Tai-Pan (33 page)

“You’ve been to university and you ask that? Without this beauty we’d be lost. You’ve heard of Captain Cook? He used the first one, and proved it, sixty years ago. Until that time we could never find our longitude. But now, with exact London time and the sextant, we know where we are to a mile.” Orlov relocked the housing and shot an abrupt glance at Culum. “Can you use a sextant?”

“No.”

“When we sink the junks, I’ll show you. You think you can be Tai-Pan of The Noble House ashore? Eh?”

There was the sound of scurrying feet on deck and they felt 
China Cloud
 surge even faster through the waves. Here, below, the whole ship seemed to pulsate with life.

Culum licked his dry lips. “Can we sink so many and escape?”

“If we don’t, we’ll be swimming.” The little man beamed up at Culum. “Ever been shipwrecked or sunk?”

“No. And I can’t swim.”

“If you’re a sailor, best not know how to swim. Swimming only prolongs the inevitable—if the sea wants you and your time has come.” Orlov pulled the chain to make certain the lock was secure. “Thirty years I’ve been to sea an’ I can’t swim. I’ve been sunk upwards of ten times, from the China seas to the Bering Straits, but I’ve always found a spar or a boat. One day the sea’ll get me. In her own time.” He eased the fighting iron on his wrist. “I’ll be glad to be back in port.”

Culum thankfully followed him up the gangway. “You don’t trust the men aboard?”

“A captain trusts his ship, only his ship. And himself alone.”

“You trust my father?”

“He’s the captain.”

“I don’t understand.”

Orlov made no reply. Once on the quarterdeck, he checked the sails and frowned. Too much sail, too close to shore. Too many unknown reefs and the smell of a squall somewhere. The line of encroaching junks was two miles ahead: implacable, silent, closing in on them.

The ship had full sails set, the mainsails still reefed, the whole ship throbbing with joy. This joy permeated the crew. When Struan ordered the reefs let go, they sprang to the rigging and sang the sails into place and forgot about the bullion that had infected them. The wind freshened and the sails crackled. The ship heeled over and gathered speed, the seawater frothing like yeast in the scuppers.

“Mr. Cudahy! Take a watch below and bring arms aloft!”

“Aye, aye, sorr!” Cudahy, the first mate, was a black-haired Irishman with dancing eyes, and he wore a golden earring.

“Steady as she goes! Deck watch! Prepare cannon! Load grape!”

The men flung themselves at the cannons, wheeled them out of their ports, charged them with grape and wheeled them back again.

“Number-three gun crew an extra tot of rum! Number eighteen to clean out the bilges!”

There were cheers and curses.

It was a custom Struan had started many years ago. When going into a fight the first gun crew ready was rewarded and the last was given the dirtiest job on the ship.

Struan scanned the sky and the tautness of the sails and turned the binoculars on the huge war junk. It had many cannon ports and a dragon for a figurehead and a flag which at this distance was still indistinct. Struan could see dozens of Chinese thronging the decks and torches burning.

“Get the water barrels ready!” Orlov shouted.

“What’re the water barrels for, Father?” Culum said.

“To douse fires, lad. The junks have torches burning. They’ll be well stocked with fire rockets and stink bombs. Stink bombs’re made from pitch and sulphur. They can make havoc of a clipper if you’re na prepared.” He looked aft. The other flotilla of junks was surging into the channel behind them.

“We’re cut off, aren’t we?” Culum said, his stomach turning over.

“Aye. But only a fool’d go that way. Look at the wind, lad. That way we’d have to beat up against it, and something tells me it’d shift farther against us soon. But for’ard we’ve the wind and the speed of any junk. See how ponderous they are, laddie! Like cart horses against us—a greyhound. We’ve ten times the firepower, ship to ship.”

One of the halyards at the top of the mainmast parted abruptly and the spar screamed, smashing itself against the mast, the sail flapping free.

“Port watch aloft!” Struan roared. “Send up the royal lift line!”

Culum watched the seamen claw out onto the spar almost at the top of the mainmast, the wind ripping at them, hanging on with nails and toes, knowing he could never do that. He felt the fear bile in his stomach and could not forget what Orlov had said: blood on your hands. Whose blood? He lurched for the gunnel and vomited.

“Here, laddie,” Struan said, offering the water bag that hung from a belaying pin.

Culum pushed it away, hating his father for noticing that he had been sick.

