Out of curiosity I stuck my head into Prosser’s cabin, and he was flat on his back and snoring in an atmosphere you could have cut up and sold in the pubs. And I was just pulling the door to again when a sudden tremendous shock threw me off my feet, the Yangtse shuddered like an earthquake, plates shattered in the dining-saloon, and faint cries of alarm sounded from the steerage deck. The boat lurched, and stopped, and began to swing. She was aground.
I pulled myself up, damning Witherspoon or whoever was at the wheel – and in an instant was flat on my face again as a ragged volley of shots came out of the mist to port, smashing a window overhead and splintering woodwork, someone shrieked in pain, the brazen clash of a gong started beating out on the water, and the night was rent by a chorus of infernal yelling from beneath the stern. Shots were cracking out, mingled with the explosion of fire-crackers – one landed within a foot of me, snapping and sending out a shower of sparks – something hit the Yangtse a grinding jar on her quarter, and close at hand were racing feet and Ward’s voice yelling:
“Pirates! Stand to! Pirates!”
Chapter 5
To race into my cabin, seize the Adams, and ram handfuls of loose rounds into my pockets was the work of a few seconds; to guess what had happened took even less time. River bandits, or possibly Imp fugitives turned brigand, had somehow blocked the channel and were about to swarm aboard – that thump under the stern had been a raft or sampan, crowded with Chinese savages who would pour over us in a wild, slashing wave, slaughter and torture most hideously whoever survived the attack, loot and burn the steamer, and be off into the web of side-creeks before the nearest Imperial garrison was any the wiser. I’d seen it in Borneo, and knew precisely what to expect – which is why you now behold the unusual spectacle of Flashy making towards the scene of action, and not fleeing for cover – of which there wasn’t any.
For I knew that in this kind of ambush the first sixty seconds was the vital time. That wild volley, the ridiculous fire-crackers, the clashing gong and the howling chorus – these were the war-whoop, designed to freeze the victim in terror. Our attackers would have few fire-arms; they’d rely on cold steel – swords, knives, kampilans, axes, Aunt Jemima’s hatpin – to hack down opposition, and once they were on our decks in force we were done for. Catch ’em with a brisk fire before they could board, and we stood a fair chance of driving them off.
I pounded along the narrow promenade to the after rail and could have whooped with relief at the sight of two Sikh guards on the wide stern deck ten feet below me, blazing away at the devil’s crew who were tumbling over the quarter-rail. About half a dozen had reached the deck, horrible creatures in loin-cloths and pigtails, wielding swords, others in peasant dress with spears and knives, shrieking contorted yellow faces everywhere – and the two Sikhs with their Miniés calmly picked their men and tumbled ’em with well-placed shots.
“Reload! Reload!” I bawled, to let ’em know they were covered, for they’d been about to drop their empty pieces and draw their swords, which would have been suicide. One Sikh heard me, and as I opened fire with the Adams he and his mate were whipping in fresh charges. I knocked over two with five shots, and with four down they wavered at the rail. I was feverishly pushing in fresh loads when I heard another revolver, and there was Witherspoon beside the Sikhs, booming away across the smoke-filled deck.
I heard feet behind me, and there was Ward, pistol in hand. “Get forrard!” I yelled. “They’ll come at the bow, too!” He didn’t hesitate, but turned and went like a hare – you’ll go far if you live through this, thinks I, and in that moment I heard the screams and yells and clash of steel from the steerage forrard, and knew that they were into us with a vengeance. I turned to the rail again – and here was more bad news, for Witherspoon’s gun was empty, one of the Sikhs was down, and the other was laying about him with his rifle-butt. A dozen pirates were on the deck, and even as I let fly again I saw Witherspoon cut down by a gross yellow genie with a kampilan. I blazed away into the brown, and now the vicious horde had spotted me, yelling and pointing upwards. A shot whistled overhead and a spear clattered on the bulkhead behind me – and I thought, time to go, Flashy my son.
For it was all up. God knew what was happening at the bow, but the brutes were well established here, and in two minutes they’d be butchering the coolies and cutting down the remaining crew. My plan was already formed: time to reload, down to the saloon deck or even lower, and at the first sight of the enemy, over the side and swim for it. And after that the Lord would provide, God willing. Which reminded me of Prosser, but he was a certain goner, drunk and damned.
