Читать книгу Shanghai - Christopher New - Страница 19

THE JOURNEY DOWNSTREAM took over an hour. They travelled in the same launch that had taken Mason and Denton to the Alexander the First, with the same chubby coxswain, whom Johnson called 'Lolly' in a tone that was at once familiar and colourless. Standing with Johnson in the prow, where the thick warm air fanned their faces, Denton kept patting and feeling the weight of the revolver he'd draw from the Customs House armoury. 'Not that we ever use them of course, but....' Johnson had said in his drab, monotonous voice.

Two Chinese Customs men with ancient rifles and wild-looking swords squatted in the stern of the boat, chatting loudly with the coxswain. The light from the boiler, glowing on their high-boned cheeks and slanting eyes, gave them, Denton thought, a lurid, sinister appearance. Sparks like little fireflies occasionally darted over their heads in the black smoke streaming from the funnel, and the sparks seemed to increase the fierceness of their looks. Yet all the while Johnson talked on in his amiably inexpressive voice about the hikes he'd taken round Shanghai last winter. As if they were only out for a picnic.

Soon after they'd passed the dark, broken heaps of the forts at Woosung, where the solitary yellow light gleamed on the smooth silk of the water, the launch slid slowly into a little creek and lay still with its engine scarcely turning. There were two hours to wait. The humid heat weighed on Denton's lids. He kept dozing off, despite the dull throb of tension in his stomach, to wake with a startled jerk as his head, loosening on his neck, lolled to one side or the other. The Chinese Customs men and the coxswain were all quiet now and seemed to be asleep. Only Johnson was still alert, humming softly to himself as he watched from the bow.

Denton slithered from one half-awake dream to another until Johnson's hand on his arm awoke him. Johnson's head was cocked on one side, his eyes turned up as though he was listening. Denton listened too. At first he could hear nothing except the run and slap of the water against the boat's hull, but then the soft plash of oars and a steady creaking sound carried faintly across the river. His stomach lifted. There was something menacing about that repeated creaking and plashing.

Without a word the two Chinese had risen together in the stern and gripped their useless-looking rifles. Johnson hissed to the coxswain and a second later the engine rattled and clanked. The deck shook and quivered as the launch thrust out of the creak at full speed. Almost immediately ahead were two sampans, low down in the water. The oarsmen were frantically trying to reach the bank before the launch closed on them easily, and when they saw it was hopeless, they gave up leaning on their oars as the launch came alongside them. The coxswain called out, translating for Johnson, and in a few minutes the sampans had been taken in tow, while the two smugglers sat dejectedly in the well of the launch, bound back to back.

Denton felt let down. It had all been so quick and ordinary.

'They can row quite fast with that single oar, can't they?' Johnson said pleasantly. 'If we'd left it much later, they'd've got clean away.'

Denton glanced at the nearest prisoner. His face in the flickering light of the boiler was leathery and grim. It seemed all shadows below the eyes, as if the cheeks had been hollowed out by hunger or disease. His lids looked inflamed, the whites of his eyes bloodshot. The man stared out vacantly over the river, while beside him the two Customs men were playing a game with little narrow playing cards no wider than two fingers, laughing boisterously. The coxswain listened, grinning widely, turning his head now and then to join in the banter.

Johnson was lighting his pipe. 'What will happen to those two?' Denton asked him.

'Oh well, you can't tell with a Chinese court.' He drew and puffed, the tobacco glowing bright and dull in the charred bowl of his pipe. 'Depends if they've got any pull, really.'

'But isn't there a set penalty?'

'Anything from death to being in the cangue for a bit. That's like the stocks, the cangue.' Johnson looked at his pipe, pushed the smouldering tobacco down and placed the moist stem back between his teeth. 'It's shame really, isn't? They're probably opium addicts, have to smuggle to get the money for their opium.' He shrugged with detached resignation, still as uninvolved as if they'd been talking about a picnic spoilt by rain. 'Bit of a shame, but there you are.'

Soon he was wondering aloud about the possibility of taking a trip to Hankow at Christmas, with the bounty from the capture. 'You can have some lovely hikes round there, you know, when the weather's cooler,' he said equably. 'Have to watch out for bandits, of course.'

Denton only half listened, gazing again at the prisoners' faces. They didn't look as though they'd have much pull. His eyelids drooped treacherously. How sore and heavy they felt. How sticky his skin was, despite the gentle fanning of the air. As he rubbed his eyes, he was reminded of the bloodshot eyes of the prisoner nearest him. He glanced at him again. The man's eyes stared out blank and motionless over the dark water and the dark, empty fields. As though the darkness had got right inside his eyes, inside his head, Denton thought. Johnson's voice flowed on uninterruptedly while Denton only half-listened. Then suddenly, as if a light had gone out, the misty shapes before his tired eyes were blotted out by sleep.