Flashman and the Dragon. George Fraser MacDonald
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her poop there was a Mandarin in full fig of button-hat and silk robe, seated in state – and flying a kite, with a little lad to help him with the string. Even the most elderly and dignified Chinese delight in kites, you know, and no city park is complete without a score of sober old buffers pottering about like contented Buddhas with their airy toys fluttering and swooping overhead. This was a fine bird-kite, a great silver stork so lifelike you expected it to spread its wings as it hovered hundreds of feet above us.
To complete this idyllic scene, the galley carried on its bows a huge wooden cage, crammed with about twenty wretched coolies so close-packed they could hardly stir – criminals being carried to their place of punishment, probably. Their wailing carried across the water as the galley feathered her oars and an officer bawled across, demanding our business.
‘Ruth and Naomi, lorchas from Hong Kong, carrying opium to the factories,’ shouts I in my best Mandarin, and he said he must come aboard and examine us. I told Ward to keep way on the lorchas, and on no account to heave to. ‘If those thieving bastards once get on our deck, they’ll have the stoppings out of our teeth,’ I told him. ‘But if we keep going, there’s nothing they can do about it.’
‘Suppose they fire on us?’ says he, eyeing the jingals.
‘And start another war?’ I nodded at the Union Jack at our stern, and hollered across the water:
‘Our licence is in order, your excellency, and we are in great haste, and must proceed to Canton without delay. So you can bugger off, see?’
This provoked a great screaming of instructions to heave to immediately, but no one moved to the jingals, so I jumped on the rail and pointed to our flag.
‘This is a British vessel, and I am a close friend of Pahsia-li, who’ll have your yellow hide if you get gay with us, d’ye hear?’ In fact, I’d never met Harry Parkes, who was our man at Canton – and pretty well lord and master of the place – but I guessed the mention of his name might cause ’em to think. ‘Sheer off, damn you, or we’ll have half the oars out of you!’ She was gliding in to head us off, not thirty feet away, and in a moment her oars would be crumpled against our hull; it was a question of who gave way. Suddenly she veered on to a parallel course, with the officer shrieking to us to heave to; I made a rude gesture, and he ran to the Mandarin for instructions.
I was half-expecting what came next. There was a barked order, and a dozen of the galley’s crew ran forward and seized on the wooden cage in which the criminals were packed like so many herring. On the order they heaved, sliding the cage until it was poised on the lip of the bow platform; her oars took the water again, keeping her level with us – and then they just looked across at us, and the officer repeated his demand to us to heave to. I turned away and told Ward to keep her going. He was gaping, white-faced; the poor devils in the cage were squealing like things demented and struggling helplessly.
‘My God!’ cries he. ‘Are they going to drown them?’
‘Undoubtedly,’ says I. ‘Unless we heave to and allow ourselves to be boarded and plundered on some trumped-up excuse. In which case they’ll certainly drown ’em later, just the same. But they’re hoping we don’t know that – and that being soft-hearted foreign devils we’ll spill our wind and come to. It’s a special kind of Chinese blackmail, you see. So just hold your course and pay ’em no heed.’
He gulped, once, but he was a cool hand; he turned his back as I had done, and yelled to the helmsman to hold her steady. There was dead silence on our deck; only the creaking of the timbers and the swish of water along our side. Another yell to heave to from the galley … silence … a shrieked order … an awful, heart-rending chorus of wails and screams, and an almighty splash.
‘Fine people, with a prime country, as you were saying,’ says I, and strolled over to the rail again. The galley was still abreast, but in her wake there was a great bubbling and boiling to mark where the cage was sinking to the bottom of the Pearl. Ward came up beside me; his teeth were gritted and there was great beads of sweat on his brow.
‘Old China or New China,’ says I, ‘it’s all the same, young Fred.’
‘The goddam swine!’ cries he. ‘The cold-blooded yellow bastard – look at him there, with his goddam kite! He hasn’t even moved a muscle!’ His face was working with rage. ‘Goddam him! Goddam him to hell!’
‘Amen,’ says I, and watched the galley slowly falling astern before turning back towards the shore, the silver stork-kite hanging in the air far above her. Suddenly a brightly coloured object went whirling up the string, and then another – gaily-painted paper butterflies which were brought to a sudden halt by a twitch on the kite-string, so that they fluttered in the breeze, glinting and turning, just below the stork.
‘Would you have heaved to when they made to drown those poor beggars, Fred?’ I asked.
He hesitated. ‘I guess,’ says he, and looked at me. ‘That’s why you’re aboard, huh?’
I nodded. ‘You see, they daren’t offer us violence – not after the Arrow affair. And they’ve no real right to stop an opium boat – but they’ll use every trick they know to bluff you, and once they’re aboard, and you don’t speak Chinese, and they outnumber you ten to one – well, they can sort of confiscate your cargo – oh, and release it later, no doubt, with apologies … and lo and behold, your chests of first-rate chandoo have been replaced, hey presto! by a ton of opium dross. See?’
‘Bastards!’ was all he said. ‘Him an’ his goddam kite!’
‘Speaking of which – see those butterflies? Somewhere up near the Second Bar an active little Chink with a spy-glass is taking note of ’em – which means that round about the Six Flats we’ll meet another deputation, with a much more important Mandarin on board. It may be politic to present him with a couple of chests, rather than risk any embarrassment.’
‘How’s that?’ His voice was sharp. ‘Give him some of our opium?’
‘What’s sixteen quid out of sixteen thousand?’ I wondered.
He was silent for a moment. ‘I guess,’ says he, and then: ‘Six Flats is up beyond the First Bar, isn’t it?’
I said it was, and that we ought to be there tomorrow noon, and after a little more talk he said he’d better take post on the second lorcha for the night, as we had agreed, so that both vessels were under proper control.
‘Remember – keep close up, and don’t stop for anything,’ says I, and he swore he wouldn’t. He didn’t bother with a small boat, but just dropped over the side and trod water until the second lorcha came by, and he scrambled aboard. A good boy that, thinks I; green, but steady. By Gad, I didn’t know the half of him, did I?
The boatmen were cooking their evening meal forward, but I’d brought cold fowl and beef, and after a capital meal and a bottle of Moselle while the sun went down I was in splendid trim for my Hong Kong girl, who was sitting by the stern-rail, singing high-pitched and combing her long hair. We went down to the tiny cabin, and were buckled to in no time; a fine, fat little romp she was, too, taking a great pleasure in her work and giggling and squealing as we thrashed about, but no great practitioner of the gentle art. But you don’t expect Montez or Lily Langtry for sixpence, which was what I was paying her; she was a crude, healthy animal, and when I’d played myself out with her she retired with a flask of the promised samshu and I settled down to my well-earned repose.
She was back at first light, though, crawling in beside me and grunting as she rubbed her boobies across my face, which is better than an alarm clock any day. I laid hold, and was preparing to set about her when I realised that she was trembling violently, and the pretty pug face was working with a strange, ugly tic.
‘What the devil’s the matter?’ says I, still half-asleep, and she twitched and sniffed at me.
‘Wantee piecee pipe!’ says she, whimpering. ‘Mass’ gimme! Piecee pipe!’
‘Oh, lord!’ says I. ‘Get one from the boatmen,