Killigrew and the Golden Dragon

by Jonathan Lunn

  He dropped to the axle. His feet slipped and he fell face-down across one of the stanchions. The wind was pounded from him and tears came to his eyes as he choked back a gasp of agony which would have given the game away. The sharks still fought for the last few shreds of pilong, but Killigrew knew he would be safer in the water with them than he would up on deck with Verran and his murderous crew.

  He pushed himself back off the stanchion and eased himself feet first into the water. The broken board was immediately below him and he slipped into the water with barely a ripple. The sharks were too busy fighting amongst themselves to pay him any heed. He swam under the hull of the junk grappled to the Golden Dragon’s port side, out of sight of anyone on deck. He was too far away to be able to hear what was going on on the steamer’s deck, but all seemed quiet enough on the junk. He trod water for a minute or two, using shallow, controlled breaths until he had got his wind back.

  The shore was visible about half a mile away. As soon as his breathing was more even, Killigrew ducked under the water and swam for the stony beach until the tightness in his aching lungs forced him to surface once more. He flipped on to his back and allowed himself to float to the surface until his face kissed the air. He could see the two junks casting off from the Golden Dragon now, hoisting their sails. Everyone on board was too busy to spy him in the water, perhaps a cable’s length from the nearest junk. He took a couple of deep breaths and submerged once more. When he next surfaced, he was too exhausted to swim underwater any longer. He was closer to the shore than to the three vessels now, and besides, the Golden Dragon was getting steam up. Killigrew rolled on to his front and struck out for the shore with a gentle breaststroke. A few minutes later he crawled up through the surf on to the stony beach, and reflected that there had to be easier ways of earning a hundred and eighty pounds a year. Suddenly the prospect of a tedious sinecure in the City of London did not seem so awful after all.

  * * *

  Verran watched the shore astern through his telescope. After a moment, he chuckled softly to himself and snapped it shut.

  ‘Something amusing, Captain Verran?’ asked Li Cheng.

  ‘He made it. The sly son of a gun actually made it ashore.’

  ‘Who made it?’ asked Hayes.

  ‘Killigrew. Here–’ Verran handed the tindal his telescope – ‘see for yourself.’

  Hayes peered through the telescope. ‘I see a figure, but you must have the eyes of a hawk if you can tell who it is from here.’

  ‘It’s Killigrew, all right. Who else would it be?’

  ‘How the hell could he have escaped?’ demanded Boggs. ‘The paddle-wheel, the sharks…’

  ‘You should never underestimate a man like Kit Killigrew, Mr Boggs.’

  ‘We got to turn back and go after him.’

  ‘Do you want me to kill him?’ offered Li Cheng. Not betraying the barbarian’s hiding place underneath the paddle-box boat had been an unnecessary risk; Li’s mission was of far greater importance than the life of a barbarian. But he was starting to wonder if the lieutenant might not prove useful. Nonetheless, if Verran suspected Killigrew had escaped with Li’s help, he would be as good as dead.

  Verran gestured dismissively. ‘What’s the point? By the time we’ve put about, steamed back and put a boat over the side, and the boat’s rowed to shore, he’ll be long gone.’

  ‘If he makes it back to Hong Kong and tells everyone we’ve been working with the pilongs, then we’ll all be up the creek,’ warned Hayes. ‘Then we’ll have to see to it he isn’t believed, shan’t we?’

  ‘And how the hell do you intend to do that? Who’s going to take the word of a merchant captain over that of a naval officer?’

  Verran checked his watch. ‘The Hoi-how fleet should reach the fishing grounds off Saddle Island in a couple of hours, shouldn’t it?’ he asked Yeh, the lao-pan of the pilong junk which had brought Li Cheng to this rendezvous. Yeh nodded. ‘Set sail for Saddle Island,’ Verran ordered Hayes. ‘Full ahead.’

  ‘Aye, aye, Cap’n.’

  Verran turned to Li Cheng and Yeh. ‘You two come with me.’

  They followed him down to his day room. He reached for a bottle of rum. ‘Drink?’

  Both Yeh and Li Cheng shook their heads. Verran poured himself a generous measure. ‘I know Zhai Jing-mu had his heart set on dealing with Killigrew personally, but I’m afraid that’s not going to be possible now.’

