The Thirteen Gun Salute (27 page)

'I should hope so,' said Jack, smiling. 'Jupiter is in opposition, you know. Nobody could have missed his splendour.'

'No, indeed: a very glorious sight. And Ganymede is connected with him, I collect?'

'Of course he is - the prettiest of the satellites. What a fellow you are, Stephen.'

'How well named. But I meant another Ganymede, the Sultan's cup-bearer. Did you notice him?'

'Well, yes, I did. I said to myself, Why, damn my eyes, there is a girl. But then I remembered that there would be no girls at a feast like that, so I returned to my excellent haunch of venison, no bigger than a hare's, but uncommon well-tasting. Why do you call him Ganymede?'

'Ganymede was Jupiter's cup-bearer; and I believe their connexion, their relations, their friendship, would now be frowned upon. But I use the name loosely, as it is so often used: I mean no reflexion upon the Sultan.'

Chapter 7

Forgive me for bursting in on you at this time of day,' said Stephen, 'but I am in sad need of the Malay for mercury sublimate, strontium nitride and antimony.'

'Pedok and datang for the first and last,' said van Buren, 'but I am afraid strontium is not yet known in these parts. Has it any therapeutic value?'

'None that I know of. Fireworks are what I have in mind, and it gives a noble red.'

'As for that, there are no less than three Chinese cracker makers on the other side of the river, and they have the whole spectrum at their command. Lao Tung is said to be the best. I would come with you, but as I said in my note I am away at noon, and I must finish this creature before I go.'

'Of course. Lao Tung: many thanks indeed. We are to receive the Sultan this evening, on the occasion of Princess Sophia's birthday, and it occurred to me that a brilliant royal salute in her honour would not only give pleasure but would emphasize the mission's loyalty as opposed to Ledward's open treason and make an evident contrast between on the one hand a set of men who deserted first their king and then their republic and who now support a vile usurper and on the other a set who have consistently supported the hereditary principle, which must surely appeal to a ruler by divine right. Fox agrees. By the way, am I right in supposing that His Highness is a paederast?'

'Oh yes. Did I not mention it? Perhaps I never thought of anything so obvious: such things are as usual here as they were in Athens. The present favourite is one Abdul - I have rarely seen a man so besotted.'

'He is a pretty youth, sure. But that to one side: I had a most satisfactory meeting with the Pondicherry clerk in the night.'

'Duplessis' Pondicherry clerk?'

'Just so: Lesueur is his name. Wu Han's young man, to whom he is deeply in debt, brought him in the darkness, and we soon came to an agreement. He has an importing and exporting house in Pondicherry, where his family still lives, and in exchange for our good word with the Company, our protection for the future and a certain amount of present money he undertook to give me what information he could. He sent these this morning. They are the rough draught of Duplessis' official journal, which Lesueur writes out fair.'

Van Buren put down his scalpel, wiped his hands and took the sheaf of paper. He read intently, and after a page or two he said, 'I see that our contact is looked upon as purely scientific.'

'Yes. Fox wanted to come and see you to talk about the Buddhist temple at Kumai, but I pointed out that a visit by the envoy might compromise the position. Aubrey too was anxious to be introduced... which reminds me, I have an appointment with him for twenty minutes after nine o'clock,' said Stephen, looking at his watch. 'Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it is quarter to ten. He is a raging lion if he is kept waiting even as little as half an hour. I wish you both a very good journey - God bless. I will show you the papers again - forgive me. Oh dear, oh dear.'

Jack, with the purser, the purser's steward, Killick and Bonden were at Liu Liang's at Stephen's recommendation, laying in stores for the Diane's reception that evening, served by Liu Liang himself. They had waited for Stephen eleven minutes at the landing-place and had then made their way to Liu Liang's by a route that led them through the hog-market, escorted by a cloud of ribald children, and they greeted him with a reserved severity, pursed lips and significant looks at their watches, or in default of watches, at a Chinese clepsydra by the dried medicinal serpents. Liu Liang, however, was as welcoming as could be, and once the stores were laid in, he sent an assistant to show the way to the firework-maker.

