Mandarin-Gold (9 page)

Jardine. Mackereth tossed the name on the wheels of memory. Of course, Dr William Jardine, a ship's surgeon from England, who had left his ship some years previously., to go into trade along the Chinese-coast. And now, he and James Matheson controlled a most astonishingly successful firm, Jardine, Matheson & .Co. They traded in all kinds of things. They owned warehouses in Macao, a factory in Canton and their own clipper fleet. Of course, they traded most in the most profitable cargo of all, what the Chinese contemptuously called foreign mud. Opium.

'Show him in,' said Mackereth, 'and light the lamps.'

The servant lit two oil lamps, trimmed the wicks, bowed and went out. He returned with Jardine, a handsome man in a dark suit. He and Mackereth knew each other, of course; everyone knew everyone else worth knowing in Macao, and there were few secrets on the island. You paid your servants to pass on what they learned from the servants of your neighbours. Information was always worth money; news of cargoes, local shortages, the going rate for bribing officials, whose wife was being unfaithful It is odd, Mackereth thought, how the poor will spend time to save money, while the rich pour out money to save time, and as he rose to shake hands with Dr Jardine, he thought ironically, I'm running out of both time and money.

'What can I do for you, sir?' he asked in his ecclesiastical voice that boomed mellifluously like a rich brass gong in the small room. 'Will you take a whisky with me, or a little wine perhaps?'

He hoped he had some wine left, that the servant hadn't drunk it all. You couldn't trust these fellows; you couldn't trust anyone.

'No thank you,' replied Jar dine. 'This is not a social call, much as I appreciate your kindness. And in any case, I rarely drink intoxicants. I came to see you, sir; on a private matter.'

Mackereth opened the door quickly, in case his servant was eavesdropping, but the corridor was empty. He shut it and nodded to Jardine to take a seat. Then he sat down himself.

'I am at your service, sir.'

'I wonder,' began Jardine, 'whether you know the Reverend Dr Gutzlaff?'

'Of course,' said Mackereth. Everyone knew Gutzlaff. He, like Mackereth, was one of the few men in Macao to speak Chinese well and to read the characters. Gutzlaff had come from Pomerania years ago, a burly man with a wide-brimmed straw hat and cold eyes. He had enjoyed more success as a missionary than Mackereth, for he was also a doctor, and so could help people with physical as well as spiritual problems.

Gutzlaff would go off for weeks on end, touring villages along the coast, distributing his own translations of Bible passages and religious tracts; 'The Word of Life' and 'Saints' Rest', along with bottles of Lee's Anti-Bilious Compound and Cockle's Pills, against all kinds of aches and infirmities. But then Gutzlaff had a source of income denied to Mackereth, which allowed him to spend heavily on his tracts and even, to order Bibles in bulk from England, Jardine's clippers employed him as an interpreter with the Chinese. Now a glimmer of hope gleamed like a welcome star in Mackereth's clouded brain. The Lord had worked in Jardine's mind; truly His ways were wonderful and marvellously worthy to be praised.

'Yes, I know the doctor well,' he said.

'We've had an unfortunate experience,' said Jardine. 'As you may know, we have given Dr Gutzlaff safe passage in one of our vessels from time to time on his missionary travels, and in return he has acted as our interpreter with the mandarins and others with whom the present situation in China insists we deal.

'We have paid him generously and so he has been able to buy medicines for the poor people among whom he moves, and also more Bibles to bring them into the way of eternal salvation.'

'I know that,' said Mackereth hastily. Why did the man not touch on the purpose of his visit?

'Dr Gutzlaff is unfortunately ill. He is therefore unable to sail with us on our next trip. I wonder, sir, whether we could prevail upon you to take passage with one of our clippers in his stead?'

'What would I have to do?' asked Mackereth.

'We would give you a cabin to yourself, and full board, of course. And we would also be pleased to pay you the sum of one thousand pounds for your services as interpreter during the length of the voyage.'

