China Flyer

by Porter Hill

  ‘Do you think they’re looking for us?’ asked Jingee.

  Gilbert was firm. ‘Now you will cancel these foolish plans.’

  ‘Cancel?’ Jingee asked indignantly. ‘How are we to rescue Captain Horne?’

  Gilbert took a deep breath, baffled by such stupidity. Surely a man’s loyalty was first to himself.

  * * *

  ‘The women think we’re from a Dutch colony on Java,’ whispered Groot as he, Jud and Babcock followed three Chinese courtesans along a suspended bamboo footbridge to the harbour moorings. Groot had been made the group’s spokesman in the women’s house when it had become clear that the courtesans had learned Dutch from trading ships visiting Whampoa.

  ‘What reason did you give them for wanting them to row us out to the war junks?’ asked Jud, behind him.

  ‘I haven’t told them yet where we want to go,’ Groot whispered. ‘I just said we wanted to have a ride in their sampan.’

  ‘You better say something soon.’ Babcock looked at the three giggling women ahead of them on the narrow footbridge.

  ‘There’s no reason to worry,’ insisted Groot. ‘It’s like Cheng-So Gilbert said: flower girls keep sampans to take customers around the harbour.’

  The three women were short, one more corpulent than the others and one of the slim women considerably older than her two companions. Each carried a bamboo pole from which dangled a paper lantern, and they had also brought earthen bottles of spirits from which they kept pausing to sip, chattering and giggling among themselves as they replaced the stoppers and continued towards the moorings.

  ‘I’ve never seen women drink so much,’ Babcock complained as the courtesans took one last swig before descending a bamboo ladder to a cluster of sampans bobbing beneath the bridge.

  Groot defended them. ‘It’s the custom in China for women to drink as much as men. Especially at banquets.’

  ‘Is this their version of a banquet?’ Jud laughed.

  ‘Maybe any visitor means a feast.’

  Babcock frowned, ‘Ummm. We’ll see.’

  The women had begun to climb down the ladder, gripping one side while managing to carry their lantern poles and bottles, and to grasp the hems of their long robes.

  Jud followed; then Babcock, then Groot, stepping cautiously into the long, narrow boat as it tilted in the water.

  Leather curtains hung from the front and back of the sampan’s arched central awning. Inside there were colourful cushions and rosewood boxes scattered over the reed matting, and the air was redolent of incense. Two of the women waved to their guests to rest on the cushions while the third—the most corpulent—crawled towards the aft curtain.

  ‘That’s your girl, Groot.’ Babcock elbowed him. ‘Stick with her.’

  ‘Is she rowing?’

  ‘Go and find out.’

  ‘Should I row for her?’

  Babcock ignored Groot’s sudden nerves, becoming increasingly interested in the other two women; one courtesan patted a heap of cushions for him to sit on beside her; the third nodded animatedly to Jud.

  Jud returned the woman’s smiles and, waving Groot towards the curtain, whispered, ‘Just keep us on course.’

  Lingering half-in, half-out of the curtain, Groot asked, ‘What if she won’t go near the war junks?’

  ‘Now’s your time to learn how to handle a woman, mate,’ called Babcock as he sank down on the cushions.

  Beads of perspiration coursed through the dried clay on Groot’s brow as he left the sweet-smelling cabin.

  Inside, Jud settled down on the reed matting, groaning pleasurably as his companion knelt behind his head, rubbing his broad shoulders with her tiny yellow hands and singing a soft song.

  Closing his eyes, he admitted, ‘This is exactly what I need.’

  ‘Don’t get too comfortable,’ warned Babcock.

  ‘We’ve got time for a little relaxation.’

  Babcock was not listening; his companion had unlocked one of the small rosewood boxes, smiling as she extended it to Babcock, offering him a choice of dim-sun pastries with one hand while her other hand stroked his leg.

  Outside the cabin, the chubby woman had lit more lanterns, festooning the sampan with coloured paper shades. Seating herself on a thwart, the vessel’s single oar seemed unwieldy in her small hands, but she used it deftly, only pausing to take an occasional drink of arrack. Offering the earthen bottle to Groot, she laughed when he refused a drink, and returned to her work.