Jack and Stephen made the journey by themselves, Mr Blyth and the others returning to the ship. They crossed the bridge and followed the guide up a street leading away from the river, shops on one side, and open drains with many small black nimble pigs in the middle, the long wall of the French envoy's compound on the other; and a hundred yards ahead they saw Wray and Ledward walking arm in arm. As soon as he saw them Wray let go; he darted across the street, leaping the gutter and hurrying blindly into a clothes shop. Ledward walked on, his face set and tense. Stephen glanced at Jack: no apparent awareness, only a remote gravity. Ledward deviated slightly from his course, giving the wall, and they passed.

The pedok, the datang and substances warranted to give a brilliant red and a brilliant blue were weighed out and packed in small cotton bags, each labelled with a coloured twist. There was little conversation on the way down to the sea, but as they walked out along the crater-rim - charmingly fresh after the close, damp and very smelly heat of Prabang - Stephen said, 'What do you feel about those two?'

'Only disgust.'

'You would not kick Ledward, for example?'

'No. Would you?'

Stephen paused and said, 'Kick him? No.... on reflection, no.' Some minutes of silent walking on the soft crumbled lava and then as they passed the stunted tree by which he had met Lesueur, the Pondicherry clerk, he said, 'Were there a white stone anywhere at hand, I should use it to mark this day. I brought off what may prove a useful stroke, in my own line.'

'I am heartily glad of it,' said Jack; and stopping to fill his powerful lungs he put up one hand as a speaking-trumpet and hailed 'Diane, ahoy!' Watching the boat put off he added, 'No white stones - all as black as your hat - but at least we can break out a case of Hermitage: I am sure it will not mind the heat.'

Stephen, his heart and belly aglow with the Hermitage, spent the later afternoon with Mr White the gunner in the forward magazine and the filling-room, fairly cool below the water-line, measuring, weighing, and trundling the deadly little barrels to and fro.

'I do assure you, Master Gunner,' he kept repeating, 'it can do your guns no harm. The Captain has used the same mixture before, broadside after broadside - I saw it with my own eyes - from the stock of a pyrotechnician deceased, and sure it did his guns no harm. Besides, it is only for the salute. We shoot at the targets with your best long-distance red largegrain.'

'Well, I don't know, I'm sure,' said Mr White once more, privately conveying a little antimony out of the scales, 'but if chemicals, Chinese chemicals! don't honeycomb a gun, what does? And a gun honeycombed with chemicals - Chinese chemicals at that! - is liable to burst.'

He and his mates were the only dismal creatures in the ship, however. Most of the Dianes, sadly bored with lying at anchor, looked forward to the Sultan's visit with pleasure; they had of course scoured the frigate from truck to keelson, and now, having prepared four elegant lofty targets trimmed with bunting on staves as long as the carpenter could be brought to spare, they were carefully chipping their round-shot so that no unevenness should make the ball deviate from its mark. The ship was filled with the gentle sound of tapping hammers, interrupted from time to time by the crack of Fox's rifle as he shot at a tree-stump two cable's lengths away, hitting it with remarkable consistency, so that Ali, with a spy-glass, reported chips flying at almost every shot. He had his second piece at hand, waiting until Maturin should appear.

Everyone was perfectly ready well before the hour, but everyone was equally certain that the Sultan (a foreigner) would be late, and they settled down to enjoy the indefinite waiting in the calm luxury of doing nothing in their best clothes and enjoying the breeze that now blew across the anchorage. It was with real astonishment therefore that they saw a two-hulled proa with a large deck-house put off from the shore forty minutes before the appointed time and advance, blowing

conchs and trumpets in a manner that would have been presumptuous in any but a ruling prince's vessel.

Fox, almost the only person not yet in full glory, hurried below for his uniform, and Jack observed to his first lieutenant, 'If some awkward sod had wanted the court to catch us with our breeches down, he could not have advised them better.'

Fielding glanced anxiously fore and aft, but everything seemed in order - the awning stretched just so, falls flemished, brasswork like that in a royal yacht, all hands shaved and in clean shirts, yards exactly squared - 'Touching wood, sir,' he said, 'perhaps the awkward sod may be disappointed: I believe we may receive all comers without a blush. But I will just step below and put the Doctor in mind of his coat and wig.'

The first comer was the Sultan himself, who like nearly all Malays came aboard in a seamanlike style, followed by his Vizier, many of his council, and his cup-bearer. They were welcomed with the roar of guns, the howl of pipes and the restrained splendour of a naval reception.

