Tai-Pan

  “Now. I think we should celebrate the rebirth of The Noble House.”

  “How, Dirk?” Robb asked. “We’ll give a ball.”

  “What?” Culum looked up excitedly, his indignation forgotten.

  “Aye, a ball. For the whole European population. In princely style. A month from today.”

  “That’ll set a hawk among the pigeons!” Robb said.

  “What do you mean, Uncle?”

  “There’ll be the biggest panic among the ladies you’ve ever seen. They’ll vie with each other for the honor of being the best-dressed—in the latest fashion! They’ll hound their husbands and try to steal each other’s dressmakers! My God, a ball is a marvelous idea. I wonder what Shevaun will wear.”

  “Nothing—if it pleases her!” Struan’s eyes glowed. “Aye, a ball. We’ll give a prize for the best-dressed lady. I think the prize—”

  “Have you not heard of the judgment of Paris?” Robb said aghast.

  “Aye. But Aristotle’ll be the judge.”

  “He’s much too clever to take that position.”

  “We’ll see.” Struan reflected a moment. “The prize has to be worthy. A thousand guineas.”

  “You must be joking!” Culum said. “A thousand guineas.”

  Culum was overwhelmed by the idea of such extravagance. It was obscene. Criminal. A thousand guineas in England today and you could live like a king, for five or ten years. The wage of a factory man who worked from sunup to sundown and deep into the night, six days a week, for all the weeks of the year, was fifteen to twenty pounds a year—and on this a home was made and children brought up and a wife kept, rent, food, clothing, coal. My father’s mad, he thought, money-mad. Think of the twenty thousand guineas he peed—yes, peed away—on the stupid bet with Brock and Gorth. But that was a gamble to dispose of Brock. A worthwhile gamble if it had come off, and in a way it has—the bullion is in China Cloud and we’re rich again. Rich.

  Now Cullum knew that to be rich was no longer to be poor. He knew that his father was right—it wasn’t money that was important. Only the lack of it.

  “It’s too much, too much,” Robb was saying, shocked.

  “Aye. In one way it is.” Struan lit a cheroot. “But it’s the duty of The Noble House to be princely. The news will flood like no news before. And the story of it will last for a hundred years.” He put his hand on Culum’s shoulder. “Never forget another rule, laddie: When you’re gambling for high stakes you must risk high. If you’re na prepared to risk high, you dinna belong in the game.”

  “Such a—a huge amount will make, may make, some people risk more money than they can afford. That’s not good, is it?”

  “The point of money is to use it. I’d say this is going to be money well spent.”

  “But what are the stakes you gain?”

  “Face, lad.” Struan turned to Robb. “Who’s the winner?”

  Robb shook his head helplessly. “I don’t know. Beauty—Shevaun. But best-dressed? There’re some who’d risk a fortune to get the honor, let alone the prize.”

  “Have you met Shevaun yet, Culum?”

  “No, Father. I saw her once taking a promenade on the road that George—George Glessing—has laid out from Glessing’s Point to Happy Valley. Miss Tillman’s beautiful. But I think Miss Sinclair’s much more attractive. So charming. George and I spent some time in her company.”

  “Did you, now?” Struan held down his sudden interest.

  “Yes,” Culum replied ingenuously. “We had a farewell dinner with Miss Sinclair and Horatio on George’s ship. Poor George has had his ship taken away from him. He was most upset. We’re really going to have a ball?”

  “Why has Glessing lost his ship?”

  “Longstaff appointed him harbor master and chief surveyor, and the admiral ordered him to accept the positions. Miss Sinclair agreed with me that it was a good opportunity for him—but he didn’t think so.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “Oh, yes. He was very nice to me.” Culum almost added, even though I’m the son of the Tai-Pan. He thanked his luck that Glessing and he had a shared interest. Both were fine cricket players—Culum had captained the university team, and last year had played for his county.

  “By Jove,” Glessing had said, “you must be damned good. Only fielded for the navy myself. What bat did you play?”

  “First wicket down.”

  “By Gad—best I’ve made was second. Damme, Culum old chap, perhaps we should set aside a place for a cricket ground, eh? Get a bit of practice in, eh?”

  Culum smiled to himself, very glad he was a cricketer. Without that he knew Glessing would have dismissed him; then he would not have had the pleasure of being near Mary. He wondered if he could escort her to the ball. “Miss Sinclair and Horatio like you very much, Father.”

