Nobody’s Child

by Andrew Wareham

  Captain Marker put up the British flag, in the hope of lessening their fears of us, corsairs normally flying no flag at all. He called to the lookout to watch the small fort carefully.

  “She’s got some guns, sir, can see four on the front face. They ain’t manned, sir. They got grass growing round ‘em, waist high, sir.”

  It sounded as if the fort was abandoned, the guns too old for use.

  “Cast off the tow.”

  We put a crew into the sampan and hauled the junk into shallow water, just off the quay, before casting out her own anchor. I was interested to see that she used a block of stone tied to a long rope rather than an iron anchor with flukes. It would drag in a high wind or strong current.

  “They must be in the habit of tying up to land rather than coming to anchor, Giles. Typical of a trader going from port to port rather than calling at small and unknown villages on wild coasts.”

  Jerry implied that there must be a regular commerce between China and the mining port. If we could only find it, then we might profit greatly from straddling that sea lane and intercepting traffic on it.

  The sampan returned to our side, half a cable offshore and Captain Marker shouted its coxswain not to tie up.

  “Giles, go into the boat and try to find a harbourmaster or some such. Tell him of the junk and see if you can sell it to him for any price you can make.”

  A few pounds would be better than nothing, certainly, but they could see that the junk was wounded and had no crew. It would take no great genius to work out that we could hardly sail it away again.

  I strapped my sword to my waist but left the pistols behind. The sword announced that I was an officer, or a gentleman at least; pistols might imply aggressive intent.

  I was rowed the yards to the quay and the sampan put me beside a ladder, the tide being low. I climbed up with no company other than Fred, who belonged at my shoulder and would not let me go alone.

  It was a solid timber structure, none too old, made of teak, at a guess. The quay had cost money, more than one might expect of a smallish town. Perhaps there was a rich hinterland supporting trade through the harbour. A pair of obvious officials appeared from a building at the opposite end to the old fort and walked towards me. They had no uniforms as such but carried that sort of a swagger that said they were paid to be a nuisance to ordinary men – if they were not policemen then they were customs officers or their like.

  “Mijnheer?”

  That, I thought, was Dutch.

  “No. Mister. We are English.”

  “You are Company?”

  Surprising how often you found English speakers in the strangest of places. India was the richest location in the East for traders and many seamen found themselves in Bombay or Madras or Calcutta on occasion for long enough to learn a few words.

  “We are from Bombay.”

  That was true, and if it implied official status for us, it did not actually say anything dishonest.

  “What is the junk, sir?”

  “It attacked us up coast. There were many men aboard her and they tried to take us. We have cannon, and we took them. There are goods in her holds. Salvage.”

  They knew that last word.

  “We unload and make a price?”

  “Please do.”

  An hour and the hull was tied up and a swarm of longshoremen were emptying her, the sacks and bales run up to an open warehouse a few yards inshore. There was a commotion after a few bales of cloth had been brought ashore from one of the sternmost holds.

  “There is hidden under cloth.”

  “What?”

  “Drink.”

  They showed me one of the hundreds of ten gallon, or thereabouts, jars they had found, the top wax sealed. We opened one and took a sniff. It was some sort of distilled spirits, the sort of thing they call arrack throughout the East. Mostly it’s made from a rice wine base. It ain’t poisonous, but that’s about the best thing that can be said for it.

  The locals seemed to think it was pretty good stuff, were all very cheerful on its discovery.

  Three hours and the junk was empty and a committee of merchants was making a formal inspection of the cargo. I sent a message out to Jenny Dawes to the effect that things were progressing slowly but that the natives seemed friendly.

  It was hot, standing on the quay and watching other people work – though nowhere as bad as it would have been if I had been doing the work myself.

  “Fred, have we got any water in the sampan?”

  He came up with an earthenware bottle of some sort of liquid.

  “Cold tea, Master Giles. Cookie brewed it up for breakfast.”

  It was thin and acidulous, but it quenched my thirst, though I was busting for a pee half an hour later and had to nip behind the cover of the old fort. I found out later that cold tea was renowned for going straight through, but it was very refreshing. Being boiled, it was the safer way to drink water.

  Another hour and I was invited into the warehouse and was formally greeted by the oldest of the merchants. The translation was limited but suggested I was welcome, the ship was welcome, the cargo was welcome.

  “But, mister, we have problem. Big cargo. Small money.”

  It was a poor town and the junk’s tonnage was far greater than they might ever expect to handle.

  “Junk is good, make two ships. No money to buy.”

  I waved a hand, dismissively, I thought and hoped.

  “Junk is pirate. Free. Cost nothing.”

  “Free?”

  I nodded, forcefully.

  “Free.”

  The interpreter bobbed his head in a little bow and made his explanation. One of the merchant committee began to chuckle and sent a runner off to the boatyard we could see just along the shore. A score of men appeared and boarded the junk, throwing ropes to the shore behind them. In less than half an hour she was at the yard and being hauled inshore onto the timbers of a slip.

