Killigrew and the Golden Dragon

by Jonathan Lunn

  ‘And have you not yet atoned for that, after all these years?’

  ‘That’s not for me to say. But a wise man once said: “It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph.”’ Then, as if afraid he was sounding pompous, he grinned boyishly. ‘Besides, the danger is half the appeal.’

  She studied him thoughtfully. He looked very dashing in his pea jacket and pilot cap, a cheroot wedged in the corner of his mouth. He made no attempt to dispose of it in the presence of a lady. At first she wondered if he did not consider her to be a lady on account of the colour of her skin, but she dismissed the thought as unworthy. He had treated her attentively and gallantly from the moment they had met. It was simply that he was something of what Miss Fothergill – her English governess – would have called a ‘fast’ man.

  She remembered the first time she had seen him, the day before yesterday, leaping over the side of the pilong junk with a pistol in one hand and a cutlass in the other. He had been grinning. At the time she had assumed it was a grimace of terror; now she was not so sure. ‘Life is too precious to be treated lightly, Mr Killigrew.’

  He blushed and looked thoughtful. ‘It’s difficult to explain,’ he said, and wandered over to the taffrail.

  She followed him. ‘I should like you to try, nonetheless.’

  He gave her a penetrating glance and then he looked away. ‘It’s the queerest thing,’ he admittedly softly. ‘But when one jumps over the bulwarks of a hostile ship, or over the battlements of an enemy fortress… when one knows one may be slain at any moment… that’s when I feel most alive. You say that life is precious; but you can have no idea how precious life is until you’ve stared into Death’s eyes – and stared him down.’

  ‘Perhaps. But surely once would be enough?’

  He laughed. She did not mind; she had the feeling he was laughing at himself as much as at her. ‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But after you’ve done it once, everything else becomes dull by comparison.’

  ‘You make danger sound like a drug.’

  ‘Perhaps, in a way, it is.’

  * * *

  A pilot cutter came out to meet the Tisiphone when the steam-sloop entered Victoria Harbour and guided her to her berth in the anchorage. Robertson sent the pilot back to Harbour Master’s Wharf with two messages: one for Sir Dadabhoy Framjee to the effect that his daughter was on board and in good health; and another to the Hong Kong Police, explaining that they had prisoners on board who needed to be taken into custody.

  On the north side of Hong Kong Island, the town of Victoria faced across the sheltered waters of the harbour to the fishing village of Kowloon on the Chinese mainland. There were far more buildings in Victoria these days compared to when Killigrew had first visited the colony seven years earlier at the end of the war, and pale stone had begun to replace the temporary wooden shelters in earnest. Most of the buildings straggled for a mile or so along the waterfront, but here and there a few bungalows and rich merchants’ houses had been built amongst the steep, treeless hills which formed a dramatic backdrop to the scene, with Victoria Peak rising to a height of over sixteen hundred feet. The stone buildings were constructed in the neo-classical style, giving the waterfront an appearance that was more Mediterranean than Oriental, but there were still plenty of wooden buildings, mat-sheds and godowns belonging to the various companies which traded out of Hong Kong.

  The town was dominated by the new three-storey barracks, but there were other notable buildings. Missionaries of various denominations had wasted no time in using Hong Kong as a beachhead in the Celestial Kingdom from which to convert the heathen Chinese, and already there was a Roman Catholic cathedral, a Union chapel, an American Baptist chapel, a Chinese temple, and even a Muslim mosque. Only the Church of England cathedral remained unfinished. At East Point, on the furthermost extremity of the settlement, stood the trading factory of Grafton, Bannatyne & Co., the company’s golden dragon ensign flying from the roof. A two-masted paddle-steamer was anchored in the harbour close to the factory, and Killigrew studied it through his telescope and saw it had a stylised oriental dragon painted gold for a figurehead.

  Amongst all the companies which traded with China, Grafton, Bannatyne & Co. was pre-eminent. George Grafton had retired to England a little over ten years previously, leaving his junior partner behind in Canton to act as general manager of the company: tai-pan, ‘great manager’, as the Chinese referred to him. In London, Grafton had purchased himself a seat in the House of Commons, using his new-found influence to defend the interests of the China traders, and it had been his lobbying which had encouraged the British government to go to war with China over the opium issue.