  The harbour traffic had thinned as the night-time mist spread across the water. Groot stood up periodically to make certain they were moving westwards towards the three war junks, then settled down again in front of the curtain, trying to ignore the voices of Jud and Babcock rising behind him.

  The small boat was half-way across the harbour, and Groot was peering around the curve of the awning to check the sampan’s progress, when he saw a junk approaching through the mist.

  Scrambling up, he spotted a flag emblazoned with a gold dragon flapping gently from the mast.

  Ducking through the leather curtain, he whispered, ‘Quick. A patrol boat.’

  Babcock looked up from his woman. ‘What?’

  ‘A patrol boat,’ Groot repeated more loudly, pointing nervously towards the prow.

  Behind him, the fat woman had ceased rowing and began calling through the night to the junk.

  Babcock and Jud looked quizzically at one another; their two women jumped to their feet, holding out their hands and chattering in Chinese.

  ‘What do they want?’ asked Babcock. ‘We’ve already paid them.’

  ‘More money,’ answered Jud, looking from one woman to the other.

  ‘What the hell for?’

  Behind them, the third woman stuck her head through the curtain, also holding out her hand, shrilling at Groot in pidgin Dutch.

  Groot translated. ‘They need money to pay the patrol boat.’

  ‘Pay?’ Babcock swung his feet on to the matting. ‘Pay what?’

  ‘A cumshaw. A tax to row their sampan around the harbour at night.’

  Grudgingly, Babcock dug into his breeches for the leather money pouch.

  * * *

  At the same hour, on the eastern edge of Whampoa harbour, a half-naked man stood on the verandah of a small stilted house. Having been awakened from his sleep by a strange noise, the man gripped a knife in one hand as he peered into the night’s misty darkness. Looking over the bamboo railing, he saw two strangers pushing his boat into the water. As he began shouting at them to stop, a figure emerged from the darkness beside him, raised one hand and chopped him across the back of the neck. The attacker hurriedly bound the unconscious man with leather thongs and, taking his knife and a coil of rope, shinned down a pole to the water and began swimming to catch up with the other two men in the stolen boat.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  THE WATERFOWL

  A pall of dense mist enshrouded the three Imperial war junks anchored within the harbour’s western arm. Their deck lanterns shone no brighter than yellow smudges in the night.

  Horne turned from the starboard windows of his floating prison, wondering again if Fanshaw had been correct in warning him that he would soon be moved from the junk to a land gaol.

  His earlier feeling of frustration had mellowed into a calm composure as he systematically considered the options open to him. After trying the door and inspecting the narrow windows lining both sides of the cabin, he abandoned any hope of immediate escape. Even the wooden louvres beneath the windows would be too noisy to remove from their frames. There might be an opportunity to break away from an escort if he was transferred to a prison on land, but he could not plan for that without knowing the size of his escort, or the method of transport.

  Instead, he spent his time going over the defence he would present at the court of inquiry George Fanshaw had said he would have to face. The job would be to persuade the interrogators that the East India Company had sent him to Canton to recover the China Flyer
and deliver George Fanshaw back to Fort St George. It would be his word against Fanshaw’s if the written orders had been destroyed.

  Horne’s case would be simpler if the Chinese gave his Marines a chance to testify about the reason for the mission; but were the men still here in Whampoa? If Fanshaw had not been lying about the Huma being towed back down the Pearl River, Babcock, Groot, Jingee, Jud and Kiro might have rejoined the crew before the ship returned to Macao and the opium depot on Kam-Sing-Moon.

  A sound disturbed his thoughts.

  Lying motionless on his pallet, he stared blankly at the oil lamp flickering beside his pallet as he listened to the soft warble of a bird.

  Why did the call sound so familiar? Where had he heard it before? Bombay? Years ago in England?

  The gentle cooing sounded a second time, unobtrusive yet definitely unique.

  Bird calls? What do they mean to me? What association do I have with that call and …

  The soft tremolo came a third time.

  Horne remembered.

