The First to Land (1984)

by Reeman, Douglas

  He heard Swan whispering at the door of his room and prayed that there was no further ceremonial for the day. After the relaxed atmosphere of Singapore this place was like an overcrowded beehive. Daily, men and guns moved along Queen’s Road while the anchorage became full of vessels of every shape and class.

  Swan returned, his round face disapproving.

  ‘The major sends his compliments, sir, an’ would you go over an’ see him.’

  Blackwood stood up while his faithful attendant went into the adjoining room to lay out a fresh uniform and shirt. Orders at last? He did not dare to hope. Anything was better than sweating it out here in Hong Kong. It had almost doubled in size since his first visit as a youthful lieutenant. New docks, larger barracks, a cricket field, he barely recognized the place. Likewise the harbour was flanked by bigger buildings. Prosperous merchants, ware-houses and offices as the Empire’s trade flowed further and further eastwards.

  Twenty minutes later he was ushered into his commanding officer’s little house which stood beside the barracks and yet was so much apart from it.

  Major James Blair was standing by a wide window watching the harbour as Blackwood was shown into the room by a Chinese servant. He turned and nodded. ‘Ah, David. Have a drink.’ He did not wait for a reply. ‘Parade went off extremely well, I thought, what?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Blackwood liked the major although he did not really understand him. Blair was described as an old China hand. One who loved the place and dreaded the thought of being sent home. It was said that he had a beautiful Chinese mistress. Today he looked worried, and it was unusual for him to suggest a drink before noon.

  Blair gestured to his servant and waited for the door to close. Then he said abruptly, ‘No easy way, David.’ He watched him steadily. ‘Just heard and thought you’d take it better from me than some idiot from the base.’

  David Blackwood felt his fingers crushing the glass almost to breaking point. ‘It’s my brother Neil, isn’t it, sir?’

  Blair nodded. ‘Killed in action. In some bloody place I’ve never heard of. A sniper.’

  Blackwood let out his breath very slowly. In his heart he had known about it all the time. He had been closer to Neil than anyone. A lively friendly person. Without an enemy in the world. It would destroy their mother. The General would go and stand by the painting in his room. Pay homage to the family’s dead.

  He heard himself murmur, ‘I’m glad you told me. I’d like to ask for a transfer immediately.’ His fingers relaxed slightly and he placed the empty glass on a table. It was all he could think of. All he wanted. Revenge against those murderous, savage Boers.

  Blair eyed him sadly. ‘Impossible. You’re appointed to Peking as soon as the arrangements are finalized.’

  ‘China?’ He stared at him. ‘But what use will I be there, sir? Wiping carriage seats for the ladies of our legation and mounting guard for foreign ambassadors, is that all I’m worth?’

  Blair poured another glass of whisky and waited for the captain to recover his composure.

  Blackwood said, ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ He looked up searchingly. ‘You’ve had a few hard knocks in your time. We’re all proud of you. I’d not want you to think you’re being wasted or pushed into an unimportant backwater. I know there has been little trouble with the mandarins since the Arrow War in fifty-eight, but there have been many changes since then. European governments are pushing hard for more concessions, getting greedy in some people’s eyes, but as they say, China is a sleeping tiger. You can step on her tail once too often. If there is real trouble there must be some professional, experienced officers ready and available. Not here or in England, but on the spot.’ He tried to smile but it would not come. ‘You in fact.’

  As if from a thousand miles away Blackwood heard the steady tramp of marching feet as the marines drilled in the unbroken sunlight. He could see them in his mind, still wearing their ceremonial scarlet tunics and their newly designed helmets. Just like his own men in the Niger expedition. Ready targets for any hidden marksmen. Only their blood had been concealed.

  He thought of Neil’s letter, his anger at the way they were being sacrificed by minds totally outdated in a new kind of war.

  And there was his youngest brother. He felt his eyes prick with sudden emotion. Jonathan was his only brother now. How much worse it might seem to him at the very beginning of his career with the Corps.

  He asked dully, ‘How many men, sir?’