  The bumboats homed in on the Tisiphone from all directions, like half-pay post-captains swarming around a flag-officer entering the waiting room at the Admiralty. The mess-cooks crowded the bulwarks, looking to purchase local delicacies that would provide some variation from the standard navy fare of salt beef and weevil-infested biscuits. There were wash-boats too, crewed by cheerful washerwomen and seamstresses who knew Jack Tar was a dandy at heart and that laundry facilities on board navy ships were primitive at best.

  ‘I’m going across to the Hastings to present my compliments to Rear-Admiral Collier,’ Robertson told his officers. ‘Second, I want you to take the pilongs and hand them over to the local authorities. You can take Miss Dadabhoy ashore while you’re about it; see to it that she gets safely back to her father’s house.’

  Killigrew coughed into his fist. ‘With all due respect, sir, I think it would be more tactful to minimise any contact between Miss Dadabhoy and her would-be kidnappers…’

  ‘Hmph? Oh, all right, I suppose so. Take the pilongs ashore in one of the cutters. Lord Hartcliffe can take Miss Dadabhoy ashore with him in the dinghy.’

  The pilongs were placed in the cutter under the muskets of the marines. Killigrew climbed down after them, keeping a watchful eye on his charges, and the cutter’s crew rowed them ashore.

  There were already three warships in the harbour: the seventy-two-gun ship of the line HMS Hastings, wearing the flag of Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Collier; the paddle-sloop HMS Fury, and an American sloop of war, the eighteen-gun USS Preble. There were other vessels, too: lorchas with Western-style hulls and Oriental sails and rigging; American whalers; and Chinese ‘scrambling dragons’, known to Westerners as ‘fast boats’ because of their speed or ‘smug boats’ because of their usefulness in smuggling opium on to the mainland. They looked like Venetian galleys, with banks of oars and masts bearing mat-and-rattan oblong sails three times taller than they were wide.

  Perhaps the most eye-catching vessel in the harbour was a houseboat. A hundred feet from stem to stern, she was a floating palace, three storeys piled one above the other like a wedding cake, with the roof curled up at the eaves in the oriental manner and a pagoda-like tower amidships rising up two storeys more.

  Innumerable sampans crowded the waterfront, along with junks of all sizes with mat-and-rattan sails and high, beautifully painted sterns, as well as countless yolos: small sampans, almost square, with curved matting roofs. These last were crewed by Tanka women in blue trousers and smocks, their plaited hair decorated with ribbons and flowers, sometimes with one child tied to their backs and another at their breasts, disarmingly young and cheerful, smiling with big, white, gleaming teeth. The boats served as homes and places of trade for the Tanka people. They crowded so thickly against the dockside it seemed as if one could walk a hundred feet out into the harbour without getting one’s feet wet.

  Yet apart from the chatter of Chinese voices and the occasional passing tramp of soldiers’ boots as they marched along the waterfront, the harbour was oddly quiet and far from being a bustling port. Trade at Victoria had not yet taken off the way its founders had hoped; with the five treaty ports open now, Hong Kong had been robbed of its raison d’être. There were no noisy steam cranes on the wharf – what trade did come to Hong Kong was actually transshipp
ed at the Cap-sing-mun Passage, a dozen miles or so to the west.

  By the time the cutter had nosed through this crowd to the wharf, a detail of sepoys in dark green uniforms already waited amongst the bustling crowds of coolies hurrying on errands, Chinese hawkers selling goods from the panniers of their pack horses, merchants being carried on sedan chairs. Under the command of a young European officer and accompanied by a civilian in a black frock coat, top hat, and extravagant side-whiskers, the sepoys waited outside a noisy waterfront tavern to take the pilongs into custody.

  Killigrew saluted. ‘Lieutenant Killigrew, HMS Tisiphone.’

  The officer returned his salute. ‘Lieutenant Dwyer, Ceylon Rifles.’ Dwyer was a young man, red-haired, freckle-faced and snub-nosed. ‘This is Assistant Superintendent Cargill of the Hong Kong Police,’ he added, indicating the whiskery civilian.

  ‘Welcome to Hong Kong, Mr Killigrew,’ said Cargill. ‘Glad to see you’ve not wasted any time,’ he added with a broad smile, indicating the prisoners.

