Thank you, God, for my joss. Thank you.
“Hola!” one of the crew called out anxiously, looking over the side.
The canvas caulking was coming adrift. Struan rushed below. He slipped off the fighting iron and pushed the waterlogged sail deeper into the ship’s wound. Water three feet deep sloshed around in the bilges. He levered a crate tighter against the canvas and wedged more silver bricks into the crevices.
“It’ll hold,” he said aloud. “Aye, maybe.”
He picked up the fighting iron and went into the main cabin. It was a shambles. He looked at the bunk longingly, picked up a grass-filled palliasse and climbed the gangway.
He froze at the top of the steps. Wung was pointing the pistol at him. A second Chinese held the musket, Ah Gip inert at his feet. One of the crew had an armlock on May-may, and was holding a hand over her mouth. Wung pulled the trigger as Struan instinctively lifted up the palliasse and hurtled to one side of the gangway. He felt the ball crease his neck and he lunged up on deck, his face stung by the gunpowder, the palliasse a pathetic shield. The second Chinese fired point-blank, but the musket exploded and blew his hands off, and he stared at the stumps of his arms, astonished, and screamed.
Struan whirled the fighting iron as Wung and the crew attacked. The barbed ball caught Wung flush on the side of the face, tearing off half his mouth, and he reeled away. Struan flailed and another man fell and another jumped on his back and tried to throttle him, using his own queue as a garrote, but Struan shook him off. The man holding May-may leaped forward and Struan shoved the fighting iron’s haft into his face and then, when the man shrieked and fell, Struan trampled him. The two men who were unhurt fled to the bow. Gasping for breath, Struan instantly rushed after them. They jumped overboard. There was a scream from the poop. Wung, grotesque, the blood gushing from half a face, was groping blindly for May-may. She slid out of his grasp and hobbled for cover.
Struan walked back and killed him.
The man with no hands was screaming hideously. Struan killed him quickly and painlessly.
There was silence on the deck.
May-may stared down at a dismembered hand and was violently sick. Struan kicked the hand overboard. When he had regained his strength, he threw all but one of the bodies overboard. He examined Ah Gip. She was breathing through her mouth, the blood trickling from her nose.
“I think she’ll be all right,” he said, and was astonished at the thickness of his voice. He felt his face. The pain was coming in violent waves. He slumped beside May-may. “What happened?”
“I dinna ken,” she said, beyond tears. “One moment I was with pistol, the next, they had hand over my mouth and they fired at you. Why aren’t you deaded?”
“I feel like I am,” he said. The left side of his face was badly scorched. His hair was singed and half an eyebrow was missing. The pain in his chest was lessening.
“What for they—Wung and they—do this? What for? He’s Jin-qua’s trusted,” she said.
“You said yoursel’ that any’d try to steal the bullion. Aye. Any. I dinna blame them. I was a fool to go below.”
He checked the course ahead. They were still limping in the right direction.
May-may saw the sear on his neck. “Another inch, half an inch,” she whispered. “Praise the gods for joss. I will make huge gift.”
Struan was smelling the sweet blood stench, and now that he was safe, his stomach turned over and he groped for the side and retched. Afterward he found a wooden pail and cleaned the deck. Then he cleaned the fighting iron.
“What for do you leave that man?” May-may asked.
“He’s na dead.”
“Throw him overboard.”
“When he’s dead. Or when he wakes, if he does, he can jump.” Struan breathed the air deeply and his nausea left him. His legs aching with fatigue, he went over to Ah Gip and lifted her onto the main housing. “Did you see where she got hit?”
“No.”
Struan undid her padded coat and examined her carefully. Her chest and back were unmarked but there was a trace of blood at the base of her queue. He wrapped her again and settled her as well as he could. Her face looked gray and mottled; her breathing was choked. “She does na look good.”
“How far must we go now?” May-may said.
“Two or three hours.” He took the helm. “I dinna ken. Maybe more.”
May-may lay back and let the wind and chill air clear her head.
Struan saw the broken bottle of rum rolling in the scuppers. “Go below. See if there’s another bottle of rum, will you? I think there were two, eh?”
“Sorry, Tai-Pan. I almost kill us with my own stupid.”
“Nay, lass. It was the bullion. Check the hold.”
She picked her way below. She was gone a long time.
When she returned she was carrying a teapot and two cups.
“I make tea,” she said proudly. “I make fire and I make tea. The rum bottle, she was broke. So we have tea.”
“I didn’t know you could even make tea, let alone light a fire,” he said, teasing her.
“When I’m old and toothless I become amah.” She noticed absently that the last of the Chinese seamen was no longer on deck. She poured the tea and offered him a cup, smiling wanly.
“Thanks.”
Ah Gip regained consciousness. She vomited, then collapsed again. “I didna like the look of her at all,” Struan said.
“She’s a fine slave.”
He drank the tea gratefully. “How much water’s in the hold?”
“The floor is washed with water.” May-may sipped her tea. “I think it would be wise to—to—how you say?—‘buy’ sea god on our side.”
“Petition? Aye, petition.”
She nodded. “Aye. Wise if I petition sea god.”
“How do you do that?”
“There is much bullion downstairs. One bar would be very good.”
“It would be very bad. A big waste of silver. We’ve been through this a thousand times. There are nae gods but God.”
“True. But please. Please, Tai-Pan. Please.” Her eyes were begging him. “We need fantastical plenty help. I counsel asking immediate for sea god’s particular blessings.”
Struan had given up trying to make her understand that there was only one God, that Jesus was the Son of God, that Christianity was the only true religion. Two years ago he had tried to explain Christianity to her.
“You want me to be Christian? Then I’m Christian,” she had said cheerfully.
“But it’s na so easy as that, May-may. You have to believe.”
“Of course. I believe wat you want me to believe. There is one God. The Christian barbarian God. The new God.”
“It’s na a barbarian God, and na a new God. It’s—”
“Your Lord Jesus was na Chinese, heya? Then he is a barbarian. And wat for you tell me this Jesus God is na new, when only he was na even born two thousand years ago, heya? That is plenty werry new. Ayee yah, our gods are five, ten thousand years old.”
Struan had been out of his depth, for though he was a Christian and would go to kirk and sometimes pray and knew the Bible as well as most men, ordinary men, he had not the learning or the skill to teach her. So he had had Wolfgang Mauss explain the Gospel to her in Mandarin. But after Mauss had taught her and had baptized her, Struan had discovered that she still went to the Chinese temple.