“Long guns only! On the nearest junk, point your guns.” Captain Marker had the wheel himself and hauled down until the broadside was laying as he wanted. “Shoot!”
We were barely sixty yards distant when we fired. Not surprisingly, all four of the roundshot hit the side of the junk, penetrating in a cloud of splinters.
“Reload grape. Cannonades, at the waist, shoot!”
The three junks were laying to anchor almost side by side, just a few yards apart. The wind and the current, which was running strong out to sea, made it impossible to cross the bows of the three, or so it seemed to me, with my limited seamanship. We crashed alongside the nearest before she could recover from our fire and I led the boarders across her, yelling loudly as seems obligatory in a fight.
Thinking on it, I have never been in a silent scrap – and I have seen more than my fair share of battles, large and small, over the years. I wonder why men must shout when they are excited – never have found an answer to that.
I put my virgin sword to practical use for the first time, running into a Chinaman with a great big curved scimitar sort of thing and sticking him through the middle as he swung his blade over his head to slice me in twain in mediaeval fashion. I recovered and managed to spike another pair before the business was over. It looked as if the cannonades had caught the Chinese in the process of forming up and had done a lot of the work for us.
Jamadar Rao had led a party onto the raised forecastle and had cut the anchor cable there so that the junk swung free and was pushed by the impetus of Jenny Dawes onto the second in line.
We were about to crash together when I collected myself and remembered I was in command.
“Pistols!”
I screeched the order at the top of my voice and the men listened and obeyed, to my surprise. They stopped and hauled out the big flintlocks and pointed and fired at a range of no more than five yards from the men lining the junk’s bulwarks. Some of them fired back with muskets and whatever and I saw a few of ours drop. Six repeated volleys from the heavy pistols did their work and broke the back of their resistance before we got into them with the cutlasses and boarding axes.
Two minutes and we had two of the junks and could see boatloads of men coming from the shore and aboard the third.
Captain Marker was shouting.
“Stay at anchor, the junks!”
I saw that the seamen aboard our ship were booming her off from the pair of junks and were setting some of the fore and aft sails – which ones I know not – to pull her clear. Two minutes and Captain Marker dropped the bower anchor at the stern and allowed the current to take Jenny Dawes’ head and turn her broadside on to the third junk.
The swivels fired – I expect they had previously, but I had not noticed them – and then the broadside guns, the six pounders double-shotted, grape over ball. It was not possible to double shot a cannonade, I was told later. Two broadsides in three minutes and Captain Marker shouted us to up anchor and drift onto the battered third junk. Her crew, those who survived, were making a fine show of firing their muskets at us but, luckily, fewer than half had firearms. We all of us had two pistols reloaded by then and fired them as we came home aboard her. No more than fifty of us leapt over her sides – we had taken losses to her musketry and in the fighting on the previous two.
It was messy – grapeshot spread body parts over the decks in a most unpleasant fashion.
I was at the front, roaring away and getting sore-throated and attracting an amount of attention. A gentleman in a blue trousers and tunic sort of suit decided I was worth his personal attention and ran at me, longsword in one hand, short in the other. He stood formally for a second or two, swords crossed high in front of him and gave a sort of bow, as if to challenge me to honourable combat. Fred leaned forward from behind me and shot him twice in the belly with his pair of heavy pistols, the dragons we had taken off the coast of Africa. I did not know he had kept them, but he had made a pair of holsters and had them on their own crossbelt, high on his chest. He made a hole in the blue-suited man from front to back that I could have put my fist in. Then he picked up the pair of swords as loot.
The man in blue must have been a champion of sorts – his loss discouraged the Chinese and they began to offer surrender, dropping swords and spears on the deck. The Indian men herded them together towards the bows, away from their weapons. Then they jumped in and cut the throats of every last one of the prisoners and heaved them overboard.
I thought that to be somewhat ill-mannered, but we had no place to keep prisoners and could hardly press them into our crew. It was very practical, in a cold-blooded, cynical sort of fashion. Jamadar Rao would have made a good politician… and a better lawyer.
Chapter Eight
Nobody’s Child Series
Nobody’s Child
We had three battered junks in our possession and now had to decide what to do with them.
“First thing we need to know is why they were here,” Captain Marker declared. “Giles, you take a boat ashore to the place they put off from. See what is to be seen.”
I looked about quickly, called to my corporal.
“Maneater! If you’re fit for more, bring six men with you, with muskets and their pistols and into the boat. Load first.”
Maneater was unwounded, though fairly well splashed with blood. He was one of those who carried a hatchet, or boarding axe as they were sometimes called. In the nature of things, they were close range sort of tools. He numbered off his men and saw to their reloading. He was becoming very efficient, a most useful man to have at my side, despite his unfortunate dietary preferences.
“Jamadar Rao! Please have one of your platoons ready to come ashore if I should call.”
It was wise, I thought, to show that I trusted the Indian men in a tight pinch.
I led my people into one of the sampans that had come out with the extra men.
