China Jewel (14 page)

“Well, she likes to eat pancakes so the crew calls her Pancake.”

“Wait till the press gets hold of that. Children all over the world will ask their parents to buy them a pancake doll. “

“I expect your boss will have some made up for his stores to sell. She has black in her feathers like the color of the Peregrine.”

Jamie came over, his black Peregrine shirt ripped and ragged, his trousers stained with grease and his shoes marked with tar streaks. “Dad. You guys brought our sticks.”

“I told the captain we’re ready to unload as soon as you people can take them aboard.”

His father tried to hug his son but Jamie pulled back. “Good to see you, Dad.”

“You too, son.”

Jamie paused. “Dad, there’s someone I want you to meet.” Coming up beside him, Cutter saw the young woman. Her face was bright, young enough to be that of a teenager, except for the hardened look of the womanly tan that the days at sea had burned into her cheeks.

“This is Madeline Etranger,” Jamie said.

Cutter touched her hand which she extended to him. She said, in a soft voice, “I told my father you had arrived. You are the most welcome today.”

His fingers closed over hers in a warm greeting. He went on, “The gang at home, Jolly, Smithy, all of them, worked hard to build those masts.”

She held Cutter’s hands in hers, her deep eyes on his. “Later we can talk.”

Jamie said, “We got to work, Dad.”

Jamie was the man in charge of the situation and Cutter knew he had to obey. He nodded and stood back. Then to his right, he spotted Etranger on the French boat waving at him. He moved his hand in a signal back to the Frenchman and crossed over.

“My friend,” Etranger said, grasping him in a hug.

Cutter grinned and said, “Your daughter doesn’t look anything like you.”

“We are all so glad of that,” he replied. “I saw her come up to you, to meet the father she says. She is very forward, this young generation. Not much respect for the old boss, you know.”

“I’m used to it. They’re doing their job, that’s what counts.”

“She wants to be with him all the time. Not so much now with her father, I think. The women, they choose like this.”

“What’s her mother think?”

“My wife is no longer with us.”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “My daughter, now she stays to help him.”

“You must be very proud of her.”

Etranger smiled. “Come to my cabin. We will let the sailors rig their boat.”

Etranger had a small cabin, opposite from the first mate’s bunk and the radio room, at the stern of the Louis 14. Inside he asked Cutter to sit down at an ornately carved table. The room had a smell of sweat and saltwater with a tint of the coffee being brewed. The chairs, carefully fastened to the teak floor, were early French Empire in pink and blue colors matching the curtain fabrics on the brass portholes. The walls had well-rubbed paneling and at one side a small fireplace. His bunk, a solid wooden affair, was built into the wall and covered with carefully made up white sheets. On the table was a silver framed picture of himself, his wife and Madeline near a blue beach umbrella.

“It is like a pirate ship in the movies, no?” he said.

Cutter nodded and sat down in one of the chairs. “My friend Bill Johnson said to say hello.”

“Bill is a great sailor.”

“He says you might beat us.”

“I do not worry about speed. I only want success,” he said as he poured whiskey into two porcelain cups for them. Etranger was dressed in shorts and sandals, his black hair full on his head and heavily sprouted on his bare chest. He twisted the tips of his short mustache as he talked.

“They, my company officials, insist I leave because of the storm. I do not understand how they expect to sail a boat if they will not take chances but who am I? In this world, it is the corporation that decides what is truth.”

“The English boat and the other American are far ahead.”

“The English are fools as always. I do not think about them. Your American is not capable of winning unless he cheats us.”

Etranger sipped his drink. “We are friends?”

Cutter nodded. “We are friends.”

“You still the man the Nigerians call the trail boss?”

Cutter smiled, “Some say that.”

Etranger eyed him. “The younger men and the women too, maybe they are more thirsty than us, you think. It is time. I think maybe I retire now, cash in my cards.”

Cutter didn’t say anything. Etranger went on, “Your son, Jamie, he is good too. He will want to take over.”

Cutter nodded. He put down his cup without speaking.

Etranger added, “Ah, always the romance is more important than money.”