  ‘All right, Havildar, let’s take these men into custody,’ Lieutenant Dwyer told his sergeant. ‘Some of Zhai Jing-mu’s men, do you think, Mr Cargill?’

  ‘Either his, or Yao Ping-han’s. I don’t suppose we’ll be able to get them to talk, though.’

  ‘Did you say Zhai Jing-mu?’ asked Killigrew.

  ‘Ah,’ said Cargill. ‘You’ve heard of him, then?’

  ‘That fellow there referred to himself as Zhai Jing-mu when we arrested him.’ Killigrew indicated the lao-pan, whose white coat was looking decidedly grubby after three days on the deck of the Tisiphone without a chance to change.

  Dwyer stared down his snub nose at Killigrew, and then Cargill burst out laughing. ‘I believe Mr Killigrew is kidding you, Dwyer. You know what these salts are like, always spinning a yam.’

  Killigrew frowned. ‘If I’ve said something to amuse you, Mr Cargill, I fear I did so in all innocence.’

  ‘Come now, Mr Killigrew. Don’t tell me you don’t know who Zhai Jing-mu is?’

  ‘A pilong captain, I suppose…’

  ‘Captain!’ snorted Dwyer. ‘Admiral would be closer to the mark. He’s said to have a fleet of over a hundred pirate junks under his command.’ Cargill nodded. ‘We’ve been after him for over two years now. The most notorious pirate in these waters; and believe you me, that’s saying something. He’s believed to be responsible for the disappearance of five clippers last year.’

  ‘Seven,’ said Zhai Jing-mu.

  Both Cargill and Dwyer stared at him with renewed interest. ‘Good God, Cargill… you don’t suppose this could be him, do you?’

  The assistant superintendent brushed his whiskers thoughtfully. ‘He’s about the right age, according to my reports. Blue eyes, too. Rare in a Chinaman.’

  Dwyer put a hand under the pilong’s jaw and tilted his head back to study his face. ‘Speakee English, eh? You Zhai Jing-mu?’

  The lao-pan jerked his head away with a contemptuous sneer. ‘I will be a free man one week after the tiger moon is down,’ he said in Cantonese. ‘And you will be dead.’ He turned to Killigrew. ‘And you and Miss Dadabhoy – before the end of the first week in the rabbit moon, you will all have been dispatched to the Hell of Ten Thousand Knives.’

  ‘You’ve got that the wrong way round,' Cargill replied in the same language. ‘If you are Zhai Jing-mu – and I’m starting to believe it myself – then you’ll be hanged along with the rest of your crew.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Dwyer.

  ‘Big talk,’ said Cargill. ‘Just hot air.’

  Dwyer’s men took the pilongs in custody and led them off in the direction of the gaol. Cargill lingered on the wharf and studied Killigrew with a speculative expression. ‘Aren’t you curious to know what that fellow just said to you, Mr Killigrew?’

  ‘I speak a little Cantonese. I was on board the Dido during the China War.’

  Cargill nodded. ‘Before I came out. So, you’re that Killigrew, eh? I take my hat off to you, sir.’ He raised his topper.

  ‘You think he really is this Zhai Jing-mu?’

  ‘After that little display of defiance? If you were here during the war then you’ll know the Chinese: all grovelling humility after they’ve been bested, and as often as not before. But not that one. No, Mr Killigrew, I believe you’ve captured the man I’ve been chasing these past two years.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘I suppose I ought to resent the fact that you’ve succeeded where I’ve failed, but, by George, I can’t! If you’d heard some of the stories about the atrocities he’s said to have committed… not all of them without foundation, I can tell you. I’m just glad that devil’s finally under lock and key.’

  ‘I just hope you’ll be able to keep him there.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you worry about that, Mr Killigrew. I intend to keep a very close guard on our friend. He’ll be tried at the earliest opportunity, before any of his friends can effect a rescue attempt; although to tell you the truth, I rather hope they do. Then we’ll snap them up, too. Zhai Jing-mu may be the worst of the pirates in these parts, but he’s not the only one.’

  Killigrew smiled. ‘I’m glad to hear it. For a moment there you had me thinking our work in these waters was over and done with before we’d even started.’