We got ashore, despite the men complaining that the Chinese oars were shaped wrong. I think they tended to push their oars, so that they could see where they were going, rather than pull at them as was our habit. There was a shingle beach, not large, perhaps forty yards across and no more than two or three deep. It showed the marks of boats having been run up a number of times. There were three outrigger canoes, small, useful for one or two men, pulled up high; they had rainwater in them, unused for some days.
I glanced about, seeing the normal beachside sights of these islands. There were coconut palms in great glades all about the lower lands, which extended no more than a quarter of a mile before reaching steep and high hills. Foothills, I should say, for the mountains rose, black and bare rock, a short distance behind them. The hills were covered in thick trees, hardwoods, though of what sort I did not know. The river showed itself at close to, mostly by the gaps in the palm trees as it wound the last yards to the sea. There were no people.
Maneater tapped my shoulder, pointed across to the right, to another gap in the palms, a small clearing. There were the remains of a small village there, perhaps twenty huts, all of them burnt out. We spotted a track through the grass under the palms, walked cautiously across to the site of the village.
We came back faster than we had ventured forward. It stank. It was a charnel house of rotten bodies, destroyed and left where they fell perhaps two or three weeks previously. It swarmed with rats and carrion birds.
“They Chinese killed the bloody lot, Master Giles.”
That struck me as an obvious sort of comment.
“So they did, Maneater. Children as well, by the look of it.”
“Bastards!”
I made no reply – there was nothing to say.
“Why did they stay? Can’t be for anything this side. Best look away from here, distant from this bloody mess.”
We searched the immediate area and saw nothing other than a track leading inland and showing signs of recent use. Ferns and grass had been slashed back within the previous day, clearing the pathway.
“W
e ain’t going inland six strong, Maneater. Not going towards a river in these parts.”
Wherever we had seen a river on this island, sailing by, we had seen crocodiles as well, mostly small, five or six feet in length, but with a few certainly of twice that size. The lookouts swore they had seen greater beasts at a distance, but we were inclined to be dubious of twenty footers at the extreme of vision.
We rowed back to Jenny Dawes where I reported to Captain Marker. He listened, brow creased in thought.
“They killed off the local people – in case they were a nuisance, perhaps. Just got rid of them as an inconvenience. Killed the women and girls as well, you say?”
“I think so. Difficult to tell after that time they had been out in the sun, with the rats and all.”
It was too much for me, I turned to the rail and spewed, thoroughly. Jerry appeared with our afternoon gin, stiffer than normal and welcome.
“That’ll either calm your guts or empty ‘em, Giles. Either way, you can use it.”
I was lucky; the drink settled me.
Not the last time I saw casual, meaningless slaughter, but I have never managed to get used to it. Something I’m glad of, too. No man should be unmoved by butchery, not if he’s to be called a man. Made me glad Jamadar Rao had dealt with the prisoners – I would have done so myself if they had still been alive. I wondered in passing what had happened to the wounded Chinese and those taken on the other two junks; I did not ask – I did not care.
“So then, Giles. They wanted to stay here and sleep undisturbed at night, with no fear of the locals attacking them.”
“Why kill the children, sir?”
Captain Marker shrugged.
“They would have demanded food and been a nuisance. If nothing else, their crying would have woken them up at night.”
It made a cold, vicious sort of sense.
“They would probably have said it was kinder than leaving them to starve, Giles. If they had understood why you were asking, that is.”
I could not fully comprehend the sort of man that could do such a thing. I still cannot. I saw some of the things the French did in Spain during the Peninsular War and I did not understand that. Easy to say that the Frogs are barbarians and seek no further. That might be the answer, but I hope not.
I finished the gin and glanced towards the sun, estimated the better part of three hours of daylight remaining.
“I’ll take all of the boarders, those left to us, sir. Time to search as far as the river today. How many are left, sir?”
“Probably forty in total, Giles, unwounded that is. Twelve of your people dead; ten more, perhaps, who will not survive. Six to ten, maybe, who will be back on their feet inside the month. Bad, but not the worst I’ve known.”
I noticed as we climbed down into the boats that the men were mixed together, sepoys and Poole men shoulder to shoulder and giving each other a hand down the side. It might not last, but was pleasant to see, I thought. Fighting side by side had brought them together, mates for the while, possibly for a long time.
We went directly to the track and followed it until we came in sight of the river - a creek more correctly.
The Chinese had been here, busy as well. There were racks made from tree branches, tall A-frames perhaps ten feet high and with rough thatched roofs that could be pulled over them. They had crocodile skins pegged out and drying in the sun; glancing closely, I thought they had salt rubbed into the underside to cure the leather rather than permit the fleshier parts to rot. Maneater had the explanation – he was a bright man, one who observed rather than simply saw.
“Seen they out in the Sugar Islands, Master Giles. Done with sharkskin there. Keeps the leather good for a few months, time to get it to a proper tannery.”
Unless crocodile leather fetched a very high price, it was hardly a worthwhile activity. They had perhaps a score of hides of eight or ten foot beasts.
“Look about for anything else you can spot.”
Twenty minutes and I was called across to a tiny side stream, a freshet no more than two yards wide that flowed in from uphill.
“They been working over ‘ere, sir. Look.”
