China Flyer (13 page)

Aboard the largest and outermost of the three war junks, Groot peered through a crack in the planking of the hold. As the rich purples and reds of the setting sun streaked across the harbour, he strained his eyes to see the activity aboard the distant European frigate.

‘She’s weighing anchor,’ he reported to Babcock, Jingee and Jud, waiting anxiously behind him. ‘She’s going back down river.’

‘Can you see the name on her prow,’ whispered Jud in the near-darkness.

‘She’s the
China
Flyer,’
answered Groot. ‘I’m certain of it.’

‘Any more sign of that fop Fanshaw?’ asked Babcock.

The men had been taking turns watching the harbour activity since the rowing-boat had carried a white man in a frock-coat and tricorn hat out to the frigate. His second stop had been the junk anchored to the east of their own. Although they could not see Horne aboard the adjacent ship, they were certain he was imprisoned there. Last night and early this morning they had seen the yellow glow of a lantern inside the cabin on its main deck and a man pacing back and forth, someone who looked very like Horne. They were certain, too, that the white man in the frock-coat, who had visited the frigate and then the junk, had been George Fanshaw.

‘Did Fanshaw’s boat take him back ashore?’ Jingee asked.

‘I can’t see any more,’ complained Groot. ‘The light’s changing too quickly and too many sampans have come this way.’

As the sun had started its descent towards the distant pine forests, sampans had begun venturing out across the oily black water towards the Imperial junks, selling fish, vegetables and arrack to the seamen for their evening meal. A few boats, more brightly painted than the others, carried women who the men had guessed were the courtesans called ‘flower women’, coming to the war junks to entertain the Hoppo’s guard.

Groot waved his hand, eye to the crack. ‘The
schipper
’s
lit his lamp again.’

Babcock reminded him, ‘We don’t know if that’s Horne over there.’

‘It’s the Captain sahib,’ said Jingee. ‘Why else would Fanshaw have gone there?’

‘To speak to the guards.’

‘No, it’s the Captain sahib,’ insisted Jingee. ‘I can recognise him a hundred miles away. Nobody paces back and forth, back and forth like the Captain sahib.’

Behind them, Kiro crept aft from the hatch, reporting excitedly, ‘The grille’s not locked into the frame. The peg slides.’

‘What about guards?’ Babcock asked.

‘There’s a clear view of them all seated on the poop deck. They’re eating and drinking and getting very friendly with the women.’

‘If you can get a clear view of them, they sure in hell can get a good look at the hatch,’ Babcock said.

‘Perhaps, but—’ Kiro shook his head. ‘They’re too busy with their supper and the girls.’

Babcock was still unconvinced about their plan to escape from the junk. ‘Fine,’ he conceded. ‘Suppose we manage to climb out of this stinking hold. What do we do then?’

‘Swim ashore and get boats.’

‘Kiro’s right,’ said Jingee. ‘Those sampans clustering around now makes a perfect cover for us.’

Babcock pulled his big ear. ‘I don’t know. It seems pretty
daft. Escaping to shore then stealing boats to come right back out here again to get Horne.’

He nodded at Cheng-So Gilbert sitting forlornly on a bolt of hempen rope. ‘And what about the Chinaman?’

‘He goes with us,’ said Kiro.

‘What if we gag and tie him and leave him behind,’ Jingee suggested. ‘That would keep him from making a noise and giving us away while we escape.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘He’s Chinese,’ said Jingee disapprovingly.

‘He’s also in gaol with us,’ Kiro argued.

‘He could be a spy.’

‘He could also divulge what he’s heard if we leave him behind.’

Jingee remained unconvinced. ‘I don’t know. I don’t trust him.’

Babcock suggested, ‘Let’s find out once and for all how much we can count on him.’

He leaned forward, beckoning to Cheng-So Gilbert, and whispered, ‘You. Come over here.’

