Dynasty

by Elegant, Robert;

  The absence of more than one craft would imperil the mission. But their captains sailed under strict orders not to use the Daimler-Benz automobile engines mounted in their holds on hand-hewn teak bearers. Resorting to the engines while on passage could betray the operation to the junks of the Imperial Chinese Government or, worse, to the steam-launches of the China Maritime Customs and the British Royal Navy’s anti-piracy patrols. Most Chinese captains could be induced by a golden “expression of thanks,” cumshaw, to disregard the strange spectacle of junks under power. The European captains of the Customs’ launches were more wily, but just as incorruptible as the English sub-lieutenants commanding the Royal Naval craft.

  The shrimp-junks had sailed by night from their different home-ports, where they normally fished with long nets for the bottom-dwelling crustaceans. They were the fastest sailing-craft on the South China Coast, fine-built to hasten their perishable catch to market. The engines had been fitted in an improvised boat-yard in Bias Bay, no-man’s waters northeast of Hong Kong. The Manchus’ vessels prudently avoided Bias Bay, preferring to accept the cumshaw of the pirates, whose domain it was, rather than fight them. The combined forces of the Maritime Customs and the Royal Navy could not winkle those pirates from their lair.

  Harry was reasonably content with the execution of his plans. Only one junk had failed to rendezvous at the Gate of the Sea, and it might yet appear to reinforce the force by twenty men. He had allowed for one straggler. Unfortunately, the missing boat, sailing from the anti-Manchu nest of Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan, carried the man called Mr. Woo, the delegate of Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Tung-meng Hui, the United League. Mr. Woo’s absence left tactical command to Elder Brother Lee, an old pirate chieftain, whose honored title derived from his rank of Incense Master in the Secret Society called the League of Elder Brothers.

  Harry was himself present primarily as an affirmation of the Sekloongs’ commitment to the operation they had planned and financed. But Sir Jonathan had instructed him not to show himself once the clash began. The House of Sekloong could outface the inevitable rumors that it had sponsored the action, but could be gravely injured if Harry were positively identified. Yet Mr. Woo’s absence made him the senior representative of the republican revolutionaries who were united with the Secret Societies and the pirates by common hostility to the Manchus. If he hung back in the absence of Mr. Woo, the Sekloongs would lose much credit.

  Harry pondered his decision. Strict obedience to his father’s instructions would imperil the operation and largely negate its benefits to the House of Sekloong. If he led the vanguard and was seen, he could imperil the existence of the House of Sekloong. He pushed back his bamboo hat and rubbed his forehead in perplexity.

  “Soon now, Mr. Sek, very soon.” A staccato Cantonese whisper broke into his thoughts.

  “I pray so, Elder Brother Lee,” he answered. “Taishan must come over the horizon in the next ten minutes. Her captain wants daylight no more than we. But it’s a very long night.”

  “Patience, Young Lord,” the throaty voice counseled. “When you’ve been in the trade as long as I, you’ll know it’s mostly waiting.”

  “Perhaps, Elder Brother. Lacking your experience, I am prey to impatience.”

  Harry eased the heavy Scott-Webley revolver holstered under his tunic, and rivulets of sand trickled down the hillock. The barking of dogs and the aggrieved crowing of cocks roused before the dawn signaled that men were astir in Wong Family Village. Their bustle was no less alarming for being expected. From that moment onward, the operation was at risk. The commando was trapped between the turbulent sea and heavily armed force sallying from the village.

  If they waited too long for the Taishan to appear, they would be attacked from the interior. If they embarked too soon, the sight of their six dark craft could startle the Taishan into flight. Even their engines could not then overtake the six-hundred-ton paddle-steamer.

  The green hands of his watch read 1:45, and Harry swore under his breath. The Taishan sailed to a rigid schedule. If she did not make her landfall within ten minutes, the transshipment would be postponed for twenty-four hours—and his plan would collapse. Licking his dry lips, he leaned toward the dark shape of Elder Brother Lee.

  The men must embark, risking discovery, rather than allow themselves to be trapped with their backs to the sea. The detachment from Wong Family Village was moving closer, its progress signaled by the creaking of harnesses, the squealing of axles and the rattle of rifle barrels. Voices swore aloud in the harsh Swatow dialect, for the enemy felt himself secure in his own territory.