  ‘Ninety. I could give you more but the other legations would kick up a fuss. Even ninety may be too many.’

  Blair added, ‘Go to your quarters, David. You are relieved until I hear something final. You never know . . .’ He did not finish.

  Outside the house Blackwood paused to recover himself. An hour ago he had been cursing his luck. The news about Neil made his own troubles seem infantile.

  He thought of the girl Neil had brought home to Hawks Hill. Like him, laughing and happy. He had wanted to marry her and the General had said, ‘When you’ve been made up to captain, m’boy.’ But even he had sounded pleased.

  Who would tell her? he wondered.

  ‘Sir!’

  He looked round and saw the tall, ramrod figure of Fox, the sergeant major, striding after him. With so many new recruits in the Corps veterans like Fox were worth more than their weight in gold. How could he put his mind to duty? What was it this time? Someone for promotion, a defaulter, orders for tomorrow? It all seemed trivial.

  ‘What is it, Sergeant Major?’

  Fox slammed to a halt and saluted. Nothing wasted, not a crease in his tunic to mark that he had been on the square for several hours during the gloomy ceremonial.

  ‘Just wanted to say I’m sorry, sir.’ He watched him calmly from beneath his helmet. ‘Mr Neil, sir.’

  Blackwood stared at him. Of course, Neil had served with the tall sergeant major. Second lieutenant and sergeant then. And Fox already knew. It was like that in the Corps. In the family as they called it.

  He said, ‘Thank you.’ He could not continue.

  Fox fell in step beside him, his gloved fingers gripping his stick beneath one arm.

  With unusual vehemence Fox said, ‘I ’ates them bastards. We puts on a uniform. They shoots our lads in the back and then pleads fer mercy when they’re caught.’ His fist tightened on the stick’s silver knob. ‘Mercy? I’d give the poxy varmints mercy all right!’

  They stood outside the officers’ quarters not looking at each other.

  Fox said, ‘The old trooper Aurora is reported enterin’ ’arbour, sir. I’d best get down there with a couple of sergeants and sort out the new arrivals.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  Fox tightened his lips into a thin line. ‘No, sir. I’ll take young Mr Gravatt. Time ’e learned a thing or two.’ He almost smiled. ‘With respect, we’ll be needin’ you later on, sir.’ His hand shot up to an immaculate salute and he marched away before Blackwood could protest.

  Swan held the door open for him and he saw a glass and decanter already on the table.

  Swan could not look at him either.

  Blackwood sat down heavily. ‘You’ve heard?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ His hand shook as he poured a full measure of Scotch. ‘Anything I can do, sir?’

  ‘No!’

  Swan paused at the door and saw the captain unfolding a letter. The one he had received from his brother in South Africa.

  Blackwood did not hear the door shut but stared at the letter as a solitary tear splashed across his dead brother’s writing. He swallowed the neat whisky and closed his eyes very tightly. What would those two nuns say if they could see him now?

  ‘How was the family when you left England?’

  David Blackwood offered his cousin a chair and watched him curiously. Ralf’s arrival in Hong Kong had been a complete surprise, but his manner and attitude were even more astonishing.

  He had not seen the youthful second lieutenant for a long
time, since he had been a mere boy, but he had expected he would follow in the family mould, like the faces in the portraits at Hawks Hill.

  He had grown a thin moustache on the passage from Portsmouth but it had made him look even younger and somehow vulnerable.

  Ralf replied, ‘I think they were all right, er, sir.’ He was looking at him warily as if he expected a confrontation like the one he had had with his uncle.

  Blackwood heard the other officers of his new detachment gathering in the mess nearby and decided that after this meeting he would treat the second lieutenant no differently from the rest. He wondered why his father had arranged Ralf’s transfer. There must be a reason. He would soon discover what it was once they had worked properly together as a team.

  But too many meetings like this would be seen as favouritism. Something he hated and which could disrupt any small unit.

