China

by Edward Rutherfurd

  * * *

  —

  When they reached the town, Elliot’s assertion that they had little to fear seemed to be borne out. This was no mere village. Whiteparish guessed the place might house thirty thousand souls. Archers on the bank loosed arrows at them, though most bounced off the ship’s iron sides. But two stout war junks barred their path. The moment the Nemesis opened fire with its guns, however, and surged towards them, they fled.

  “They’ve never seen an iron warship before,” Elliot remarked with a chuckle.

  “Iron dragon,” said Nio.

  “The town’s not important,” Elliot explained. “Exposed on the water like that, we can knock it about whenever we like. It’s the forts I’m concerned about.”

  They began to encounter these during the afternoon. They were not large. Most had mud walls and batteries of cannon. In each case, the iron ship’s cannon soon blasted these defenses to bits, and the marines were able to run ashore and spike their guns without suffering casualties. In several places, parties of soldiers appeared and waved antique spears, shouting abuse. But they wisely kept out of the marines’ musket range.

  At the end of the afternoon they came upon a small fort where the commander asked for a parley. He was quite a young man, with an intelligent face. Coming aboard the Nemesis, he explained that his father owned much of the local land. He looked at the ship’s armaments with great interest. “I have heard all about this iron ship,” he explained, “but I wasn’t sure it was true.”

  “Tell him he’d better surrender,” said Elliot.

  “He says he quite agrees,” Whiteparish reported. “It would be foolish to do anything else. But he asks you to oblige him so that he and his men can save face. His cannon will fire a few shots at us, but they will be blanks. Could we please do the same? Then he will surrender.”

  “Sorry,” said Elliot. “No time for such nonsense. Surrender at once.”

  With a sigh, the young man did so, though he did quietly say one thing, which Whiteparish wasn’t going to translate until Elliot insisted on hearing it. “He says you have better cannon, but a smaller brain.”

  “Probably right,” said Elliot cheerfully. “Spike his guns.”

  When the ship anchored a few miles upstream that night, Elliot posted a watch; but nobody disturbed them.

  * * *

  —

  They came upon a bigger fort midway through the morning. It stood on a natural platform of raised ground, commanding a bend in the waterway. It was twice the size of the forts they’d seen the day before, with big ramparts of packed mud.

  “I’d say they’ve twenty cannon in there,” said Elliot, “and a couple hundred men. Maybe more.” His eyes narrowed. “If I’m not mistaken, we can station ourselves a quarter of a mile downstream, and their cannon won’t be able to hit us.”

  He was right. For the next hour the guns of the Nemesis methodically pounded the fort. A gaping breach opened up in the wall. They launched a Congreve rocket into the breach, saw it explode, heard the screams that followed. Then, carefully, they proceeded upstream until they were directly opposite the fort. Three of the Chinese guns fired, but their shots went too high. With quick precision, the gunners on the Nemesis fired back, and the Chinese guns fell silent. They launched another rocket and again heard awful screams.

  “Poor devils,” remarked Elliot. He called the lieutenant of marines, a smart, fair-haired fellow of about thirty. “Take the sergeant with you.” He indicated a big mustachioed veteran. “Storm the fort. Offer them quarter, and once they’ve surrendered, spike their guns.” He turned to Whiteparish. “Can you tell him what to say?”

  In a few words, Whiteparish told the lieutenant how to call for surrender and offer quarter in Cantonese, and made him repeat it back to him twice.

  The Nemesis was so close to the bank now that they didn’t need the longboats. Running out planks, led by the young officer and the big sergeant, the marines raced across them and up the undulating grass slope towards the smoking fort.

  The defenders weren’t giving up. From the breach and from the damaged walls came a hail of arrows and several musket shots. Fortunately, the uneven ground gave the marines some cover from which to return fire. The cannon on the Nemesis roared again. But still the Chinese resisted.

  “Plucky fellows,” said Elliot, with a nod of approval.

  Some of the marines were peeling off to one side now, working their way unseen towards the breach. At the same time, the lieutenant shouted out the message Whiteparish had given him for the Chinese troops. Twice he shouted. They could not have failed to hear. But it had to be admitted, the message had become horribly garbled.

  Whiteparish glanced at Elliot, then at Nio. “Will they understand that?”

  Nio shook his head.

  “Damn,” said Elliot. “I’m afraid this is going to be bloody. But I must have that fort.”

  The lieutenant got on top of the grass bank, shouted his incomprehensible message once more, and was rewarded with a musket ball from the wall above that only just missed him.

  “Prepare for mortar fire,” Elliot ordered. “Exploding shells. And get another rocket ready.” He glanced at Whiteparish. “Can’t risk my marines. Too many defenders.”

  “What’ll you do?”

  “Blow the Chinese to bits, I’m afraid.” He turned and called out: “Ready, Master Gunner?” And he was about to give the order to fire when Cecil Whiteparish did a foolish thing.

  He never even thought about it. Almost before he knew what he was doing, he’d run across the plank and was racing up the slope. Reaching the lieutenant, he leaped up onto the grass bank and bellowed in his best Cantonese: “Surrender now! Our general promises you will not be harmed. Save yourselves!”

