Culum shaded his eyes from the sun and understood his father’s compliment. But he let it pass unacknowledged. He was thinking about the other mistress and wondered what she was like and what Gordon’s mother was like. His mind was working coldly, dispassionately, without rancor, but with contempt for the weakness and promiscuousness of his father. Culum found it strange that his mind was so very calm.
“What’s Brock going to do about the bullion? He’ll be pirated and pirated so long as he has it.”
“He’ll have to ask us to take some back. For paper. We’ll do this immediately. And then at less than the usual interest. Tell Robb to arrange it.”
“Then we’ll be pirated.”
“Perhaps.” Struan was watching
Blue Cloud slowly beating up against the wind in the passage between Lan Tao and Hong Kong. “As soon as
China Cloud returns, I’m leaving. I’ll go with the expeditionary force and I’ll na be back to Hong Kong until the day before the ball.”
“Why?”
“To give you time to get used to our ‘enmity.’ You’ll need practice. You and Robb are to start the buildings. The plans are already settled. Except for the Great House. I’ll decide about that later. Begin to build a church on the knoll. Get Aristotle to design it. Pay him a tenth of what he asks in his first breath. You and Robb are to do everything.”
“Yes, Tai-Pan,” Culum said. Tai-Pan. Not Father. Both men heard its finality. And accepted it.
“Build my cottage on suburban lot seventeen. Robb has the plan. It’s to be up in three weeks, the garden planted, and a ten-foot wall around it.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Whatever it costs. Put a hundred, two hundred men abuilding it if necessary. Furnished, landscaped as the plan says. And I want all our buildings finished in three months.”
“There’s at least ten months of building there. A year or more.”
“Aye. So we use more men. More money. Then we’ll finish earlier.”
“Why hurry?”
“Why na?”
Culum looked out to sea. “What about the ball?”
“You arrange everything. With Robb and Chen Sheng, our compradore.”
“And Robb? He’s not to know that our enmity is a masquerade?”
“I’ll let you decide that. You can tell him the night of the ball. If you want.”
China Cloud crested the horizon.
“We can go now,” Struan said.
“Good.”
Struan put the glasses and the remains of the food back into the haversack. “Send some men up here secretly to keep a permanent watch during daylight.”
“What for?”
“Ships. From here we’d have four or five hours’ advance notice of arrivals. Especially the mail packets. Then we send a fast cutter and intercept her and get our mail before the others.”
“And then?”
“We’ve the jump on everyone. In four hours you can do a lot of buying and selling. Knowing four hours ahead of others could be the difference between life and death.”
Culum’s respect increased. Very clever, he thought. He was staring idly westward at the big island of Lan Tai. “Look!” he cried suddenly, pointing just south of it. “There’s smoke. A ship’s on fire!”
“You’ve sharp eyes, lad,” Struan said, swinging the binoculars over. “God’s death, it’s a steamer!”
The ship was black and lean and ugly and sharp-nosed. Smoke poured from her squat funnel. She was two-masted and rigged for sails, but she wore no sails now and steamed malevolently into wind, the red ensign fluttering aft.
“Look at that belly-gutted, stinking fornication of a Royal Navy ship!”
Culum was rocked by the vehemence. “What’s the matter?”
“That bloody iron-festering whore—that’s what’s the matter! Look at her steam!”
Culum stared through the glasses. The ship looked harmless to him. He had seen a few paddle ships like her before. The Irish mail packets had been steamers for ten years. He could see the two giant paddle wheels, amidships port and starboard, and the billowing smoke and the frothing wake. There were cannon aboard. Many.
“I can’t see anything wrong with her.”
“Look at her wake! And her heading! Into wind, by God! She’s steering due east. Into wind. Look at her! She’s overhauling our ship as though
Blue Cloud’s a pig-rotten brig in the hands of godrotting apes—instead of one of the best crews on earth!”
“But what’s wrong with that?”
“Everything. Now a steamer’s in the Orient. She’s done the impossible. That rusty, iron-hulked, machine-powered, Stephenson-invented pus-ridden harlot has sailed from England to here, against all the sea’s disgust and the wind’s contempt. If one does it, a thousand can. There’s progress. And the beginning of a new era!” Struan picked up the empty wine bottle and hurled it against a rock. “That’s what we’ll have to use in twenty or thirty years. Those bitch-fornicating abortions of a ship, by God!”
“It is ugly, when you compare it to a sail ship. To
Blue Cloud. But being able to sail into wind—to forget the wind—means that it’ll be faster and more economic and—”
“Never! Na faster, na with the wind abaft the beam, and na as seaworthy. And na in a storm. Those smellpots’ll turn turtle and sink like a stone. And na as economic. They have to have wood for the boilers, or coal. And they’ll be nae good for the tea trade. Tea’s sensitive and it’ll spoil in that stink. Sail’ll have to carry tea, thank God.”
Culum was amused but didn’t show it. “Yes. But in time they’ll improve, certainly. And if one can sail out here, as you say, a thousand others can. I think we should buy steamers.”
“
You can, and you’ll be right. But damned if I’ll buy one of those stenchfilled monstrosities. Damned if the Lion and Dragon’ll fly one of them while I’m alive!”
“Do all seamen feel as you do?” Culum asked the question carelessly, warmed inside.
“That’s a right stupid question! What’s on your mind, Culum?” Struan said tartly.
“Just thinking about progress, Tai-Pan.” Culum looked back at the ship. “I wonder what her name is.”
Struan was studying Culum suspiciously, knowing that the man’s mind was working but unaware of what it was planning. That’s odd, he told himself. That’s the first time you’ve thought of Culum as a man and na as your son and na as “Culum” or “lad” or “laddie.” “Thank God I won’t live to see the death of sail. But that whore heralds the death of the China clipper. The most beautiful ships that have ever sailed the seas.”
He led the way down the mountain toward Aberdeen. Later the steamer passed close enough for them to read her name. It was
Nemesis. H.M.S.
Nemesis.
BOOK III
The two frigates poured broadside after broadside into the first of the forts athwart the Bogue, the ten-mile neck of water that guarded the approach to Canton. The Bogue was heavily fortified with dominating forts and dangerously narrow at its mouth, and the frigates appeared to be at a suicidal disadvantage. There was scant room to maneuver, and the cannons in the forts could hold the attackers easily at point-blank range as they tacked back and forth, groping upstream. But the cannons were set firm in their beds and could not traverse, and centuries of corrupt administration had allowed the fortifications to languish. Thus the token cannon balls of the forts passed harmlessly to port or to starboard of the frigates.