Читать книгу Flashman and the Dragon - George Fraser MacDonald - Страница 10

Old Professor Flashy’s first law of economics is that the time to beware of a pretty woman is not when you’re flush of cash (well, you know what she’s after, and what’s a bankroll more or less?), but when you’re short of the scratch, and she offers to set you right. Because that ain’t natural, and God knows what she’s up to. I learned this when I was fourteen, and one Lady Geraldine, a high-spirited Hebe ten years my senior, lured me out in a punt with the promise of a crown if I minded her clothes while she went bathing. In all innocence, I accepted – and I haven’t seen that five bob yet, because the randy baggage had to shell out all her loose change to buy the silence of the grinning water-bailiff who caught us unawares in the reeds, where she was teaching me natural history after her swim. I had the presence of mind even at that tender age to clap my breeches over my face and so avoid recognition as I fled, but you take the point – I had been misled, in my youthful simplicity, by a designing female who played on my natural cupidity.

Ever since, when they’ve dangled rich rewards before me, I’ve taken fright. If the case of Mrs Phoebe Carpenter was an exception – well, she was a clergyman’s wife, and you don’t expect double-dealing from a wide-eyed simperer who sings come-to-Jesus in the choir. I don’t know why I bothered with her … yes, I do, though; shaped like an Indian nautch-dancer under her muslin, blue-eyed, golden-haired, and with that pouting lower lip that’s as good as a beckoning finger to chaps like me – she reminded me rather of my darling wife, whom I hadn’t seen in more than three years and was getting uncommon hungry for. So, reading the invitation in Mrs Carpenter’s demure smile, and having ten days to loaf in Hong Kong before my ship sailed for Home,¹ I decided to have a cast at her; it was a dead-and-alive hole in ’60, I can tell you, and how else should a weary soldier pass his time?

So I attended morning and evening service, hollering hosannas and nodding stern approval while her drone of a husband sermonised about temptation and the snares that Satan spreads (about which he didn’t know the first dam’ thing), and gallantly helping her to gather up the hymn-books afterwards. I dined with them, traded a text or two with the Reverend, joined them in evening prayers, squired her along the Queen’s Road – she was all for it, of course, but what was middling rum was that he was, too; it ain’t every middle-aged vicar who cares to see his young bride escorted by a dashing Lancer with Balaclava whiskers. I put it down to natural toad-eating on his part, for I was the lion of the hour in those days, with my new knighthood and V.C., and all my Mutiny heroics to add to the fame I had undeservedly won in Crimea and Afghanistan. If you’ve read my earlier memoirs you’ll know all about it – and how by shirking, running, diving into cover, and shielding my quaking carcase behind better men, I had emerged after four campaigns with tremendous credit, a tidy sum in loot, and a chestful of tinware. I was a colonel of six years’ seniority at 37, big, bluff, handsome Flash Harry, quite a favourite with Queen and Consort, well spoken of by Palmerston and my chiefs, married to the beauteous and wealthy daughter of a peer (and a dead peer, at that) – and only I knew (though I’d a feeling that wily old Colin Campbell suspected) that my fame was all a fraud and a sham.

There had been a time when I was sure it couldn’t last, and they were bound to find me out for the poltroom and scoundrel I was – but I’d been devilish lucky, and, d’ye know, there’s nothing sticks like a good name, provided you know how to carry your credit with a modest grin and a glad eye. Once let ’em call you a hero, and they’ll never leave off worshipping – which is absolute nuts when the worshipper cuts a figure like the adoring Mrs Carpenter’s. After three days of my society I reckoned she was ready to melt; all that was needed was a stroll in the garden after dark, a few well-chosen quotations from the Song of Solomon, and she’d play like one of those abandoned Old Testament queens her husband was forever reviling from the pulpit.

As a final rehearsal I took her out to picnic at the Poke Fullam bungalow, which was the favoured resort in Hong Kong at that time; we found a secluded spot, spread a rug, disposed of the cold prawns and a bottle of Hock, and settled down to exchange my murmured gallantries for her sighs and coy glances – I didn’t intend to board her that afternoon, you understand; too public, and she wasn’t even part-drunk. As it happened, I’d have been wasting my time, for the innocent Mrs Carpenter had been working to a fixed end just as purposefully as I. And such an end; when I think back on it, words fail me.

She led up to it by talking of her husband’s ambition to build a church and hall over at Kowloong; even in those days it was the fashionable place, so he would be quite top dog among the local gospel-wallopers. The difficulty, says she sighing, was money – although even that would not have been insurmountable had it not been for the impending war.