  Harry’s whisper to the imperturbable old pirate was cut off by a horny hand closing on his biceps.

  “Look!” Elder Brother Lee commanded hoarsely. “Look at the horizon!”

  A yellow light flared above the whitecaps. Once, twice, thrice, and the sea was dark again. But he could see a darker shape breasting the waves where the signal had flashed and the white bow-wave curving back from the hard-driven Taishan, running without lights.

  Elder Brother Lee shrieked like a gull, and the hillside sprouted men. Black shapes tumbled down to the shore, slithering on the coarse grass to clamber over the teak-sides of the narrow junks. Wooden blocks banged, ropes snapped, and bat-wing sails creaked up the raked masts, blotting out the sky. The moon vanished in a torrent of clouds.

  Harry’s boat came alive when its anchor was untethered. As the slim craft took the first shock of the waves crashing beyond the sheltered cove, his eyes searched the surrounding darkness. Six lighters lay like stranded whales in the outgoing tide, where his men had scuttled them. Since the lighters would not put to sea that night, their rear was secure against attack. Harry’s junk gave way to clear the furthest lighter. A half-naked form was spread-eagled on the foredeck.

  “Only one guard,” Elder Brother Lee said contemptuously. “We only had to slit one throat.”

  Harry’s stomach clenched, and bile rose bitter in his throat. He blamed the fish stench and the narrow-gutted junk’s wild pitching, alternating with cork-screw gyrations when the quartering waves slammed against the prow. Once beyond the promontory’s shelter, the junk lay over on her side, and white water swirled in the leeward scuppers. The heeling motion eased when the southwest monsoon blowing beam on bellied out the bamboo-battened sails.

  “The engine?” Elder Brother Lee shouted in eagerness above the wind’s falsetto screaming through the shrouds. “Start engines now?”

  “Wait for signal,” Harry shouted into his ear. “Must not alarm Taishan.”

  For thirty minutes the frail junk pounded through storm-waves, and her timbers groaned. A monstrous wave lifted the junk thirty feet on its crest. The junk skidded down into the trough, and the next wave towered above the wildly swaying mainmast. Righting itself, the junk bobbed in the maelstrom like a cork.

  Clutching the foremast, Harry searched for the loom of the Taishan in the enveloping darkness. The wind-driven spume that stung his hands and face obscured his vision. Elder Brother Lee beside him was unconcerned.

  “Fast time,” he shouted. “Helmsman good.”

  A golden flare arched into the night above the black bulk of the paddle-steamer. A second followed, and the flares hung in the sky for thirty seconds before plummeting into the sea. Red pinpoints flared like angry fireflies in the Taishan’s battered superstructure.

  “They’re firing,” Elder Brother Wong shouted. “Not smooth as hoped. Must make speed. Engine now?”

  Harry nodded and the older man scuttled along the wave-swept deck toward the high poop. A red lantern cast faint radiance into the night. The clatter of gears and the coughing of pistons from the junk’s hold were just audible above the shrieking storm. The wind snatched a cloud of gray-white smoke from the stern, shredding it like a puff-ball. Gears grated and the exhaust popped as tyro engineers struggled with the balky motor.

  The engine settled into a pounding roar after three minutes. It raced wildly when the waves lifted the screw ou
t of the water and Harry feared it would break loose from its mounting.

  All Taishan’s lights flared bright to make a beacon for the junks. They were no more than a mile from the paddle-steamer, less than ten minutes sailing at their mad pace. His watch showed that just fifty-two minutes had elapsed since they weighed anchor.

  The Taishan slowed, butting her blunt bows into the wind, and a searchlight swept the sea to guide the junks alongside. Ropes snaked from the decks, and the rebels swarmed aboard. Elder Brother Wong shouted orders at two men with a heavy, canvas-wrapped package slung between them.

  Harry snatched at a dangling rope-ladder. With his foot on the first rung, he paused. The wind snatched him off the deck. He clung desperately to the water-soaked ropes which writhed in the air as the Taishan rolled on the swell.