  Since the Aurora’s arrival in the harbour there had been many more signals and rumours about growing danger for the ‘Foreign Devils’ in Peking and around the various European and Japanese concessions along the coast. Major Blair had been correct. There would be trouble of vast proportions unless prompt action was taken.

  For two weeks the new company had been drilling, marching and exercising together in the hills above Hong Kong, or from boats around Aberdeen harbour. It had already worked wonders, but there were too many new recruits amongst them to be certain of anything so soon.

  Ralf Blackwood did not seem interested in anything. Of Neil’s terrible death he had muttered only a few words and then launched into his own list of complaints and requests for a transfer to one of the larger men-of-war in the harbour.

  Major Blair had not even considered it. He had snapped, ‘You make something of him, David. He might learn a bit about soldiering if he can set his mind to it.’

  He tried again. ‘How are you settling in, Ralf?’

  The moustache turned down slightly. ‘I don’t think they like me.’

  ‘Why not?’ He was wrong even to ask. There was something not quite honest about this young man. Like a sulky child.

  He shrugged. ‘It’s not my fault.’ He looked up defiantly. ‘I – I think it’s because of the family. The name of Blackwood. They’re jealous, I expect.’

  Blackwood sat down and felt strangely satisfied that he had been right. Disappointed too for all their sakes.

  ‘I don’t want to hear that sort of trouble-making rubbish again, do you understand?’

  He saw the sudden alarm in Ralf’s eyes. And anger. That he had played his hand badly and too soon.

  Blackwood tried again. He had always been sorry for the boy, and now that he was grown-up and an officer under his command he could appreciate what he must have suffered down the years.

  ‘I never knew your father, Ralf. But he was a fine man, one to be proud of. Keep that memory alive.’ He saw that he was making no impression. Ralf’s eyes had the knack of becoming motionless and opaque. Like coloured glass. He said wearily, ‘Dismiss. I’ll see you when I speak to the others.’

  Ralf marched from the room and shut the door as loudly as he dared.

  Blackwood smiled gravely. He would have to watch that one very closely.

  Later in the small private mess allotted to his newly formed company Blackwood ran his eyes over their expectant faces. The usual mixture, he thought. Excitement, anxiety, acceptance, it was all there. He could feel Ralf’s eyes fixed on him as he ran briefly through his orders.

  They would embark aboard the cruiser Mediator tomorrow and steam the thousand miles north-east along the coast of the mainland to Taku at the mouth of the Peiho river. There they would anchor and await instructions which would depend on the state of the emergency.

  While he was speaking he was looking at his officers, the ones who would have to interpret them, to lead if he and others fell. The three lieutenants Gravatt, Bannatyre and de Courcy, the last from a very old marines family. Two second lieutenants, Ralf and a childlike youth named Earle. The three lieutenants had seen some action but on a very punitive and limited scale.

  Blackwood continued, ‘We shall be under the command of Captain Masterman of the Mediator. But if we are required to move inland to Peking we shall be taking orders from the military at the embassy.’

  He saw a few grimaces. The Royal Marines tolerated being given orders by a ship’s captain. There were plenty of second thoughts about the army.

  Lieutenant Gravatt asked politely, ‘How do we get to Peking, sir?’

  It was a good question, Blackwood thought.

  ‘Upriver as far as possible, then overland by train.’ He had a stark picture of the armoured trains in South Africa. Neil had described them in his letter. He had probably been shot while he and his men were moving across country.

  Gravatt, who was his second-in-command and acting adjutant, grinned. ‘I shall sit with my back to the engine.’

  They laughed. All except Ralf who barely seemed to blink.

  ‘Just remember this.’ His grave tone stilled the laughter like a closed door. ‘We shall have to adapt to a new sort of warfare. Sentries and pickets in full marching order are perfect targets. Scarlet tunics have cost too many lives already. At sea we stand-to with the sailors. Ashore we will fight like the enemy. But on our terms.’

  It was a beginning.

  The Mediator was a second-class light cruiser of some three thousand tons. As the marines had climbed aboard with their piles of equipment and weapons Blackwood had found time to admire her sleek and graceful lines. She was less than a year old and a far cry from the old ironclads which had once been the backbone of the fleet.