‘When Sir Hope Grant begins his campaign, you see, it is certain that there will be a cessation of all China trade, even with Canton,’ says she. ‘And when that happens – why, there will be an end to all Josiah’s hopes. And mine.’ And she choked back what sounded like a little sob.

I’d been paying no heed, content to stroke her hand, brotherly-like, while she prattled, but hearing her gulp I perked up. Get ’em weeping, and you’re half way to climbing all over them. I feigned concern, and squeezed her hand, begging her to explain what Grant’s campaign could have to do with dear Josiah’s church-building. I knew, as all the world did, that Grant was due in Hong Kong shortly with a fleet and army whose purpose would be to go up-country and force our latest treaty down the Chinese Emperor’s throat, but it wasn’t liable to be much of a war: show the flag to the Chinks, kick a few yellow backsides, and home again with hardly a shot fired – the kind of campaign that would have suited me, if I’d been looking for one, which I wasn’t. I could thank God I’d be homeward bound before Grant arrived, for he knew me from India and would certainly dragoon me into service if I were silly enough to be on hand. You don’t pass up the chance of employing the gallant Flashy. And he don’t pass up the chance of making himself scarce.

‘But even a little war will put an end to traffic with the Chinese merchants,’ she lamented. ‘Oh, it is so hard, when Josiah and his friends have invested so wisely! To be robbed of the deserved profit that would have fulfilled his dream! It is too bad!’ And she looked at me with trembling mouth and great blue eyes – Gad, she was like Elspeth, even to the imbecile parting of those crimson lips, and the quivering of her top hamper. Feeling slightly fogged, I asked, what investment had dear Josiah made?

‘Why, opium, of course! He was so clever, laying out Papa’s legacy in two thousand chests of the very choicest Patna,’ says this fair flower of the vicarage. ‘And it would have fetched ever so much money at Canton – more than enough to build our dear little church! But if war comes, and he cannot sell his cargo …’ She sniffed and looked woebegone.

‘D’you mean to tell me,’ says I, astonished, ‘that Josiah is smuggling poppy?’ I know the Church is game for anything, as a rule, and Hong Kong only existed for the opium trade; most everyone was in it. But it don’t go with dog-collars and Sunday schools, exactly.

‘Gracious, no! Dear Sir Harry, how could you suppose such a thing? Why, it is not smuggling at all nowadays!’ She was all lovely earnestness as she explained – and so help me, these were her very words: ‘Josiah says that the fifth supplementary clause of the new treaty removes all restrictions on the trade in opium, cash, pulse, grain, saltpetre … oh, I forget all the things, but one of them is spelter, whatever that may be; it sounds very horrid. It is true,’ she admitted gravely, ‘that the treaty is not yet ratified, but Sir Hope Grant will see to that, and Josiah says there can be no illegality in profiting by anticipation.’ So there.

Josiah’ll end up in Lambeth Palace or Dartmoor, at this rate, thinks I. Imagine – a clergyman peddling the black smoke. Purely out of curiosity, I asked didn’t he have moral qualms? She twitched her tits in impatience.

‘Oh, Josiah says that is Nonconformist missionary talk, and that it is well-known the natives of China use opium as a sedative, rather than as a narcotic, and that it does not one-tenth of the harm that strong waters cause among our poorer classes at home. Gin, and such things.’ Then she sighed again, and they quivered in dejection. ‘But it is all by the way now. If he cannot sell the cargo … and he could have built our church and to spare, too!’

With enough over to start a couple of brothels, no doubt, the way Josiah did business. ‘Hold on,’ says I. ‘Why can’t he sell it – where is it, by the way?’

‘At Macao. Josiah is gone over today to see it put aboard the fast crabs and scrambling dragons.’ Not two years out of the schoolroom, sink me, and she was talking like a taipan.^fn1

‘Well, there you are – he can send it up Pearl River to the Canton factories tomorrow, and sell it to the Hongs.’

‘Oh, if it were so simple! But you see, Sir Harry, with all the war talk there is word that the Chinese merchants have been forbidden to buy from our people … and … and Josiah and his friends have no influence to persuade them.’

‘Then get Dent or Jardine to run it in – they’ll persuade anybody – and get a better price than Josiah could, I daresay.’

‘And take all our profit in commission! They are the greediest persons, you know,’ says this tender child. ‘Besides, the price is settled. Josiah vows to take no less than eight pounds a chest.’

