The Secret Mandarin (35 page)

‘We are fighting for our lives here. Shout “Yes, sir!”,’ Robert admonished them.

The crew tried this without much success but after several attempts they did sound like English sailors, albeit drunk ones.

At this point I saw one of McFarlane’s men sneaking up on the deck. Our own crew looked chipper in comparison, for the sailor was filthy and had ripped his clothes like many of his fellows when the pirates first came into sight. He surveyed the gardeners’ outlandish attire with wide eyes without stopping in his tracks, and continued to move, smoothly, across the deck, almost sliding towards the side of the ship, ignoring our newly formed crew. McFarlane spotted him just as he was climbing over. He grabbed the man by the hair.

‘Thought you’d slip overboard, did you?’ he spat viciously.

The man struck out, but McFarlane felled him swiftly. He was a big chap and clearly adept in a fight.

‘There will be no swimming to the safety of the shore, you sneak. We are on navy rules now. Bring me that rope,’ he snapped at Sing Hoo.

He deftly tied a hangman’s noose and it was only then that I realised his intention. Navy rules, I suppose, were navy rules and deserters would be hung. We could not have one coward giving others ideas. With a brutal efficiency, the man was noosed, the rope slung over part of the rigging and the sailor hoisted high as McFarlane himself secured the cord.

‘No deserters,’ he shouted at the crew, as the sailor’s legs thrashed and his eyes bulged. I had never seen a hanging at such close quarters but, truth to tell, I had no objection to stringing up such a coward. He threatened us all. A sharp pull on the man’s calves quietened his thrashing to a mere twitch.

‘He will hang there until the fight is over,’ McFarlane announced. ‘And the next man who goes over will be treated likewise. You will fight here and some may die, but none of us have any chance if we do not all fight together.’

‘Yes, sir,’ the men shouted and I could see, oddly, that Sing Hoo’s eyes were alight.

With everything else ready, McFarlane raised the Union Jack and some other flags that he happened to have stowed in a box in his cabin.

‘Not quite the right thing for a navy vessel, but close enough and we are clearly British,’ he said. ‘Now we can only take our places and hope.’

‘Do you think this will work?’ I asked as I crouched by the helm.

McFarlane smiled and shrugged. ‘I think we have a shot,’ he hazarded, honestly. ‘They are terrified of the navy in these waters. It is not so long since our boats decimated them. We cannot outgun the six of them but if we put up a decent
show we may hold off until nightfall. If we are lucky they will not be able to follow us and we can change course and sail without lamps. Fortune is right. We cannot outrun them in daylight and if they see us as we are then they will know we are easy game. This is the best we can hope for. That and a dark night.’

I looked at the sky. It was the early afternoon at latest. The junks were only a few minutes away from firing range. We would have to fight them off for hours before dusk. McFarlane saw what I was thinking.

‘I’ve had better odds, ma’am, but I have had worse too,’ he assured me.

I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. Each time I peered over the side the ships were closer, looming into view with dark sails. When we could make out the men on their decks, Robert marched our crew at action stations so the pirates could see we were British. He even managed to get one or two of McFarlane’s men back up on deck to join in—a godsend as it was proving difficult to sail the ship using the gardeners as the only crew. The poor men had no idea of the logistics of unfurling a sail or tying the thick ropes in place as they were required.

McFarlane stood with his spyglass in place and surveyed the pirate vessels relentlessly. He said nothing of what he saw, unwilling, I expect, to make clear how many men we were taking on or how well they were armed. It was daunting enough as it was.

After what seemed like a longer wait than it probably was, the junks sailed into range and swung into action. They lobbed over their bombs, all together.

‘Hit the deck!’ McFarlane screamed and everybody dived.

The shot passed over our heads but the ship took the brunt of it. There was splintered wood strewn everywhere, much of it alight. Many of the men were caught in the shrapnel
but none were floored by it. Sing Hoo’s face was peppered with tiny, bloody cuts, but he rallied the men. At intermittent gunpoint our gardeners doused the deck in seawater while Robert, Wang, McFarlane and I returned fire across the water. Our sniper skills were not too shabby and we hit half a dozen men between us on our first two or three volleys. The pirates returned once more and again, we hit the deck and, on rising, found all round us aflame. Sing Hoo rallied the men once more, drawing water on board and raking the deck where he could to douse the flames. This time I saw one man had been hit badly in the side with a sharp shard of wood. He was screaming over and over again. McFarlane, I saw, also had a huge splinter of what I took to be the yardarm in his leg. The wood had not shattered completely and the sail was still in place and useable. He removed the stake from his thigh and bound the bloody gash without even wincing. We reloaded. This time with four volleys from each of the three of us we hit only four of our marks. Their men were lying low now, as were we.