  And he might have said more, but a huge force struck him in the back and flattened him upon the ground just as, above him, a musket ball hissed by.

  Then a voice spoke in his ear. “Sorry about that, sir. Can’t have you getting shot.” It was the burly sergeant. “Head down, sir.” Another musket ball hissed by.

  He allowed himself to be dragged back to relative safety. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Sorry I didn’t deliver the message very well,” the lieutenant said cheerfully. “They heard you all right, though, loud and clear. Maybe it’ll work.”

  But it didn’t. Perhaps the Chinese defenders were too proud. Perhaps they didn’t trust the barbarian’s word. Whatever their reasons, they continued to shoot, loosing a few arrows and even getting off another cannonball.

  Whiteparish saw the marine lieutenant glance back to the ship. Evidently Elliot had sent him a signal. “Please don’t move this time,” the lieutenant said. “There are going to be a lot of explosions inside the fort. Then we’re going to rush them.”

  And it happened just as the lieutenant said. And after the great and terrifying noise, the lieutenant and his men left him on the grass, and there were shouts and shots and screaming up ahead. And then it became quieter.

  Nobody noticed him as he clambered into the fort. He climbed first over rubble, then over bodies, heaps of them, four or five deep, slippery with blood. Were all the defenders dead already? He did not know. Inside, the scene was terrible. In one corner of the place, a dozen Chinese prisoners were huddled, under guard. They at least would live. But the rest of the space was littered with something far worse than corpses.

  The cannonballs and explosives had done their work. So had the hand-to-hand fighting. There were body parts—here a hand, there an arm or leg—from men who had been blown to bits. Then there were the living, men with gaping wounds, several with entrails half out, some screaming, others already sinking into silence. Most of them seemed to be half naked. And in the middle of them all, the lieutenant with a pistol and the large mustachioed sergeant with a cutlass. They moved among the twisted figures on the ground calmly and
methodically. Some of the wounded they judged might live; those whose case looked hopeless and whose agony was too great to bear, they killed quickly. It was only common decency that made them do it. He realized that. But he had never seen such horrors before. Soon, he knew, a sickening smell would be added to this terrible scene. He would not wait for that.

  Once when he was a boy, he had met a man who had been at the great Battle of Waterloo, and he had asked him what it was like when the battle was over. But the man had only shaken his head. “Oh no,” he’d said, “I cannot speak of that.” Now he knew why.

  The thought crossed his mind: Should he not go and give comfort to the dying? But what comfort could he give to those who did not even know the true and Christian God?

  Instead he staggered out of the fort again and, once he was out, bent double and threw up.

  It was the sergeant who came upon him. “Sorry you had to see it, sir. We don’t like to leave them like that, you know.”

  “I understand.”

  “They’re only heathens, aren’t they, sir? That’s a comfort, I suppose.”

  * * *

  —

  Back on the Nemesis, Cecil Whiteparish stood, his head bowed. “It’s my fault,” he said to Elliot. “If I’d gone across with the marines at the start…”

  “I wouldn’t have let you,” Elliot said firmly. “Besides, when they did get the message, they still ignored it.”

  “God forgive me,” said poor Whiteparish.

  * * *

  —

  An hour later, as the Nemesis continued northward through the marshes, Whiteparish, still deep in his own thoughts, was surprised to find himself addressed by the pilot, who had been watching him attentively.

  “You are a holy man,” Nio said.

  “I suppose so,” Whiteparish replied without conviction.

  “I know the British worship a god, but that is all. What is he like, your god?”

  For a few moments Whiteparish said nothing. He didn’t really want to talk. He didn’t feel very worthy. But it was his duty to answer the question. After all, as a missionary, that was what he was there to do. So he told the Chinese smuggler the rudiments of the Christian faith, which made him feel a little better. And when Nio seemed to take an interest and asked him more, he gave him further details. And perhaps grateful to make up for his sense of failure, he found himself telling Nio everything he knew about his loving Lord.

  And when he was finally done, Nio looked thoughtful for a while. “This Jesus, did he have brothers and sisters?”

  “Some think he had, others say not.”

  “Was Jesus the Son of Heaven? Like the emperor?”

  “His father was the King of Heaven. Better by far.”

  “I hope so,” Nio said. He thought for a moment. “Would he have killed all those people in the fort?”

  “No,” said Whiteparish firmly. “He would not.”

  Several minutes passed before Nio spoke again. “You are a good man,” he said.

  “I wish I were.”

  “I think you are,” said Nio.

  Cecil Whiteparish did not answer, but he wondered: Had his words about his faith been in the least adequate? Had some seeds fallen on good ground? Might they one day bear fruit?

  He could not tell.

  * * *

  ◦

  At first, it seemed to Nio, he was contented enough. If something in his heart troubled him, he ignored it.

  He was a free agent. His feelings about the Manchu hadn’t changed. He didn’t want to go back to the daily uncertainty of the pirate’s life. But the British seemed to trust him. They were still prepared to pay him very well. And there was plenty to do.