‘Jesus – I mean, dear me!’ says I. ‘Two thousand chests – why, that’s near a ton, isn’t it? Sixteen thousand quid!’ I was no expert, but you couldn’t be in Hong Kong five minutes without knowing the going figures. ‘Phew! Well, my dear, he’d better get it to Canton somehow before the war starts – stay, though: can’t he put it in bond until things are more settled?’

‘It is prepared chandoo, not raw cake,’ says the Opium Queen pathetically. ‘Unless it goes directly, it must spoil. Oh, is it not wretchedly unlucky? Those who could run it will do so only on extortionate terms; those who would, for a fair consideration, are not people who could deal with the Chinese officials and merchants. Josiah has a skipper, a Mr Ward, but he cannot speak Chinese, even!’

And it was then, with another superb sigh, that she turned those great misty eyes on me in undoubted appeal, and said in a little voice: ‘It would be so easy … for the right person, you see.’ She looked away, downcast. ‘Josiah says he would pay him ten per cent.’

Lady Geraldine had been rather more subtle … but she hadn’t been offering sixteen hundred quid. Handsome pocket money, if you like – and easier to earn than falling off a log, for whatever the Pekin government said, the Hong merchants would cut Confucius’s throat to buy a ton of chandoo, whoever offered it. And she was right – all that was needed was someone with bold front and bearing who could brush aside inconvenient officials on the run upriver, stick out his jaw at any Chink jack-in-the-office who threatened confiscation, and see that Josiah’s ignorant skipper found his way safe to Jackass Point. Nothing in that.

Mind you, she had a hard bark, asking a British Army colonel to nursemaid her shipload of puggle – yet why not? Here was I, friendly disposed, officer and gentleman, knew the ropes, spoke the lingo (well, I could understand a Mandarin, and make myself enough understood in turn; with the coolies I had to use pigeon and my boots), and just the chap to stare down any yellow office-wallahs. A week till my ship sailed, ample time … sixteen hundred … Mrs Carpenter swooning with gratitude … h’m …

You must remember that these thoughts ran through my mind with those innocent-wanton eyes fixed on mine, and that excellent bosom heaving between us. And if you think she was a froward piece, or that I should have smelled a battalion of rats … well, it was a plausible tale, and not even a scent of risk. With our garrison at Canton, the Pearl was as safe as the Avon, and there was no stigma – well, not to signify. It was ‘trade’, not ‘opium’, that would have raised an eyebrow at Horse Guards. And sixteen hundred … for a jolly sail on the river?

‘We … I … should be so grateful,’ she murmured, and gave me a quick slantendicular.

‘You little goose!’ says I indulgently, ‘if you want me to do it … why not say so?’ I gave her my sad Flashy smile. ‘Don’t you know I’d do anything for you?’ And with a light laugh I kissed her masterfully, munching away, and I daresay we might have done the business there and then if a gaggle of brats with a governess hadn’t hove in view, causing us to break clean and remark on the splendid view, such a perfect day for picnicking.

We settled the details in the tonga back to town, myself making light of it and pinching her palm, she all flushed confusion and breathless gratitude. How could she and dear Josiah ever thank me? Well, Josiah could stump up the rhino on my return, and she would certainly do the rest, if I could judge by the light in her eye and the way she shivered when I squeezed her knee. They’re all alike, you know.

Aye. I should have remembered Lady Geraldine.

I don’t know who ran the first chest of opium into China, but he was a great man in his way. It was as though some imaginary trader had put into the Forth with a cargo of Glenlivet to discover that the Scots had never heard of whisky. There was a natural appetite, as you may say. And while the Chinks had been puffing themselves half-witted long before the first foreign trader put his nose into the Pearl River, there’s no doubt that our own John Company had developed their taste for the drug, back in the earlies, and before long they couldn’t get enough of it.

This didn’t suit the ruling Manchoos, for while they were as partial to a pipe as the next heathen, they saw that it was ruining the commonalty, and who would hew the wood and draw the water then? These Manchoos, you see, were fierce warriors who had swept in from the north centuries earlier, and dealt with China much as our English forebears did with Ireland (not that we ever forced the Paddies to wear pigtails as a badge of serfdom). They established a Manchoo ruling class, took all the plum posts, ran the country with a sloth, inefficiency, and waste that would have shocked a Bengali babu, treated the conquered Chinese like dirt – and sat back in complacent luxury, growing their fingernails long, cultivating the more rarefied arts, galloping their concubines, developing a taste for putrefied food, preaching pure philosophy and practising abominable cruelties, exalting the trivial and neglecting the essential, having another romp at the concubines, and generally priding themselves on being lords of creation. Which, since they hardly admitted the existence of the world outside China, is what they were.