On occasions of this kind Fox and even his colleagues managed extremely well. They sat the guests under the awning, refreshed them with drinks judiciously laced with gin or brandy according to signals arranged beforehand, and helped Jack and Fielding show them round the ship. Jack was particularly struck by the Sultan's intelligent interest in all he saw, his grasp of the principles of naval architecture on the grander scale; for when Fox's perfectly fluent Malay ran dry on the subject of spirketting, hanging knees, brace-bitts and ridingbitts, the Sultan at once grasped Jack's explanation chalked on the deck and helped out with gestures. But it was the guns, the eighteen-pounders and the broad-mouthed carronades, the genuine short-range smashers, that really fascinated him and his followers: even the Vizier's benign, intelligent old face took on a predatory gleam.

'Perhaps His Highness would like to see them in action?' said Jack.

His Highness would indeed, and the whole party went back to the quarterdeck: the reception had gone very well so far and Jack was reasonably sure that it would go still better as soon as the ship was under way. Only Abdul would not be pleased. In spite of the fact that the envoy, now aware of the situation, had provided an unusually handsome present, Abdul had been froward from the beginning, and when drinks were being poured he snatched a decanter from Killick's hands with a rudeness that would have brought him a shrewd box on the ear in any other circumstances. And now, aware that the Dianes did not love him very much, he behaved with a petulant wantonness that made even confirmed old sodomites like the cook and the yeoman of the signals shake their heads. The Sultan himself had to stop him pulling the laniard of one of the quarterdeck guns, and while the targets were being towed out and the cables buoyed and slipped he capered about in a very offensive manner, openly despising Ali, Ahmed and the other Malay servants. Fox had left his two rifles on the capstanhead when he hurried below, and now Abdul picked up the Purdey. He was very urgent to fire it - he was perfectly used to guns - he was an excellent shot, the best in Pulo Prabang after the Sultan he said in a little boy voice - and to quieten him Fox loaded, showed him how to hold the rifle and where to point. Abdul did not listen, did not cuddle the butt close; and the recoil hurt his cheek and shoulder. He burst into tears of pain and mortification (Ahmed had laughed aloud), and the Sultan, ludicrously concerned, tried to comfort him; but there was nothing to be done until Fox, yielding to very strong hints on the part of His Highness, gave Abdul one of his fowling-pieces. The envoy put as good a face upon it as he could - the treaty was very dear to him - but his complaisance was not very convincing and it was a relief when the pipe of All hands to make sail brought the ship to active life, turning the general attention away from the nasty little scene.

The evening breeze at Prabang was reasonably predictable and at present it was behaving just as they had hoped, blowing across the west-east line from the seaward gap in the crater-rim to the town. The targets had been towed to their positions north and south of this line and four hundred yards from it, two to starboard, two to larboard.

The Diane let fall her topsails, sheeted them home and hoisted the yards, bracing them to the steady breeze just abaft the beam; she gathered way remarkably fast and Jack said to the master at the con, 'Pray keep her to five knots, Mr Warren.' She was to fire only the eleven forward guns of the main battery on either side, but here Fielding had concentrated all the frigate's talent, and he and Richardson, seconded by the four most responsible young gentlemen, were to supervise the firing. Not that there was any great need of supervision: the first and second captains of each gun thoroughly understood their business - Bonden, in charge of the starboard bow gun, had been pointing twenty-four- or eighteen-pounders ever since the battle of St Vincent - and by now the picked crews were all well above the average for speed and accuracy. Since the Diane was new, well-built and strong she could stand the shock of a simultaneous broadside, the most spectacular by far; but everyone concerned knew that this was an all-or-nothing affair, that no error could be corrected, and that they were being watched attentively by knowing eyes; most had taken off their shirts (their best shirts, embroidered in the seams), laying them carefully folded amidships or on the chain-pump brakes, and most were a little nervous. For this kind of exercise, where the new flint-lock might fail, Jack always preferred the old-fashioned slow-match; and now its smoke eddied along the deck, awaking countless memories.

The frigate was almost abreast of the first target, the water rippling along her side. 'She bears,' murmured Bonden. 'Fire!' cried Fielding and the whole broadside went off in an immense long-thundering crash, eleven jets of flame with wadding dark in the brilliance; and before the smoke-bank rose to veil the sea those on the quarterdeck saw the target leap in an eruption of white water, with a few plumes beyond it and one shot that went skipping over the sea in great bounds until it hit the rocky shore. The Sultan's face was suffused with fierce delight; he pounded his right fist into his left palm in a European or perhaps a universal gesture and called out to the Vizier, his eyes sparkling with a most unusual animation. Meanwhile the teams were holding their guns inboard, sponging, reloading, ramming home the wad and running the piece up with a fine satisfying thump.

