“Na baiting him, Tyler. Just stating a fact. You better teach him some manners as well as seamanship.”
Brock held himself in check. Gorth was no match for Struan yet. Yet. In a year or two, when he be more cunning, that be different. But not now, by God. An’ it baint the English way to kick yor enemy in the gut when he be lying on his back, helpless. Like godrotting Struan. “Friendly wager. A hundred guineas says my boy can beat thee. First to touch the flagpole at Hong Kong.”
“Twenty thousand guineas. His money, not yours,” Struan said, his eyes taunting Gorth.
“How you going to pay, Tai-Pan?” Gorth said contemptuously, and Brock boiled at his son’s stupidity.
“He doan mean that other’n as a joke, Dirk,” Brock said quickly. “Twenty thousand it is.”
“Aye, a joke it is. If you say so, Tyler.” Struan was outwardly cold but inwardly jubilant. They had swallowed the bait! Now Gorth and Brock would hurry to Hong Kong—twenty thousand guineas was a tidy fortune, but nothing against forty lacs safe in
China Cloud. Brock was safely out of the way. A dangerous game though. Gorth nearly went too far and then blood would have been spilled. Too easy to kill Gorth.
He put out his hand to Cooper. “I’m holding you to the thirty days.” They shook. Then Struan glanced at Gorth. “The flagpole at Hong Kong! Good voyage, Tyler!” and he hared for his lorcha, which had already cast off and was being nosed into midstream.
He leaped onto the gunnel and turned back and waved mockingly. Then he disappeared belowdecks.
“Excuse us’n, eh, Mr. Cooper?” Brock said, taking Gorth by the arm. “We be in touch!”
He shoved Gorth toward their lorcha. On the poop deck he pushed him violently against the gunnel. “You cursed halfwit poxwobbled scupper rat! You want yor godrotting troat cut from godrotting ear to ear? You call a man son of a bitch in these waters, you got to fight. You call him that, he’s the right to kill thee!” He backhanded Gorth across the face, and blood trickled from Gorth’s mouth. “I tell thee fifty times to watch that devil. If I watch he, by God, thee better!”
“I can kill him, Da’, I know I can!”
“I tell thee fifty times, act perlite to him. He be waiting to cut thee up, fool. An’ he can. You baint fighting that devil but once! Understand?”
“Yes.” Gorth felt the blood in his mouth, and the taste increased his rage.
“Next time I let thee get deaded, fool. An’ another thing. Never challenge a man like him on a gamblin’ debt. Nor kick him in the groin when he be beat an’ helpless. That not be the code!”
“Pox on the code!”
Brock backhanded him again. “The Brocks live by the code. Open. Man t’man. Go again’ it, and thee be out of Brock and Sons!”
Gorth wiped the blood off his mouth.
“Doan hit me again, Da’!”
Brock felt the violent edge to his son’s voice, and his face tightened.
“Doan do it, Da’. By the Lord Jesus Christ, I’ll hit you back,” Gorth said, his weight on both legs, fists like granite. “You hit me a last time. You hit me again and I won’t stop. By the Lord Jesus, you hit me a last time!”
The veins in Brock’s throat were black and throbbing as he squared up to his son, no longer a son but an enemy. No, not an enemy. Only a son who was no longer a youth. A son who had challenged his father as all sons challenge all fathers. Brock knew and Gorth knew that if they fought, blood would be spilled and there would be a casting out. Neither wanted a casting out, but if it came, both father and son knew they would be blood enemies.
Brock hated Gorth for making him feel his age. And loved him for standing up to him when he knew, beyond doubt, that he was more cunning in the art of death fighting than Gorth would ever be.
“Thee best get to Hong Kong.”
Gorth unclenched his fists with an effort. “Yes,” he said hoarsely. “But thee’d best settle with that bastard right smartly, if thee’ve a mind—or next time I do it my own way.” He glared at the bosun. “What the hell’re you scum waiting for? Get under way!”
He wiped the blood off his chin and spat overboard. But his heart was still pumping heavily and he was sorry that there had not been a third blow. I were ready, by God, an’ I could’ve beat him—like I can beat that green-eyed son of a bitch. I know I can.
“Which course should we follow, Da’?” he asked, for there were many different ways to go. The approaches to Canton on the river were a maze of islands large and small, and multitudinous waterways.
“Thee got thyself into this mess. Chart thy own course.” Brock walked to the port gunnel. He felt very old and very tired. He was remembering his own father who was an ironworker, and how as a boy he had had to take the beatings and guidance and watch his temper and do what he was told until the day he was fifteen and the blood filled his eyes. And when his sight had cleared, he saw that he was standing over his father’s inert body.
Lord above, he thought, that were near. I be glad I doan have to fight him proper. I doan want to lose my son.
“Doan thee take after Dirk Struan, Gorth,” he said, his voice not unkind.
Gorth said nothing. Brock rubbed the socket of his eye and replaced the patch. He watched Struan’s lorcha. It was already in midstream, Struan nowhere in sight. The sampan shoved the bow around, then scuttled neatly to the other side. A tangle of Struan’s men leaned on the ropes and chanteyed the sails aloft. The sampan poled back toward Vargas’ lorcha.
Baint like Dirk to leave so fast, Brock reflected. Baint right at all. He glanced back at the wharf and saw that Vargas and all Struan’s clerks were still there, the lorcha still tied up. Now, that baint like Dirk. To leave afore his clerks. Dirk be strange about things like that. Yus.
Struan was hiding in the cabin of the sampan. As the boat nosed around the bow of the Vargas’ lorcha, Struan rammed the coolie hat low on his head and pulled the padded Chinese jacket tighter around him. The sampan owner and his family did not appear to notice him. They had been well paid not to hear or to see.
The plan he had made with Mauss was the safest under the circumstances. He had told Mauss to hurry to
China Cloud, which lay at anchor off Whampoa Island thirteen miles away; to take the shorter northern passage there and then order Captain Orlov to cram on all sail and rush downstream to the end of the island; to change course there and cut around it and head back upstream by the south channel toward Canton again; he had warned that it was of paramount importance that this maneuver not be observed by Brock. Struan, meanwhile, would wait for the bullion lorcha and then take the long route and sneak by devious waterways to the south side of the island where they would rendezvous. By the Marble Pagoda. The pagoda was two hundred feet high and easily seen.
“But why, Tai-Pan?” Mauss had said. “It’s dangerous. Why all the risk,
hein?”
“Just be there, Wolfgang,” he had said.
When the sampan reached the wharf, Struan picked up some panniers that he had had prepared, and hurried through the throng to the garden gate. No one paid any attention to him. Once inside, he tossed the panniers aside, raced to the dining-room window and peered carefully through the curtains.
His lorcha was well away. Brock was in midchannel, gaining way, the sails billowing as the breeze caught them. Gorth stood on the poop and Struan could faintly hear his obscenities. Brock was at the port gunnel, staring downstream. Vargas had just finished checking the clerks and was walking back toward the garden.