Mandarin-Gold (32 page)

But there was no necessity for them to do so, since they could maintain their lucrative and illegal trade simply by using Chinese agents. Lin must therefore speedily devise some proper plan to stop this obnoxious trade completely, not just temporarily.

Lin folded the scroll thoughtfully. It was so easy to issue orders from Peking, but how could he carry out such lofty instructions, when Barbarian ships were infinitely faster than the swiftest vessel he controlled? He had to rely on the goodwill of the Barbarians, and the extent of this was hard to estimate, for he had no personal contact with them, and, of course, in his position he would not expect any. Thus he always had to gauge their mood by second-hand opinions. Ah, well, he would have to do the best he could. He clapped his hands, and a servant entered instantly.

'Have my boat made ready immediately. We will sail south to see the mud destroyed.'

'It awaits your departure, Your Excellency,' replied the servant.

Lin followed him out to the sedan that carried him down through the narrow teeming streets, into the baking heat of the quay. A boat with fifty oarsmen waited for him. In the stern hung a welcome shade of crimson silk to shield him from the sun; on its sides, against a black ground, details of his rank were painted in gold letters.

They set off, rowing in midstream, past the houseboats, the chop-boats, then past the graceful tea clippers anchored at Whampoa, waiting for Certificates of Release, which he would issue when all the opium had been surrendered.

Their British crews, anxious to be home, shouted obscenities and waved their fist's at him as he passed. Some even exposed themselves on the upper deck, urinating at him to show their intense displeasure, as his fifty gilded oars dipped and swung through the yellow water.

This was Barbarian behaviour, of course, and to be expected from such crude sailors from beyond the Outer Seas. Lin felt that he had just taught the Barbarians a lesson that they would do well to remember; maybe, one day, someone would also teach them civilized manners.

His boat docked and he allowed himself to be assisted out, up the specially built wooden steps and into another sedan. Bearers carried him to his pavilion and he sat down and looked with interest at the network of trenches that surrounded his seat.

At first, he had thought of burning the opium, but he had rejected this idea, because the residue would still be noxious, and no doubt some opium would escape the flames and be sold.

Instead, he had ordered that deep trenches should be dug and filled with river water. On either side of these trenches stood pyramids of salt and lime, with new wooden spades to shovel it in. Coolies waited, ready to jump down into the trenches, and as the opium balls were flung in, to pound them to powder, which the salt and lime would then neutralize.

A subordinate bowed before him.

'All is ready, Your Excellency,' he announced.

'Before we begin,' said Lin, 'we must make a sacrifice to the Spirit of the Southern Sea and warn her to take her subjects the fish and other of her creatures away from this area, where the poison will pour out into the river.'

'We have already prepared hard bristle and soft down, with clear wine and sweetmeats for such a purpose,' the subordinate assured him.

'Good,' said Lin.

The hard bristle referred to pig; soft down was the official way of describing a sheep. Both were sacrifices that, as was well known, the Spirit of the Southern Sea was always pleased to receive.

'Burn them,' Lin commanded. 'As they roast, I will make my prayer.'

The subordinate bowed, and gave the necessary orders. Lit papers were placed against dry wood chips underneath the two carcases skewered on bamboo poles. As the flames caught and the flesh began to crackle and blister in the heat, Lin held out his hand and began to speak.

'Spirit, whose virtue makes you a chief of divinities, whose deeds match the opening and closing of the doors of nature, you who wash away all stains and cleanse all impurities, warn your watery subjects in time to keep away, for we will burn poisons that may corrupt the rich oceans that beat around our coast.

'We could have burned this filthy thing, which has been poisoning the whole body of our land. But if it had been cast into the flames, charred remains might still have been collected. Far better to hurl it into the depths, to mingle with the giant floods.'

As Lin ended his peroration he nodded to a servant who beat on a huge brass gong to one side of the pavilion. As he beat, the coolies, wearing only loincloths and rattan hats against the heat, passed cases of opium from hand to hand, and tipped them on one side of the trench so that melon-sized lumps of the stuff splashed into the muddy water.

Other coolies, passively standing up to their knees in the burning corrosive mixture, whacked the compressed opium balls with their spades. They burst apart with a sharp, sweet, syrupy smell. Some of the opium had been adulterated with clay or mud and molasses and even cow dung and the gummy resinous juice of Bengal quince. This was sometimes done by natives anxious to increase their earnings, because clearly the more they could appear to roll in a day, the more they were paid. Now their secret malpractices were exposed, for these adulterated opium balls were covered with greyish-yellow mould; when they split apart, they stank like a rotting corpse.

Lin watched, his face inscrutable, despite the foul smell. He did not know the reason for the stench, but believed the rumours that human faeces and even the bodies of dead babies were pounded up.in the manufacture of opium, and that this accounted for the disgusting odour.

Hundreds of locals had gathered to see the astonishing sight of a fortune being deliberately destroyed. Because the risk of theft was so great, Lin had ordered that a fence of sharpened stakes, should be set up round the trenches so that everyone could watch, but none could enter. All through that day he sat, counting the number of cases, and at dusk he pronounced himself satisfied. As he rose from his chair, he suddenly remembered something, and called a secretary to him.

'An Edict,' he announced. 'All these coolies are to be stripped naked and their body orifices thoroughly examined before they leave for their shelters tonight, in case they are smuggling any mud out of this place.'

The secretary bowed his acquiescence. Lin then proceeded to his boat, and the oarsmen took him smartly up the darkening river. It was evening when they reached the dancing paper lanterns of Canton.

Captain-Elliot sat at his desk overlooking the Praya in Macao, drafting a letter to Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary in London.

It was a difficult letter to write, because it was inconclusive, and yet he had to write it or miss the ship, and then wait for weeks or maybe months, in the present climate of events, before another sailed.