  ‘Because you let him get away,’ Yeh said coldly.

  Verran shook a warning finger. ‘We let him get away, remember?’

  ‘If he gets back to Hong Kong and warns the authorities…’

  Verran laughed. ‘Warns them about what? He knows nothing.’

  ‘He knows you are in league with Zhai Jing-mu.’

  ‘You let me worry about that. In a few hours he can tell them the sky is blue and no one’s going to believe him. He’s already got a reputation with his superiors for being reckless and unstable. I’m going to make sure that reputation is trebly confirmed.’

  ‘What do you intend to do?’

  ‘Give my men some target practice.’

  It took them seven hours to sail around the south-east coast of Hainan Island to where Saddle Island rose up four and a half miles off shore. The small junks of the Hoi-how fishing fleet were there, their lights coming on as the sun set over the shore. Li Cheng counted about two dozen of them. Seeing the junks reminded him of his own childhood at Canton, where his father had worked as a fisherman amongst the islands of the Pearl River estuary; until he had been killed by the barbarians.

  ‘Well, there’s the fishing fleet,’ Hayes remarked when Verran came up on deck. ‘What do you want us to do now?’

  ‘Sink it,’ Verran said simply.

  ‘What, sink them all?’

  ‘No, no! Leave one. We want a witness to return to Hoi-how and report what was done.’

  ‘Have you got a screw lose? The yellow-bellies may be crazy, but they ain’t stupid. They’ll have no problems identifying the Golden Dragon…’

  ‘A ship which is under the command of Lieutenant Kit Killigrew of Her Majesty’s navy, as far as the authorities in Hong Kong are aware.’

  ‘Until this morning.’

  ‘After this evening’s work I expect tensions in Hoi-how will be running too high for anyone to worry about a discrepancy of a few hours. It will take Killigrew days to travel overland from the south coast of the island to Hoi-how. By then all anyone in the city will remember is that the fishing fleet was attacked by a barbarian devil-ship, and Killigrew will be a barbarian from that same ship. When he realises the magnitude of his crime, what more natural than he should lie about the time he swam to the coast of the island?’

  Boggs grinned. ‘I get it,’ he said, and ran to the bow-chaser on the forecastle calling for the gun crew.

  ‘You ain’t making a heap of sense, Cap’n,’ protested Hayes.

  ‘Do try to keep up, Hayes. It’s perfectly simple. Killigrew went insane and ordered his men to start shooting at the fishing junks. He insisted they were pirates, though Heaven knows we tried to tell him otherwise. He was crazy for opium – the tai-pan and his wife will confirm that he was recovering from being an opium user, and I’ve got an empty laudanum bottle below which he polished off – and thirsting for revenge against the yellow-bellies after the murder of his lady love.’

  Hayes stared at Verran and a smile spread slowly across his face. ‘Sweet Jesus, Cap’n. It’s perfect!’

  ‘“We tried to stop him, Captain Morgan.”’ Li realised that Verran was already rehearsing what he would tell the barbarian authorities when they got back to Hong Kong. ‘“But his men wouldn’t listen to us. They just kept blasting away, while Killigrew kept us covered with a pepperbox, frothing at the mouth and calling us mutineers while urging his men on to greater slaughter. God knows what they thought they were doing: maybe they really believed they were firing at pilong junks, maybe they were just trained to obey orders, or maybe they just d
idn’t give a damn… in the end, I could bear it no longer. I tackled Killigrew, tried to wrest the gun from him… there was a scuffle… his men came to his aid, they were killed… Killigrew jumped overboard and swam for the coast of Hainan. There was nothing we could do but pull a couple of survivors from the water and head home to report this sorry tale.”’

  ‘Survivors?’ asked Hayes.

  Verran indicated Yeh and Li Cheng. ‘I’m sure these gentlemen will have no hesitation in playing the part of fishermen from Hoi-how when they testify in Victoria to Killigrew’s moment of madness.’

  Li Cheng shook his head. ‘I cannot go. I am known in Hong Kong. If I am recognised the whole calumny falls apart.’

  Verran turned to Yeh. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I will do it. If we stop off at Liu-chu on the way back, I can pick up some friends who can testify also.’

  ‘Excellent! So you see, I don’t think we need to worry about Mr Killigrew any more.’

