We Saw The Sea

by John Winton

  It was a very good map, The Bodger was forced to concede. It was complete with contours, streets, even soundings in the harbour; every street was named and every mooring buoy marked. It was indeed a superlative map but The Bodger was careful not to show approval; a little praise went a long way with Master Waffard.

  “Looks like an elephant’s turd. What’s this next one that looks like a dissected sheep’s heart?”

  “It’s an isometric drawing of a boiler feed regulator, sir. You remember we did our engineering time last month, sir.”

  “Of course I remember.”

  Actually, the fact had escaped The Bodger’s mind completely. The Bodger wished he could remember what “isometric” meant. He studied the drawing. Again, it was well done; The Bodger had no doubt that Ginger would say that it was as good as any of the ship’s drawings. The Bodger turned to the text.

  “Writing could be improved a bit.” Waffard’s writing, The Bodger reflected, was probably the most legible in the ship; it was almost mechanically legible.

  “Too many adjectives.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “It’s not too bad, though. Still a long way to go before it’s any good. Try and remember you’re writing a journal, not an Admiralty Fleet Order.”

  “Yes, sir. Sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “Could you tell me anything about Dhon Phon Huang, where we’re going next week, sir? I can’t find anything about it anywhere, sir.”

  “Ask the Navigating Officer. That’s his part of ship.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  After Soapy Waffard had gone (probably, The Bodger suspected, to read up his Seamanship Manual), it occurred to The Bodger that he himself knew nothing of Dhon Phon Fluang either. The Bodger brushed the dust off the wardroom encyclopedias and in the volume entitled “Deodorant--Frier,” between Dholgore and Dhrualagiri, he found Dhon Phon Huang.

  “Dhon Phon Huang,” The Bodger read, “a native principality on the lower southern edge of the Indochinese Peninsula. Pop: 250,367 (1826). Exports: opium, hashish, slaves. A backward and barbaric port on the delta of the Houdun River believed to have been first founded by stragglers from the armies of Genghis Khan. Governed since the earliest times by a hereditary chieftain known as The Huang, who is hostile to foreigners. Huang the Terrible (1818-1895), who begat 453 bastards, one for each day of the Dhonese Year, was responsible for the massacre of forty missionaries in 1863. The missionaries were cooked and eaten in the palace amidst scenes of extravagant excitement.”

  “Name of a name,” said The Bodger admiringly. “This Huang must be quite a player! “ He went to ask the Navigating Officer for more information.

  The Navigating Officer was in the chart-house, poring over a chart and looking disgruntled.

  “Bodger, you’re about the fourteenth person who’s asked me about that damned place this morning. I tell you I don’t know yet. I’ve got to read it up. All the Far East Pilot says is ‘Not recommended for ships above 5,000 tons. The Dhonese are expert smugglers and armed guards should be posted day and night’. I’ve only just got the chart of the place from Droggy.”

  “Let’s see. Is this what Captain Cook saw from the horizon in 17-something or other?”

  “Oh no, it’s the latest. Not that it’s much help. The place hasn’t been surveyed.”

  The Bodger was impressed. “That’s pretty efficient of Droggy,” he said. (The Bodger had often noticed that, when a ship was isolated at the end of the earth and all normal mail had come to a stop, bills still arrived from Gieves Ltd and charts from the Hydrographer of the Navy.)

  “What exactly is this shindig we’re going to?”

  “It’s the Dhonese New Year. It’s like our New Year’s Eve, the Fourth of July and Mardi Gras all rolled into one. It lasts a week. Apparently the Communists have got their eye on Huang and his merry men and someone in Honkers thought it would be a good idea for the R.N. to be represented there. Nobody’s ever been there before. Just look at this passage up to the city. There’s a bloody great kink half-way up, like Bechers Brook. . . .”

  “The Canal Turn, you mean.”

  “The Canal Turn then. There doesn’t seem to be a leading mark or a buoy the whole way and the greatest depth of water, marked that is, is six fathoms. It may be much shallower for all we know. I only hope to Christ there’s a pilot.”