So you can see they resented white interlopers who bade fair to undermine their Empire with poppy drug, and did their damnedest to stop the trade, but couldn’t. To their chagrin they discovered that their God-given superiority, their highly refined taste in eggshell pottery, and their limitless lines of ancestors, availed nothing against any Dundee pirate with a pistol on his hip and a six-pounder in his bows who was determined to run his opium in. Which made the Manchoo Mandarins wild with outraged pride, and more high-handed towards foreigners than ever, with the result that war broke out in 1840. Being Chinese and useless, they lost, and had to cede Hong Kong to us and open up Treaty Ports to European trade. And the poppy-running went on as before, only more so.

You’d have thought that would teach ’em manners, but not a bit of it. Instead of realising that foreign trade had come to stay, they convinced themselves that we were only there on sufferance, and they could treat our traders and emissaries as dirt, evil-smelling foreign savages that we were. They knew China was the centre and master of the world, and that everyone else was barbarian filth, lurking on their outskirts plotting mischief, and needing to be brought to heel like untrained curs. What, admit us as equals? Trade freely with us? Receive our ambassadors at Pekin? (The Chinese for ‘ambassador’ is ‘tribute-bearer’, which gives you some notion of their conceit.) It was unthinkable.

You have to understand this Chinese pride – they truly believe they have dominion over us, and that our rulers are mere slaves to their Emperor. Haven’t I heard a red-button Mandarin, a greasy old profligate so damned cultivated that his concubines had to feed him and even carry him to the commode to do his business, because he’d never learned how – haven’t I heard him lisping about ‘the barbarian vassal Victoria’? As for the American President – a mere coolie. (And you won’t teach John Chinaman different by blowing his cities apart with artillery, or trampling his country underfoot. Well, if a footpad knocks you down, or a cannibal eats you, it don’t follow that he’s your superior, does it? Fiercer and stronger, perhaps, but infinitely lower in the scale of creation. That’s how the Chinese think of us – and damn the facts that stare ’em in the face.)

So, even after we’d licked them, and gained a trade foot-hold in the Treaty Ports, they continued as arrogant as ever, and finally over-stepped the mark in ’56, boarding the British ship Arrow (though whether she was entitled to fly the Union Flag was debatable) and arresting her Chink crew because one of ’em was believed to be a pirate (which some said he wasn’t, but one of his relatives might be). The usual Chinese confusion, you see, and before you could say ‘Snooks!’ we had bombarded Canton, and the local Mandarin was offering thirty dollars for British heads.

I believe it might have blown over if the clown Cobden, abetted by Gladstone and D’Israeli (there’s an unholy alliance, if you like), hadn’t worked himself into a sweat in Parliament, saying it was all our fault, and it was a scandal the way our opium-traffickers abused the Chinese, who were the most saintly folk on record, while British bounce and arrogance were a byword, and we were just picking a quarrel, more shame to us. This had Palmerston spitting his false teeth all over the shop; he damned Cobden and the Chinks for rascals both, said our honour had been flouted, and anyway we had only bombarded Canton with the ‘utmost forbearance’ (good old Pam!), and was Cobden aware that the Manchoos had beheaded 70,000 folk at Canton in the past year, and were guilty of vices that were a disgrace to human nature, hey?

Fine Parliamentary stuff, you see, and when Pam lost the vote and had to go to the country, he won a thumping majority (which was what the old scoundrel had been playing for all along) and the Chinese war was on with a vengeance. It was a scrappy business, but after we took Canton the Chinks had to climb down and agree to a new treaty, admitting us to inland trade, with Ambassadors at Pekin. But being still as arrogant as ever, they dragged their heels about signing, and when we sent a fleet up the Peiho to persuade ’em, damned if they didn’t have a sudden burst of martial valour, and handed us a splendid licking at the Taku Forts. So now, in the spring of ’60, with an uneasy truce between Britain and China, Hope Grant was coming with an army of British and Frogs, to convoy our Ambassador to Pekin, and make the Emperor sign.²

You must bear with my historical lecture, for I have to show you how things stood if you are to understand my tale. For all the official coolness between Pekin and ourselves, commerce was still going on between our traders and Canton (which we continued to hold) but the Carpenters were right to wonder how long it might continue, with our invasion imminent. Which brings me back to the point where I agreed to escort their cargo of poppy up the Pearl, with the prospect of a jolly river cruise, sixteen hundred sovs, and a fine frolic with dear Phoebe when I got back to Hong Kong.