Loose rocks had been thrown into the stream to form a dam, the water no more than three feet deep and pouring over the top in a tiny fall. There were three sieves, made of bamboo with a mesh of perhaps a tenth part of an inch square; besides them there half a dozen shovels, thrown down hastily it seemed. There was a bank of gravel next to the water, part dug up, and piles of stone thrown back onto the grass behind.
It seemed obvious to me.
“Look about for sacks, or maybe a chest. Is there a camp fire close to?”
The workers would have wanted to eat during the day, I thought. Being Chinese, who ate rice, as far as I knew, they would have a cooking place.
In the shade of coconut palms, up a bit on drier land, we found their camp site. They had a couple of rough-made shelters, thick bamboo uprights and roof beams tied together with coconut fronds laid over and long grass over that, probably proof against rain showers. There was a leather purse rather than a sack, no bigger than my clenched fist and a quarter full of gold. Tiny nuggets, smooth and water-worn as if they had tumbled many miles downstream.
“Half a pound weight, sir. The day’s take. Got to have been more than a hundred men on they three junks.”
One of the others shook his head briskly.
“More like a ‘undred and fifty, you asks I, Maneater.”
Brief discussion among the men brought agreement on the higher figure.
“Only pennies apiece in a day, if they shared out fair and equal-like. Ain’t worth it, sir.”
I agreed. The tiny deposits were not worth the effort of collecting them – but they were gold, and people were not sensible when it came to gold.
“Better to let the local folk pick it up and then trade with them, the way we have been doing.”
We collected the tools together and wandered back to the racks and inspected the hides more closely. They stank, were a long way from ready to be taken away.
“Ain’t got much out of this fight, sir.”
The comment came from one of the quieter men, a thinker as well as a madman in battle.
I suspected that ‘sir’ could be a way of passing the blame as well as a measure of respect.
“Looks like it, John. Not much choice though, they shot at us as soon as we rounded the headland. We didn’t start this fight – but I’m buggered if I’m going to let them end it. They shoot at me, and I shoot back, and don’t stop before they do.”
There was absolute agreement on that, John included.
“Got to, ain’t us. No bugger’s shootin’ guns at I and boastin’ afterwards. Same for you, sir. Ought to know better than go shootin’ at a wild young bugger like you, sir, beggin’ your pardon, that is, for bein’ rude.”
I laughed, said he would have to be a lot more offensive than that to upset me.
“We’re all of us in this together. They don’t shoot at men like us, not twice, anyhow!”
We swaggered back to the beach and had a final search about, discovering nothing more at all before pushing off in the boats.
I reported to Captain Marker.
“Nothing worth the effort of collecting, Giles?”
“No, sir. A few crocodile hides that will need weeks to cure yet. They will stink the ship out, sir. The gold – a dribble each day. They must have been putting tons of gravel through those sieves each day to pick up a few ounces of gold. Barely enough to pay for the men’s rations for a day of labour, at a guess, sir.”
“Queer stuff, gold. Amazing what men will do for it, and never count its true value. We’ll rummage the three hulls, pick up what they’ve collected, and then call it a day. Burn the hulls and go.”
We waited till full daylight next morning to search the junks, which was a wise move on our part. The bright sunshine showed up a section of deck planking on the largest of the three that was newer than
the rest and suspiciously regular, as if a hatchway had been covered in, perhaps four feet long by three wide, typical of the entries to the small holds of a junk. Master Gunner, our artisan, peered at the boards and called for his biggest hammers and a pair of cold chisels. Half an hour and he had levered the new boards up.
“If, as you might say, we was wishful to sail her again, I should never have been so vandalous, as you might describe doing such wanton damage to a hull.”
We assured him that we understood such goings-on were not his normal way of behaviour. He could sometimes, it seemed, be touchy about his status as a master craftsman among us sea-going peasants.
“A hidden strongroom, do ye see, gentlemen?”
We peered with proper amaze at the fruits of his labours.
The junks had evidently been adventuring for some months in the South Seas. The small hold, some eight feet deep and six feet long by four broad was full of wooden chests, most of them containing mother-of-pearl. There were worked coral beads as well and some amount of jade stone and a single box of bright feathers, each carefully packed in cloth and laid flat.
“That will sell in Bombay, of a certainty, though I have no idea of prices,” Jerry said, supervising the transfer to the driest part of Jenny Dawes’ hold.
The cabins had so far produced almost nothing of value, yet we knew there had been some gold brought off.
“There must be other hidden places, lads. Take axes to the bulkheads of the cabins.”
The Chinese evidently were untrusting folk. We found closed away cupboards and safes in every cabin we searched. The men were entertained by the game of hunt-the-treasure and stripped the upperworks down to the bare bones as it were, chopping out every piece of planking until they had exposed their last secrets.
There were small sacks of gold nuggets and a little of dust; each of the three junks disclosed little purses of pearls; there were sharks’ teeth, whose value we were unsure of. We found a dozen bales of shagreen as well, tucked away in another sealed hold; it was useful stuff but obviously far more valuable in China than to us.
Nobody’s Child Page 11