“Lin Tin is better.”
“I learned English from Scragger’n others. Over years.” He ate for a moment and again pressed on Struan more of the delicious food. “Have more grub, mate. You be a queer’n. I be right proper glad t’ meet a man o’ the likes of you. You baint natural, I’ll be bound. You’d take many a day to die, many a day.”
Struan’s eyes became greener and more luminous. “You’d die very quickly. My methods are different from yours. One moment alive, the next dead.” He snapped his fingers. “That’s best—for friend or enemy. Or mad dog!”
“Why you talks so strange, eh?” Wu Kwok asked after a dangerous pause.
“What?”
“You doan talks like me. You be hard to un’erstand. Sounds different like.”
“There are many dialects—kinds—of English,” Struan said calmly, giving Wu Kwok face.
“He be a toff, Wu Kwok, like I sayed,” Scragger explained. “Toffs talk different. They go t’ school like I tol’ you.”
“Do that gallows bait Scraggier talk true, matey? My English baint proper?”
“Who talks more correct Cantonese—a peasant or a schoolmaster? The peasant’s is correct for the fields an’ the schoolmaster’s for the school.”
Wu Kwok leaned back on the cushions and sipped his tea. He broke the silence. “We heard you’ve bullion aboard. Forty lac.”
“How’d you get this?” Struan unbunched his fist and put the half coin on the table.
“One ’arf a coin, one favor, right, matey?”
“Aye,” Struan said, furious at himself for falling into Jin-qua’s trap. “How’d you get it?”
“From me dad.”
“How’d he get it?”
“Where’d you think that old highwayman Jin-qua laid his dirty mitts fast on forty lac o’ bullion, matey? Eh? From his old shipmates, o’ course. You’ve ten lac o’ me dad’s aboard.” Wu Kwok’s belly shook with laughter. “Pour ’Is Honor some grog, Scragger. He be needin’ it.”
“Wu Fang Choi and Jin-qua are shipmates?” Struan asked, shaken.
“In a manner o’ speakin’, matey. We be protecting his sea trade from muck-pissed pirate. We be keepers o’ the sea. It be fair do’s to pay for service, eh? An’ a wise man invest his money to profit, hey? So we invests with him occasional. Tea, silk, opium. Loans.” Wu Kwok held his belly, and tears of laughter seeped from his slitted eyes. “So now we be partners like, us’n Noble House. Wot better invest be there, eh, matey?”
“What’s your ‘favor,’ Wu Kwok?”
“We be drinking to the bullion and yor joss, Tai-Pan. Then we talks.”
“He sayed t’ hang the boy if he were aboard more’n an hour,” Scragger said, filling three tankards with rum. “An’ if you raised sail, to blow us’n out o’ the sea and hang the lad.”
“How long be’n hour, mate?”
“Long enough.”
Wu Kwok ate for a moment. “You’d hang th’ lad?”
“Would you?” Struan took out his timepiece and laid it on the table. “You’ve used up half your time.”
Wu Kwok accepted a tankard from Scragger and drank slowly. Struan felt the hair on his neck prickle with the tension. He could hear the muted sounds of babbling Chinese and straining hawsers and creaking timbers.
There was a faint patter of rain on the deck above. Wu Kwok picked up a toothpick and cleaned his teeth, one hand politely covering his mouth. The rain intensified.
“Th’ favor of Wu Fang Choi,” Wu Kwok began. “Yor fleet be twenty clippers, right?”
“Nineteen.”
“Nineteen. On each we puts one o’ our lads. You train they as cap’ns. Officers. Nineteen men. You train ’em good. Howsomever you wants as proper cap’ns. Lash ’em, keelhaul ’em, wot you wishes—if they baint obeying—but no killing. For five year they be yorn, then they come back ’ome. Next: In a year’n a day we wants a clipper. Like
China Cloud. We pay bullion wot she costed. You give us’n bills an’ the like, an’ we pays bullion. Cannoned an’ rigged an’ sailed like
China Cloud. Ten o’ our men to go to Blighty to watch her builded, then come home with her. Where an’ how we takes the ship come later— right, Scragger?”
“Yus.”
“Last, we giv’ you a nipper—three nippers—to train. Three boys to train like toffs. Best school in Lon’on,” Wu Kwok said. “Wot ever it costed.”
“Best clotheses an’ carriages an’ lodgings an’ grub,” Scragger added. “Like bleeding toffs they t’ be brung up. Treated proper. Oxford or Cambridge Unyversity. Yus. Through t’ unyversity and then ’ome.”
“That’s na one favor,” Struan said. “That’s many.”
“Many—few—they be favor,” Wu Kwok said viciously. “By God, they be the askt. Maybe I takes the ten lac back an’ the thirty as well. Then buy ship. If money, buy anything, right, matey? Yus, I takes lacs maybe and make deal with One-Eye Devil. Wot’s ‘is name?”
“Brock,” Scragger said.
“Aye, Brock. Make deal with Brock or other. Deal is deal. Just train men. One ship. Fair ask. You say yes or no. ”
“I’ll make a new deal with you. Take back the coin, and, with or without me aboard
China Cloud, just try to take all the bullion, by God.”
“There be two hundred ship over the horizon. I lose hundred, two hundred ships, never mind. I take lac, Tai-Pan. I take lac.”
Struan picked up his half coin and stood up. “Agreed?”
“No agree. Favor—you agree favor. Has Tai-Pan of Noble House no face, heya? Yes, no?”
“In one month bring a hundred men, none of whom are wanted by the mandarins for any crime, all of whom can read and write. Of these I pick nineteen to be captains. And ten men to watch the building. Bring the three boys then.”
“Too dangerous, matey,” Wu Kwok said, “so many men. Right, Scragger?”
“Not if we brunged ’em, say t’ Aberdeen. To pick be fair, no harm in that. Eh? Secret like?”
Wu Kwok pondered a moment. “Agreed. One month. Aberdeen.”
“I’ll hand the clipper over to you personally—or to Wu Fang Choi—only,” Struan said. “No one else.”
“To any I sends.”
“No.”
“Or to me, matey?” Scragger said.
“No. To Wu Kwok or to Wu Fang Choi. In open seas.”
“Why?” Wu Kwok said. “Eh, why? Wot muckstink devilment be in yor head, matey?”
“She’ll be your ship. I’m nae passing over such a beauty to anyone else. Where’s your face, eh?”
“Agreed,” Wu Kwok said at last. “No treachery, by God, or you’ll pay.”
Struan contemptuously started for the door, but Scragger blocked his path. “Yor holy oath, Tai-Pan?”
“Jin-qua’s already had it, Scragger. You know the value of my oath, by God!”
Scragger nodded to Wu Kwok and stepped aside; “Thankee, Tai-Pan.”
“Seeing as how you agrees, so nice and friendly like, Tai-Pan,” Wu Kwok said, “me dad’s sended a gift for you and a message.” He waved a hand at Scragger who opened a sea chest, brought out a bundle, handed it to Struan.
The bundle contained a flag—the entwined Lion and Dragon. And a ship’s log book: the log book of the lost
Scarlet Cloud.
Struan opened the book and turned to the last page: “Nov. 16th. Noon. N 11° 23’ 11” E 114° 9’ 8”. Storms continuing, gale force. At three bells in the middle watch last night storm sails were carried away and the masts. Our ship was thrust helpless here onto Tizard Reefs where, by Divine Mercy, she came to rest, her keel torn away and hull holed.