Brock freed himself from the debris and railed at the petrified crew. “On deck, you scum! For yor lives! Cut masts adrift or we be lost!”
He spurred the men on deck, and, hanging on with one hand, the gale wrenching him and the rain blinding, he slashed frantically with an ax at the main halyards and remembered the other typhoon that had cost him an eye, and he prayed that he would keep his remaining eye and that Tess was safe and Liza and Lillibet would not drown.
The scaffoldings of the new town had long since been torn away. A Supreme Wind rushed at the shore, demolishing the remains of the soldiers’ tents and wrecking the dockyard. It snuffed out the gin shops and pubs and whorehouses near the dockyard and flattened Mrs. Fortheringill’s establishment, pulverizing the painting and entombing Aristotle Quance in the rubble. Then it tore an arrow-straight swath through the hovels of Tai Ping Shan, obliterating a hundred families, and swept the remnants of the debris a mile away on the breast of the Peak.
Deep below ground on the Tai Ping Shan hillside, Gordon Chen crouched in the secret cellar he had constructed and congratulated himself on his prudence. The cellar was rock-lined and very strong, and though he knew that his house above had vanished, he cheerfully reminded himself that all his valuable possessions were safe here, and the house could quickly be replaced. His eyes ranged over his sets of ledgers, the files of land deeds, promissory notes, outstanding debts and mortgages, over the chests of bullion, boxes of jades, bolts of expensive silks and kegs of the finest wine. And over his concubine, Precious Blossom. She was propped comfortably, under the finest down coverlets, in the bed that was set against one of the walls. He poured himself another tiny cup of tea and got in beside her.
You’re a very clever fellow, he told himself.
The wind and the rain were pounding the north side of Struan’s factory in Happy Valley, and from time to time one of the Devil Winds would pull at it. But apart from an occasional tremor, and the raging noise, the building stood firm.
Struan was lighting a cheroot. He hated being inside the house and doing nothing.
“You smoke too much,” May-may shouted above the tempest.
“Smoking’s good for the nerves.”
“Dirty habit. Stinky.”
He said nothing, but checked the barometer again.
“Wat for you keep looking at that every ten minutes?”
“It tells where the storm is. When it stops dropping, the center’ll be over us. Then it’ll rise. I think.”
“I’m na very pleasurably happy we’re here, Tai-Pan. It would be much better at Macao.”
“I dinna think so.”
“Wat?”
“I dinna think so!”
“Oh! Do we have to sleep here again tonight?” she asked, tired of shouting. “I would na want you or Yin-hsi or even that turtledung Ah Sam to get the fever.”
“I think we’re safe enough.”
“Wat?”
“We’re safe enough!” He glanced at his watch. The time was twenty past two. But when he peered through a crack in the shutter, he could see nothing. Only a vague movement in the darkness and horizontal streaks of rain on the windowpanes. He was thankful that they were in the lee of the wind. This corner of the residence faced east and west and south and was protected from the violence. And Struan was thankful to be ashore. Nae ship can live through this, he told himself. Nae harbor on earth can protect the fleets from such an act of God for long. I’ll wager Macao’s catching it. No protection there. I’ll wager half her shipping’s wrecked and ten thousand junks and sampans for five hundred miles up and down the coast. Aye. And the ship sent to Peru? I’ll wager she was caught and she’s gone, Father Sebastian with her. “I’m going to look in on the others.”
“Dinna be long, Tai-Pan.”
He went along the corridor and checked the shutter fastenings. Then he walked across the landing and absently straightened a Quance painting and entered Robb’s quarters.
Horatio was sitting—half shadowed—on the bamboo chair in which Sarah had been seated long ago, and in the frail, flickering light of the lanterns Struan thought for a moment that it
was Sarah.
“Hello, Horatio. Where’s Monsey?”
Horatio looked at Struan without recognizing him. “I found Ah Tat,” Horatio said, his voice weird.
“I canna hear, lad. You’ll have to shout.”
“Ah Tat. Oh yes, I found her.”
“Eh?”
Horatio began to laugh hideously, as though Struan were not in the room. “Mary’s had an abortion. She’s a filthy whore for stinking heathens and has been for years.”
“Nonsense. That’s nonsense, lad. Dinna believe it,” Struan said.
“I found Ah Tat and lashed the truth out of her. Mary’s a devil whore of Chinese and she carried a half-caste bastard in her. But Ah Tat gave her the poison to murder it.” Again a shriek of laughter. “But I caught Ah Tat and beat her till she told me the truth. She was Mary’s pimp. Mary sold herself to heathens.” His eyes went back to the lantern’s core. “Glessing’ll never marry a whore of Chinese. So she’ll be mine again. All mine. I’ll forgive her if she crawls and begs.”
“Horatio. Horatio!”
“She’ll be all mine. Like when we were young. She’ll be all mine again. I’ll forgive her.”
Another devil gust rocked the building, and another, and a third, and it seemed as though they were in the middle of ten thousand raging maelstroms, and Struan heard windows and shutters blowing apart. He took to his heels and rushed along the corridor to his suite. May-may and Yin-hsi were quailing in the bed, and Ah Sam was moaning, petrified. Struan charged over to the bed and took May-may in his arms. The roaring screaming violence crescendoed.
Abruptly the storm vanished. There was silence.
Light began seeping through the cracks in the shutters, growing in intensity with the seconds.
“Wat’s happened?” May-may asked, her voice sounding unreal in the overpowering hush. Struan put May-may down and walked over to the window. He peered through one of the cracks, then cautiously opened the window and unbolted the shutters. He winced as hot, dry air swarmed into the room.
He stared incredulously into the harbor.
China Cloud was still at her moorings.
White Witch was dismasted, the ends of her halyards drooping over the side.
Resting Cloud was grounded at Glessing’s Point. The lorcha was still tied up at the company wharf. He saw one frigate aground, heeled over, high above the surf. But the rest of the fleet and troopships and merchantmen were still at anchor, untouched.
Above were feathers of clouds and blue sky and sunshine. But in the harbor the sea had gone mad. Pyramidal waves rose out of the surface and clashed into each other, and he saw
China Cloud take water over both gunnels and stern and bow at the same time. Beyond, in the distance, an encircling screen of gigantic thunderclouds grew out of the sea and towered, peerless, to sixty thousand feet.
And over all, but for the slopping of the waves against one another, the unearthly silence.
“We’re in the vortex!”
“Wat?”
“The eye of the storm. This is it. The center!”
May-may and Yin-hsi and Ah Sam hurried over.