  “I thought Mary was in Macao.”

  “She was, Father. But she came back to Hong Kong for a few days, a week or so ago. A lovely lady, isn’t she?”

  There was a sudden clanging of the ship’s bell and the scurry of feet, and the cry “All hands on deck!” Struan bolted out of the cabin.

  Robb started to follow, but stopped at the cabin door. “Two things quickly while we’re alone, Culum. First, do what your father says and be patient with him. He’s a strange man, with strange ideas, but most of them work. Second, I’ll help you all I can to become Tai-Pan.” Then he rushed out of the cabin, with Culum trailing behind.

  When Struan burst onto the quarterdeck, the crew was already at action stations and opening the gunports, and aloft men were swarming the rigging.

  Directly ahead, spread against the horizon, was a menacing fleet of war junks.

  “By Thor’s left buttock, it’s a bloody fleet!” Captain Orlov said. “I’ve counted more than a hundred, Tai-Pan. Turn and run?”

  “Hold your course, Captain. We’ve the speed of them. Clear decks! We’ll go closer and have a look. Set royals and fore-royals!”

  Orlov bellowed aloft, “Set royals and fore-royals! All sails ho!” The officers took up the shouts and the men raced into the shrouds and unfurled the sails, and China Cloud picked up speed and sliced through the water.

  The ship was in the channel between the big island of Pokliu Chau, two miles to port, and the smaller island of Ap Li Chau half a mile to starboard. Ap Li Chau was a quarter of a mile off the coast of Hong Kong Island and formed a fine bay that had been named Aberdeen. On the shore at Aberdeen was a small fishing village. Struan observed more sampans and fishing junks than had been there a month ago.

  Robb and Culum came up onto the quarterdeck. Robb saw the junks and his scalp prickled. “Who are they, Dirk?”

  “Dinna ken, lad. Keep clear there!”

  Culum and Robb jumped out of the way as a bevy of sailors clambered down the rigging and chanteyed the hawsers tight, then raced aft to their action stations. Struan passed the binoculars to Mauss, who had lumbered up beside him. “Can you make out the flag, Wolfgang?”

  “No, not yet, Tai-Pan.” Wolfgang was peering dry-mouthed at a huge ponderous war junk in the lead, one of the biggest he had ever seen—over two hundred feet long and about five hundred tons, the dominating stern heeling slowly under the press of the three vast sails. “Gott im Himmel, too many for a pirate fleet. Would they be an invasion armada? Surely they wouldn’t dare attack Hong Kong with our fleet so near.”

  “We’ll soon find out,” Struan said. “Two points to starboard!”

  “Two points to starboard,” the helmsman called.

  “Steady as she goes!” Struan checked the lie of the sails. The throbbing of the wind and the straining rigging filled him with excitement.

  “Look!” Captain Orlov cried out, pointing astern.

  Another flotilla of junks was swooping out from behind the southern tip of Pokliu Chau, readying to cut off their retreat. “It’s an ambush! Ready to go about …”

  “Avast there, Captain! I’m on the quarterdeck!”

  Captain Orlo
v walked sourly over to the helmsman and stood by the binnacle, damning the rule which provided that when the Tai-Pan was on the quarterdeck of any ship of The Noble House he was captain.

  Well, Orlov thought, good luck, Tai-Pan. If we don’t go about and run, those gallows-baited junks will cut us off and the others ahead’ll swamp us, and my beautiful ship will be no more. The devil she will! We’ll blow thirty of them to the fire pits of Valhalla and sail through them like a Valkyrie.

  And for the first time in four days, he forgot the bullion and gleefully thought only of the coming fight.

  The ship’s bell sounded eight bells.

  “Permission to go below, Captain!” Orlov said.

  “Aye. Take Mr. Culum and show him what to do.”

  Orlov preceded Culum nimbly into the depths of the ship. “At eight bells in the forenoon watch—that’s noon, shore time—it’s the duty of the captain to wind the chronometer,” he said, relieved to be off the quarterdeck now that Struan had usurped command. But then, he told himself, if you were Tai-Pan you’d do the same. You’d never allow anyone to have the most beautiful job on earth when you were there.