The Diane approached the second target in dead silence. The gunners glared out of their gunports with total concentration, making minute changes of bearing and elevation; the Sultan and his men lined the rail, motionless, wholly absorbed.

'She bears,' murmured Bonden again, and again Fielding, peering along the barrel behind him cried 'Fire!' This time there were no visible misses, and the Sultan laughed aloud.

'Hands about ship,' said Jack, and the frigate stayed in little more than her own length; the gun crews straightened for a moment, hoisting their trousers and spitting on their hands. They were now in perfect form, and bending to the guns again they destroyed the two remaining rafts with a deliberate certainty. The Diane picked up her moorings once again, by the two-hulled proa, twelve minutes after she had left them.

Jack and the returning first lieutenant exchanged private glances of relief. It had been a somewhat perilous caper, but they knew that the ship had performed it well, even by the most professional standards. 'Upon my word, sir,' said Fox at his elbow, 'that was a most impressive sight. The Sultan wishes you to know that he has seen nothing to equal it.'

Jack and the Sultan bowed and smiled to one another and Jack, glancing at the setting sun, said, 'Pray tell His Highness that in a few minutes I hope to show him something that may perhaps go beyond it, at least as an expression of loyalty. At one bell in the last dog-watch we are to fire a salute in honour of Princess Sophia's birthday.'

By one bell the tropical dusk had become tropical darkness, and Mr White stalked forth in his best uniform, a red-hot poker in his hand and a mate with a brazier behind him, and while the officers and Marines stood to attention and the hands to something faintly resembling it, he put the poker to the touch-hole of the first quarterdeck nine-pounder, which instantly shot out a vast tongue of crimson fire and a strangely shrill explosion.

'Oh!' cried the Sultan, in spite of himself; and repeating 'If I wasn't a gunner I wouldn't be here' Mr White paced on to the next: a jet of more than sapphire blue, and the whole court uttered a great 'Ah!' The brilliant white of camphor, the green of brass filings, a rosy pink, a most uncommon violet derived from orpiment, and so it went at perfectly regular intervals, timed by the gunner's ritual words, to the final prodigious blast from the aftermost carronade, crammed with a deafening, blinding mixture of pedok, datang and colophony.

Stephen saw the welcome light in van Buren's window, and stepping over the python that was travelling along the outer path he walked in by the garden gate.

'How pleasant to see you again,' they said almost simultaneously; and when van Buren had described his journey, safely performed but slow, tedious and unrewarding from the point of view of natural philosophy, and his treatment of the patient, Stephen said, 'By the way, there was a python in your lane.'

'Reticulatus, I suppose?'

'I imagine so. There was neither time nor light to examine his labial scales, but I imagine so. Twenty-five feet long, perhaps, and reasonably stout for a serpent of that length.'

'Yes. I see him from time to time. Pythons are said to be ill-tempered, but he has never proved objectionable; though perhaps it might not be wise to linger underneath his tree. Now tell me, how have matters come along?'

'As far as the official negotiations are concerned, they began well; but now they tend to become difficult, with endless restatements of the case.'

'Of course they will drag on for a great while; in these parts a rapid conclusion would be a loss of consequence. I put Cuvier's bones for the very small, very delicate red ants to clean, a long task for them, considering the tapir's bulk; but I am sure the hones will be perfectly white long before you carry them off to be sent to France.'

'Oh, I should be happy to stay. I have scarcely begun on the coleoptera, and I have never caught so much as a glimpse of an orang-utang, even in the summit of a very distant tree. But what distresses me is that although with your invaluable advice and the help of the amiable Wan Da I have won the good-will of the Vizier and the greater part of the council, particularly the Sultana Hafsa's relations, every time Fox makes real headway, the Sultan imposes his veto and the Vizier is obliged to overthrow everything, sometimes on pretexts that can hardly be attempted to be believed. And both Fox and I are convinced that this is because of Abdul. The Sultan has a strong, dominant character - his council is afraid of him - but as you said yourself some time ago, never was a man so besotted. It was embarrassingly obvious at the otherwise very successful reception aboard the frigate.'