Mind you, as I leaned on the rail of the lead lorcha bearing up beyond Lintin Island two days after our picnic, with the rising sun rolling the fog-banks up the great estuary, I could honestly say it wasn’t either the cash or the lady that had made me turn opium-runner. No, it was the fun of the thing, the lure of sport-without-danger, the seeking for fresh sights and amusements, like this magnificent Pearl River, with that wondrous silver mist that I suppose gave it its name, and its fairy islets beyond the Tiger’s Gate, and the dawn breeze rippling the shining water and filling the sails of the stubby junks and lorchas and crazy fisher-craft – and the pug-nosed, grinning Hong Kong boat girl rolling her poonts on the thwart of a sampan and shouting: ‘Hi-ya, cap’n! Hi-ya! You wanchee jiggee no wanchee jiggee? You payee two hunner’ cash, drinkee samshu? Jollee-jollee!’

‘Who you, Dragon Empress?’ says I. ‘Come aboard, one hunner’ cash, maybe all-same samshu.’ They’re the jolliest wenches, the Hong Kong boaters, plump little sluts who swim like fish and couple like stoats. She squealed with laughter and plunged in, reached the lorcha in a few fast strokes, and was hauled inboard, all wet and shiny and giggling in her little loin-cloth. Anything less like an angel of Providence you never saw, but that’s what she was; if I’d guessed, I’d ha’ treated her with more respect than I did, slapping her rump and sending her aft for later. For the moment I was content to muse at the rail, enjoying the warm sunshine and the distant green prospect of Lintin, where the coolies could be seen languidly pursuing the only two occupations known to the Chinese peasant: to wit, standing stock-still up to the knees in paddy-water holding a bullock on a rope, or shifting mud very slowly from one point to another. Deny them these employments, and they would simply lie down and die, which a good many of them seemed to do anyway. I’m told that Napoleon once said that China was a sleeping giant, and when she awoke the world would be sorry. He didn’t say who was going to get the bastards out of bed.

I put this to Ward, the skipper commanding the two lorchas which made up our little convoy. He was a brisk, wiry, bright-eyed little Yankee about ten years my junior, and though he hadn’t been in China more than a month or two, you couldn’t have wished for a smarter hand at the helm of a lorcha, or a sharper tongue when it came to keeping the Chinese boatmen up to the mark; he was a young terrier, and had learned his trade on American merchantmen, with a mate’s ticket, damn-your-eyes, which was fair going at his age. For all that, he had an odd, soft streak; when one of the Chinks was knocked overside by a swinging boom, and we lost way fishing him out, I looked to see Ward lay into him with a rope’s end for his clumsiness, or hang him from the rail to dry. But he just laughed and cuffed the Chink’s head, with a stream of pigeon, and says to me:

‘I fell overboard on my first voyage – and what d’ye think I was doing? Chasing a butterfly, so help me, I was! Say, I was a lot greener than that Chink, though! C’mon, ye blushing Chinese cherubs, tailee on makee pull! Pullee, I say! Tell ye what, colonel, it takes an awful lot o’ these beggars to do one man’s work!’

That was when I observed that the Chinese were the idlest rascals in creation, and he frowned and chuckled all together.

‘I reckon,’ says he. ‘But they could be a fine people, for all that. Give ’em someone to lead ’em, to drive ’em, to show ’em how. They got the prime country in creation here – when they find out how to use it. Say, and they’re smart – you know they were civilised while we were still running around with paint on? Why, they had paper an’ gunpowder centuries before we did!’

‘Which they use to make kites and fireworks,’ says I. It was plain he was an old China hand in the making – and after a few weeks’ acquaintance, too. ‘As for their civilisation, it’s getting rottener and more corrupt and decadent by the minute. Look at their ramshackle government—’

‘Look at the Taipings, if you like!’ cries he. ‘That’s the new China, mark my words! They’ll stand this whole country on its head, ’fore they’re through, see if they don’t!’ He took a big breath, smoothing his long black hair with both hands in an odd nervous gesture; his eyes were shining with excitement. ‘The new China! Boy, I’m going to get me a section of that, though! Know what, colonel? – after this trip, I might just take myself a long slant up the Yangtse and join up with ’em. Tai’ping tieng-kwow, eh? The Kingdom of Heavenly Peace – but can’t they fight some? I guess so – and you may be sure they’re on the look-out for mercenaries – why, a go-ahead white man could go right to the top among ’em, maybe make Prince even, with a button on his hat!’ He laughed and slapped his fist, full of ginger.