I came down the ladder at a race, reloading frantically, and reached the saloon deck. All hell was breaking loose on the steerage forrard; I heard the crash of the Miniés – Ward must have the remaining Sikhs at work. Then down to the main deck – I knew there was no way through from the stern; the pirates there would have to climb up to the saloon deck and come down as I had done. I slipped through the door to the open steerage, and it was like Dante’s Inferno.
A battle royal was raging round the deckhouse forrard, but nothing to be seen for smoke. Nearer me, coolies were going over the rail like lemmings, apart from a sizeable group over to starboard who were wailing fearfully and evidently trying to burrow through the deck. For twenty feet in front of me the port side of the deck was almost clear as a result of the coolie migration – by God, here were two of ’em coming back over the rail! And then I saw the glittering kampilans and the evil, screaming faces, and I shot the first of them as he touched the deck. The second, a burly thug in embroidered weskit and pantaloons, with an enormous top-knot on his bald skull, sprang down, waving an axe, and I was about to supply him with ballast when a fleeing coolie cannoned blindly into me, I went sprawling – and my Adams clattered away into the scuppers.
No one, not even Elspeth, ever believes this, but my first words were: “Why the hell don’t you look where you’re going?”, followed by a scream of terror as the bald bastard lunged for me, axe aloft. There wasn’t time to scramble or strike; I was down and helpless, he took just a split second to pick his target – and someone shouted, high and shrill: “Hiya, Shangi! Nay!” His head whipped round in astonishment, and so did mine. Fifteen feet away, just clear of the smoke obliterating the forward deck, stood the tall girl, looking like Medusa. Her kerchief and blouse were gone; there was blood on her breeches and on the chain collar, and in one hand she carried a bloody kampilan.
The old China Sea trick, in fact – half your pirates come aboard as passengers, and turn on the crew when the attack begins. She and those ugly rivermen … It was a fleeting thought, and of small interest just then, as Shangi of the axe held his hand in the act of disembowelling me, and responded with a huge beam:
“Hiya, Szu-Zhan!”
and having observed the courtesies, swung up his axe to cleave me. I heard her scream something, he shot her an angry look and a curse, took final aim at me, and swung. I shut my eyes, shrieking, there was the sound you hear in a butcher’s shop when the cleaver hits the joint, and I thought, how deuced odd, that was his axe in me – and I felt no pain at all. I looked again, and he was standing side-on, chin on breast, evidently meditating; then I saw the kampilan hilt protruding from his midriff, and eighteen inches of bloody blade standing out behind him, and he crashed forward on the deck, his axe dropping from his hand.
It had taken five seconds since the coolie barged into me – and now I was scrambling over the deck, grabbing the Adams, aware that she was still poised in the act of throwing – and as I came round, two more pirates were mounting the rail, seeing their fallen pal, and going for her with blood in their eye. I shot one in the back; she caught the second by his sword-arm, and I heard the bone snap. Something hit me a terrific clout on the head, and I was on my knees again, with the deck and the night and the hideous din of battle spinning round me; I tried to crawl, but couldn’t; the Adams was like lead in my fist, and I knew I was losing consciousness.
A boot smashed into me, steel rang beside my head, voices were screaming and cursing, and suddenly I was whirled up, helpless; I was suspended, floating, and then I was flying, turning over and over for what seemed an age before plunging into warm, silent water, into which I sank down and down forever.
Nowadays, in the split second of uncertainty between sleeping and waking, I sometimes wonder: which is it going to be this time? Am I in the Jalallabad hospital or the Apache wickiup, the royal palace of Strackenz or the bottle dungeon under Gwalior, the down bed at Bent’s Fort or the mealie bags at Rorke’s Drift? Is this the morning I go before the San Serafino firing-squad, or have I only to roll over to be on top of Lola Montez? On the whole, it’s quite a relief to discover it’s Berkeley Square.
I mention this, because in all the unconscionable spots I’ve opened my eyes, I’ve known within seconds where I was and what was what. The Yangtse Valley, for some reason, was an exception; I lay for a good half hour without the least notion, despite the fact that I could overhear people talking about me, in a strange language which, nevertheless, I understood perfectly. That’s the oddest thing; they were talking in a Chinese river dialect (quite unlike Mandarin) which I haven’t learned yet – but in my awakening, it was as clear as English. Ain’t that odd?