  ‘Ever been to Hong Kong before?’

  ‘Not since forty-three.’

  Cargill nodded. ‘As you can see, it’s changed a great deal in the past seven years…’

  Before the policeman could finish his sentence, the door of the waterfront tavern burst open and a Chinese in European clothes came haring out. He dodged past Killigrew and raced down the waterfront.

  Another figure emerged behind him, a tall, barrel-chested man with a huge, unkempt beard. Killigrew watched in astonishment as the man raised his hand with a pistol in it – his massive fist made the gun seem puny – and fired. Already thirty yards away, the Chinese cried out and fell. He rolled in the dust of the unpaved street and clutched his wounded leg.

  ‘Capital shot, Captain Ingersoll,’ Cargill remarked to the pistoleer.

  Ingersoll scowled at him. ‘I were aiming for his back,’ he snarled with a West Country accent. ‘Sonuvabitch stole fifty dollars off me!’ He pocketed the pistol and strode over to reclaim his money.

  Cargill turned back to Killigrew. ‘What was I saying?’

  ‘Just that Hong Kong’s changed in the past six years. It’s certainly a good deal livelier than I remember.’

  Cargill grinned. ‘Welcome back to the Orient, Mr Killigrew.’

  * * *

  As the horses thundered around the oval track at the Happy Valley racecourse, Killigrew gazed through his pocket telescope. It was not the horses he was studying, however, but the other race-goers. Just about everyone who was anyone in Hong Kong society was present: Samuel George Bonham, Her Majesty’s Governor, Plenipotentiary and Superintendent of Trade; Rear-Admiral Collier and the officers of the other ships in the harbour; missionaries; and the owners and representatives of all of the great trading houses.

  Unlike most of the military men there, resplendent in their uniforms, Killigrew was fashionably but unobtrusively dressed in a morning coat and top hat, as befitted attendance at a race meeting. He saw Miss Dadabhoy, ravishing in a sapphire-blue sari, but there was no sign of anyone who might have been her father. Her curly black hair was done up and crowned with a garland of flowers. There were no two ways about it, she was a damned fine-looking woman. And intelligent, too, unafraid to speak her own mind.

  He had been thinking about her a great deal in the week since the Tisiphone had arrived at Hong Kong. That worried him. He had had plenty of female friends, and while it would not have been fair to say they meant nothing to him, certainly they meant no more to him than he did to them. Usually it was an equitable arrangement. Only once had he made the mistake of becoming emotionally attached to a woman, and it had turned out unhappily for both of them. He could not blame the woman in question for that: he had put her on a pedes
tal and built her up in his mind into something she had not been. The disappointment had been inevitable, but hurtful nonetheless. He had promised himself he would never make that mistake again. But that did not mean that he should never fall in love; he would just have to be more careful.

  He was about to go and talk to Peri Dadabhoy when a half-familiar voice called out behind him. ‘Kit? Long time no see!’

  Killigrew turned and saw a handsome young man of roughly his own age, dressed in civilian clothing. There was something vaguely familiar about the man’s face, but Killigrew could not instantly place it. But since only a select band was accorded the honour of being allowed to address him as ‘Kit’, he pasted an uneasy smile on his face as he struggled to remember where he had met this fellow. ‘Good afternoon!’ he said with false enthusiasm.

  The man grinned. ‘You don’t remember me at all, do you?’

  Killigrew shook his head. ‘I’m sorry…’

  ‘Well, it was over nine years ago. In those days you couldn’t see my face for the pimples.’ He thrust out his hand. ‘Jago Verran.’

  The name was the trigger which brought all the memories back. Jago Verran had been one of his fellow midshipmen on board HMS Dreadful. They had been shipmates for four years, and looking at him again Killigrew was amazed he had not recognised his old friend earlier. He clasped Verran’s hand and pumped it vigorously.

  ‘Jago! Look at you, you old sonuvagun!’

  ‘And you’re looking as well as ever. When did you arrive?’

  ‘A week ago. What about you? What have you been doing since we parted?’

  ‘I spent three years on the Alecto, mostly cruising in the Med., but things were much quieter after Syria. I made it to mate but when I saw my career wasn’t going anywhere I quit the Andrew Miller and joined the merchant service. I’ve got my own vessel now.’