‘You’re crazy,’ says I, ‘but since they are too, you’ll fit right in, I daresay.’

‘Fred T. Ward fits in anywhere, mister!’ cries he, and then he was away along the deck again, chivvying the boatmen to trim the great mainsail, yelling his bastard pigeon and laughing as he tailed on to the rope.

Not only China-struck, but a well-fledged lunatic, I could see. Of course he wasn’t alone in having a bee in his bonnet about the Taipings; even the European Powers were keeping an anxious eye on them, wondering how far they might go. In case you haven’t heard of them, I must tell you that they were another of those incredible phenomena that made China the topsy-turvy mess it was, like some fantastic land from Gulliver, where everything was upside down and out of kilter. Talk about moonbeams from cucumbers; the Taipings were even dafter than that.

They began back in the ’forties, when a Cantonese clerk failed his examinations and fell into a trance, from which he emerged proclaiming that he was Christ’s younger brother – a ploy which, I’m thankful to say, I never tried on old Arnold after making a hash of my Greek construes at Rugby. Anyway, this clerk decided he had a God-given mission to overthrow the Manchoos and establish ‘the Tai’ping’ – the Kingdom of Eternal Peace or Heavenly Harmony or what you will. He went about preaching a sort of bastard Christianity which he’d picked up from missionary tracts, and in any normal country he’d either have been knocked on the head or given a University Chair. But this being China, his crusade had caught on, against all sense and reason, and within a few years he’d built up an enormous army, devastated several provinces, thrashed various Imperial generals, captured dozens of cities including the old capital, Nanking, and come within an ace of Pekin itself. Getting madder by the minute, mark you, but among the millions of peasants who’d rallied to him and swallowed his religious moonshine, there were some likely lads who plotted the campaigns, fought the battles, and imposed his amazing notions of worship and discipline on a sizeable slice of the population.

This was the famous Taiping Rebellion,^fn2 the bloodiest war ever fought on earth, and it was still going great guns in ’60. Countless millions had already died in it, but neither the Imperials nor the rebels looked like winning just yet; the Imps were besieging Nanking, but not making much of it, while various Taiping armies were rampaging elsewhere, spreading the gospel and piling up the corpses, as not infrequently happens.

There was some sympathy for the Taipings among those Europeans (missionaries mostly) who mistakenly thought they were real Christians, and a few enthusiasts, as well as rascals and booty-hunters, had enlisted with them. Meanwhile our government, and the other foreign states who had some trade interest in China (and hoped to have a lot more) were watching uneasily, afraid to intervene, but devilish concerned about the outcome.

So there you are: a Manchoo government with an idiot Emperor who thought the world was square, fighting a lethargic war against rebels led by a lunatic, and preparing to resist a Franco-British invasion which wasn’t to be a war, exactly, but rather a great armed procession to escort our Ambassador to Pekin and persuade the Chinks to keep their treaty obligations – which included legalising the opium traffic at that moment personified by H. Flashman and his band of yellow brothers.³ And in case you think I was incautious, heading upriver at such a time, take a squint at the map, and be aware that all the bloodshed and beastliness was a long way from Canton; you’d not have caught me near the place otherwise.

We were into the Bocca Tigris, where the estuary narrows to a broad river among islands, before I started to earn my corn. Out from Chuenpee Fort comes an Imperial patrol boat with some minor official riff-raff aboard, hollering to us to heave to; Ward cocked an eye at me, but I shook my head, and we swept past them without so much as ‘good day’; they clamoured in our wake for a while, beating gongs and waving wildly, but gave up when they saw we’d no intention of stopping. Ward, who’d been anxiously scanning the big forts on the high bluffs overlooking the channel, shook his head with relief and grinned at me.

