Treasure of Khan (2 page)

Yon ordered the lugsail on the foremast raised and maneuvered the ship's bow to the west. Tossing roughly through the growing waves, the sturdy vessel slowly began fighting its way away from the coastline.

Around Yon's vessel, confusion reigned with the rest of the fleet. Several of the Chinese ships attempted to put troops ashore in the maelstrom, though most remained at anchor a short distance away. A scattering of vessels, mostly from the Eastern Fleet, followed Yon's lead and began repositioning themselves offshore. Few seemed to believe that yet another typhoon could strike and damage the fleet as in 1274. But the doubters were soon to be proven wrong.

The super typhoon gathered force and rolled closer, bringing with it a torrent of wind and rain. Soon after dawn the sky turned black and the storm reared up with its full might. Torrential rains blew horizontally, the water pellets bursting with enough force to shred the sails of the bobbing fleet. Waves crashed to shore in thunderous blows that could be heard miles away. With screeching winds that exceeded a Category 4 hurricane, the super typhoon finally crashed into Kyushu.

On shore, the Japanese defenders were subject to a ten-foot wall of storm surge that pounded over the shoreline, inundating homes, villages, and defense works while drowning hundreds. Ravaging winds uprooted ancient trees and sent loose debris flying through the air like missiles. A continuous deluge of rain dumped a foot of water an hour on inland areas, flooding valleys and overflowing rivers in a deadly barrage. Flash floods and mud slides killed untold more, burying whole towns and villages in seconds.

But the maelstrom on shore paled in comparison to the fury felt by he Mongol Fleet at sea. In addition to the explosive winds and piercing rains came mammoth waves, blown high by the storm's wrath. Rolling mountains of water belted the invasion fleet, capsizing many vessels while smashing others to bits. Ships anchored close to shore were swiftly blown into the rocky shoals, where they were battered into small pieces. Timbers buckled and beams splintered from the force of the waves, causing dozens of ships to simply disintegrate in the boiling seas. In Hakata Bay, groups of ships still lashed together were battered mercilessly. As one vessel foundered, it would pull the other ships to the bottom like a string of dominoes. Trapped inside the fast-sinking ships, the crew and soldiers died a quick death. Those escaping to the violent surface waters drowned a short time later, as few knew how to swim.

Aboard the Korean
mugun,
Temur and his men clung desperately to the ship as it was tossed like a cork in a washing machine. Yon expertly guided the vessel through the teeth of the storm, fighting to keep his bow to the waves. Several times, the wooden ship heeled so far over that Temur thought she would capsize. Yet there was Yon standing tall at the rudder as the ship righted itself, a determined grin on his face as he did battle with the elements. It wasn't until a monster forty-foot wave suddenly appeared out of the gloom that the salty captain turned pale.

The huge wall of water bore down on them with a thunderous roar. The cresting wave swept onto the ship like an avalanche, burying the vessel in a froth of sea and foam. For several seconds, the Korean ship disappeared completely under the raging sea. Men belowdecks felt their stomachs drop from the force of the plunge and oddly noted the howl of the wind vanish as everything went black. By all rights, the wooden ship should have broken to pieces by the wave's pounding. But the tough little vessel held together. As the giant wave rolled past, the ship rose like an apparition from the deep and regained her position on the frenzied sea.

Temur was tossed across the deck during the submersion and barely clung to a ladder rung as the ship flooded. He gasped for air as the vessel resurfaced and was distraught to see that the masts had been torn off the ship. Behind him, a sharp cry rang out in the water off the stern. Glancing about the deck, he realized with horror that Yon and five Korean seamen, along with a handful of his own men, had been swept off the ship. A chorus of panicked cries pierced the air momentarily before it was washed out by the howl of the wind. Temur caught sight of the captain and men struggling nearby in the water. He could only watch helplessly as a large wave carried them from his sight.

Without masts and crew, the ship was now at the complete mercy of the storm. Pitching and wallowing feebly in the seas, pounded and flooded by the high waves, the ship had a thousand opportunities to founder. But the simple yet robust construction of the Korean ship kept her afloat while around her scores of Chinese ships vanished into the depths.