McFarlane changed tactics. He took a careful shot at one of the junks and managed to hit a rope that secured one of the sails. This caused a huge commotion aboard the junk as the cloth crashed onto the deck and the ship foundered.

‘Ha!’ he shouted triumphantly.

‘Good shot, Captain,’ Robert grinned.

In this way we fought for what seemed like a long time, the
Island Queen
moving alongside the pirate vessels but maintaining a good enough distance to keep them from boarding. Our deck was littered with burnt wood but the helm and mainsail were safe. The same could not be said of our men. Not one of us was intact and there were streaks of blood across the wooden deck. We gave as good as we got, though, if not better sometimes, and each time we volleyed fire we caught one or two of them fair and
square—and importantly, we seemed to hit one captain, for that junk, along with its sister whose sail McFarlane had disabled, fell behind. For our part I consider that we were extraordinarily lucky with our injuries.

Well into the battle I managed to tend the first man who had been hit in the side and he quietened, even rising shakily to his feet to help again after a while. Our only fatality was one of the feral crew who came up on deck about an hour in and whom McFarlane shot himself when it became clear that the man intended jumping ship and swimming towards the shore rather than helping us. It seemed the example of his fellow, now a very bloody carcass, swinging from his rope, had not been enough to discourage him.

‘Shame to waste the bullet,’ the captain muttered as the man fell.

I have to say, McFarlane was formidable in action.

Robert’s skin shone and he proved an excellent sniper, following McFarlane’s example and felling one more mainsail.

‘You are in your element!’ I accused him.

‘If we survive you can say that,’ he volleyed. ‘But if we fail or are hit then, Mary, this is not my element, no doubt about it.’

I was sorry then to have accused him. It was in the heat of the moment and, in truth, I liked taking aim myself. If you didn’t think about it too much, it was exciting, and I realised quickly that it was far better not to think.

At the end of the afternoon we had them down to only two ships and I think neither we nor they had ammunition left. We had fired every piece of offensive wood, glass, pottery or metal we could bring to hand including some stone carvings we were carrying, which, while not worth our lives, would have made a pretty penny on sale in the
Strand. Safe to say, we would be eating off a bare table with our fingers if we were lucky enough to survive.

When the sky finally melted into a peachy haze, the clouds dark against the failing sunlight, we had kept well enough ahead. The pirates put on one last push, but it was half hearted and we held them off. I think they had thought us an easy prize and we had proved we were no such thing. Still, a prize we were and they wanted our skins. As the dusk turned to blackness, I was both exhausted and relieved. McFarlane sent for his remaining sailors who appeared sheepishly on deck. There was no measure in berating them now. To manage in the darkness he needed a fresh crew of men who knew the ship and what to do with her. The pirates lit lanterns but we had no such luxury and set off as night fell, all of us silent, and praying that the cloud would hold, for there was little light from the moon.

‘Not a breath. Not a word from anyone,’ McFarlane swore. ‘They do not need light to follow us. Voices will do.’

And our Chinese sailors, cowards every one, slipped around the deck of the
Island Queen
like ghostly shadows. We cut further out to sea. For a while the pirate junks still followed us, managing by instinct to tell our route, but after an hour or so the lanterns disappeared and McFarlane changed direction, arcing a loop to bring us eventually in the direction of Hong Kong. It was a roundabout course to take and would add two days, but we were safe.

‘Might we run into them again?’ Robert asked as McFarlane pored over his maps.

‘Unlikely,’ he said, ‘though not impossible. They have no way to plot what we are doing. If we do meet again it will be mere chance and they will not want to head close to Hong Kong themselves, for there is the real navy.’