‘Is it always so easy?’ cries he, and I told him, not quite, we’d meet more determined inquiry farther on, but I would talk our way past. Sure enough, in late afternoon, when we were clearing Tiger Island, up popped a splendid galley, all gold and scarlet, with dragon banners and long ribbons fluttering from her upper works, her twenty oars going like clockwork as she steered to intercept us. She had three or four jingals^fn3 in her bows, and fifty men on her deck if there was one; under a little canopy on her poop there was a Mandarin in full fig of button-hat and silk robe, seated in state – and flying a kite, with a little lad to help him with the string. Even the most elderly and dignified Chinese delight in kites, you know, and no city park is complete without a score of sober old buffers pottering about like contented Buddhas with their airy toys fluttering and swooping overhead. This was a fine bird-kite, a great silver stork so lifelike you expected it to spread its wings as it hovered hundreds of feet above us.

To complete this idyllic scene, the galley carried on its bows a huge wooden cage, crammed with about twenty wretched coolies so close-packed they could hardly stir – criminals being carried to their place of punishment, probably. Their wailing carried across the water as the galley feathered her oars and an officer bawled across, demanding our business.

‘Ruth and Naomi, lorchas from Hong Kong, carrying opium to the factories,’ shouts I in my best Mandarin, and he said he must come aboard and examine us. I told Ward to keep way on the lorchas, and on no account to heave to. ‘If those thieving bastards once get on our deck, they’ll have the stoppings out of our teeth,’ I told him. ‘But if we keep going, there’s nothing they can do about it.’

‘Suppose they fire on us?’ says he, eyeing the jingals.

‘And start another war?’ I nodded at the Union Jack at our stern, and hollered across the water:

‘Our licence is in order, your excellency, and we are in great haste, and must proceed to Canton without delay. So you can bugger off, see?’

This provoked a great screaming of instructions to heave to immediately, but no one moved to the jingals, so I jumped on the rail and pointed to our flag.

‘This is a British vessel, and I am a close friend of Pahsia-li, who’ll have your yellow hide if you get gay with us, d’ye hear?’ In fact, I’d never met Harry Parkes, who was our man at Canton – and pretty well lord and master of the place – but I guessed the mention of his name might cause ’em to think. ‘Sheer off, damn you, or we’ll have half the oars out of you!’ She was gliding in to head us off, not thirty feet away, and in a moment her oars would be crumpled against our hull; it was a question of who gave way. Suddenly she veered on to a parallel course, with the officer shrieking to us to heave to; I made a rude gesture, and he ran to the Mandarin for instructions.

I was half-expecting what came next. There was a barked order, and a dozen of the galley’s crew ran forward and seized on the wooden cage in which the criminals were packed like so many herring. On the order they heaved, sliding the cage until it was poised on the lip of the bow platform; her oars took the water again, keeping her level with us – and then they just looked across at us, and the officer repeated his demand to us to heave to. I turned away and told Ward to keep her going. He was gaping, white-faced; the poor devils in the cage were squealing like things demented and struggling helplessly.

‘My God!’ cries he. ‘Are they going to drown them?’

‘Undoubtedly,’ says I. ‘Unless we heave to and allow ourselves to be boarded and plundered on some trumped-up excuse. In which case they’ll certainly drown ’em later, just the same. But they’re hoping we don’t know that – and that being soft-hearted foreign devils we’ll spill our wind and come to. It’s a special kind of Chinese blackmail, you see. So just hold your course and pay ’em no heed.’

He gulped, once, but he was a cool hand; he turned his back as I had done, and yelled to the helmsman to hold her steady. There was dead silence on our deck; only the creaking of the timbers and the swish of water along our side. Another yell to heave to from the galley … silence … a shrieked order … an awful, heart-rending chorus of wails and screams, and an almighty splash.

‘Fine people, with a prime country, as you were saying,’ says I, and strolled over to the rail again. The galley was still abreast, but in her wake there was a great bubbling and boiling to mark where the cage was sinking to the bottom of the Pearl. Ward came up beside me; his teeth were gritted and there was great beads of sweat on his brow.

‘Old China or New China,’ says I, ‘it’s all the same, young Fred.’

‘The goddam swine!’ cries he. ‘The cold-blooded yellow bastard – look at him there, with his goddam kite! He hasn’t even moved a muscle!’ His face was working with rage. ‘Goddam him! Goddam him to hell!’

‘Amen,’ says I, and watched the galley slowly falling astern before turning back towards the shore, the silver stork-kite hanging in the air far above her. Suddenly a brightly coloured object went whirling up the string, and then another – gaily-painted paper butterflies which were brought to a sudden halt by a twitch on the kite-string, so that they fluttered in the breeze, glinting and turning, just below the stork.