  It was the same call Cheng-So Gilbert had imitated in his first days out of Madras—the sound of the Whampoa waterfowls that were so delicious to eat.

  Swinging his bare feet to the deck, Horne moved to the starboard windows and looked down at the courtesans’ sampans bobbing gently below him. Through the mist, he saw that one sampan had drifted closer to the junk than the others, and that a fat-faced girl was looking up at him.

  Was she a late-comer hoping to join the guards’ party on the poop-deck? Or had she purposely been left aboard the sampan by her friends? Or was it possible that …

  The waterfowl’s warble came again. Horne moved to look out of the other side of the cabin. There was a face pressed against the panes, and he came to a stop in the middle of the cabin.

  Jingee! Hanging by a … rope?

  Crossing the cabin in three strides, Horne blew out the lantern beside the bed and fell to his knees. He crawled towards the junk’s larboard windows and pressed his mouth against the low louvres, whispering, ‘What are you doing here?’

  Jingee’s voice came to him through the slats. ‘We came to rescue you, Captain sahib.’

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘We swam ashore and stole boats, Captain sahib.’

  ‘Where have the Chinese been keeping you?’

  ‘On the next junk, Captain sahib. Earlier today we saw an Englishman row out to this ship. That’s how we guessed you were here.’

  ‘That was Fanshaw.’

  ‘So we guessed, Captain sahib.’

  ‘Did you all escape?’

  ‘In two groups, Captain sahib.’

  ‘Who’s here with you?’

  ‘Kiro and the Chinaman are with me, Captain sahib. Babcock, Groot, and Jud are below in a sampan from a flower house on shore.’

  Horne remembered the fat-faced courtesan looking up at his cabin.

  ‘Are you armed?’ he asked.

  ‘Kiro and I have knives.’

  Horne explained, ‘I tried opening the windows and removing these louvres, but I can’t do it without creating a disturbance.’

  ‘I saw you have one guard outside your door, Captain sahib. Are there others?’

  ‘Yes, but they’re merrymaking with the women. My guard goes and returns. I hear his footsteps.’

  ‘Shall I ambush him, Captain sahib?’

  ‘Where’s Kiro?’

  ‘Knotting a rope to the starboard side. To escape to the sampan.’

  ‘Cheng-So Gilbert?’

  ‘Rowing our little boat round to the sampan.’

  ‘Do we know if the women are trustworthy?’

  ‘Two have drunk themselves into unconsciousness, Captain sahib. The fat one’s ready to pass out.’

  Horne weighed the preparations his men had made—boats, rope, knives. Realising that the escape must be quick and kept as simple as possible, he explained to Jingee how they should proceed.

  * * *

  Horne tapped lightly on the cabin door. He did not want to arouse the revellers on the poop-deck, but at the same time he had to attract the guard’s attention.

  Rapping louder, he paused when he heard footsteps approaching the iron-banded door. Listening more closely he could hear only distant raucous laughter, the giggling of women, the sound of a stringed instrument enlivening the midnight party.

  He knocked a third time, venturing in English. ‘Please, I must speak to you.’

  As a key sounded in the lock, he prepared an excuse for having the door opened in case Jingee had not reached the agreed spot. The metallic scratch of the key stopped abruptly and, outside the door, he heard a thud.

  There was another silence and then the key sounded again in the lock.

  Horne stood back from the door as it opened a few inches. He pushed it wider and stepping out of the cabin, spotted the guard slumped on the deck. No one else was in sight. Pulling the guard into the cabin, he shoved him on to the pallet, pulled the blanket over him and crept back to the door.

  From the protection of the shadows, he saw the revellers gathered round the glow of their lanterns and charcoal braziers on the poop-deck. Satisfied that he was temporarily unobserved, he hoisted himself on to the cabin roof and, finding the rope knotted there by Kiro, dropped over the starboard side, lowering himself hand-over-hand to the water. Then he released the rope and swam silently towards the sampan.

  The boat was sitting low in the water, and Horne pulled himself cautiously aboard, wary of the sampan capsizing under the heavy passenger load.