We collected the British clothes, ordered all wounds
doused in seawater and then I myself soothed them with warm water and lavender oil. We had all sustained injuries, McFarlane the worst. He was brave with it, though for the rest of the voyage he walked with a crutch. Later the men were issued with extra rations, such as were available. Nothing could be cooked so it was ship’s biscuits, stale corn bread and
sham shoo
for supper. They were ravenous and it would do. Our last duties were to throw overboard the bloodied bodies of the two deserters.

‘Thank God,’ Robert breathed, as we sank into seats at the captain’s table, close on midnight.

McFarlane found a decent bottle and uncorked it in the pitch black, passing it to each of us in turn. The glasses were long gone. The bottle itself was the only one that had escaped being used as ammunition. The rest of the case had become splinters and shards in the pirates’ sides.

‘Thank God for this refugee. At least I know my way around a cork and bottle,’ McFarlane joked. ‘After that long day, we deserve more than slops from a barrel of rice wine. I propose a toast to us all. Quick thinking, Fortune. And, Mrs Fortune, might I say, not many ladies would manage as you did. You are a crack shot, madam.’

‘Mary,’ Robert admitted, ‘is a treasure. Once she was even shipwrecked, you know. But, Captain McFarlane, I must tell you that Mary is not my wife. She is my wife’s sister.’

McFarlane downed his drink. I heard him gulping.

‘Really?’ he said. ‘I would never have guessed you were not a love match.’

I knew Robert probably smiled here, but could not see it. For myself I held the secret to my heart. I would, I knew, have to get used to that.

When Hong Kong appeared on the horizon I was on deck. It was early in the morning and I was taking a turn. We knew
we were close—there had been seabirds wheeling high in the sky the whole of the night.

Robert and I had stood at midnight on the deck. The
Island Queen
was a sight—like some kind of zombie, still moving despite her bones being exposed, she glided through the darkness.

‘I promise you, Mary—’ Robert started.

‘Hush,’ I said.

He did not need to say it. We both knew how we felt. We both knew it must be a secret. Things would appear quite normal but we would have each other despite that. Now we held our bodies close knowing our next night would be on dry, English soil.

When Hong Kong island came into view I jumped up and down with the excitement of it. The Peak towered, lush and green over the bay and in the two years we had been absent there had been a lot of new building. Even from a distance, parts of the city looked quite fine, I thought, the houses painted white, standing out against the jungle. I pictured myself the last time we had been here—a well-dressed woman, seemingly sophisticated but callow in the ways of the world, with all the shallow concerns of a privileged European close to her heart. An observer would probably doubt I could have survived on foot in the Bohean Hills in winter or raised a rifle against a pirate attack sustaining the injuries that still nipped my skin. I had loved poetry and the theatre. Now I loved adventure more. And, of course, the man who had adventured with me.

McFarlane anchored at the dock, his battered ship drawing much attention. A friend, another opium runner, strolled over and called for permission to come aboard.

‘What the hell happened to you?’ he asked, flinging his arms around McFarlane’s frame in greeting and almost
knocking our brave captain over, for he still was not entirely steady.

‘This,’ McFarlane turned, ‘is Robert Fortune and this Mary Penney. We fought off a pirate attack together as well as if we were a navy frigate!’

The man laughed delightedly.

‘Now that story merits a side of ham and some burgundy,’ he said.

‘I would kill, Captain, for some steamed pudding,’ I admitted.

‘Or some cheese and chutney,’ Robert chimed in.

The captain laughed. ‘How long have you been away?’ he asked.

‘Two years,’ I said. ‘Heavens. Do you think there may be chocolate?’

And a mere ten minutes later we were aboard the
Oriental
with warm, delicious chocolate streaming down our chins and an advance message dispatched to Pottinger about the state of affairs at Foo Chow Soo, to be followed in short order, or as short as we could, with a visit in person from Robert and myself.

It was in this state that she found us. Aboard the
Oriental
there was a window in the captain’s cabin that oversaw her approach. I saw the figure, but I did not properly register it. It was so entirely unexpected, you see. A minute later there was a sharp knock on the captain’s door, the sound of our laughter wafting out, I expect, as she burst in. Jane Penney. Mrs Fortune. My dear sister. In her navy dress with the red buttons and a parasol at her side. She must have been waiting at the dock to find us so soon after we had arrived. She had been poised and ready for some time.