  There was certainly a Pilot. He was rowed from shore by forty oarsmen in a ceremonial silver barge. The barge was sixty feet in length and was a magnificent craft. The rubbing strakes were of burnished silver and jewels shone in the canopy over the Pilot’s head. The oarsmen dipped their oars to the time of a silver horn, blown by a man standing in the sternsheets. Above all flew the Pilot’s flag of rich red cloth and silver thread.

  “Here’s your pilot,” the Captain said to the Navigating Officer. “Looks like something out of ‘Anna and the King of Siam’.”

  The Dhonese Pilot was the most bizarre figure ever seen on Carousel’s bridge. His face was the shade of sun-soaked teak and was carved in planes of strength. He stood only about five foot in height but he had tremendous thighs and shoulders. His cap was flat and red, like a cardinal’s, with silver designs worked on it. He wore a short red sarong and a red cape which hung open to reveal his mighty brown chest. His feet were bare but his mouth was determined and his eye commanding. The Captain recognized an equal.

  The Pilot was accompanied by three other men, one very short and the other two very tall, with shaved heads and long polished swords.

  The Pilot bowed. The Captain and the Navigating Officer bowed. The very short man bowed and, pointing to himself, said: “Interpreter”.

  The Captain pointed at the two men with swords.

  “Who are they?”

  “Huang executioner.” The Interpreter made an expressive downwards sweep of his arm. “Slow sailor--zut! “

  The Captain thought about the swords. He was sure he had read something somewhere about the implications of naked weapons on the bridge of H.M. Ships and Vessels.

  “Well, I suppose we’d better get on with it,” he said. He nodded. The Dhonese Pilot mounted the bridge parapet and stood with his legs apart and his arms folded. The Navigating Officer took up his position by the voice pipe and the two executioners placed themselves behind him. The Captain grinned.

  “Watch it, Pilot,” he said. “Slow sailor--zut! “

  The Navigating: Officer allowed a thin smile to cross his face.

  “Half ahead together, one hundred revolutions.”

  Carousel began to move ahead. Suddenly, the Dhonese Pilot shot out his right arm. The Navigating Officer hesitated. The executioners shifted their grips on their swords.

  “Come to starboard, Pilot,” the Captain said quietly.

  “Starboard fifteen.”

  The ship’s head swung. The Dhonese Pilot pointed ahead.

  “Midships.”

  After several alterations, one of them through ninety degrees, the Navigating Officer realized that the Dhonese Pilot’s hand signals were not directional but were intended as helm orders. The Navigating Officer was forced to admit to himself that this exotic-looking pilot had a very accurate grasp of a cruiser’s handling qualities in confined waters. Again and again, the arm gestured at the exact moment when the Navigating Officer himself would have ordered a helm movement. Between them, the Navigating Officer and the Dhonese Pilot navigated very successfully. The executioners relaxed their grips.

  At the mouth of the estuary the shoreline had been low-lying swamp and mudbanks but farther inland the ground began to rise and the banks closed in. A range of hills lay ahead and Carousel was steering directly towards them. The Dhonese Pilot shifted his stance. His hand signals were smaller and more frequent.

  Presently Carousel passed into a narrow gorge cut into a hillside. The fairway was not more than a cable across and the bottom was shallow. The Navigating Officer wondered how so small an outlet could convey the water volume of a river, which by the
size of its estuary, must be at least the size of the Thames; then he realized that they must have chosen only one of the many faults in the hill formation, almost certainly the most navigable. The Navigating Officer began to have more confidence in their outlandish Pilot.

  The Navigating Officer looked up and saw that Carousel was apparently steering into a solid hillside of rock. It must be the Canal Turn.

  “Very bad place,” explained the Interpreter.

  The Navigating Officer privately agreed. The hillside loomed closer so that the men on Carousel’s bridge could see the individual boulders in its face and the bushes near its summit. The Dhonese Pilot seemed unconcerned, although Carousel with her complement of eight hundred souls was steaming at six knots towards sudden and final ruin. At the last moment, before Carousel must have dashed herself on the rocks, a clear channel appeared to port. Still the Dhonese Pilot made no movement. The Navigating Officer looked questioningly at the Captain but the Captain shook his head and nodded at the Dhonese Pilot. The Navigating Officer tightened his lips; this, he said to himself, will separate the men from the boys.