  His small blue eyes were studying Culum. He had seen Culum’s immediate distaste and the covert looks at his back and tiny legs. Even after forty years of such looks he still hated to be thought a freak. “I was birthed in a blizzard on an ice floe. My mother said I was so beautiful the evil spirit Vorg mashed me with his hoofs an hour after my birth.”

  Culum moved uneasily in the half-darkness. “Oh?”

  “Vorg has cloven hoofs.” Orlov chuckled. “Do you believe in spirits?”

  “No. No, I don’t think so.”

  “But you believe in the Devil? Like all good Christians?”

  “Yes.” Culum tried to keep his fear off his face. “What has to be done to the chronometer?”

  “It has to be wound.” Again Orlov chuckled. “If you’d been born as I was, mayhaps you’d be Culum the Hunchback instead of Culum the Tall and Fair, eh? You look at things differently from here.”

  “I’m sorry—it must be very hard for you.”

  “Not hard—your Shakespeare had better words. But don’t worry, Culum the Strong. I can kill a man twice my size so easily. Would you like me to teach you to kill? You couldn’t have a better teacher. Except the Tai-Pan.”

  “No. No, thank you.”

  “Wise to learn. Very wise. Ask your father. One day you’ll need such knowledge. Aye, soon. Did you know I had second sight?”

  Culum shuddered. “No.”

  Orlov’s eyes glittered and his smile made him more gnomelike and evil. “You’ve a lot to learn. You want to be Tai-Pan, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I hope to be. One day.”

  “There’ll be blood on your hands that day.”

  Culum tried to control his sudden start. “What do you mean by that?”

  “You’ve ears. You’ll have blood on your hands that day. Yes. And soon you’ll need someone you can trust for many a day. So long as Norstedt Stride Orlov, the hunchback, is captain of one of your ships, you can trust him.”

  “I’ll remember, Captain Orlov,” Culum said, and promised himself that when he did become Tai-Pan Orlov would never be one of his captains. Then, as he looked back into the man’s face, he had the weird feeling that Orlov had seen into his heart.

  “What’s the matter, Captain?”

  “Ask yourself that.” Orlov unlocked the housing of the chronometer. To do this he had to stand on a rung of the ladder. Then he began to wind the clock carefully with a large key. “You wind this clock thirty-three times.”

  “Why do you do it? Not one of the officers?” Culum asked, not really caring.

  “It’s the captain’s job. One of them. Navigation’s one of the secret things. If all aboard knew how to do it, there’d be mutiny after mutiny. Best that only the captain and a few of the officers know. Then, without them, the seamen are lost and helpless. We keep the chronometer locked and here for safety. Isn’t it beautiful? The workmanship? Made by good English brains and good English hands. It tells London time exactly.”

  Culum felt the closeness of the passageway and nausea building inside of him—overlaid by fear of Orlov and of the coming battle. But he caught hold of himself and was determined that he would not allow Orlov to bait him into losing his temper, and tried to close his nostrils against the pervading sour smell from the bilges. There’ll be a reckoning later, he swore. “Is a chronometer so very important?”

  “You’ve been to university and you ask that? Without this beauty we’d be lost. You’ve heard of Captain Cook? He used the first one, and proved it, sixty years ago. Until that time we could never find our longitude. But now, with exact London time and the sextant, we know where we are to a mile.” Orlov relocked the housing and shot an abrupt glance at Culum. “Can you use a sextant?”

  “No.”

  “When we sink the junks, I’ll show you. You think you can be Tai-Pan of The Noble House ashore? Eh?”

  There was the sound of scurrying feet on deck and they felt China Cloud surge even faster through the waves. Here, below, the whole ship seemed to pulsate with life.

  Culum licked his dry lips. “Can we sink so many and escape?”

  “If we don’t, we’ll be swimming.” The little man beamed up at Culum. “Ever been shipwrecked or sunk?”

  “No. And I can’t swim.”

  “If you’re a sailor, best not know how to swim. Swimming only prolongs the inevitable—if the sea wants you and your time has come.” Orlov pulled the chain to make certain the lock was secure. “Thirty years I’ve been to sea an’ I can’t swim. I’ve been sunk upwards of ten times, from the China seas to the Bering Straits, but I’ve always found a spar or a boat. One day the sea’ll get me. In her own time.” He eased the fighting iron on his wrist. “I’ll be glad to be back in port.”

