Killigrew and the Golden Dragon

by Jonathan Lunn

  Pinching the pistol between forefinger and thumb, Killigrew slowly unhooked his pepperbox from his belt. Gadsby grinned victoriously.

  Killigrew tossed the pistol at him. ‘Catch!’

  Caught off guard, Gadsby dropped his own gun instinctively to clutch at the pepperbox. Killigrew kicked him in the crotch, and threw a left cross at Firebrace’s jaw.

  Hayes appeared behind them with a pistol in either hand. ‘Not smart, Loo-tenant. You don’t know when you’re whupped, do you?’

  Killigrew backed away. ‘I’m a fast learner.’

  Hayes smiled. ‘Glad to hear it. Clasp your hands behind your head. Get his sword, Boggs.’

  The number-two tindal dragged Killigrew’s cutlass from its scabbard and backed away as the pilongs swarmed over the Golden Dragon’s sides. Somehow Killigrew was less than surprised to see Li Cheng amongst them, along with the Triad who had almost shot him the night of the gaolbreak. Li met his eyes with a penetrating glance, but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking. There was no sign of Zhai Jing-mu himself.

  ‘Turn around.’ Hayes gestured with one of his pistols. Killigrew had no choice but to obey. A moment later Boggs had thrown him against the thirty-six-pounder – for such a slight-looking youth, he was surprisingly strong – and Killigrew’s wrists were bound behind his back.

  Then a new voice cut across the words of command being given on the Golden Dragon’s deck. ‘Everyone throw down their weapons!’ a voice commanded in Cantonese. ‘Or Captain Verran is the next to die!’

  All eyes turned to the quarterdeck, where Yan stood behind Verran with a sword at the captain’s throat. Verran did not look particularly troubled by this new development.

  ‘He did his job well,’ the lao-pan of one of the junks said in Cantonese. Killigrew recognised him as the Triad who had menaced him with a crossbow at Victoria gaol. ‘Unwitting fool!’

  ‘Yes,’ Verran agreed in the same language. ‘But we no longer have any purpose for him.’

  Killigrew saw what was coming next. He looked about to see if there was some way he could forestall the inevitable, but with his hands tied behind his back he was helpless.

  ‘Muda!’ snapped Verran. Seated astride the main yard, the Golden Dragon’s steward raised an eight-foot-long bamboo blowpipe – Killigrew recognised the Malay sumpitan – to his lips.

  ‘Look out, Yan!’ yelled Killigrew.

  It was too late: one puff from Muda, and a moment later Yan had released Verran to stagger back with his throat skewered by a long dart; tipped with deadly radjun venom, Killigrew had no doubt.

  As Yan dropped to the deck, Verran nonchalantly flicked a piece of fluff from his shoulder, raised a hand in acknowledgement to Muda, and then exchanged bows of greeting with the lao-pan. Then he beckoned for Hayes to approach.

  Hayes turned to Firebrace and Gadsby. ‘Bring him,’ he ordered curtly, indicating Killigrew.

  The lieutenant was dragged across the quarterdeck. ‘Running with the hare and hiding with the hounds?’ he asked his one-time friend bitterly.

  Verran grinned. ‘I find life so much more exhilarating this way.’

  ‘How much is Bannatyne paying you, Jago?’

  ‘You think I’m in it for the money? Kit! I thought you knew me better than that.’

  ‘Then why? Surely you don’t find common cause with Zhai Jing-mu and the Triads?’

  ‘Sheer devilment, old boy. Who’d’ve thought that pimply little Jago Verran would one day help to make history? I’d’ve asked you to join us if I’d thought you’d say yes, but you always were an utter prig, weren’t you?’

  ‘Better a prig than a murderous fiend. How can you work with a man like Zhai Jing-mu, damn you? He killed Peri in cold blood!’

  Verran tutted. ‘You were the one who took her to the Akhandata that day, Kit, not me.’ Killigrew lunged for him furiously, but Firebrace and Gadsby held him back. After a moment he stopped struggling. ‘As hot-blooded as ever, eh?’ Verran continued. ‘Perhaps if you hadn’t been so fired up about avenging her death, Zhai Jing-mu wouldn’t want your head on a plate for blowing him up.’

  ‘You’re going to burn in hell for this, Jago.’

  ‘Oh, I dare say. But not for a very long time.’