One fellow was saying they should cut my throat; another says, no, no, this is an important fan-qui, I should be held for ransom. A third thought it was a damned shame that I’d been the cause of their falling out with the Triads, because those Provident Brave Butterflies were likely lads whom it was foolish to offend. A fourth said they could hold their wind, since she would do what she pleased – guess what? At which they all haw-hawed and fell suddenly silent, and a moment later a hand was raising my head, and strong spirit was being trickled between my lips, and I opened my eyes to see the lean handsome face over the steel chain collar.
Then it came rushing back – the boat, the pirates, that hellish mêlée in the steerage. I struggled up, with my head splitting, staring around – a camp-fire among bushes beside a sluggish stream, half a dozen Chinese thugs squatting in a half-circle, regarding me stonily … two of them I recognised as rivermen who’d been talking to the tall girl that first night. And herself, kneeling beside me with a flask in her hand, eyeing me gravely; she’d lost her kerchief, and her hair was coiled up most becomingly on top of her head, which must have made her about seven feet tall. For the rest, she wore a peasant shirt now, and the ragged knee-breeches, complete with blood-stain.
I demanded information, fairly hoarse, and she gave it. The Yangtse had been ambushed by members of the Provident Brave Butterfly Triad – once a perfectly respectable criminal fraternity which, in these troubled times, had abandoned its urban haunts and gone rogue in the countryside. She and her associates knew the Butterflies quite well; had, indeed, been on friendly terms –
“Until you had to put your knife through Shangi’s guts!” cries one of the lads. “What the hell for? Why?”
He and his friends had spoken their river dialect before; his question now was phrased in a dreadful mixture of bastard Pekinese and pigeon, which I could just make out. Why he used it, I couldn’t think, unless out of courtesy to me – which it probably was, in fact. They have the oddest notions of etiquette, and can show great consideration for strangers, even unwelcome prisoners, which I seemed to be.
Anyway, when he wondered why she’d corrected poor old Shangi’s exercises for him, she simply said: “Because it pleased me,” glanced at me, and then looked away with her lazy smile.
“It’ll please you, then, when the Butterflies make feud, and kill us all,” says he, or words to that effect. “You’ll see. What’s more, he –” flicking his finger at me “– shot Ta-lung-ki. We’ll get the blame for that, too.”
“It saved my life,” says she, and looked at him. “Are you complaining, you little —?”
He hurriedly said, no, of course not, and Shangi and Ta-lung-ki were admittedly a pair of prominent bastards … still, it was a pity to provoke the Triads … he merely mentioned it.
“Who are you?” I interrupted, and she looked slightly surprised.
“Bandits,” says she, as one might have said “Conservatives, of course”, and added with a lift of the splendid head: “I am Szu-Zhan.”
Plainly I was right to look impressed, although I’d never heard the name. I nodded solemnly and said: “I see. You work with the Triads?”
It appeared they didn’t; she and the boys were real bandits, not townee roughs. Sure enough, they’d been preparing to take the Yangtse farther up, but the Triads had got in first, and Szu-Zhan and her gang had been pursuing a neutral policy until (here she looked at me steadily) it had become necessary to intervene. After that, to avoid further embarrassment, they had left, and she’d been considerate enough to throw me over the side first.
“What happened to the others – the passengers and crew?”
“They will be in Kiangyin by now,” says she. “From the bank we saw them beat off the Triads; then they refloated the boat and went down-river.”
Ward, you son-of-a-bitch! I thought to myself. He’d absolutely fought his way clear – and thanks to the zeal of my protectress I was stuck in the wilderness. Not that I could complain – but for her I’d have been digesting Shangi’s axe by now. Which was highly flattering, although I’d known, of course, after our tussle behind the deckhouse, that she had worked up a ravenous appetite for me. It didn’t surprise me, for – I say this without conceit, since it ain’t my doing – while civilised women have been more than ordinarily partial to me, my most ardent admirers have been the savage females of the species. Take the captain of Gezo’s Amazons, for example, who’d ogled me so outrageously during the death-house feast; or Sonseearray the Apache (my fourth wife, in a manner of speaking); or Queen Ranavalona, who’d once confessed shyly that when I died she intended to have part of me pickled in a bottle, and worshipped; or Lady Caroline Lamb – the Dahomey slave, not the other one, who was before my time. Yes, I’ve done well among the barbarian ladies. Elspeth, of course, is Scottish.