  Now as he lay in his comfortable bunk Blackwood wondered what had awakened him. He had been dreaming about Neil, and had seen him walking away, glancing back at him, his face incredibly sad.

  Blackwood groaned and rolled over to find the bunk light. It was still pitch dark, not even dawn.

  As he gripped the side of the bunk he felt the Mediator shivering under his touch, and as his mind pushed all thoughts of sleep aside he heard the swish and plunge of the light cruiser’s hull as she increased speed.

  They had been at sea for four days, but never exceeded ten knots. Captain Masterman believed in conserving his stocks of coal, just in case of some last-minute emergency.

  Blackwood lowered himself to the deck and felt the tremble pulsing through the steel plates. She was doing a lot more than ten knots now.

  As if to settle his uncertainty the whistle of a voice-pipe shrilled above the bunk.

  Blackwood snapped on the light and blinked at the bulkhead clock. It was only four in the morning.

  ‘Captain Blackwood.’ He held the tube to his ear.

  ‘Bridge, sir.’ The sailor had a strong Cockney accent, like the sergeant major. ‘Cap’n Masterman’s compliments an’ could you join ’im.’

  ‘What’s happening?’ But the voice-pipe was dead again.

  Blackwood scrambled into his uniform and smiled to himself. He could not expect to hear any gossip with Masterman on the bridge.

  The cruiser’s captain was tall and straight, as if every ounce of unwanted fat and weight had been honed away. A large beaked nose, dominated by deceptively mild blue eyes and two sweeping sideburns iron grey against his sunburned cheeks.

  Blackwood had spoken to him only twice since he had come aboard. Not a man to waste words. Like his coal. But someone who would be like a rock in any kind of emergency.

  He climbed quickly to the upper bridge and soon saw Masterman’s tall outline framed against the white screen. The bridge was full of people. Most of the ship’s officers, the yeoman of signals, lookouts, everyone.

  Masterman glanced at him. ‘Mornin’, Soldier. Sorry to get you up.’

  ‘There, sir! Port bow!’

  The lookout pointed above the screen with one arm.

  Blackwood saw it. A rocket or flare, drifting lazily in the far distance. Without any clouds to reflect the light it looked puny, unreal.

>   Masterman breathed out very softly. To Blackwood he remarked, ‘Second one. Beginnin’ to think the lookouts had imagined it all.’ He chuckled and some of the officers near him visibly relaxed.

  ‘Course to steer?’

  The navigating officer was ready. He needed to be.

  ‘North fifteen west, sir.’

  ‘Alter course.’

  Blackwood listened to the orders being passed down to the quartermaster, the slight heel of the deck as the ship changed course very slightly.

  Masterman said offhandedly, ‘Shanghai is about eighty miles nor’-west of our present position. That ship is somewhere in between.’

  He made up his mind. ‘Full ahead together. Close up action stations.’ He swivelled round as one of Mediator’s own Royal Marines stamped smartly to the rear of the bridge, moistening the mouth-piece of his bugle with his tongue.

  ‘Not that, dammit!’ He glared at the commander. ‘I don’t want the whole bloody world to hear us!’

  The boatswains’ mates scampered from the bridge and moments later seamen and marines poured up from below decks and ran to their stations while others manned the barbettes on either side.

  Masterman said, ‘She’ll likely be the Delhi Star. Passengers and mail. She sailed two days before us.’

  He did not attempt to hide the pride he had in his ship. Blackwood could picture her smashing through the water as she worked up to her impressive maximum of twenty knots. White hull and two buff funnels, she would look like a spectre in the pitch darkness. Light she might be but she carried six-inch guns as well as smaller weapons and could if required speak with authority.

  Blackwood hesitated. Masterman did that to you. You felt obliged to honour his silence.

  He asked, ‘Shipwreck, sir?’

  The captain shook his head. ‘Unlikely. I know her master. A wily old chap.’

  A voice called, ‘Ship at action stations, sir!’