  Killigrew turned to Firebrace and Gadsby. ‘I might have known this humbug would turn traitor, but what about you two?’

  ‘Cap’n Verran here made us a better offer,’ sneered Gadsby. ‘Did you think that by showing you still had faith in us in spite of everything, you’d win our eternal loyalty?’

  ‘That was the general idea,’ Killigrew admitted ruefully.

  Gadsby laughed. ‘Your faith in human nature is touching, Killigrew, but sorely misplaced.’

  ‘Jago and I were friends once,’ Killigrew told them. He glared bitterly at Verran, who shrugged indifferently. ‘Not too long ago, I might add. It didn’t take long before he sold me down the river. If he can throw so many years of friendship away in a brace of shakes, how long do you two expect to last?’

  ‘You’d say anything to save your own neck,’ spat Firebrace.

  Boggs handed Killigrew’s pepperbox to Verran. The captain turned the revolving pistol over in his hands. ‘Actually, Mr Firebrace, I’m afraid Mr Killigrew is absolutely right.’

  Firebrace and Gadsby turned to stare at him with uneasy smiles. ‘You wouldn’t, would you?’ pleaded Gadsby. ‘We did everything you told us to. We had a deal…’

  Verran rubbed his cheek with the muzzles of the pepperbox. ‘What was it you said to Mr Killigrew just now? Ah, yes, that was it…’ Verran levelled the pepperbox at Gadsby’s head. ‘“Your faith in human nature is touching, but sorely misplaced.” ’

  He blew Gadsby’s brains out. Firebrace turned and ran for the side. Verran’s second shot took him between the shoulder blades before he got halfway across the deck. He sprawled on his face and lay motionless.

  Verran turned to Li Cheng. ‘Weigh the bodies down with chains and send them to Davey Jones’ locker.’

  Killigrew felt sick as he watched the bodies of Dando, Firebrace, Gadsby, O’Connor and Yan being tipped unceremoniously over the side. Perhaps Firebrace and Gadsby had got no more than they deserved, but Killigrew had served with Dando and O’Connor for nearly four years now and they had been loyal, while Yan had been an innocent pawn in all this, and had proved himself worthy of the title ‘brave’ in the final analysis, even if it had achieved nothing.

  ‘I suppose a similar fate awaits me?’ he asked Verran.

  ‘Nothing so quick and painless, I assure you. It’s nothing personal, you understand, but I have my orders.’

  ‘So you take your orders from Zhai Jing-mu now?’

  ‘For as long as it serves my purpose,’ admitted Verran. ‘He’s very keen to renew his acquaintance with you, Kit. He said something about “an eye for an eye”. I’m sure he’ll explain it better than I can when we get where we’re going.’

  ‘And that would be…?’

  ‘His lair, of course. What, did you think I would blurt out the location, so you could escape and then lead a flotilla of navy ships there? What is it my namesake says in the play? “Demand me nothing: what you know, you know.”’ Verran shook his head and tutted. ‘You never do give up, do you, Kit?’

  ‘Not while there’s breath in my body.’

  ‘A circumstance which Zhai Jing-mu will not hesitate to rectify, I assure you.’ Verran turned to the second tindal. ‘Put him in irons in the lazarette, Mr Boggs. And watch him – he’s a tricky devil.’

  Boggs nodded and started to drag the lieutenant towards the forward hatch. Killigrew went willingly at first, then stopped abruptly. He pulled Boggs off balance, and then tripped him up with a sweep of one leg. Boggs hit the deck before anyone had a chance to realise what was happening. Killigrew ran on to the forecastle, got one foot on the carriage of the thirty-six-pounder and the other on the gun itself. A bullet whistled past his head. Balancing with difficulty because of his hands tied behind his
back, he ran down the barrel towards the muzzle and then launched himself head-first over the side.

  He plunged straight under, then jack-knifed his body under the prow and allowed the air trapped inside his clothes to buoy him up against the hull until he felt the keel between his shoulder blades. The keel was hardly sharp, but it was encrusted with barnacles which provided a rough, abrasive surface. He sawed the rope binding his hands against it, while the air in his lungs rapidly ran out.