Cheng-So Gilbert crawled reluctantly towards the small group crouched in a circle. His clothes were ripped and soiled from the journey up river in the prison barge.

‘Can you swim?’ whispered Babcock.

Quick, deep nods.

‘You sure? From here to the shore?’

‘I learned to swim with the Jesuit fathers.’ he whispered.

‘Another reason not to trust him,’ whispered Jingee.

Cheng-So Gilbert took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

‘Give him a chance,’ said Babcock, then continued his questions.

‘Would you prefer to stay aboard here?’

Cheng-So Gilbert gasped. ‘While you go ashore?’

Babcock nodded, saying to the others, ‘That means he’s heard us talking about our plans.’

Groot intervened. ‘Perhaps he can help us. He knows
this harbour. Maybe he can tell us where to get boats.’

‘It’s never going to work,’ Cheng-So Gilbert warned them. ‘The surrounding wharves are dangerous, not only because of the Hoppo’s guards and the soldiers but also because of the wharf people who will recognise you immediately as strangers.’

He leaned further, whispering, ‘The wharf people will do anything for money. Rob, steal, slit your throats, betray you to the authorities. They are the lowest of human life. Thieves and footpads and prostitutes …’

‘Prostitutes?’ asked Jingee, suddenly alert. ‘The same women who come out here aboard their sampans? The girls from the flower houses?’

‘Oh, there are many more bad women than those few who have paddled out here tonight. Whampoa has house after house of flower girls. They all have sampans and make life miserable for good, respectable—’

Jingee interrupted, looking at the others. ‘That’s where we could get a boat. A flower house.’

Gilbert was instantly critical. ‘A crazy idea, mister. A crazier and more dangerous idea I have never heard!’

Babcock liked the idea but added, ‘If it’s so dangerous we should have an alternative plan.’

‘We could divide into two groups,’ said Kiro. ‘One group could try to get a boat from a flower girl house. Another group tries somewhere else, like a fishing boat or a vendor.’

Despite Cheng-So Gilbert’s protestations, the plan for two groups began to take shape.

Groot was the last to climb the bamboo ladder from the hold. Babcock had gone first, carrying a rope and knotting it around a capstan to make an escape route over the starboard side. Jud and Kiro climbed up next and crawled across deck to the gunwale, followed by Jingee and a
reluctant Cheng-So Gilbert. Groot watched Jingee urge Gilbert over the side before he himself scrambled out. The voices hummed behind him on the poop deck as he gently replaced the iron grating over the hatch.

Crawling across deck, he peered down at the sampans bobbing between the three war junks. Beyond, the night’s darkness had swallowed the other men swimming to their agreed destinations. He climbed over the side and lowered himself down the rope until he felt the greasy black water envelop his bare feet.

Putting strength into his strokes, Groot swam silently towards the western wharves, too frightened to look back at the war junks. In an attempt to calm himself, he forced his mind back to his boyhood, when he had swum in the canals of Amsterdam, sneaking away from his aunt’s house to go swimming with his friends.

Would he ever return to Holland, or save enough money to buy a passage home on a Dutch East Indies
merchantman
? As he cleaved his way across the harbour, he realised that he had no real reason to go back to Holland. He had no family there now, no friends. His closest friends were the other four Marines and, of course, the
schipper.

With each stroke, Groot counted the men he had seen killed since Horne had taken them from the prisons of Bombay Castle. The crew aboard Horne’s first command, the
Eclipse
… The convicts on Bull Island … The first Marines: Bapu … then Mustafa …

The night air felt warm against his dripping body as he pulled himself up to a wooden pile. Clinging to the encrusted wood, he looked around him in the darkness, catching his breath. The
China
Flyer
had disappeared from her anchorage across the harbour. The three junks still lay quietly at anchor, giving no sign that the Hoppo’s men had discovered their escape. The Merchant’s Pier was too far away for Groot to see if Jingee, Kiro and Cheng-So Gilbert had reached their destination.