“Clean your mouth out, by God!” Struan’s voice was harsh.

Culum obeyed miserably and did not notice that the water actually was cold tea. He drank some of it and it made him sick again. Then he rinsed out his mouth and sipped sparingly, feeling dreadful.

“First time I went into battle I was sick as a drunk gillie—sicker than you can imagine. And frightened to death.”

“I don’t believe it,” Culum replied weakly. “You’ve never been afraid or sick in your life.”

Struan grunted. “Well, you can believe it. It was at Trafalgar.”

“I didn’t know you were there!” In his astonishment Culum momentarily forgot his nausea.

“I was a powder monkey. The navy uses children on the capital ships to carry powder from the magazine to the gundecks. The passageway has to be as small as possible to lessen the chance of fire and the whole ship exploding.” Struan remembered the roaring guns and the screams of the wounded, limbs scattered on the deck, slippery with blood—and stench of blood and redness of the scuppers. Smell of vomit in the never-ending black little tunnel, slimy with vomit. Groping up to the exploding guns with kegs of powder, then groping down another time into the horrifying darkness, lungs on fire, heart a violent machine, terror tears streaming—hour after hour. “I was frightened to death.”

“You were really at Trafalgar?”

“Aye. I was seven. I was the oldest of my group but the most afraid.” Struan clapped his son warmly on the shoulder. “So dinna worry. Nae anything wrong in that.”

“I’m not afraid now, Father. It’s just the stench of the hold.”

“Dinna fool yoursel’. It’s the stench of the blood you think you smell—and the fear it’ll be your own.”

Culum quickly hung over the side of the ship as he retched again. Though the wind was brisk, it would not blow the sick sweet smell out of his head or the words of Orlov from his brain.

Struan went over to the brandy keg and drew a tot and handed it to Culum and watched while he drank it.

“Beggin’ yor pardon, sirr,” the steward said. “The bath wot was ordered be ready, sirr.”

“Thank you.” Struan waited until the steward had joined his gun crew, then he said to Culum, “Go below, lad.”

Culum felt the humiliation well in him. “No. I’m fine here.”

“Go below!” Though it was an order, it was given gently, and Culum knew that he was being allowed the chance to go below and save face.

“Please, Father,” he said, near tears. “Let me stay. I’m sorry.”

“No need to be sorry. I’ve been in this sort of danger a thousand times, so it’s easy for me. I know what to expect. Go below, lad. There’s time enough to bathe and come back on deck. And be part of a fight, if fight it is. Please go below.”

Despondently, Culum obeyed.

Struan turned his attention to Robb, who was leaning on the gunnel, gray-faced. Struan thought for a moment, then walked over to him. “Would you do me a favor, Robb? Keep the lad company? He’s na feeling well at all.”

Robb forced a smile. “Thanks, Dirk. But this time I need to stay. Sick or not. Is it an invasion armada?”

“Nay, lad. But dinna worry. We can blast a way through them if need be.”

“I know. I know.”

“How’s Sarah? She’s very near her time, is she na? Sorry, I forgot to ask.”

“She’s well as most women feel with a few weeks to go. I’ll be glad when the waiting’s over.”

“Aye.” Struan turned away and adjusted the course a shade.

Robb forced his mind off the junks that seemed to fill the sea ahead. I hope it’s another girl, he thought. Girls are so much easier to raise than boys. I hope she’s like Karen. Dear little Karen!

Robb hated himself again for shouting at her this morning—was it only this morning that they had all been together in 
Thunder Cloud?
 Karen had disappeared, and Sarah and he had thought she had fallen overboard. They were frantic and when the search had begun, Karen had come blithely on deck from the hold where she had been playing. And Robb had been so relieved that he had shouted at her, and Karen had fled sobbing into her mother’s arms. Robb had cursed his wife for not looking after Karen more carefully, knowing that it was not Sarah’s fault, but being unable to stop himself. Then in a few minutes little Karen was like any child, in easy laughter, everything forgotten. And he and Sarah were like any parents, still sick with mutual anger, everything not forgotten . . .

Fore and aft, the junk fleets were blocking 
China Cloud’s
 avenues of escape. Robb saw his brother leaning against the binnacle, casually lighting a cheroot from a smoldering cannon taper, and wished that he could be so calm.

Oh God, give me strength to endure five months and another twelve months and the voyage home, and please make Sarah’s time easy.