  His decision had made itself, since it was the only possible choice. He could not hang back and let his allies bear the full risk. The Taishan’s crew had resisted, and might still fight. The emissary of the House of Sekloong could not cower in the junk’s cabin while the buccaneers and the revolutionaries climbed through the darkness toward unknown hazards.

  The tarry ladder twisted in the wind despite his one hundred and eighty pounds. He was flung against the ship’s side, and rusty rivets tore through his clothes, leaving bloody welts. He fought upward inch by inch, until a convulsive effort carried him over the teak-capped bulwarks to lie gasping like a landed fish on the coal-stained deck.

  Incongruous in a sailor’s white smock, the lean body of the Shanghai intellectual he knew as Mr. Woo loomed over him. The apparition flashed white teeth and spoke in cultivated Mandarin.

  “I must apologize, Mr. Sek, for not notifying you. We decided at the last moment that I should sail as a member of the crew. My men hold the officers at pistol-point on the bridge. Deckhands and engine-room gang are under hatches.”

  “The cargo?” Harry panted. “What of the cargo?”

  “Ten tons of first-grade Bengal opium, worth more than fifty thousand pounds. The year’s big shipment, and they were desperate to land it unseen by Customs. There’ll be no opium in most of south China for many, many months.”

  “That’s wonderful!” Harry replied. “And the unloading?”

  “Your men know their places,” Mr. Woo answered. “Look, they’re beginning.”

  Black-clad figures wrestled aside the heavy timbers that secured the hatch-covers. Others climbed the rickety ladder to the bridge, where the British captain, first-mate and engineer were under guard. The deck-lights flickered, tantalizing the smugglers stranded on the beach beside their scuttled lighters.

  “Everything under control?” Harry asked nervously.

  “Everything is going as planned. All under con …”

  The white figure bent gracefully from the waist, and Harry heard a single shot above the wailing wind. Mr. Woo fell to his knees, his forehead touching the deck in a formal kow-tow.

  A torrent of fire from the bridge hosed the black figures on the ladder. They toppled from the perch. Two cartwheeled into the sea, their despairing shrieks piercing the wind’s screaming. Three crashed to the deck and lay still. The rest were an unmoving heap at the foot of the bridge-ladder.

  “The officers,” Elder Brother Lee shouted, drawing Harry into the doorway of the deckhouse, “they’ve broken loose. Those damned coolies couldn’t keep three men under control.”

  “What now?” Harry cried. “How do we get them off the bridge?”

  Elder Brother Lee did not reply. He was struggling to open the butterfly-nuts that secured the iron-door behind them. Harry threw his weight on the hasp, and the door swung open on the saloon. The officers’ last meal was smeared across the table bolted to the deck, the plates smashed on the worn green linoleum. A steward wearing a grimy white jacket raised his hands above his head.

  “The lights?” Elder Brother Lee demanded. “Where are they?”

  The steward pointed to the switch-box on the far bulkhead. The old pirate’s gnarled hand flipped the master-switch, and the Taishan was again cloaked in black.

  Elder Brother Lee edged into the gloom on his stomach. He crawled to the bulky package his men had left in the scuppers. Pushing it before him, he signaled to Harry to follow. Single shots sounded from the bridge.

  “They want to keep our heads down,” Elder Brother Lee shouted. “We’ll oblige—cheerfully.”

  The painful crab-crawl along the scuppers with the package seemed interminable, though it took no more than five minutes. Forward of the bridge, a hatch offered shelter. The old pirate ignored the body sprawled on the hatch-cover, but Harry tasted copper bile when a limp hand brushed his cheek.

  The pirate’s knife slit the canvas-wrapped package to reveal a brass jingal shimmering in the half-light. Oblivious to the shots from the bridge, Elder Brother Lee extracted an oilcloth packet from his waistband. He measured out black-powder and inserted a fuse in the touch-hole.

  “Now give me a hand,” he directed.

  Harry’s skin crawled, and his head drew into his shoulders. He steeled himself to help the old pirate manhandle the miniature cannon onto the hatch. Bullets plowed the timbers around them, but Elder Brother Lee imperturbably sighted the weapon. Finally satisfied, he extracted a wooden match from the oilcloth packet, stuck it on the jingal’s rough breech, and lit the fuse. The match’s flare drew a volley of shots.