And here now was Szu-Zhan of the glorious height and colossal thews – when I thought of the strength that could drive a kampilan through a stout human body from fifteen feet, I felt a trifle apprehensive. But at least I was safe with her, and would be most lovingly cared for, until … ? Aye, the sooner we took order, the better.
“Szu-Zhan,” says I gravely, “I am in your debt. I owe you my life. I’m your friend, now and hereafter.” I held out my hand, and after a moment she grasped it, giving me her pleased, insolent smile. It was like putting your hand in a mangle. “My name is Harry, I am English, and stand high in the British Army and Government.”
“Halli’,” says she, in that deep liquid voice – and d’ye know, it never sounded better.
“And I’m indebted to your friends also,” says I, and held out my hand again. The six proud walkers looked at each other, and frowned, and scratched, and scowled – and then one by one came forward, and each took my hand, and muttered “Hang” and “Tan-nang” and “Mao” and “Yei” as the case might be. Then they all sat down again and giggled at each other.
“I need to go back to Shanghai, quickly,” I went on. “The British Trade Superintendent will pay many taels for my safe return. In silver. I can promise –”
“Not to Shanghai,” says she. “Not even to Kiangyin. This is Triad country, so we go west, until we are strong again – thirty, forty swords. Then let the Butterflies feud!” And she sneered at Mao, the argumentative one.
“Then let me go,” says I. “I pledge two hundred taels, to be paid to you wherever you wish. I’ll make my own way back.”
She studied me, leaning back on her elbow – and if you don’t think that shirt, bloody breeches, and great clog sandals can look elegant, you’re mistaken. The long hungry face was smiling a little, as a cat might smile if it could. “No. You were going to Nanking. We can take you there … or farther.” And for the first t
ime since I’d met her, she dropped her eyes.
“Hey!” cries Yei, who I learned was the gang idiot, and had just reached a conclusion the others had known long ago. “She wants him to——!” Obviously they’d all gone to the same elocution class. “That’s why she wants to keep him with us! To——!”
Her response might have been to blush and say, “Really, Yei!” – and perhaps, by Chinese bandit standards, it was. For she was on her feet like a panther, reached him in two great strides, plucked him up wriggling by the neck, and laid into him with a bamboo. He yelled and struggled while she lambasted him mercilessly at arm’s length until the stick broke, when she swung him aloft in both hands, dashed him down, and trampled on him.
He came to after about ten minutes, by which time I had lost any inclination to argue with the lady. “Nanking let it be,” says I. “As it happens, I have business with the Loyal Prince Lee.” That ought to impress even bandits. “You know the Taipings?”
“The Coolie Kings?” She shrugged. “We have marched with them against the Imps, now and then. What is your business with the Chung Wang?”
“Talk,” says I. “But first I shall ask him for two hundred taels in silver.”
We spent the night where we were, since the crack I’d taken on the head had left me feeling fairly seedy. Next morning I had nothing worse than a bad headache, and we set off north-west through the wooded flats and flood-lands that lie between the great river and the Tai Hu lake to the south. Nanking was about fifty miles ahead, but in the state of the country I reckoned it would take us a good four days, and wary travelling at that.
For we were marching into a battle-field – or rather, a killing-ground that stretched a hundred miles, where the remnants of the Imperial armies were fleeing before the Taipings, with both sides savaging the country as they went. I’ve seen slaughter and ruin in my time – Gettysburg, and Rio villages where the Mimbreno had passed through, the Ganges valley in the Mutiny time, and the pirate-pillaged coast of Sarawak – but those were single battle-grounds, or a few devastated villages at most. This was a whole country turned into a charnel-house: village after burned village, smoke on every horizon, corpses, many of them hideously mutilated, on every wrecked street and in every paddy and copse – I remember one small town, burning like a beacon, and a pile of bodies of every age and sex outside its shattered gate – that pile was eight feet high and as long as a cricket pitch; they had been herded together, doused with oil, and burned.
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