After several intense, buffeting hours, the winds slowly died down and the pelting rains ceased. For a brief moment, the sun broke clear, and Temur thought the storm had ended. But it was just the eye of the typhoon passing over, offering a brief reprieve before the assault would continue again. Belowdecks, Temur found two Korean sailors still aboard and forced them to help man the ship. As the winds picked up and the rains returned, Temur and the sailors took turns tying themselves to the rudder and battling the deadly waves.

Lost as to position or even the direction they sailed, the men bravely focused on keeping the ship afloat. Unaware that they were now absorbing the counterclockwise winds that swirled from the north, they were pushed rapidly through open water to the south. The brunt of the typhoon's energy had been expended as it struck Kyushu, so the battering was less intense than before. But gusts over ninety miles per hour still buffeted the vessel, blasting it roughly through the seas. Blinded by the pelting rain, Temur had little clue to their path. Several times the ship nearly approached landfall, inching by islands, rocks, and shoals that went unseen in the gloom of the storm. Miraculously, the ship blew clear, the men aboard never realizing how close they came to death.

The typhoon raged day and night before gradually losing its power, the rain and winds fading to a light squall. The Korean
mugun
, battered and leaky, held fast and clung to the surface with gritty pride. Though the captain and crew were lost and the ship was a crippled mess, they had survived all that the killer storm could throw at them. A quiet sense of luck and destiny settled over them as the seas began to calm.

No such luck befell the rest of the Mongol invasion force, which was brutally decimated by the killer typhoon. Nearly the entire Yangtze Fleet was destroyed, smashed to bits against the rocky shoreline or sunk by the vicious seas. A jumbled array of broken timber from huge Chinese junks, Korean warships, and oar-driven barges littered the shoreline. In the water, the cries of the dying had long since echoed over the shrieks of the wind. Many of the soldiers, clothed in heavy leather body armor, sank immediately to the bottom upon being cast in the waves. Others fought through the throes of panic to stay afloat, only to be pummeled by the endless onslaught of massive waves. The lucky few who crawled ashore alive were quickly cut up by marauding bands of samurai roving the shoreline. After the storm, the dead littered the beaches like stacked cords of wood. Half-sunken wrecks lined the horizon off Kyushu in such numbers that it was said a man could walk across the Imari Gulf without getting wet.

The remnants of the invasion fleet limped back to Korea and China with the unthinkable news that Mother Nature had again spoiled the Mongol plans of conquest. It was a crushing defeat for Kublai Khan. The disaster represented the worst defeat suffered by the Mongols since the reign of Genghis Khan, and showed the rest of the world that the forces of the great empire were far from invincible.

For the Japanese, the arrival of the killer typhoon was nothing less than a miracle. Despite the destruction incurred on Kyushu, the island had been spared conquest and the invading forces defeated. Most believed it could only have come as a result of the eleventh-hour prayers to the Sun Goddess at the Shrine of Ise. Divine intervention had prevailed, a sure sign that Japan was blessed with heavenly protection to ward off foreign invaders. So strong was the belief in the Kami-Kaze, or “divine wind” as it was called, that it permeated Japanese history for centuries, reappearing as the appellation for the suicide pilots of World War II.

 

A
BOARD THE
Korean troopship, Temur and the surviving crew had no idea as to the devastation suffered by the invasion fleet. Blown out to sea, they could only assume that the invading force would regroup after the storm passed and continue the assault.

“We must rejoin the fleet,” Temur told the men. “The emperor is expecting victory and we must fulfill our duty.”

There was only one problem. After three days and nights of severe weather, tossed about without mast and sails, there was no telling where they were. The weather cleared, but there were no other ships in sight. Worse for Temur, there was nobody aboard capable of navigating a vessel at sea. The two Korean sailors who survived the storm were a cook and an aged ship's carpenter, neither possessing navigation skills.

“The land of Japan must be to the east of us,” he conferred with the Korean carpenter. “Construct a new mast and sails, and we shall use the sun and stars to guide us east until we reach landfall and relocate the invasion fleet.”