The Frenchman stood up and, balancing himself against a large pitch of the deck, moved to a handsome carved cupboard on the wall across from. Turning a key and opening a small panel door, he withdrew an envelope and handed it to Cutter. “This I planned to send to you when I could without prying eyes. Call it, how do you say, a little gift among friends.”

Cutter started to open the letter. Etranger put his hand on Cutter’s to stop him.

“Read when you are back on your plane. That will be soon enough.”

Cutter stuffed the envelope into his pants pocket and got to his feet. “We must get this mast aboard and then fly that plane out of here.”

Captain Hall had his crew in place. To get the masts on board from the seaplane a block and tackle was rigged to the rear or mainmast of the Peregrine. A spar extended out over the ship so that the replacement masts could be lifted vertically. At the same time, it was important to keep the seaplane’s long wing apart from the immediate area of the ships so that the rigging didn't catch in the wing material and destroy or otherwise hurt them. One shift in the winds or the waves and their metal covering might be ripped by some loose spar.

Two longboats, one from the French ship and the one from the American ship, were sent out to the side of the seaplane. There the masts were lifted by hand through the crew entry hatch in the top of the airplane. Then, the masts were placed and secured across the boat gunwales. The boats were maneuvered to the side of the Peregrine.

At this time tackle was used to lift the replacements one by one to the deck of the Peregrine. At the top of the remaining foremast of the Peregrine there was a step to which the new foretopmast had to be inserted. The procedures began with teams of men and women pulling on guide ropes.

The lines attached to the new mast section guided it into a vertical position where it was lifted up to the step. When it reached the mast step several men, including Jamie, working with sledges tapped it into the mast step. The stays were put into place and as this was being done the second or topgallant mast was lifted in the same way. This mast was lighter and its positioning was easier. Once it had been fastened the standing rigging and shrouds of the whole foremast assembly were finally tightened and the masts was secured for the yards to be hoisted again. The yards would hold the sails.

When they were able to take a short break in the work, Cutter relaxed with Captain Hall near the stern of the Peregrine.

Hall said, “The Brits have two days start on us. That’s five or six hundred miles. It's all in the wind. We’ve got some breezes now. Nothing strong but enough to get underway. We’ll know tonight but I’m sure we’ll get some speed. With your hard work I think we’ll beat that storm. With the mast fixed we can ride her anyway. It’s just thunderstorms and a little wind. I don’t know why the folks on shore get so worried.”

Hall called Jamie to say goodbye to his father. He arrived, taking off the gloves he had been using to keep his hands from being sliced by the rigging lines. Hall got up to leave them alone.

“You don’t have to leave us, Captain,” Jamie said.

“Are you all right, son?” asked Cutter.

“Yessir. The mast is not a setback, Dad. We figured we’d just have a bigger party when we get to China. We’re going to win, Dad, whether you believe it or not.”

Cutter recognized the blaze of excitement in the boy’s eyes. It was the same as he felt many times. The reckless desire to win because against the worst odds that is all there is.

“What about Madeline?”

“She wants to stay with the Peregrine.”

“Her father, I’m sure, won’t let her,” said Cutter.

Jamie smiled. “He doesn’t worry about her.”

“Etranger doesn’t worry?”

“He has faith in me,” said Jamie.

Cutter didn’t say anything.

“Look Dad, she’s not like you. All she asks from me is that I love her.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know you don’t. People can love someone and still want them to do their thing even if it is wrong or if they fail.”

Cutter heard these words of his son and thought again what his wife had said, so long ago. He was beginning to understand how he had been so wrong about success and what was really important in life.

“You love success more than you love love.”

His son continued, “I have to prove something to myself and Madeline she has to prove something to herself. That’s just the way it is.”

Within another hour the first sails were raised. The rigging creaked with the strain as the sailors pulled in unison. The Peregrine let go the French brig and was on her own, her sails filling.