  At last, the Dhonese Pilot extended his left hand and Carousel wheeled swiftly into the channel. The Dhonese Pilot took off port wheel before a layman would have expected him to and ordered starboard wheel. Carousel slid on a straight course with ten of starboard wheel on. A new respect came into the Navigating Officer’s eyes.

  “Clever chaps, these Chinese,” he muttered. “This bastard’s even heard of canal effect.”

  The Navigating Officer caught the Dhonese Pilot’s eye and was astounded to see him grinning. The truth flashed on the Navigating Officer. In the Dhonese Pilot’s eyes it was he, the Navigating Officer, who was the beginner, not to be trusted in pilotage waters! The Navigating Officer’s temper rose. This man comes on board, looking like something escaped from the Chelsea Arts Ball, with his Chu Chin Chow henchmen, and then gives him, the Navigating Officer, a graduate of H.M.S. Dryad, and a professional seaman whom the Admiralty had passed as competent to handle their biggest ships, an object lesson in ship handling. The Navigating Officer now understood the meticulous hand signals and the exaggerated movements to indicate changes of speed. It occurred to the Navigating Officer that he might have been in real danger from the executioners.

  Meanwhile, the Captain could not prevent himself feeling a strong rush of relief. He had summed up the Dhonese Pilot and, ignoring the ancient rule of “Pilot’s advice but Captain’s orders” he had decided that the Dhonese Pilot was the best man to guide the ship. But, when the Captain remembered that hairpin bend, he was heartily glad that fortune favoured the brave.

  “Worse than Shimoneseki,” he said to the Navigating Officer.

  “Much worse, sir.” The Navigating Officer could feel the sweat cooling on his brow.

  The channel widened into a land-locked bay. The city of Dhon Phon Huang lay at the northern end. Carousel dropped her anchor and her ship’s company looked out upon a sight which had not changed since the time of Marco Polo.

  The Captain studied the shoreline with more than usual attention. There were few landfalls the Captain had not made, few coastlines he had not seen from seaward, and few seaports he had not visited. But Dhon Phon Huang was a new one. The Captain was probably the first man-of-war captain to have penetrated so far up the channel for several hundred years.

  The city was uncompromisingly oriental. There were no signs of Western influence, no oil company and soft drink hoardings, no modern buildings, no cars. The city was untouched by hand, a vintage piece. Its skyline was of temples and trees and towers. The silver barges with high prows by the quay might have carried Sinbad himself to catch the magic fish which became beautiful maidens at the cast of his net. The golden temple dome behind the trees might have been the Roc’s egg and those wharves might be the wharves of old Cathay where silk and sandalwood were unloaded by merchants who travelled as far as Samarkand. The Captain thought that Carousel’s sailors would cause a sensation ashore.

  Before the Captain had made any official calls, before even the mail had come aboard, The Bodger received an invitation. Hand-written on excellent writing paper, it smelled faintly of lavender and made The Bodger beetle his eyebrows in disbelief.

  Dear Robert,

  You won’t remember me so there is no need for you to rack your brains. But I know you because I was at your christening. I was bridesmaid at your grandmother’s wedding and Julia’s grandmother was my greatest friend when we were girls.

  I shall expect you to take tea with me this afternoon at my house. My First Elephant will be waiting at Huang Steps at a quarter to four. Come in uniform. I cannot abide your dreadful naval dog-robbers.

  Yours sincerely, Emily Several-Strickland.

  “Several-Strickland! First Elephant! Dog-robbers! “

  The Bodger’s first thought was of a hoax. He suspected the Commander. But when he read the note a second time he was convinced it was genuine; it was too fantastic not to be. Also, the name Several-Strickland had at last stirred a dim memory; The Bodger could remember as a schoolboy going to tea with a mad red-haired family who lived in a huge house twenty miles away. The boys of the family had dared The Bodger to ride a pony bareback and the eldest girl had blacked The Bodger’s eye.

  There were no motor cars in Dhon Phon Huang. The townspeople walked, more important citizens had donkeys, and the most important had elephants which reflected their owners’ taste and finances as accurately as motor cars. The British Consul’s elephant, for example, was a splendid animal. It was silver grey in colour and from its silver-tipped tusks to its blue-tasselled tail it had Rolls-Royce written all over it. Emily Several-Strickland’s First Elephant, too, was a majestic beast. It was kneeling on the jetty, its eyes fixed on The Bodger with a look of malevolent appraisal. The Bodger’s transport caused some facetious and ribald comment from the other officers in the boat.