  A dark shape loomed through the water towards him: a shark. It zoomed straight at him, then seemed to change its mind and darted off in another direction. Another shark drifted past, further away. The blood from the bodies of the men tossed overboard would bring every shark for miles around: the sooner he got out of the water, the better.

  The tightness in his chest was almost unbearable and for a moment he thought he was going to drown. The water had seeped through his clothes and he was losing his buoyancy, drifting down from the hull of the Golden Dragon. He pulled on his bonds in desperation and they snapped. Feeling a dark mist sweep over him, he kicked and clawed his way to the surface. He came up beneath the square-cut prow of the junk grappled to the starboard side of the steamer and whooped a great gulp of air into his lungs as he trod water.

  He could hear footsteps pound the decks above him, and voices cried out confused orders in English, Malay and Cantonese. ‘Find him, and kill him! Do whatever you have to do, but don’t let him get away!’

  ‘Over here!’ shouted a voice immediately above Killigrew’s head. ‘I think I heard him surface!’

  ‘Lower the jolly boat, chop chop!’ shouted Verran. ‘A hundred dollars to the man who brings me his head!’

  A couple of bodies splashed into the water in quick succession and two pilongs surfaced, grinning savagely as they gripped daggers between their teeth. Killigrew ducked back under the water and swam beneath the Golden Dragon’s keel. No sooner had he surfaced in the lee of the other junk than a shot sounded from the deck of the steamer and a gingall-ball kicked up a spout of water close by. He swam in towards the Golden Dragon’s side, sheltering beneath the rear overhang of the paddle-box where the wheel itself gave him some cover from the deck of the second junk.

  Something grabbed his ankle. He kicked instinctively with his other leg, hoping it was a pilong rather than a shark, and felt the sole of his foot connect with something. The other pilong had surfaced a short distance away.

  Killigrew duck-tailed beneath the waves once more. Dazed, the first pilong was striking for the surface. Above Killigrew, the lower-most boards of the paddle-wheel hung motionless in the water. He pulled himself up between two of them. They were six feet across but only two and a half feet apart: a tight fit, but not too tight. He climbed up until he was inside the paddle-wheel. If the engines were started now, the barnacle-encrusted boards would slice him up like a Chinese cook preparing Peking duck.

  As he stood on the inner-edge of the lower-most board, the axle was two feet above his head, but stanchions running across the wheel from side to side connected the spokes at chest height. The stanchions were slippery with marine slime, but by gripping on to one of the spokes he was able to balance enough to haul himself up until he could get both his feet on to the stanchion while wrapping his arms about the greasy axle.

  Both the pilongs climbed into the wheel below him. ‘We have him trapped!’ once of them shouted in Cantonese. ‘He’s in the port-side paddle-wheel!’

  ‘We could get at him if we lifted the paddle-box boat,’ offered Hayes, somewhere above Killigrew’s head.

  ‘Why bother?’ Verran called back. ‘Have Mr MacGillivray start the engines: full ahead. I’ve always wondered what would happen if a man was inside the wheel when the engines were started,’ he added sadistically.

  Chapter 13

  Give a Dog a Bad Name…

  The two pilongs in the paddle-wheel must have understood English, for they exchanged shocked glances when they realised that they were expendable in Verran’s eyes – and about to be expended. Killigrew was less shocked – it no longer came as any surprise to him that Verran wanted him dead – and he recovered first, kicking one pilong in the mouth in which he gripped his dagger. The pilong screamed as blood spurted. Moaning, he gave up trying to catch Killigrew and instead began to ease himself through the boards to get out of the wheel before it started to turn.

  Killigrew was already climbing. It would take only a few seconds for the order to be relayed to MacGillivray in the engine room. The other pilong tucked his dagger in his sash and climbed nimbly up after him. He got his arms over the axle and grabbed one of Killigrew’s ankles. The lieutenant kicked him in the wrist and continued climbing until he was able to reach up through the upper boards and pull himself up. There was not much space above the wheel, where the paddle-box boat formed the ceiling, but he squeezed through. He tried to climb through the thwarts of the upturned boat and still had his feet on the boards when the wheel started to rotate.

  The pilong was climbing up and had his feet on the axle and his arms on one of the stanchions. He cried out. Killigrew stepped on to the next board, and then the next, struggling to keep from falling as the boards moved beneath his feet with increasing speed.