  Thunder crashed around Harry’s head, flinging him to the deck. Red fire erupting from the muzzle blinded him. The jingal hurled stones, broken bottles, nails, scrap-iron, and six-inch bolts at the open bridge.

  “The old ways are still the best ways,” Elder Brother Lee observed contentedly. “We’ll wait a minute or two.”

  Striking a second match, he drew no fire, but lit the hand-rolled cigarette that had magically appeared between his lips. He fluttered the canvas wrapping, and the bridge remained silent. The only sounds were the wailing of the wind and the crashing of the waves.

  “Come,” he said, rising. “It’s all right.”

  Clambering over the still, black forms at the ladder’s foot, they climbed to the bridge. Elder Brother Lee contemptuously flung open the steel grill that had not protected the British officers and stepped into the wooden enclosure.

  The bridge-house was a torn shambles. The engine-telegraph was buckled, and the teak steering-wheel drooped on its iron pylon. Ripped charts were plastered on the bulwarks, the sheet depicting Haimen Bay impaled by a rusty nail. Two white-clad shapes that had been men were crumpled on the deck boards. The nearer, cut almost in half at the waist, spilled yellow intestines on the polished teak. The further body lay headless, though otherwise untouched, in a puddle of blood. Blond hair and gray brain-matter spattered the bulwarks. A third figure rested on its back as if sleeping, but a six-inch bolt protruded from its chest. Harry retched at the stench of blood and feces. The older man clapped him on the shoulder.

  “First time’s always the worst.” He grinned as the lights came on again to illuminate the horror. “But you’re blooded now—well blooded.”

  An English voice rose in loud protest over the wind’s roar. Two revolutionaries emerged from the chart-house, hustling a frightened young man between them. The trousers of his cheap tweed suit were stained yellow by urine.

  “My Lord,” he expostulated in pidgin. “What for you silly fellows do this thing? You know big gunships belong English king come makee boom-boom makee dead all you bloody fellows.”

  Deeply unimpressed, his guards pushed him forward. They were apprehensively proud, like young terriers that drag a dead rat into the parlor wondering whether they’ll be praised or berated. Harry stepped into the shadowed corner of the bridge, but the prisoner had already seen him.

  “Thank God!” The young Englishman was volubly relieved. “Harry Sekloong, by God. What the devil are you doing here? By God, it’s good to see you. Tell these fellows …”

  Harry stared unspeaking. The Englishman’s voice trailed away, and his eyes started
in renewed fear.

  “Harry! For God’s sake, Harry Sekloong! You remember me. Peakton, George Peakton of Derwent’s. They shipped me as supercargo to see the stuff safely ashore. Surely you remember me?”

  Harry drew his revolver from its holster. Unthinking, he thumbed back the hammer and leveled the weapon with both hands. Unspeaking, he shot the young Englishman through the right eye and mechanically reholstered the revolver.

  While the body was still crumpling, Harry leaned over the side of the bridge-house and vomited onto the deck below. Heaving paroxyms shook him, and sweat bathed his body in the chill night.

  Later, he dimly remembered watching the black-clad figures shift the cargo into the junks, piling up the brass-bound opium-chests until the craft sank dangerously low in the water. Long after the junks left the Taishan adrift, he finally fell into dream-tortured sleep in the dank cabin.

  The next morning he awoke to find the gale subsided and gentle waves sparkling in the sunlight. The convoy raced southward, borne by the following wind toward Bias Bay. Harry sat on the foredeck, his back braced against the mast. His teeth chattered, and shudders shook him. He saw the half-formed features of George Peakton superimposed on the white clouds that drifted like tufts of wool against the blue vault of the sky.

  The nineteen-year-old English youth had traveled far from the grimy corridors of his third-rate public school to die in the charnel-house of the old Taishan during a shrieking gale on the South China Sea. He had done no more than follow his superiors’ instructions to sail on the old paddle-steamer that carried a cargo of misery and degradation for tens of thousands of unknown Chinese. In their youth his superiors had begun to amass fortunes by landing similar shipments on the same coast. Peakton could not have known that the times had changed. No more could he have known that he had sentenced himself to death by appealing to the one man he recognized amid the slaughter. It was not his fault. It was no one’s fault that he had spoken the wrong words in the wrong place at the wrong time.