yeung Hong Sheung, better known as the Co Hong, and a matching row of old and delapidated minor hongs of Chinese merchants, there on sufferance from the Co Hong. The whole thing was walled in from the rest of the city to prevent the natives from being disturbed or corrupted by the barbarian traders. But the Consoo House and most of the hongs on that side of Factory Street, as they'd been warned, were off-limits for them, except for a few shops in Old Clothes Street, and Carpenter's Square at the far right-hand end of the ghetto.
Feeling naked without a pistol, sword or even a clasp knife, they made the best of their time ashore. First stop was at the Chun Qua Factory, third building east of China Street, to their far left, where they'd established headquarters. Conveniently right next door to the French Compagnie des Indies factory!
"Ah, welcome ashore at last," Tom Wythy grated, sounding anything but welcoming, as he sorted through packets of tea on a table. "Have an ale. Chinee muck, but not as bad as some."
He had a large tub near his feet, filled with ice and rice chaff, from which he drew two stone bottles and preferred them.
"Cold ale?" Alan frowned.
"Aye, ice comes all the way from Siberia, far's I know, run by some poor coolies, an' God help 'em if it melts on the way. The way they like it." Wythy belched. "No accountin' fer taste among savages. Refreshin' on a hot day, though, I must admit."
"Mm, not bad at that," Alan commented after an appreciative eructation of his own. "Close enough to home-brewed."
"Mm, if the inn's common-rooms'r chilly as most back in England. Let it stand awhile if it's too cold fer ye, Mister McTaggart."
"What are you doing, sir?" McTaggart asked.
"Gradin' tea, such as I may. Sit ye down to see."
As they quaffed their ales, Wythy laid out samples, explaining their grades and desirability. The smaller the leaves, the better the tea. There was coarse black Bohea, from late in the growing season, worth something in trade but not much: a poor man's tea. Another black tea was Congou, what the East India Company bought in quantity. The best black teas were Souchong, scented with flowers, and Pekoe, which was only of the best young spring buds, delicate and very dear.
Then there were the green teas: Gunpowder and Pearl Tea, and Yu Tsien, which were the choicest spring pickings, and in descending order, Hyson skin, and Twankay, which was mostly used to adulterate batches of the better pickings.
"Yes, I've always found the younger the bud, the more fun to pick as well, sir," Alan grinned, unable to contain himself as the lecture ran on, and on, and on.
"More like deflowerin', Mister Lewrie?" Wythy rasped. "Ye'd be the best judge o' that, I'm sure. Ye mind my warnin' about the local lasses, both o' ye? 'Twas Macao'r nothin'. No women in the factories, ye know."
"Yet there are women in Hog Lane, sir, for the sailors?" Alan inquired. "Do the Chinese mean no foreign women, or no women at all?"
"Aye, fer a whiff o' silver, ye may find custom, though I warn ye both, they're sure to be poxed so bad even the surgeon's mercury cure'd only slow it down," Wythy allowed.
"But something more discreet… uhm, more select for senior traders, sir?" Alan pressed softly, and was pleased that Wythy gave him a shrug and a sly wink. So the man's not a total lout, he thought!
"A tai pan, head of a trading house, well, there are places…" Wythy grunted. "Not at this time of day. The Chinee is a hard-workin' bugger. The day's fer making profit. If the humor's on ye so devilish hard, Mister Lewrie, I'll give ye the fairest wind to steer y'er course by, but 'pon y'er head be it, mind."
"Aye, sir," Alan agreed. "I'd expect nothing less."
"Well, be off with ye. I've work to do. Sup here with us at seven o' the evening. In the meantime, enjoy the sights. Take a peek about. Go visiting," Wythy enjoined, winking once more and jerking his head over his shoulder to indicate the French hong next door. "I spotted some nice bargains along China Street."
They finished their ales and went outside into the heat of the day. After a couple of cold ones, it didn't seem that bad any longer, and there was a decent breeze to keep the hordes of flies at bay and cool the air. At least it wasn't Calcutta, or the Equator.
"I despair o' your immortal soul, Mister Lewrie," McTaggart sighed with a long-put-upon air. "Wenching. Is that all ya hae on your mind, sir?"
"If left to my own devices, yes," Alan confessed willingly.
"You're as much a heathen as een o' these yellow fellas! A bluidy… pagan!" McTaggart spat. "I doan know why I abide your comp'ny!"
"Church of England, actually, not pagan," Alan corrected.
"Same bluidy thing," McTaggart sighed.
They shopped in China Street, running into Burgess Chiswick, who was out browzing in company with his native orderly Nandu, both wearing civilian clothes. Burges
s was loaded down with packages-or at least his orderly was.
"The most unbelievable things, Alan!" Burgess enthused. "Laces as good as any from Flanders or Holland, and damn-all cheap, too. A whole tablecloth for the price of a man's shirt, can you credit it?"
"Hollo, what's this? In need of fanning, Burge?" Alan teased.
"For mother. And for Caroline. Even one for Mammy."
"Your grand-mither?" McTaggart inquired, somewhat confused.
"Family slave. Been with us for years," Burge informed him off-handedly. "Couldn't bear to sell her off at Charleston, so she crossed to England with us. Practically raised me. Those smaller bundles are silk shawls for all. Can't go to a drum or dance without a fancy shawl and a Chinese fan, now can they?"
"Slavery." McTaggart shivered, and wandered off on his own.
"What the devil did he mean by that?" Chiswick huffed. "By God, if he's slurring my family because we…"
"No reason to take offense, Burge," Alan said, grinning. "Between my morals, and you a slave-owning Carolinian, he's having a hellish hard day of it."
"The devil take him, then, him and his blue-stocking airs."
"My dear Burgess, the devil wouldn't dare!" Alan drawled.
After plunging into the market, Alan was entranced all over again, just as he had been in Calcutta. There was so much to see, so many new aromas to savor, so many goods in so many shops that would have gathered mobs of oglers back in London, though most of them could never afford most of it, as novel as any raree-show on earth. And once more, he was glad he'd sailed halfway round the world to see it, hard as the sailing was between ports. This experience was something he'd never forget.
As mementoes, he bought a fiery-red silk dressing gown for himself, all figured with dragons in green and iridescent blue that leaped off the cloth. A small carved ivory junk. Some marble models of temple dogs for his mantel, wherever that would be once he was home. And, with mention of the lovely and gentle Caroline Chiswick, he purchased a pair of earrings and a necklace made of jade, ivory and silver beads, to go home to her on the first Indiaman clearing port for England.
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