  Culum thankfully followed him up the gangway. “You don’t trust the men aboard?”

  “A captain trusts his ship, only his ship. And himself alone.”

  “You trust my father?”

  “He’s the captain.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Orlov made no reply. Once on the quarterdeck, he checked the sails and frowned. Too much sail, too close to shore. Too many unknown reefs and the smell of a squall somewhere. The line of encroaching junks was two miles ahead: implacable, silent, closing in on them.

  The ship had full sails set, the mainsails still reefed, the whole ship throbbing with joy. This joy permeated the crew. When Struan ordered the reefs let go, they sprang to the rigging and sang the sails into place and forgot about the bullion that had infected them. The wind freshened and the sails crackled. The ship heeled over and gathered speed, the seawater frothing like yeast in the scuppers.

  “Mr. Cudahy! Take a watch below and bring arms aloft!”

  “Aye, aye, sorr!” Cudahy, the first mate, was a black-haired Irishman with dancing eyes, and he wore a golden earring.

  “Steady as she goes! Deck watch! Prepare cannon! Load grape!”

  The men flung themselves at the cannons, wheeled them out of their ports, charged them with grape and wheeled them back again.

  “Number-three gun crew an extra tot of rum! Number eighteen to clean out the bilges!”

  There were cheers and curses.

  It was a custom Struan had started many years ago. When going into a fight the first gun crew ready was rewarded and the last was given the dirtiest job on the ship.

  Struan scanned the sky and the tautness of the sails and turned the binoculars on the huge war junk. It had many cannon ports and a dragon for a figurehead and a flag which at this distance was still indistinct. Struan could see dozens of Chinese thronging the decks and torches burning.

  “Get the water barrels ready!” Orlov shouted.

  “What’re the water barrels for, Father?” Culum said.

  “To douse fires, lad. The junks have torches burning. They’ll be well stocked with
fire rockets and stink bombs. Stink bombs’re made from pitch and sulphur. They can make havoc of a clipper if you’re na prepared.” He looked aft. The other flotilla of junks was surging into the channel behind them.

  “We’re cut off, aren’t we?” Culum said, his stomach turning over.

  “Aye. But only a fool’d go that way. Look at the wind, lad. That way we’d have to beat up against it, and something tells me it’d shift farther against us soon. But for’ard we’ve the wind and the speed of any junk. See how ponderous they are, laddie! Like cart horses against us—a greyhound. We’ve ten times the firepower, ship to ship.”

  One of the halyards at the top of the mainmast parted abruptly and the spar screamed, smashing itself against the mast, the sail flapping free.

  “Port watch aloft!” Struan roared. “Send up the royal lift line!”

  Culum watched the seamen claw out onto the spar almost at the top of the mainmast, the wind ripping at them, hanging on with nails and toes, knowing he could never do that. He felt the fear bile in his stomach and could not forget what Orlov had said: blood on your hands. Whose blood? He lurched for the gunnel and vomited.

  “Here, laddie,” Struan said, offering the water bag that hung from a belaying pin.

  Culum pushed it away, hating his father for noticing that he had been sick.

  “Clean your mouth out, by God!” Struan’s voice was harsh.

  Culum obeyed miserably and did not notice that the water actually was cold tea. He drank some of it and it made him sick again. Then he rinsed out his mouth and sipped sparingly, feeling dreadful.

  “First time I went into battle I was sick as a drunk gillie—sicker than you can imagine. And frightened to death.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Culum replied weakly. “You’ve never been afraid or sick in your life.”

  Struan grunted. “Well, you can believe it. It was at Trafalgar.”

  “I didn’t know you were there!” In his astonishment Culum momentarily forgot his nausea.

  “I was a powder monkey. The navy uses children on the capital ships to carry powder from the magazine to the gundecks. The passageway has to be as small as possible to lessen the chance of fire and the whole ship exploding.” Struan remembered the roaring guns and the screams of the wounded, limbs scattered on the deck, slippery with blood—and stench of blood and redness of the scuppers. Smell of vomit in the never-ending black little tunnel, slimy with vomit. Groping up to the exploding guns with kegs of powder, then groping down another time into the horrifying darkness, lungs on fire, heart a violent machine, terror tears streaming—hour after hour. “I was frightened to death.”