  The wounded pilong was only halfway between two of the boards when the top half of his body was smashed against the edge of the paddle-box. One of the boards snapped against his torso, and his body flopped free. It got caught on the paddles below and was swept up on the outside edges of the boards.

  Killigrew kicked off with one final effort and pushed himself through the thwarts, lifting his feet clear before he missed his footing on the broken board. A moment later the sodden corpse of the first pilong was carried past inches from his face.

  The second pilong still had his feet on the axle and gripped the stanchion, but now the stanchion was below the axle rather than above it and the pilong was upside down. His screams of terror were almost drowned out by the churning of the waters as the boards thrashed down against the waves. The first pilong was deposited in the water which churned in the wheel’s wake.

  The second pilong was brought upright again, and as Killigrew glimpsed his horror-stricken face through the speeding boards he felt only pity. As a pilong he deserved to die, but not like that. No one deserved to die like that. As the water churned and dripped the spokes and stanchions became even more slippery until the pilong lost his grip. He bounced off one of the stanchions below. Another stanchion came up to meet him and Killigrew heard a bone snap sickeningly. Then the pilong landed on the boards at the bottom of the wheel. They quickly dragged him to the top and dropped him down through the whirling stanchions once more. Killigrew could only squeeze his eyes shut. After what seemed like forever, the throb of the engine faded and he opened his eyes once more. There was nothing left of the pilong, nothing that was too large to slip between the boards at least, and as the wheel’s rotation slowed he saw that the water which dripped down from the boards was tinged vermilion with blood. Abaft, the sharks snapped at chunks of meat which floated in the water.

  Outside the wheel, he glimpsed the prow of the jolly boat. ‘Bring me his body!’ Verran ordered from the steamer’s deck.

  But the men in the boat were going nowhere near that feeding frenzy. ‘Sorry, Cap’n!’ Killigrew heard Boggs call. ‘Looks like the sharks beat you to it!’

  ‘I wonder…’ Verran did not sound convinced. Killigrew knew what was coming next. ‘Let’s have the port-side paddle-box boat up, Mr Hayes, just to make sure.’

  Feet sounded on the deck as the hands attached the cradle supporting the paddle-box boat to the inboard davits. Ropes creaked and a moment later light flooded through the gap beneath the boat as it was hoisted up an inch at a time. Unarmed, pinned above the thwarts of the upturned boat, there was nothing Killigrew could do to defend himself. Six inches, seven inches, eight inches… The boat was lifted inexorably higher. Sooner or later someone was going to look underneath and his hiding place would be
revealed.

  Twelve inches, thirteen inches, fourteen inches… A shadow appeared, and a moment later a head was thrust through the gap between boat and paddle-box. Killigrew saw a Manchu queue. Then the head rotated as the man craned his neck to glance into the boat above him.

  Killigrew looked around for something he could use as a weapon, but there was nothing.

  His eyes met those of the man with the queue, and he recognised Li Cheng. The two of them stared at one another for what seemed like an eternity. All Li had to do was call out ‘He’s here!’ and Killigrew would be a dead man.

  Instead, the Chinese merely winked and withdrew his head.

  Killigrew blinked. He had never seen a Chinese wink before.

  ‘It is clear, Captain Verran,’ he heard Li Cheng say. ‘The sharks must have got him.’

  ‘All right. Lower the boat back in place and let’s get underway again.’

  Killigrew wondered why the Chinese had helped him. What did he have to gain? It was impossible to guess. Perhaps this was someone’s idea of a joke: as soon as Li was out of earshot he would tell Verran exactly where Killigrew was hiding, and they could both have a good laugh about it, safe in the knowledge that the lieutenant was right where they wanted him and in great discomfort to boot.

  But he did not have to stay there. Indeed, if they were going to use steam to get underway, he had only a few seconds to climb back down into the water or else be trapped until the next time they stopped the engines.

  The men in the jolly boat were rowing back around the stern, but they would have their faces turned towards the paddle-wheel. This was going to have to be timed to a nicety, if it could be timed at all. Killigrew could not wait until the jolly boat was out of sight: he eased his legs between the boards and lowered himself until he dangled at the fullest extent of his arms from one of the thwarts. He moved his grip from the thwart to one of the boards, one hand after the other, until he was able to get his feet on one of the stanchions. He just glimpsed the stern of the jolly boat as it disappeared from view.