  The meanwhile, it seemed that I had established my bona fides. I was not a wicked profiteer but a good-hearted gentleman trying to dispose of an embarrassment, and making an honest profit in the process, as was only proper.

  “You kill pirate. You make money. Right. Not much. Not got.”

  The merchants had huddled together in solemn conclave, had evidently called in the bankers. A deputation arrived, inspected the cargo and came to some sort of agreement. A short delay and a group of labourers arrived, carrying small chests. They were escorted by a dozen of fighting men, armed with muskets and swords and watching all around them.

  The chests were emptied and the coin they contained was set into stacks in front of me, laid out on a square of canvas on the timbers of the quay. A pair of scales was set formally to the side, their weights displayed to me, though I did not understand what they were.

  There was every sort of currency from the whole of the Orient, I imagined, cast in gold and silver, together with a few of small ingots. They were weighed and set into stacks, presumably of equal value. I was then invited to accept them, with apologies for there being so few.

  I bowed and expressed my pleasure in dealing with such good-hearted folk. I then announced that we must sail – we could delay no longer, we were looked for elsewhere. They were glad to see the back of us, hoping, I expect, that we would be far away before we realised just how little we had received.

  “Fifteen hundred pounds sterling, or thereabouts, Giles. Not a tenth of what the cargo might have fetched in Bombay – but we ain’t in Bombay and we could not have carried it there. So, what we got was fair enough, and a lot better than nothing.”

  I agreed – it was a windfall, something for nothing, and if the little town was richer for it, well, there were few indeed in the East who could claim to have benefitted from the Europeans being there. We should be glad to have done some good for those few people.

  “Why were the spirits hidden away, Jerry? Those folk were pleased to see them.”

  “They are not Mussulmen, Giles. Spir
its are forbidden to the followers of Mahomet. That does not stop them drinking them, of course, but does mean they have to be circumspect. These people were Buddhists, most likely, or some other faith, and have no difficulties in getting drunk.”

  “So, we know that the mining port is in a Mohammedan region, Jerry.”

  “We do, and that is something, but not sufficient. There are many such areas in the Orient, Giles.”

  We cast about hopefully for information for the rest of that voyage, but we could not discover just where the mines were located, which was a pity – though not for them.

  The crew all understood that the first few days of the voyage had made them well off; they had earned more money than they could have in a year at sea in a merchantman. They were much in favour and wanted more. It was a good omen, having such fortune in their first encounter.

  We sailed east, inshore and looking hopefully for more junks, seeing none until we had been the better part of a month searching. We were close to our trading partners in the islands off the Papues when we saw a pair of small fifty-tonners at anchor inside the reef with boats out, as if fishing in the lagoon.

  Captain Marker put the telescope on them and then shook his head.

  “Beche de Mer. Trepang. Bloody sea slugs!”

  Jerry explained that the aptly named beasts were regarded as a great delicacy in China, dried and added to the main meal of the day or used as an ingredient by medical men.

  “Chances are that they will have nothing else aboard, and few enough of them this early in the season. A fight that might lose us men in exchange for a prize we do not want. Not my idea of fun.”

  Nor was it Captain Marker’s; we sailed on

  Jerry explained more fully later in the day, sat in the sunshine with a glass of gin and water in our hands and nibbling at the dried and candied skin of tropical oranges and lemons we had bought in Bombay, for being good for our health, or so the medical men there insisted. They may have been right, for we had few of the ordinary sailing ailments on voyages where we had the dainty aboard. I liked it, too. Can’t get hold of it in England, which is a pity – very flavoursome.

  A gin was welcome too, sat quietly in the afternoon, very short on spirits and long on boiled water, kept in an earthenware pot with a wet length of towelling wrapped round to make it a fraction cooler than the ordinary run. The sahibs in India make a ‘tonic water’ from quinine bark which they add to their gin or schnapps – they say that it’s healthy as well. They may be right.

  “Those junks, Giles, might well have had a couple of dozen pearls and a few ounces of gold dust aboard. Some hundreds of pounds worth, possibly. They would have fought, and we would probably have had to send the boats inside the reef, the waters too shallow for Jenny Dawes to enter with her deeper hull. The Navy would have attempted them, for having nothing better to do than attack the enemy wherever and whenever possible. We are in the business of making a profit, and not losing our men. There will be better chances, elsewhere, most likely. If there ain’t – well, we can’t always be lucky.”

  We were in the commercial line, in the nature of things – when we fought it was for business. Simple to say, but difficult for a youngster to take aboard. I learned, however, courtesy of the Markers. I owe them much. You might say that I had saved the captain’s life, but it had been no more than the impulse of the moment. They gave me a great deal of their thought and time in response.

  I learned, as I say, and I grew. I was at that age – shooting up in height and outward on chest and shoulders. A diet rich in meats helped and I took a sufficiency of exercise to turn the extra weight into muscle. I became within reason powerful, for my age. Mind you, I doubt I ever saw a weakling seaman – shipboard life don’t tolerate the feeble.