The wind was rising. The seaplane engines roared. The smell of airplane fuel mixed with hot exhaust fumes permeated the cockpit. The flying boat moved ahead, bouncing, bolts of spray like sledgehammers pounding hard against the thin metal hull. Then, as Captain Willoughby maneuvered the controls, his aircraft went up on the hump of seawater and its hull planed over the water. With a whine of the engines the seaplane lofted free of the ocean and gained altitude. In a few minutes, the Peregrine was behind and below, its now tiny men climbing over sails which were partially up and filling. Captain Willoughby circled the plane to gain more altitude. The Peregrine was visible for a moment, then disappeared on the horizon.

They turned toward the east and the Azores. Cutter watched Willoughby. The pilots did not talk. The sole indication that they were awake were twitches of the rudder or ailerons to adjust the flight. Cutter was quiet also as he stared ahead at the darkening eastern sky. Above him outside the windshield were the great propellers, their vibration and sound reminding him, as if he could forget for even a moment, they were pulling him forcefully toward land. They flew at four thousand feet and below them the waves made long thin white lines. Radio checks crackled amid the engine noise. They were alone above the vast ocean with the tiny Peregrine below and far behind them.

Chapter 11

June 26, 7 PM

Atlantic Ocean

The package from Etranger contained several documents.

My friend, you may find this of interest. I should say that although we have always been competitors for, how do you say, Uncle Sam’s dollars, I have sat out here on the ocean this last week and heard the radio broadcasts that give praise to all our boats. I wish you well and you should believe this for you have never been my antagonist except in commerce. Even in that you have been fair and maybe even smarter. I do not like these things of the world where there is bad talk, talk behind the back, and other ways to make a deal than face to face. That has always been to my way of thinking a travesty of the art of trade. You share that sense, I know. At any rate, skim these confidential French documents sent to me as I hope they might be helpful in your effort in pursuing this race fairly.

Staff to Etranger, August 1, Paris,

This following is taken from letters of our agent at Canton during the years in which the Louis 14 was at the port in trading for tea and while the famous race was held between the Peregrine and the Willow.

June 15, 1840 sent forward by a chartered clipper, from agent in charge Jean Repose

We are enclosing with the Captain of the Charter this update news of our first buy of the season. Our ship Louis 14 will be loaded with one hundred fifty one of the one hundred pound chests of black tea from Kaiser. You will be pleased that this shipment was bought for silver in competition with the British agents.

The rumor was that the recent race with the American Peregrine and the British Willow was not all that it appeared. Although the British friends that we have will not speak to the matter, a rumor persists. The information has been carefully kept from any of the Americans here. It seems that during the night before the race, the keel of the American brig was clamped in some treacherous manner with blocks of wood so as to slow her progress through the water. After the race of course the blocks were removed. From what we hear this interference with the sailing of the brig was borne out by slow speeds almost exactly the same in each heat even though the water and wind must have been different. The slowing of the faster American design was enough to allow the Willow to win each time. You must be aware that such a feat in sailing speed means better freight rates awarded to the winner, something the Brits were anxious to achieve.

We have managed to use our social graces to entrance the merchants of our interest. Yesterday we attended one of the most beautiful balls that we have had the pleasure in the city of Macao. As you know the city is the home during the summer months for the men and women and their families who engage in the trade upriver at Canton. The wives of the factory officials planned the ball with great effort and over several weeks to insure its excellence. Houses were opened, gardens resplendent, and the Chinese servants everywhere. Music was provided by an orchestra of Chinese well trained by our musicians in the latest music from home. I must say that nothing in Napoleon’s court could ever have out shown these ladies and gentlemen in their promenade of fine silks and fashion. Of course, as was our purpose, some of the Chinese officials and merchants also attended.

We were admiring during the evening the beauty of the consort of the young American Captain Tolchester. Her name was Meikuo. She was also accompanied by her father the famous merchant Fusing who sat in his canopy and oversaw the events. Each of us visited him from time to time to speak of the honor his rare presence in foreign quarters had bestowed on all of us. Often they do not come even by surreptitious invitation and look down on us, the foreign devils, as they say. Fusang was a special exception and I am sure influenced by this handsome American captain.