'Are there any bad effects of opium?' asked Mackereth pontifically. 'I am not a medical man like Dr Gutzlaff, you understand. I would like my conscience to be at ease before I agree.'

'Of course. I respect you for that, sir. As you may know, opium is used widely in medicinal drugs in England. In fact, as a doctor myself, I can say I have prescribed it in a very high proportion of the cases I have been called upon to visit — including children who cannot sleep, older people who sleep badly, and patients of a nervous disposition.

'It has soothing qualities, Mr Mackereth, but it is idle to pretend that, if taken to excess, it may not cause some mental trouble and even instability. But then, of course, that is the same with the whisky you are drinking now — which I know you-do not take to excess. But were you to drink a bottle a day, then naturally that would gradually have deleterious effects on your mind and body.

'Equally, if I were to eat sodium bicarbonate in large quantities, this could also have serious consequences. But in the proper quantities, it is ideal for relief in indigestion. It is precisely the same with opium. We sell it because, to be honest with you, this is an important part of our business. We make a profit that allows us to lower the prices of other commodities we carry. People who buy our opium also draw comfort from it. Many work in the rice-fields, up to their knees in water, and so suffer the most excruciating agonies in their joints. They smoke a pipe of opium and immediately they know peace and calm, and feel goodwill to their fellow men. Then they sleep, and rise refreshed to work for another day.'

'So, in fact, Dr Jardine,' said Mackereth, sipping his whisky, 'you would consider this drug to be of help to those who buy it?'

'Provided they do not take it to gross excess, yes. We fulfil a need. And if we did not do so, someone else would. I am sure that most of us would agree that in these circumstances it is right that our nation should benefit?'

'I am American,' said Mackereth coldly.

'Of course. Forgive me. You have so many qualities which I think of as English that, temporarily, I forgot you were not — ah — one of us. Do I take it then, Mr Mackereth, that you will be of our number when we sail?'

'When do you sail?'

'I personally will not be with you. The clipper
Hes
perides
is owned by a company with which we have connections. She leaves on Tuesday on the evening tide. Eight o'clock precisely from the main quay.'

'I will be there.'

They both stood up at the same time and shook hands, and then Jardine went out into the warm Chinese evening. He was happy that Mackereth had agreed. Rumour said that Mackereth was a drunk and a perverter of boys. But Mackereth spoke Cantonese and Mandarin fluently and also the dialects which were most widely used. For while the Chinese language had one set of characters, it possessed so many dialects that someone from one province might not understand a man from a different district. Mackereth would tell, from the inflection in an official's voice, whether a bribe was too much or too little; or even whether it had been offered to the wrong man.

So, until Gutzlaff recovered, he, would use him. After all, Gutzlaff charged much more than a thousand pounds for his services on each voyage, because he thought he had the monopoly. But he had forgotten about Mackereth. Well, Jardine had remembered. And if Mackereth earned his money, he would play him against Gutzlaff.

Jardine had learned this essential lesson early on; you played one man against a second, both against a third. Then you set them all against each other — and picked up the profits yourself.

He had learned the hard way, from the old China traders; men like Daniel Beale, who nearly half a century earlier had been a purser in a Company ship, and then laid the foundations for all their fortunes. Beale had seen the possibilities for trade in the East, but of course, the East India Company held the monopoly in China as in India; no British outsiders could squeeze more than a bare living from what petty trade they were allowed to conduct.

But the Company could not prevent foreigners from trading, so Beale had somehow acquired Consular papers from a friend at the court of the King of Prussia, and then set up in Canton and Macao as an Agent of the Prussian Government. Although he was simply a merchant, the East India Company could neither expel him nor harass him, as they would have done had he not possessed this invaluable diplomatic protection.

A Scotsman, David Reid, next saw further possibilities for trade and, armed with a captain's commission in a Danish infantry regiment, which also gave him immunity from the Company's monopoly, he arrived in Canton and joined forces with Beale.

