“Nov. 18th. Four o’clock. Four junks sighted northeast by east. Final preparing for abandoning ship done.
“Nov. 18th. Five o’clock. The four junks have changed course and are heading for us. I issued muskets. I have tried to prepare a cannon but the list of the ship forbade us. Prepared ourselves as best we can. In case they’re pirates.”
“Nov. 18th. Eight o’clock. Overrun. Pirates. Killed the first wave but they’re”
Struan closed the book. “You killed them all?”
“The junks was not part of our regilar fleets, mate. Leastways not mostly.”
“You killed them all?”
“They deaded ’emselves, Tai-Pan, I wasn’t there.”
“You knowed how some of them scalawags is, Tai-Pan,” Scragger said. “If the men’d be Wu Fang Choi’s—why’d he give you the log, eh? Word were brought to Wu Fang Choi. He sent me to have a look. There weren’t no men aboard when I were there. Or bodies. None.”
“You looted her?”
“You knowed the laws o’ the seas, Tai-Pan. She were shipwrecked an’ abandoned. Half yor cargo were salvaged. Sixteen cannon and a mess of powder’n shot.”
“Where’s the chronometer?”
Scragger’s eyebrows soared. “Why, aboard me junk, o’ course, not that I can use one. Yet. Finders keepers, eh? Fair do’s, eh? But you knowed, Tai-Pan, you knowed what them God-cursed scalawags done? They let her stop. Imagine that! Gawd’s truth. They let it run down. Took us’n weeks to find a merchantman with London time. An American, the
Boston Skylark.” He guffawed, remembering, then added, “Four o’ her boys elected to go along with us’n.”
“And the rest?”
“They were set adrift, off the Philippines. Near t’ shore. You’ve me oath. Three, four week ago.”
Wu Kwok shifted on the cushions, scratching leisurely. “Last, Tai-Pan, me dad sayed, ‘Ten taels a ship ain’t much for safe passage. Ten taels a ship an’ the English flag be protected by Wu Fang Choi.’ You’ve a new berth now, here at Hong Kong, so we beared. Put it to yor mandarin.”
“I might put one tael to him.”
“Six be the lowest. The lowest. That be wot my dad sayed, knowing you be a hard trader. Six.”
“One.”
“Sit. We drinks more grog an’ there be other grub corning,” Wu Kwok said.
“In five minutes this ship’s blown out of the water and the hostage hangs.”
Wu Kwok belched. “You baint hanging my son, matey.”
“O’ course,” Struan said disdainfully, “only some poor dressed-up lad.”
Wu Kwok smirked and drank deeply. “You be proper smart, Tai-Pan. Two taels a ship it is. Put it to your mandarin, eh? And tell you wot, keep the lad—hang him, throw him in the sea—he be yorn. Put him aboard us and I’ll hang him for you.”
“Wot?” Scragger exploded. “The lad baint your son?”
“O’ course, Scragger. You think I’m a fool?” Struan said harshly. “I know the value of the oath of scum.” He stalked out.
“But it were yor oath an’ mine,” Scragger said, appalled, to Wu Kwok. “We giv him our oath. You sayed he were yor son. You tol’ me, by God.”
“The Tai-Pan’d never put his son aboard us’n—why should I put mine aboard his’n?”
“But I give ’im me oath, by God. That be cheat!”
Wu Kwok got up very slowly. “You call me cheat, matey?”
“No, Guv’, no,” Scragger said quickly, keeping his blinding rage away from his face. “It were just me oath. We keeps our oaths. That not be proper wiv us’n, what were done, not proper. That be all.”
Wu Kwok shook his head wearily as he retired to his sleeping quarters. “Barbarians is right proper strange, matey. Right proper strange indeed.” The latticed door closed behind him.
Scragger went on deck. By God, he thought, almost weeping with rage, by God, that do it. I’ll fix that sodding, duck-fornicating heathen, by God, see if I don’t. But not till after the men be picked. Oh, no, not till then. Daren’t afore that, no, by God, ’cause that’d spoil everything.
But after that, by God, after that . . .
CHAPTER ELEVEN
China Cloud cut through the driving rain, heading up the south coast of Hong Kong Island for the main harbor on the north side.
The Struans were having dinner in the main cabin: oyster stew, smoked sausages, kippers, boiled cabbage and bacon fat, cold fried chickens, sea biscuits, dishes of apple pie and preserved fruit pies. Sea-chilled dry white wine and champagne. And tea.
“Forty lacs—four coins,” Robb said, toying with his food. “One to Wu Fang Choi. Who has the other three?”
“Jin-qua kept one, certainly. Perhaps two,” Struan said. He reached across the table and helped himself to another fried kippered herring.
“We’re committed to an immense favor,” Robb said. “That’s worth ten lacs to those devils. With a clipper like
China Cloud in their hands, why, even frigates could be ravaged. The Asian sea-lanes of the whole Empire could be cut. One ship—and ten men trained to build more. Nineteen men trained as captains—to train more! We’re trapped and our future’s trapped. Terrible.”
“Jin-qua cheated you. He cheated you,” Culum said.
“No. Outsmarted me, yes, but even that’s na correct. I was na smart enough. Me, lad! Na him. When you sit down at a table to make a deal, each side is obligated to make the best deal possible. It’s very simple. Aye, I was weaker than he, that’s all. But even if I’d thought that the coins would be split among other men—I still must make the deal as he wanted it. We’d nae option, nae option at all.”
“If you get outsmarted, Dirk, what chance is there for me? For Culum?”
“None. Unless you’re ready to think for yoursel’ and learn by the mistakes of others. And na treat the Chinese like one of us. They’re different.”
“Yes, they are,” Culum said. “Ugly, repulsive, heathen. And impossible to tell apart.”
“I dinna agree. I meant they think differently,” Struan said.
“Then what’s the answer to them, Father?”
“If I knew that, I’d be right every time. They’ve just had five thousand years of practice, that’s all. Now pass the stew please, there’s a good laddie.”
Culum handed him the dish and Struan helped himself to a third portion.
“You don’t seem perturbed, Dirk,” Robb said. “This could ruin us. Ruin Asian trade.”
“You’re na eating, Robb. And you, Culum. Eat.” Struan tore off a chicken leg and put it on his plate. “The situation’s na quite so dismal as all that. First the nineteen men: Aye, they’ll be spies for Wu Fang Choi and his scum. But for us to teach ’em they have to learn English, eh? And if we can
speak to them, why can we na change them? From pirate to useful citizen? Perhaps even to Christian, eh? Nineteen chances to bring them to our side. Good odds, I’d say. And if they’re on our side—even one of them—we’ll know the pirate lairs. Then we control them and destroy them at will. Second, the clipper: In a year and a day I’ve a sea battle to look forward to, that’s all. I’ll hand the ship over, then sink it. I made nae promise na to sink it.”