  “Please pass, running in,” said the Padre.

  “Bet she won’t do more than twenty in third,” said Eric the D.L.O., who had once participated in the Monte Carlo Rally and still dined out on the story.

  “Make sure you face the right way, Bodger,” shouted Ginger. “This is one of the reversible ones with old-fashioned reciprocating legs.”

  As The Bodger approached, the mahout, who was dressed in clean white linen shirt and trousers, let down a small set of steps. The Bodger mounted into the howdah, which was also stamped with its owner’s personality. The cushions were covered in embroidered silk and the windows were lace-curtained. Sachets of lavender hung in the corners and in a rack was a month-old copy of The Tatler. A metal horn, like a goad, lay in a rest and The Bodger picked it up curiously, so uncovering a notice which read: “Don’t fiddle”.

  The Bodger enjoyed the ride. The elephant’s back put him high above the hurly-burly of the streets. The Bodger looked down on a scene which might have come out of a travel film. There were old women holding chickens, stalls full of pink, fly-covered slices of meat, swarthy faces which burst into huge smiles at the sight of The Bodger, in uniform, swaying on top of the elephant. The Bodger looked across the roofs to the hills at the end of the city. The houses ended abruptly and the elephant rolled along a garden path. The garden had been laid out by an expert. Tropical flowers, flame red and brilliant yellow, grew in banks and slopes and clusters of colour. Here and there, The Bodger recognized familiar faces.

  “Goddamn,” he said, “hollyhocks!”

  The First Elephant stopped, and knelt, in front of a low white house with a veranda. The Bodger had no time to examine it. An imperious voice called from inside.

  “Come in, Robert. One more minute and the tea will be spoiled.”

  The Bodger hurriedly handed his cap to a butler who stood at the door and entered a long room which showed its owner’s years of service as a missionary. The furniture was a hotchpotch of bamboo, mahogany and tubular steel. On one wall hung, in succession, a worked sampler commemorating Victoria’s Diamond J
ubilee, an aquatint of Salisbury Cathedral, an oil portrait of a Malayan pirate, and a rose crayon drawing of a sleeping mongoose. At the far end of the room, bolt upright in a hard straight-backed chair, sat Miss Emily Several-Strickland.

  She was plainly one of those fabulous, and formidable, English females who did not allow the peculiar habits of foreigners to alter their own way of life in the least particle. They grew snapdragons in the jungle, took afternoon tea with scones and thin sandwiches in the middle of revolutions, and conducted Sunday school classes, with verve and enthusiasm, on mountain tops. They considered divorce worse than murder, read The Times faithfully and minutely, pampered their dogs and dispatched their menfolk dispassionately, almost implacably, to endure incredible privations in every remote corner of the globe. Emily Several-Strickland had her family’s red hair. Her nose was angular and thin. Her skin was like powdered parchment and her eyes were searching, as though she was wondering whether The Bodger had washed his neck before coming to tea. Her greeting was typical.

  “Come and sit down, Robert. Let me see your hands.”

  The Bodger bashfully held out his hands; he was glad that the Commander could not see him.

  “A very fine pair of hands. You’re obviously a very capable man. You’re better-looking than your grandfather. He didn’t drink. You obviously do. I like a man who drinks. If my father had not been a teetotaller he would have lived another forty years. Old Huang would never have dreamed of eating a fellow-alcoholic.”

  Miss Several-Strickland poured two cups of tea while The Bodger wrestled with his voice.

  “Really, ma’am?”

  “The present Huang’s grandfather ate my father, you know.”

  The Bodger’s cup rattled involuntarily in the saucer.

  “Oh yes,” said Miss Several-Strickland. “With mango sauce. My father was considered quite a delicacy. But I get on very well with young Huang. Probably because we have that bond in common. Huang gave me Manweb, my butler.”

  “That’s a very odd name, ma’am,” said The Bodger, desperately seizing on the one intelligible part of this lunatic conversation.