  By the last week of March, the opium trade was in full swing again. The British had returned to their waterfront factory at Canton, though the great walled city overlooking them remained in imperial Chinese hands.

  But neither the British nor the emperor intended to leave things as they were—which meant that the British needed spies.

  Nio was perfect. Not only did he hear everything in the streets, but he had soon bribed two different servants in the governor’s yamen, his administrative office, to give him information. Together with all the news that merchants like Tully Odstock heard through their Chinese counterparts in the Hong, Elliot was well informed.

  Each week, Nio went to the missionary hospital beside the factories—supposedly to seek help with a pain in his elbow that Chinese medicine had failed to cure—and made a detailed report to Cecil Whiteparish, who then conveyed the information to Elliot.

  After reporting, Nio would usually stay to talk with the missionary—the good man, as Nio thought of him—and Cecil would tell him wonderful stories of Christ’s sayings and his miracles. Nio was especially impressed that the Christian Son of God had walked on water. And despite the fact that in the eyes of the law he was just a traitor reporting to his foreign paymaster, Nio drew spiritual nourishment and solace from these talks.

  “There’s going to be more trouble,” Nio informed Whiteparish the first day he reported. “The emperor’s furious about the loss of Hong Kong. As for the compensation money, he just won’t pay. He wants the British trapped in the Gulf of Canton and annihilated.”

  “How does he think he’ll do it?”

  “Extra troops. A lot of them, from several provinces. They’re on their way already. And to command them, no less a person than General Yang.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A hero of the old wars against the steppe barbarians. And the province will be governed by one of the emperor’s royal cousins.” A signal that the place was now the court’s top priority.

  But when the new troops began to arrive in the city, Nio soon reported back: “They look half starved. Some of the companies are in rags. They’re from distant provinces and can’t speak a word of Cantonese. Most of them don’t even seem to know where they are.”

  “And their officers?”

  “Drinking and whoring. They only show up on payday. As for General Yang, he’s over seventy and deaf as a post.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. He believes the British are using black magic. If so few of the barbarians can defeat so many Chinese, he says, there can be no other explanation.”

  All through April, Nio brought reports of fresh arrivals of troops and cannon. One day in early May, in a secluded inlet near the city, he saw a small fleet of fire ships being prepared. Presumably they could be used against the flotilla of British vessels out in the gulf. This he also reported.

  By the third week of May the heat in Canton was growing intolerable. The merchants at the factories, making up for the time lost in the spring, continued their urgent business of selling opium and buying tea, as if the world of trade would never cease. But Nio noticed that the ordinary people of Canton, those who could afford it, were quietly leaving the city.

  His informants at the governor’s yamen told him that something big was brewing. And then, one afternoon, Nio discovered a cannon hidden in the yard of a disused warehouse near the factories and realized that it could easily be dragged out onto the waterfront to fire at British ships.

  The next day he saw Whiteparish. “Where is Elliot? And where is the iron ship?”

  “The iron ship is down at the Bogue. Elliot’s on it.”

  “They’d better come up fast and take the people in the factories off. I think General Yang’s about to attack, and he’s going to take over the waterfront.”

  Two days later, the Nemesis and a flotilla of British warships came up the Pearl River to the factories. Somewhat disgruntled, the merchants allowed themselves to be evacuated.

  By nightfall, the flotilla was out in the waters below the city.

  * * *

  —

  So most people were asleep when, at
two o’clock in the morning during the ebb tide, all hell broke loose on the Pearl River.

  Cannon, dragged onto the waterfront, suddenly roared. Fire ships, chained together in pairs, were floating towards the anchored British vessels. The assault was huge and seemed well organized. The Chinese navy was good at fire ships, after all.

  It didn’t take Nio long to bribe a guard to let him up on the city wall. The night scene before him was spectacular. The roars and flashes from the cannon, coming from so many directions, were confusing, but Nio could see what the fire ships were doing. The British vessels, tall, ghostly shapes in the half-distance, had been caught unawares. Most were still at anchor or trying to get under way as the flaming hulks bore down upon them. Only the Nemesis was moving about and firing its guns. More fire ships were appearing. Some war junks were training their cannon on the British vessels. He even thought he saw the Nemesis take a hit. Were the British going to be defeated for once?

  “I believe we’ve got them,” he cried excitedly. He said it without thinking, and nobody heard.

  It was only as the minutes passed that he noticed something odd. Perhaps, he thought, it was the dark. The fire ships were still advancing, but they seemed to be moving more slowly. A couple of the British ships had weighed anchor; one of them had got a grappling hook on to a fire ship and was dragging it off course. He stared into the blackness. And then, as a good waterman, he suddenly realized…and let out a groan. “The fools,” he wailed.

  The ebb tide that was supposed to carry the fire ships towards the British was almost over. They’d sent the fire ships out too late.

  And so it proved. Through the rest of that short night and as the first hint of dawn appeared, he watched the great fire offensive slowly disintegrate. With the change of tide, some of the fire ships were even carried back to the waterside suburbs of the city, where flames soon broke out amongst the wooden houses. Finally, as dawn sent a faint grey light over the futile remains of the action, Nio made his way down from the wall.