Summoning his strength, he shinned up the pile and grabbed the edge of the clay-packed pier, cautiously raising his head to see if Babcock and Jud had already arrived.

Two bodies lay face-up in the darkness.

Groot hissed quietly.

Jud raised an arm.

Babcock whispered from his prone position, ‘Groot, if you start talking now I’ll choke you.’

Grinning, Groot clambered on to the pier. Why did Babcock always say he talked too much?

The night sky was starry above the three men as they lay on the pier, listening to the waves slapping and the harbour sounds rising all about them—the call of a woman’s voice, the plucking of a stringed instrument, the caterwauls of cats.

Jud rolled onto his belly and, feeling the wharf’s clay between his fingertips, suggested, ‘Rub this on your face and arms, you two. Darken yourselves like me.’

As Babcock and Groot followed his advice, he added, ‘Rub some in your hair, too, Groot. Keep it from shining so white in the night.’

Then they crawled along the pier in single file, standing upright only when they reached the shadowy warehouses.

A dog barked inside a flat-roofed building.

Jud listened for men’s voices. Satisfied that no one had been alerted by the alarm, he dashed across an alleyway. Peering round the corner, he beckoned Groot and Babcock to follow.

Jumping from shadow to shadow, lane to lane, Jud raised his hand when they reached a narrow lane festooned with dimly-glowing paper lanterns.

‘This must be one of those places,’ he whispered.

Groot and Babcock surveyed the double row of
reed-fronted
shacks; the street was empty except for a
grass-hatted
man dragging a large bag behind him along the garbage-strewn street.

Jud pointed at the door nearest them. ‘Is this the house we agreed on?’

‘First on the right?’ Babcock looked around him. ‘Has to be it.’

Groot smiled at the thought of Cheng-So Gilbert knowing such a place.

‘Let me go first,’ whispered Jud.

‘Scare the ladies good and proper,’ quipped Babcock as he dug into the pocket of his sodden breeches.

Producing a leather pouch, he withdrew three coins, passed one to Jud and, giving the second to Groot, said, ‘Enjoy yourself, mate.’

Taking the coin, Groot thought of the last woman he had been with in Bombay, how she had driven him from her hut for jabbering too much. Tonight he hoped that he would be able to keep quiet. It was no secret that he talked incessantly when he was nervous …

A midnight mist had begun inching across the harbour by the time Jingee, Kiro, and Cheng-So Gilbert waded ashore in a swamp beyond the Merchants’ Wharf. Anxious to get out of the oily water, Gilbert ran in long, splashing steps, looking for a tree or branch to grip on to for support in the marshy shallows.

‘Shhh,’ cautioned Kiro, motioning Gilbert to stop making so much noise. Before the interpreter had time to explain his actions, Jingee grabbed both him and Kiro by the arms and pulled them down to water-level.

Pointing through reeds, he whispered, ‘Boat.’

The three men knelt chest-deep in the filthy swamp, watching a sampan drift slowly along the edge of the reed beds. A lantern swung from the boat’s low prow, one man standing above it with a spear poised high over his shoulder, a second man gently poling the sampan through the water, eyes trained on the light’s phosphorescent reflection.

‘What are they doing?’ whispered Cheng-So Gilbert.

‘Octopus,’ Kiro answered.

‘Octopus?’ Cheng-So Gilbert looked anxiously around him in the swamp.

‘The lantern attracts the octopus to the surface,’
whispered
Kiro, pleased to be the one explaining facts to the Chinese interpreter for a change. ‘They are drawn to the light and the fisherman stabs them.’

Jingee was more interested in the plan to find a boat than
in hearing about octopus fishermen. He said, ‘There are only two of them and three of us. Why don’t we tip over the sampan and take it?’

Kiro disagreed. ‘Even if we could surprise them and take it, another sampan might be following close behind and would rush to their aid.’