  Hayes nodded. ‘As you say, he’ll head for Hoi-how: it’s the shortest route to the mainland, and the likeliest place he’ll get passage back to Hong Kong. If the crowd doesn’t tear him to shreds, the authorities will execute him for piracy. And even if they don’t – even if they choose to abide by the Treaty of Nanking and hand him over to the British in Hong Kong – we’ll have arrived days ahead of him to spread the bad word. Cap’n, you’re a goddamned genius.’

  Verran beamed. ‘I know.’

  The bow-chaser boomed, startling Li Cheng, and a moment later a fishing junk was lifted out of the water by a direct hit from a shell. Boggs and his gun crew worked quickly to reload the thirty-two-pounder. Within a couple of minutes, the gun boomed again and another junk was destroyed. Some of the fishermen on the deck were hurled screaming through the air. Verran laughed to see them.

  The third shot and the explosion of the third junk finally snapped Li Cheng out of his awed reverie. Until then he had stood as a helpless spectator, knowing he could not betray himself by revealing the slightest weakness, and there was nothing he could do against so many men. It was nothing to him if the barbarian Killigrew was lynched by the people of Hoi-how, but he could not stand back and allow these fishermen to be slaughtered.

  Perhaps there was something he could do after all.

  He made his way down to the orlop deck where he found a storeroom. There were kegs, ropes, boxes, sacks. He ran his finger over the writing on one of the canisters. He spoke English fluently, but struggled with the barbarian method of spelling, using a small number of characters to represent different sounds, and using those sounds to spell out words.

  ‘P… en… jellee’s p… pa… te… patent la… lamp oh-ill. Penjelly’s patent lamp oil.’ He took the canister down from the shelf, unscrewed the lid and took a sniff. This was what he was looking for.

  The thirty-two-pounder two decks above boomed again, reminding him he had no time to waste. He picked up a box of matches and carried them aft with the canister of lamp oil. A constant succession of crewmen ascended and descended the companionway between the upper deck and the magazine, but everyone was too busy to pay any attention to Li. The rest of the ship seemed deserted. To avoid MacGillivray and the stokers in the engine room he ascended to the lower deck and headed aft to Verran’s day room. He closed the door, took the cap off the canister and splashed lamp oil everywhere: over the deck, the bulkheads, the furniture. He had almost finished when the door burst open. It was Yeh.

  ‘Li Cheng, what are you doing in here? Every hand is needed on deck—’ He broke off when he saw the empty canister of lamp oil in Li’s hands.

  Li threw the canister at his head. Yeh swatted it aside and drew his sword. Li leaped on to the table. The lao-pan slashed at his ankles, but Li jumped over the arcing blade and caught hold of the rim of the skylight above his head. He kicked the lao-pan in the chest with both feet, and then dropped to the floor. As Yeh came at him again, he kicked the sword from his hand.

  Yeh stared at him. ‘So, you know wu-yi, eh?’ He adopted the classic martial arts fighting stance. ‘Well, I am a master of the black belt!’

  As the two of them circled, Li shook his head. ‘You are mistaken. Once you were a master of the black belt. Now you are dead.’ He took out the matches, and as the lao-pan stared at him in horror, Li struck one and dropped it to the floor.

  Yeh cried out as the flames spread quickly through every part of the room. Li snatched up a chair and threw it at the stern window. The panes of glass between the leading shattered. The flames blazed all around Li now and his left sleeve was on fire. He smashed the chair against the leading until it fell out, then used the legs to sweep away the last jagged shards of glass around the frame. Then he dived out.

  The water extinguished his burning clothes. He surfaced in the wake of the Golden Dragon and looked around, treading water. The nearest junk was a hundred yards away, but it was in flames. He struck out for one further off while the steamer’s bow-chaser continued to sink the fishing boats remorselessly.

  After he had swum a few hundred yards Li found himself surrounded by men and women from junks which had already been sunk, some of them horribly injured. He heard a woman scream and twisted in the water to see a shark’s fin angling towards her. He grabbed her and pulled her out of the way.

  ‘Don’t struggle!’ he hissed.

  The shock of being seized paralysed her with fear, and it saved her life. The shark swam past only inches away and another man straggling in the water was abruptly dragged under.