He leaned over the rail and was very sick.

“Two points to port,” Struan said, watching the shore of Hong Kong carefully. He was almost close enough to the finger of rocks off the starboard bow and well to windward of the line of junks. A few minutes more and he would turn and hurtle at the junk he had already marked for death, and he would smash through the line safely—if there were no fire ships and if the wind did not slacken and if no hidden reef or bank mutilated him.

The sky was darkening to the north. The monsoon was holding true, but Struan knew that in these waters the wind could shift a quarter or more with alarming suddenness, or a violent squall could sweep out of the seas. With the ship carrying so much sail he would be in great danger, for the wind could rip away his sails before he could reef them, or tear away his masts. Then too, there could be many reefs and shoals waiting to tear his ship’s belly open. There were no charts of these waters. But Struan knew that only speed would carry them to safety. And joss.

“
Gott im Himmel
!” Mauss was peering through the binoculars. “It’s the Lotus! The Silver Lotus!”

Struan grabbed the binoculars and focused on the flag that flew atop the huge junk: a silver flower on a red background. No mistake. It was the Silver Lotus, the flag of Wu Fang Choi, the pirate king, whose sadism was legendary, whose countless fleets ravaged and ruled the coasts of all south China and exacted tribute a thousand miles north and south. Supposedly, his base was in Formosa.

“What’s Wu Fang Choi doing in these waters?” Mauss asked. Again he felt the weird hope-fear welling in him. Thy will be done, oh Lord.

“The bullion,” Struan said. “It must be the bullion. Otherwise Wu Fang Choi would never risk coming here, na with our fleet so close.”

For years the Portuguese and all the traders had paid tribute to Wu Fang Choi for the safe conduct of their ships. Tribute was cheaper than the loss of the merchantmen, and his junks kept the south China seas rid of other pirates—most of the time. But with the coming of the expeditionary force last year, the British traders had ceased paying for this safe passage, and one of Wu Fang’s pirate fleets had begun to plunder the sea-lanes and the coast near Macao. Four Royal Navy frigates had sought out and destroyed most of the pirate junks, and followed those that fled into Bias Bay—a pirate haven on the coast, forty miles north of Hong Kong. There the frigates had laid waste the pirate junks and sampans, and had fired two pirate villages. Since that time the flag of Wu Fang Choi had never ventured near.

A cannon boomed from the pirate flagship, and astonishingly all the junks except one turned into the wind and downed mainsails, leaving only their short sails aft to give them leeway. A small junk detached itself from the fleet and headed the mile toward 
China Cloud.

“Helm alee!” Struan ordered, and 
China Cloud
 was turned into the wind. The sails flapped anxiously and the ship lost way and almost stopped. “Keep her head t’wind!”

“Aye, aye, sorr!”

Struan was looking through the binoculars at the small junk. Waving from the masthead was a white flag. “God’s death! What’re they playing at? Chinese never use a flag o’ truce!” The ship came closer and Struan was even more dumfounded at the sight of a huge black-bearded European dressed in heavy seafaring clothes, cutlass at his belt, conning the junk. Beside the man was a young Chinese boy, richly dressed in green brocade gown and pants and soft black boots. Struan saw the European train his long telescope on 
China Cloud.
 After a moment the man put the telescope down, laughed uproariously and waved.

Struan passed the binoculars to Mauss. “What do you make of that man?” He leaned across to Captain Orlov, who had a telescope trained on the junk. “Cap’n?”

“Pirate, that’s certain.” Orlov handed his telescope to Robb. “Another rumor is confirmed—that Wu Fang Choi has Europeans in his fleet.”

“But why would they all down sails, Dirk?” Robb said incredulously.

“The emissary’ll tell us.” Struan walked to the edge of the quarterdeck. “Mister,” he called out to Cudahy, “ready to put a shot across his bows!”

“Aye, aye, sorr.” Cudahy jumped for the first cannon and trained it.

“Cap’n Orlov! Get the longboat ready. You lead the boarding party. If we dinna sink her first.”

“Why board her, Dirk?” Robb said, approaching Struan.

“No pirate junk’s coming within fifty yards. It may be a fire ship or full of powder. In times like these it’s better to be ready for devilment.”

Culum self-consciously appeared in the companionway dressed in a seaman’s clothes—heavy woolen shirt and woolen jacket and wide-legged trousers and rope shoes.