Determined to seize the fishermen’s boat, Jingee moved through the reeds, looking up and down the harbour for approaching craft. To his right, another lantern appeared in the hazy darkness—two men armed with spears instead of one.

Jingee crouched while the second sampan passed and then waded back to Kiro. ‘We wait longer,’ he admitted.

Gilbert asked impatiently, ‘What if they only come in twos and threes? We can’t stay here all night.’

Kiro remained calm. ‘Then we swim down the harbour and steal a boat from the wharf.’

‘Oh, we’re certain to get caught,’ Gilbert moaned. ‘We’ll all be thrown into prison. I’ll be beheaded as a traitor.’

Irritated by the Chinaman’s cowardice, Jingee chided him, ‘Stop complaining. You knew the risks before we started.’

Cheng-So Gilbert was not cowardly; he merely wished he was not here tonight, not involved with the Bombay Marines in a rescue attempt for their leader. He remembered how excited he had been when he had originally been hired by the East India Company to serve traders as an interpreter between Macao and Madras. The Chinese considered Europeans inferior, avoiding their
companionship
, calling them barbarians and unclean. Being half-caste, Cheng-So Gilbert not only suffered prejudice in China but also found difficulty in obtaining employment. As
Englishmen
were equally suspicious of the Chinese, they welcomed a man of mixed blood more than someone of pure Chinese descent. Heartened by that acceptance, Gilbert began to entertain hopes of travelling to England and making his
fortune in the great capital of London. But what would happen to his dreams if the Manchu found him involved in a covert plan to abduct Adam Horne from an Imperial war junk?

‘Look.’ Kiro pointed out into the bay.

Gilbert and Jingee sloshed forward through the marsh and saw a small junk with a gold dragon fluttering from its mast.

‘The imperial flag,’ gasped Gilbert.

‘A patrol boat,’ said Kiro.

‘Do you think they’re looking for us?’ asked Jingee.

Gilbert was firm. ‘Now you will cancel these foolish plans.’

‘Cancel?’ Jingee asked indignantly. ‘How are we to rescue Captain Horne?’

Gilbert took a deep breath, baffled by such stupidity. Surely a man’s loyalty was first to himself.

‘The women think we’re from a Dutch colony on Java,’ whispered Groot as he, Jud and Babcock followed three Chinese courtesans along a suspended bamboo footbridge to the harbour moorings. Groot had been made the group’s spokesman in the women’s house when it had become clear that the courtesans had learned Dutch from trading ships visiting Whampoa.

‘What reason did you give them for wanting them to row us out to the war junks?’ asked Jud, behind him.

‘I haven’t told them yet where we want to go,’ Groot whispered. ‘I just said we wanted to have a ride in their sampan.’

‘You better say something soon.’ Babcock looked at the three giggling women ahead of them on the narrow footbridge.

‘There’s no reason to worry,’ insisted Groot. ‘It’s like
Cheng-So Gilbert said: flower girls keep sampans to take customers around the harbour.’

The three women were short, one more corpulent than the others and one of the slim women considerably older than her two companions. Each carried a bamboo pole from which dangled a paper lantern, and they had also brought earthen bottles of spirits from which they kept pausing to sip, chattering and giggling among themselves as they replaced the stoppers and continued towards the
moorings
.

‘I’ve never seen women drink so much,’ Babcock
complained
as the courtesans took one last swig before descending a bamboo ladder to a cluster of sampans bobbing beneath the bridge.

Groot defended them. ‘It’s the custom in China for women to drink as much as men. Especially at banquets.’

‘Is this their version of a banquet?’ Jud laughed.

‘Maybe any visitor means a feast.’

Babcock frowned, ‘Ummm. We’ll see.’

The women had begun to climb down the ladder, gripping one side while managing to carry their lantern poles and bottles, and to grasp the hems of their long robes.

Jud followed; then Babcock, then Groot, stepping
cautiously
into the long, narrow boat as it tilted in the water.