'But what interest can Abdul have in the matter?'

'Have you met Ledward, the negotiator on the French side?'

'I have seen him two or three times, a fine upstanding figure of a man, though no doubt carrion.'

'He is not only a very able, persuasive negotiator, capable of out-talking Fox before the council and making him lose his temper, but he is also Abdul's lover.'

'Oh, oh,' said Van Buren. 'That young man is playing with fire. Hafsa hates him, and her family is powerful. She is a determined woman herself. And the Sultan is of an extremely jealous disposition.'

'It is my belief,' said Stephen, after a pause, 'that Ledward has made Abdul suppose that if they are put to their last shifts the French will give their frigate as well as the guns, the subsidy and the shipwrights they offered in the first place - they have nothing else left. Their money is all gone. They had no great matter to begin with, and Ledward lost much of it in play. He is a furious and uniformly unfortunate gambler; so is his companion Wray. Will I tell you the reason for my belief?'

I should be very happy to learn it. But first let us drink a pot of coffee.'

'Do you remember how I exulted over the rough draughts of Duplessis' journal?' asked Stephen, putting down his cup and wiping his lips. 'It was the unwisest thing I ever did. Well, almost the unwisest. After a week however I did begin to feel that this was too easy entirely, too handsome to be honest. Now I did tell you, before you left, that I intended to arrange for your gardener's half-brother to bring me the waste paper from Duplessis' house?'

'Certainly.'

'The arrangement took some time, and the accumulation that eventually reached me when a discreet means of delivery had been contrived made a forbidding great heap. Still, I did flatten and class it all in time; and in time I came across some rough draughts of the mission's journal. Doubt had been growing in my mind and I was not altogether astonished to find that they were not the same as my alleged rough draughts of the same date; but I will confess that it vexed me extremely. Ledward is in charge of all the mission's intelligence, and I could see him laughing with Wray at my simplicity.'

'Galling. Oh very galling, I am sure.'

'So galling that I did not trust myself to act for some little while. Fortunately Wu Han, to whom I confessed some part of my disappointment, felt himself- I will not say responsible, but to some extent concerned, or engaged. I should add that he thinks of moving to Java, a more fruitful field for his talents, and he is very willing to be well-seen by Shao Yen and of course by Raffles. He questioned his clerk, whose good faith seems entire, bought his debt on my behalf, and made him invite Lesueur that evening. Lesueur came - I am not the only simpleton in Prabang - and he was summoned to pay. Of course he could not produce the money and so he was seized as a debtor - Wu Hao has powerful porters for this kind of thing - and brought to me by night. He has no immunity of any kind. The Sultan gave safe-conduct and promise of protection to the members of the mission as it was constituted in Paris: Lesueur and other minor people were engaged in the East Indies. I represented to him that he had behaved very foolishly. He had not only ruined himself, since he would be kept in prison and scourged daily until he paid, but he had utterly wrecked the fortunes of his family and his mercantile house, all in British hands. He wept - he was exceedingly sorry- he had been forced into it by Mr Ledward who had found him abstracting papers after the first few days. I told him that his only hope of salvation was to say nothing whatsoever, to do what he had undertaken to do while at the same time sending me the false rough draughts as well: I had someone in the mission who would tell me if he did amiss, as I had already been told on this occasion. So far he has not done amiss, and I have the advantage of knowing both what they have done and what they wish me to think they have done or are about to do. And one thing that they or rather Ledward wishes me to think is that the French are prepared to throw their frigate into the scales in order to obtain their treaty.'

'How would your thinking that profit him?'

'l am not sure. It might be in the hope that the rumour would spread from our mission, eventually reaching the Sultan's ear from various sources and thus gaining in credibility. It might be in order to reduce Fox to despair, so that he should go away without any agreement. I do not know. But clearly it has floated into Ledward's mind and I am persuaded he has made Abdul believe it.'

The door opened and Mevrouw van Buren came in. She was little more than five feet tall, but she contrived to be elegant, slim, intelligent and above all cheerful, a quality Stephen valued highly - most Malays tended to be morose, and many, many married women to be glum. He was very fond of her: they bowed to one another, smiling, and she said to her husband, 'My dear, supper is on the table.'

'Supper?' cried van Buren, amazed.