Jardine, as a ship's surgeon at the age of eighteen, first visited India aboard an East Indiaman. He decided he liked business better than medicine and, on his return to London, he became a trader and then returned to the East. In Canton, he met James Matheson, twelve years his junior, who had previously -worked for a Spanish firm, which enjoyed certain trading concessions at Amoy, farther up the coast, which they never used. Matheson turned these concessions to his own great advantage by selling the locals there a cargo of opium for thirty-three thousand pounds.

This transaction changed not only his career, but the whole course of Eastern history. Others speedily learned of the astonishing profit he had made, and began to peddle opium along the China coast. The Coast Trade had begun.

Matheson also recognized the value-of diplomatic status, and became Danish Consul. His diplomatic duties were limited to acting for any Danish ships in port, and the real value of the post was that he could run up the Danish flag if any East Indiaman or British Navy ship approached to inquire about the nature of his cargo.

At first, Jardine rented living quarters from Matheson; soon they were partners. Until they began operations together, the ships ferrying mud from Calcutta were old-fashioned, heavy vessels, called country wallahs. Built of teak and displacing between five and eight hundred tons, they were replicas of seventeenth-century caravels and galleons and carracks, built with a roundhouse over a cuddy, and a short waist for guns.

Jardine and Mathesori scrapped these ancient vessels, some of which had been at sea for a century and a half, and. took three months for the trip from Calcutta to Lintin, and a month even with the monsoon wind behind them.

Both men realized that their success depended on moving as much mud as possible and as quickly as possible. They needed ships that could easily make three round voyages from Calcutta to Lintin every year, vessels capable of sailing against the wind, even in the monsoon. Jardine soon commissioned the first,
Red Rover,
a copy of an American privateer, displacing only two hundred and fifty-four tons, with three masts; she was so swift, she sailed from Calcutta to Lintin in eighteen days, against both tide and wind.

The Coast Trade was the most profitable side of their business, but it was only one side. They traded in virtually anything; snuff-boxes (called 'sing-songs' because they contained jewelled mechanical birds inside that sang when the lid was opened); furs from North America; camphor, tea and rattan and birds' nests from Malaya; elephants' teeth and raw cotton from India; cut price machinery from Britain. Nor were they simply content to trade; they took a genuine interest in what they sold, and when they found they could improve it, they did so.

Matheson, for example, discovered that the Chinese would buy more blue bandanas if they were woven with white lines in them, instead of being blue with white spots as the mills supplied them.

Jardine capitalized on the fact that East India Company's officers sailing east usually occupied cabins far larger than they needed. He sublet their unwanted space and stacked his goods around their bunks.

For years the East India Company had held the monopoly of shipping direct from Canton to London, but Jardine, Matheson & Company found a loophole in this arrangement. They sailed Chinese cargoes to Singapore, a free port, and unloaded them. Then they reloaded them in the same ship, and sailed on to London. Legally, no monopoly had been infringed, and several thousand pounds more profit had been paid into their bank account.

Not many could teach them much when it came to pruning expenses and increasing profits; and now, with more opium arriving from India aboard their clippers, they had to find new markets farther up the coast.

Mackereth knew this, too, but he also knew that without this unexpected money he would have faced ruin and disgrace, and for some time after Jardine had left, he sat in his chair, watching the moths blunder blindly against the dim globes of the oil lamps.

It was astonishing that literally only minutes before he had been wondering where he would find funds to continue with his work, and even to stay alive. But he had prayed to the Lord, and the Lord had answered him, in a most unexpected way.

Mackereth poured himself more whisky, relief pouring over him in a warm tide of satisfaction. He sipped the drink and crossed his legs and, suddenly aware of his masculinity, of the well-known, ever-recurring beat of blood in his loins, he rang the handbell for his manservant.

He would find a boy tonight and teach him the blessings of Christianity, and the wonder-working power of the Lord.