Leather curtains hung from the front and back of the sampan’s arched central awning. Inside there were colourful cushions and rosewood boxes scattered over the reed matting, and the air was redolent of incense. Two of the women waved to their guests to rest on the cushions while the third—the most corpulent—crawled towards the aft curtain.

‘That’s your girl, Groot.’ Babcock elbowed him. ‘Stick with her.’

‘Is she rowing?’

‘Go and find out.’

‘Should I row for her?’

Babcock ignored Groot’s sudden nerves, becoming
increasingly
interested in the other two women; one
courtesan
patted a heap of cushions for him to sit on beside her; the third nodded animatedly to Jud.

Jud returned the woman’s smiles and, waving Groot towards the curtain, whispered, ‘Just keep us on course.’

Lingering half-in, half-out of the curtain, Groot asked, ‘What if she won’t go near the war junks?’

‘Now’s your time to learn how to handle a woman, mate,’ called Babcock as he sank down on the cushions.

Beads of perspiration coursed through the dried clay on Groot’s brow as he left the sweet-smelling cabin.

Inside, Jud settled down on the reed matting, groaning pleasurably as his companion knelt behind his head, rubbing his broad shoulders with her tiny yellow hands and singing a soft song.

Closing his eyes, he admitted, ‘This is exactly what I need.’

‘Don’t get too comfortable,’ warned Babcock.

‘We’ve got time for a little relaxation.’

Babcock was not listening; his companion had unlocked one of the small rosewood boxes, smiling as she extended it to Babcock, offering him a choice of
dim-sun
pastries with one hand while her other hand stroked his leg.

Outside the cabin, the chubby woman had lit more lanterns, festooning the sampan with coloured paper shades. Seating herself on a thwart, the vessel’s single oar seemed unwieldy in her small hands, but she used it deftly, only pausing to take an occasional drink of arrack. Offering the earthen bottle to Groot, she laughed when he refused a drink, and returned to her work.

The harbour traffic had thinned as the night-time mist spread across the water. Groot stood up periodically to make certain they were moving westwards towards the three war junks, then settled down again in front of the
curtain, trying to ignore the voices of Jud and Babcock rising behind him.

The small boat was half-way across the harbour, and Groot was peering around the curve of the awning to check the sampan’s progress, when he saw a junk approaching through the mist.

Scrambling up, he spotted a flag emblazoned with a gold dragon flapping gently from the mast.

Ducking through the leather curtain, he whispered, ‘Quick. A patrol boat.’

Babcock looked up from his woman. ‘What?’

‘A patrol boat,’ Groot repeated more loudly, pointing nervously towards the prow.

Behind him, the fat woman had ceased rowing and began calling through the night to the junk.

Babcock and Jud looked quizzically at one another; their two women jumped to their feet, holding out their hands and chattering in Chinese.

‘What do they want?’ asked Babcock. ‘We’ve already paid them.’

‘More money,’ answered Jud, looking from one woman to the other.

‘What the hell for?’

Behind them, the third woman stuck her head through the curtain, also holding out her hand, shrilling at Groot in pidgin Dutch.

Groot translated. ‘They need money to pay the patrol boat.’

‘Pay?’ Babcock swung his feet on to the matting. ‘Pay what?’

‘A
cumshaw
. A tax to row their sampan around the harbour at night.’

Grudgingly, Babcock dug into his breeches for the leather money pouch.

At the same hour, on the eastern edge of Whampoa harbour, a half-naked man stood on the verandah of a small stilted house. Having been awakened from his sleep by a strange noise, the man gripped a knife in one hand as he peered into the night’s misty darkness. Looking over the bamboo railing, he saw two strangers pushing his boat into the water. As he began shouting at them to stop, a figure emerged from the darkness beside him, raised one hand and chopped him across the back of the neck. The attacker hurriedly bound the unconscious man with leather thongs and, taking his knife and a coil of rope, shinned down a pole to the water and began swimming to catch up with the other two men in the stolen boat.