  We penetrated the islands, sailing past our previous port of call, reluctantly but inexorably, much as we might have liked to exchange greetings with the young ladies again. They would need years to rebuild their supplies of dust and pearls. We passed any number of small places, villages with no more than a dozen huts and small outrigger canoes, until perhaps fifty miles distant we came across another large island that showed rich garden lands and big trading boats. We anchored and raised a flag and waved hopefully. The women on the white coral sands waved back and called to us.

  The sampan was hauled in on its tow line and Captain Marker raised an eyebrow to me. I stepped down into the boat, together with Fred and six of the boarders to man the oars and if necessary use the muskets and pistols they brought with them. Jerry handed down samples of our wares – an iron cooking pot, an axe, a machete and a sharp knife – and we rowed in to the beach.

  We stood, smiling our best at the young ladies, who wore something in the way of a barkcloth girdle around their hips and thighs and nothing else at all, much to our approval. They smiled back and examined our trade goods and then produced the half-shells of coconuts, exactly as had the previous folk. They had more by way of nuggets than dust, pretty little pebbles of pure gold, perhaps the size of the tip of my little finger. They pointed back to the hills that rose behind them, not tall, a thousand feet or so at a guess, but steep and covered in thick forest and probably impenetrable to us. If that was where the gold was to be found, then they must be the finders, it seemed – we could not live in that sort of thick mix of cane and bush and bugs and quite probably tigers as well. They had no pearls; I presumed their sea bore no shells. When we sailed a few days later I saw I was wrong – the waters were full of sharks. It would have been impossible to dive outside the reef.

  The gold they had was sufficient for our demands. I called the ship and had a full load of goods brought ashore.

  They wanted the cooking pots, for being so much more convenient than the thin-walled clay pots which were all they had. They were not skilled in pottery, but had very little of clay on their island, so that was no surprise.

  The machetes and axes delighted them, and they called their menfolk to the beach and took pleasure in presenting them with one apiece. Then they shooed the fellows away and set them to work in the gardens where they belonged, it seemed, putting the new blades to immediate practical use.

  Trade was a new concept to them. It seemed to me that they thought we had come to give them gifts, wonderful new goods which were so very welcome. In return, they were obligated to make presents to us. They knew that the people from the ships that so rarely visited thought gold to be amazing stuff, so they gave us all they had, not attempting to value it, for they did not know the concept of price. They made presents of pig tusks as well, grown round into spirals. Just a few of the tusks, for they were too important to be profligate with them. They had hundreds of pigs, snuffling in their bamboo-walled sties. I suspect much of the garden produce went to the swine.

  Business concluded, they fed us, those of us who were on shore, and then ushered us into their huts while no few of their girls swam out to the ship to spend the night. Again, there was nothing by way of a commercial transaction, just a friendly exchange of gifts.

  I liked these people. I much hope they stay as friendly for ever.

  We traded on another three islands before we had emptied our holds, heading towards the north, not intending to call on the Bukas again, in the absence of bottles of gin sufficient for their thirsts.

  Talking it over, we concluded that there were small deposits of alluvial gold on most of the islands. There was sufficient to allow the sort of trading we and a few other ships attempted, but too little to justify a colony and mines. In any case, we were not to call for redcoats to build forts and destroy these people, as had happened in India to my knowledge and elsewhere by hearsay. We owed their courtesy that much.

  Two days of sailing and there was a mountainous island stretching north to south across our bows for many miles, well out of sight, far greater than any of the friendly islands we had traded with. The mountains were covered with thick forest, stretching from the peaks, some four or five thousand feet at a rough estimate, to the shorel
ine. There were inlets and breaks in the reefs and often sandy beaches, sometimes a most unusual black sand. The villages we spotted were generally mean and ramshackle places. When we closed the shore, in places where the reef was close in, we were greeted, if such be the word, by men only and them waving spears and stone axes with unmistakable intent. We continued north.

  On the third day of voyaging along the island we rounded a headland and came into a deeper bay, already occupied by a trio of junks. The bay was more of an inlet, though we could see no river at its head for being so heavily forested. It was perhaps a quarter of a mile across and twice that as long and the junks were anchored inshore, close to the southern headland, no more than half a cable distant from us as we sighted them. They were inside long musket shot, and to prove it, fired a gingal at us with no attempt to ask our business first.

  I suspect it may have been an alarm for their own people ashore, for the load of grape or langrage or whatever they may have used in the one pounder gun missed our bow by yards, making a splash and no more. It served as a declaration of hostile intent, however, very useful because we could say to any official sniffing for piracy that they had fired first.

  I yelled for the boarders to make ready while I ran for my own sword and pistols. The cannon were kept loaded with little canvas aprons over the touchholes to protect the powder from rain and spray. The bonnets were removed, and the gun captains poured in their priming powder and lit the slowmatch on their linstocks and ran out their guns, all in less than half a frantic minute, which was good to see – most efficient.

  The six pounders were loaded ball and the cannonades, as always, with grape.

  The ship fell silent as the six gun captains raised their hands to signify they were ready.