‘Would you have heaved to when they made to drown those poor beggars, Fred?’ I asked.

He hesitated. ‘I guess,’ says he, and looked at me. ‘That’s why you’re aboard, huh?’

I nodded. ‘You see, they daren’t offer us violence – not after the Arrow affair. And they’ve no real right to stop an opium boat – but they’ll use every trick they know to bluff you, and once they’re aboard, and you don’t speak Chinese, and they outnumber you ten to one – well, they can sort of confiscate your cargo – oh, and release it later, no doubt, with apologies … and lo and behold, your chests of first-rate chandoo have been replaced, hey presto! by a ton of opium dross. See?’

‘Bastards!’ was all he said. ‘Him an’ his goddam kite!’

‘Speaking of which – see those butterflies? Somewhere up near the Second Bar an active little Chink with a spy-glass is taking note of ’em – which means that round about the Six Flats we’ll meet another deputation, with a much more important Mandarin on board. It may be politic to present him with a couple of chests, rather than risk any embarrassment.’

‘How’s that?’ His voice was sharp. ‘Give him some of our opium?’

‘What’s sixteen quid out of sixteen thousand?’ I wondered.

He was silent for a moment. ‘I guess,’ says he, and then: ‘Six Flats is up beyond the First Bar, isn’t it?’

I said it was, and that we ought to be there tomorrow noon, and after a little more talk he said he’d better take post on the second lorcha for the night, as we had agreed, so that both vessels were under proper control.

‘Remember – keep close up, and don’t stop for anything,’ says I, and he swore he wouldn’t. He didn’t bother with a small boat, but just dropped over the side and trod water until the second lorcha came by, and he scrambled aboard. A good boy that, thinks I; green, but steady. By Gad, I didn’t know the half of him, did I?

The boatmen were cooking their evening meal forward, but I’d brought cold fowl and beef, and after a capital meal and a bottle of Moselle while the sun went down I was in splendid trim for my Hong Kong girl, who was sitting by the stern-rail, singing high-pitched and combing her long hair. We went down to the tiny cabin, and were buckled to in no time; a fine, fat little romp she was, too, taking a great pleasure in her work and giggling and squealing as we thrashed about, but no great practitioner of the gentle art. But you don’t expect Montez or Lily Langtry for sixpence, which was what I was paying her; she was a crude, healthy animal, and when I’d played myself out with her she retired with a flask of the promised samshu and I settled down to my well-earned repose.

She was back at first light, though, crawling in beside me and grunting as she rubbed her boobies across my face, which is better than an alarm clock any day. I laid hold, and was preparing to set about her when I realised that she was trembling violently, and the pretty pug face was working with a strange, ugly tic.

‘What the devil’s the matter?’ says I, still half-asleep, and she twitched and sniffed at me.

‘Wantee piecee pipe!’ says she, whimpering. ‘Mass’ gimme! Piecee pipe!’

‘Oh, lord!’ says I. ‘Get one from the boatmen, can’t you?’ She wanted her opium, and I could see she’d be no fun until she’d had it. But the boatmen hadn’t any, or wouldn’t give it, apparently, and she began to blubber and twitch worse than ever, sobbing ‘Piecee pipe!’ and pulling the pipe from her loin-cloth and shoving it at me. I slapped her across the cabin, and she lay there crying and shivering; I’d have let her lie, but her first awakening of me had put me in the mood for a gallop, and it occurred to me that with a few puffs of black smoke inside her she might be stimulated to a more interesting performance than she’d given the previous night. It was only a step under the companion to where half a ton of the best chandoo was to be had; Josiah would never grudge a skewerful in such a good cause, I was sure.

So I growled at her to get her lamp going and bring her pin, and she came panting as I pushed through the chick-screen to the long main hold which ran the full length of the lorcha under its flush deck. There were the chests, and while she twitched and whined at my elbow I rummaged for a handspike and stuck it under the nearest lid. She had her little lamp lit, and was holding out the skewer in a trembling paw – as I said before, she was a most unlikely-looking guardian angel.

I levered the lid up with a splintering of cheap timber, and pulled back the corner of the oilskin cover beneath. And then, as I recall, I said ‘Holy God!’ and came all over thoughtful as I contemplated the contents of the chest. For if I hadn’t had Mrs Phoebe Carpenter’s word for it that those contents were high-grade prepared Patna opium, I’d have sworn that they were Sharps carbines. All neatly packed in grease, too.