The old carpenter argued that the ship was not seaworthy. “She is battered and leaking. We must sail northwest, to Korea, to save ourselves,” he cried.

But Temur would have none of it. A temporary mast was hastily constructed and makeshift sails raised. With a fresh determination, the Mongol soldier-turned-sailor guided the waylaid ship toward the eastern horizon, anxious to put ashore again and rejoin the battle.

 

T
WO DAYS
passed, and all Temur and his men could see was blue water. The Japanese mainland never materialized. Thoughts of changing course were dispelled when yet another storm crept up on them from the southwest. Though less intense than the earlier typhoon, the tropical storm was widespread and slow moving. For five days, the troopship battled the throes of high winds and heavy rains that pitched them wildly about the ocean. The beaten ship seemed to be reaching its limits. The temporary mast and sails were again lost overboard to the gales, while leaks below the waterline kept the carpenter working around the clock. More disconcerting, the entire rudder broke free of the ship, taking with it two of Temur's soldiers, who clung to it for dear life.

When it seemed that the ship could bear no more, the second storm quietly passed. But as the weather eased, the men aboard became more anxious than ever. Land had not been sighted in over a week and food supplies were beginning to dwindle. Men openly pleaded with Temur to sail the ship to China, but the prevailing winds and current, as well as the lack of a ship's rudder, made that impossible. The lone ship was adrift in the ocean with no bearings, no navigation aids, and little means to guide the way.

Temur lost track of time, as the hours drifted into days, and the days into weeks. With their provisions depleted, the feeble crew resorted to catching fish for food and collecting rainwater for drinking. The gray stormy weather was gradually replaced by clear skies and sunny weather. As the winds tapered, the temperature warmed. The ship seemed to grow stagnant along with the crew, drifting aimlessly under light winds over a flat sea. Soon a death cloud began to hover over the vessel. Each sunrise brought the discovery of a new corpse as the starving crewmen began to perish in the night. Temur looked over his emaciated soldiers with a feeling of dishonor. Rather than die in battle, their fate was to starve on an empty ocean far from home.

As the men around him dozed in the midday sun, a sudden clamor erupted on the port side deck of the ship.

“It's a bird!” someone cried. “Try to kill it.”

Temur lurched to his feet to see a trio of men attempting to surround a large, dark-billed seagull. The bird hopped around spastically, eyeing the hungry men with a wary look. One of the men grabbed a wooden mallet with a gnarled sunburned hand and flung it swiftly at the bird, hoping to stun or kill it. The gull deftly sidestepped the flying mallet and, with a loud squawk of indignation, flapped its wings and rose lazily into the sky. While the disgruntled men cursed, Temur quietly studied the gull, his eyes following the white bird as it flew south and gradually melted into the horizon. Squinting at the far line of blue where the water met the sky, he suddenly arched a brow. Blinking forcefully, he looked again, tensing slightly when his eyes registered a small green lump on the horizon. Then his nose joined in on the fantasy. Temur could smell a difference in the air. The damp salt air that his lungs had become used to now had a different aroma. A sweet, slightly flowery fragrance wafted through his nostrils. Taking a deep breath, he cleared his throat and grumbled to the men on the deck.

“There is land before us,” he said in a parched voice, pointing toward the path of the gull. “Let every man who is able help guide us to it.”

The exhausted and emaciated crew staggered to life at the words. After straining their eyes at the distant speck on the horizon, the men gathered their wits and went to work. A large deck-support beam was sawed loose and manhandled over the stern, where, secured with ropes, it would act as a crude rudder. While three men wrestled the beam about to steer the ship, the remaining men attacked the water. Brooms, boards, and even sabers were used as makeshift oars by the desperate men in a struggle to row the battered vessel to land.

Slowly the distant spot grew larger, until a shimmering emerald island materialized, complete with a broad, towering mountain peak. Approaching the shoreline, they found heaving waves battering a rocky coastline, which rose up vertically. In a panicked moment, the ship became caught in a crosscurrent that drove them toward an inlet surrounded by jagged boulders.