Also, Elliot knew that whatever report he posted on the evening tide could be out of date by morning, and certainly would be totally irrelevant to the situation in Canton by the time it reached London. However, he was under orders to submit regular reports, and so his pen spluttered and scratched loyally on the thick, official notepaper. First, he had to announce that twenty thousand odd chests of opium had been delivered up for destruction, and more were promised. Next, sixteen British merchants who had been concerned with smuggling, had been warned by name that they would never be allowed to enter Canton again; one was James Matheson.

As a safety measure, because Lin was obdurate that no provision's would be allowed into any of the foreign factories until every chest of opium had been destroyed, Elliot, had ordered the British staffs to leave Canton. Some had sailed to Macao and others were aboard ship, anchored between Hong Kong Island and the mainland at Kow-Loon. The factories were therefore deserted.

American merchants still remained in Canton, however, simply because they had not been named as undesirables. After all, their smuggling activities were on a smaller scale, and some American companies nobly refused to deal in mud at all. As a consequence, they hoped, of course, to pick up the lawful trade that the British were being forced to abandon. Meanwhile, they had agreed to act as commission agents for tea and silk and other legitimate goods on behalf of British merchants. The American flag, known to the Chinese as 'the flowery flag' because of its stars and stripes, fluttered alone on its mast in front of the factories.

Elliot wrote grimly: 'This rash man Lin is hastening on in a career of violence which will react upon this empire of China in a terrible manner.'

He guessed that Palmerston and the Parliament would not allow the forceable seizure of British property, whether it belonged to smugglers or not, without some active mark of displeasure. Indeed, he declared that the proposals constituted 'the most shameless violence which one nation has ever yet dared to perpetrate against another.'

Clearly, the British Government must take charge of affairs on the China Seas, otherwise what anarchy would not result? And while he agreed that opium was a most shameful trade, it was not impossible that some completely legitimate aspect of commerce would be used as a lever against all Western traders.

Not a very inspiring report to write or to read, he thought wretchedly, but it was true, and he could not alter facts.

Elliot blotted the pages with sand, then drew another sheet of paper towards him, and on the impulse wrote a personal appeal to Lord Auckland, the Governor-General of India. He felt peculiarly vulnerable to any Chinese attack, whether planned or spontaneous, and the presence of a British man-of-war would undoubtedly have a steadying influence on the whole sad situation. Not least, the British would feel that they were not entirely at the mercy of the Chinese; and Lin would realize he would have to act with caution and not in a mood of unrestrained aggression.

By the same mail-boat, although Elliot did not know it, British merchants in Macao were also sending a round robin letter to Lord Palmerston, urging him to indemnify them speedily for their losses, and to take most vigorous action against the Chinese concerned. And their losses indeed were high. The usual price of five hundred dollars a chest had now doubled, which meant that a loss of twenty thousand chests was
_:
now worth the enormous sum of twenty million dollars, roughly five million pounds, approaching the total annual revenue of the East India Company.

Elliot could only foresee one way in which such an inflated sum could ever be repaid — by forcing the Chinese to pay it. And the only way to force them was by a punitive expedition.

Another name for this, of course, was war.

Lin sat in his room, a warm damp towel around his head, listening to his trusted messenger who poured out an extraordinary story.

Some sailors from British and American ships anchored in Hong Kong Roads, had gone ashore, drunk too much native liquor, and become involved in a fight with villagers. As a result, a Chinese labourer had been killed.

'Was this a deliberate act?' asked Lin.

'It is impossible to say, Your Excellency,' the man said evasively. 'There are many confusing accounts.'

Lin therefore guessed that it had not been deliberate. No. doubt it was only chance that an American or British sailor had not been killed as well. However, the incident was very fortuitous from his point of view. Perhaps the gods, in their wisdom, had decreed that it should happen, because it provided Lin with an immensely strong lever to use against the Barbarian Elliot.

'Four clippers came in yesterday. Two are Jardine and Matheson ships, and two belong to this new English Barbarian, the physician Gunn, under the Mandarin-Gold flag. He has been trading for twelve months now; Your Excellency, and some say that if he continues at this rate he will eventually be the richest
taipan
on the coast.'

'But are not our sailors vigilant? Are not our customs officials seeking out these felons under penalty of ignominy and death?'

‘They work like tireless ones, Your Excellency. But the coast is long, the nights are dark, the seas run high. It is not always possible to intercept all contraband.'

'I know,' agreed Lin with resignation. ‘However, we must try. When a man sees water leaking through a dam, if he says that the hole is too difficult to repair, then the wall may crumble and the entire valley be flooded. If we do not stem this evil leak of poison into our kingdom, it will also increase until it swamps our civilization. Remember this! Vigilance!'

‘That will be our watchword, Your Excellency.'

‘Well, what
are
we going to do about it?' asked Gunn. 'If anything?'

'I do not know. I can only tell you what I have done. I have sent a man to the village with three hundred pounds sterling in specie for this dead Chink's relations. We have paid another hundred and twenty five pounds to the local mandarin, just to show him who his friends are. And we have distributed twenty-five pounds to the children in the village, as a general
pourboire.'

‘That is generous,' said Gunn approvingly. 'But
I
hear that Lin is still on the warpath?'

'Unfortunately, yes,' said Elliot. 'He is demanding that either the Americans or we give up the culprit to him. But, damn it, we don't know who the culprit is! Thirty or forty sailors get fighting drunk. They're fighting each other as much as the villagers — you see it all the time, when sailors come ashore — and a man is killed. No-one knows who killed him. It was clearly an accident.

'I have asked the captains of all our vessels to interrogate their crews, but although they admit there
was
a brawl, they do not know who killed the Chink. That is the truth of the matter.'

'But Lin will not accept this?'