  A piece of wreckage drifted past. Li grabbed it and helped the woman cling on to it beside him. ‘Rest now. Kicking in the water only attracts the sharks.’

  She nodded. The mass of struggling bodies in the water became the focus of a feeding frenzy about twenty yards from Li Cheng and the woman.

  He turned to where the Golden Dragon steamed on, glowing sparks flying from the funnel in the gathering dusk. Her bow-chaser had fallen silent: the men on deck were too busy fighting the fire in the day room to have any thought for pressing home their attack on the fishing fleet.

  A junk altered course to pick up the men in the water. Li waved a hand above his head to attract the attention of her crew. She hove to close by and Li and the woman risked a few kicks to bring them close to her hull. Fishing nets were thrown over the gunwales to help the men and women in the water climb aboard. Li Cheng helped the woman on board and then climbed up after her. He stayed at the gunwale to help everyone else climb out of the water – after the sharks had finished with them, there were few survivors – but even so the deck of the small junk was crowded. Out of a fleet of about two dozen, only eight still floated.

  Exhausted, Li collapsed in the lee of the bulwark in the junk’s waist. He looked at the faces of the men and women on deck: tired, bedraggled, stunned and shocked. How many loved ones had they lost?

  One of the fishermen shook a fist at the departing steamer. ‘Cursed barbarian devil-ship! May the goddess T’ien Hou condemn you to an eternity in the Hell of Ten Thousand Knives!’

  ‘What I don’t understand is, why?’ sobbed the woman Li Cheng had rescued from the water. ‘Why did they attack us? What did we do to harm them?’

  ‘The barbarians need no excuses. They are cruel savages who kill for the pleasure of it.’

  Li Cheng was starting to think that the fisherman was right. So many people killed, just to destroy the reputation of one barbarian naval officer. Captain Verran was deranged; and so were the men who had gone along with it.

  One youth had been pulled out of the water with his legs bitten off above the knees by a shark. The fishermen did what they could for him, but his life poured out on to the deck with his blood. The woman Li had pulled out of the water cradled the youth’s head and shoulders in her arms. ‘It is all right, Bao. Everything is going to be all right. Do not die, please do not die…’

  She was the only one who could not see what was obvious to everyone else: the youth was already dead. Finally one of the me
n pried her away from the corpse.

  ‘The men who did this will be made to pay dearly,’ snarled Li.

  The fishermen all turned to stare at him. ‘Who are you?’ demanded one. ‘I do not recognise you.’

  ‘Yes. Where did you come from? You’re not one of us.’

  ‘He must have come from the barbarian devil-ship!’

  ‘What is your name?’ demanded the skipper of the junk.

  ‘My name is Li Cheng and I am an Imperial spy. And it is of vital importance that you take me to Hong Kong at once. I have to report to Admiral Huang.’

  * * *

  ‘No… no… no…’ With a growing sense of weariness, Strachan sorted through the bones Mei-rong had brought him in her yolo. There were dog bones, cat bones, pig bones, cattle bones, even – rather disturbingly – human bones; but none of them was what he was looking for.

  ‘What for you no likee bones?’ asked Mei-rong.

  ‘They’re bonny bones, but I wanted dinosaur bones.’

  ‘What is dinosaur?’

  ‘Dragon. Dragon bones.’ The dragon was such a prominent motif in Chinese art and culture, he was sure that at some point in Chinese history an entire dinosaur skeleton had been found by some imaginative peasant, sparking off the whole dragon culture. Perhaps more than a skeleton. An iguanodon, maybe, or a megalosaurus, or even a species of dinosaur as yet undiscovered by man.

  Strachanosaurus.

  But if strachanosaurus were out there, there were no traces of it amongst the bones in Mei-rong’s boat.

  She said something to her sister, and the two of them fell about laughing hysterically. ‘That’s the way to do it, Mr Strachan,’ Molineaux called from the entry port of the Tisiphone. ‘Get ’em laughing. Works for me every time.’

  Strachan scowled up at him. ‘Now really, Molineaux! For your information I’ll have you know I’m engaged in serious scientific research.’

  Before Molineaux could reply, a hubbub arose from the bumboats crowded round the far side of the stern, which quickly spread through all the boats there. ‘What is it?’ Strachan asked Mei-rong. ‘What’s going on?’