  As soon as Horne rolled aboard, the boat began moving. The chubby courtesan sat propped against the stern but was too inebriated to paddle. As she smiled blankly into the night, Jud and Kiro lay flat on both sides, paddling from prone positions with oars taken from the fisherman’s boat they were towing.

  Satisfied with their progress, Horne crawled to the curtained awning, the stench of alcohol assailing his nostrils as he entered. Babcock, Groot and Jingee were there, waiting anxiously between the unconscious bodies of two painted courtesans, loud snores emerging from the women’s gaping mouths.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  DOWN RIVER

  The morning light was breaking over the pine-covered hills as Horne moved down the Pearl River with his men and Cheng-So Gilbert. Two hours had passed since they had abandoned the courtesans, bound and gagged, under a willow tree and stripped their sampan of its decorative lanterns and cushions. They had continued down river, travelling in two groups to avoid attracting unnecessary attention to themselves on their way to Macao.

  Horne went with Jud, Groot and Cheng-So Gilbert in the sampan. Babcock, Kiro and Jingee kept to the reeds on the opposite bank, paddling the fisherman’s boat. Both groups wore oddments of clothing they had stolen from washing lines in fishing villages along the way.

  A ragged piece of homespun hung from Horne’s head to his shoulders as he poled the sampan through the eddying shallows, eyes alert as Groot and Gilbert sat watchful near the prow.

  River traffic had been sparse throughout the dark morning hours. Every owl’s hoot and crane’s flutter had tried the men’s nerves, but the only travellers they had seen were two sampans moving in the opposite direction. The peasants showed little interest in Horne’s men; they likewise pretended to be undisturbed by them. The journey continued southwards, slow and monotonous, the two groups periodically emerging from the reeds, waving a brown rag to signal they were maintaining their progress.

  After sunrise, when Groot was due to take over the pole, Horne heard a noise behind him. Glancing over his shoulder he saw a mast above the distant rushes.

  Whistling, he waved Groot to his knees.

  Groot spotted the tall mast rounding the bend, but Cheng-So Gilbert had not yet seen it.

  When he eventually caught sight of the approaching vessel, he gasped, ‘The Imperial flag.’

  Horne had already identified the official Manchu dragon; he beckoned Gilbert to him, ordering, ‘Take the pole instea
d of Groot.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Gilbert.

  Horne waved for Groot, answering, ‘Inside.’

  The vessel was rapidly gaining distance on the far side of the river. Horne observed their progress through the leather curtain, guessing, ‘They could be looking for us.’

  ‘Do you think Babcock’s seen it?’ asked Groot beside him.

  Horne was concerned about the same thing. It was time for the other men to signal from the reeds and, if they had not spotted the patrol boat, they would emerge directly in front of it.

  ‘Gilbert, call to them,’ ordered Horne through the curtain.

  ‘To Mr Babcock?’

  ‘To the patrol.’

  ‘Call what?’

  ‘Anything. But shout loud enough to alert the others that somebody’s nearby. Quick.’

  ‘What if they come and search us?’ asked Gilbert.

  ‘We have to risk that,’ Horne said. ‘Remember you’re a fisherman. Don’t sound too educated.’

  Horne, Groot and Jud lay motionless inside the curved cabin, careful not to rock the sampan as Cheng-So Gilbert poled his way out through the reeds.

  ‘He’s going to give us away,’ whispered Groot.

  ‘Let’s just hope he doesn’t capsize the boat.’

  ‘Or get caught in the river’s main current,’ added Jud.

  ‘Or drop the pole.’

  Outside the cabin, Gilbert had begun calling to the patrol, his voice quavering with nerves.

  ‘Louder,’ Horne urged through the curtain.

  Groot whispered, ‘What do you think he’s saying.’

  They fell silent as a reply came back across the river. They exchanged glances, listening, expecting the patrol to cross the swift-moving current …

  But nothing.

  ‘You can come out now,’ whispered Gilbert.

  Horne peered through the leather curtain. The patrol was moving down river. Across the wide body of water, a brown cloth waved from the reeds—all was clear.

  ‘What did you say to get rid of them so quickly, Mr Gilbert?’ Horne asked, crawling from the cabin.