"A private revenge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Вудмен Ричард)

CHAPTER 4  The Dragon's Roar

Captain Drinkwater looked across the strip of grey water between his barge and that of the Dedaigneuse, and met Dawson's eye. He smiled encouragingly at the young post-captain. Dawson smiled back, a trifle apprehensively.

The two captains' barges were leading a flotilla of the squadron's boats, their crews bending to their oars and leaving millions of concentric circles expanding in their wakes to mark the dip, dip, dip of the blades. In each boat sat a small detachment of marines, muskets gleaming between their knees.

Dawson was in command, for Drury had ordered him to proceed the twelve miles upstream from Whampoa to obtain stores (in particular liquor) from the European factories at Canton and to determine the whereabouts of the specie. Drinkwater, out of a sense of curiosity and the realisation that his presence aboard Patrician was frustrating Fraser in his attempts to refit the ship, had volunteered his own services and those of a midshipman and his barge. The whiff of action had persuaded Mount to come with a file of his marines and Drury himself had, at the last minute, hailed Dawson's passing boat and climbed aboard. Perhaps it was the admiral's presence that rattled Dawson.

Or perhaps it was the situation that was rapidly deteriorating and that promised trouble ahead of them, that caused the young captain's anxiety. Drinkwater did not know.

To be truthful, he did not much care. The whole sorry business seemed utterly incomprehensible and as distant from his pursuit of Russian warships and defeating the French as if he were engaged at single-stick practice on Hadley Common.

The fact was that he was a mended man; his physical collapse had given him time to recover his faculties and his vigour. He wanted to be off with the convoy, to get out of the Pearl River and headed, if not for home, then for the staging post of Penang. He had vague thoughts of persuading Pellew to take ship in Patrician when he handed over the chief command to Drury, as a guarantee of their destination. That, he thought, would make a fine Christmas gift to his ship's company. But the silver specie had yet to come down from Canton and Patrician was not ready to proceed; so when Drury announced his intention of sending Dawson upstream with the squadron's boats, Drinkwater had found the suggestion of adventure irresistible.

And so, judging by their efforts, had his men. They were all volunteers, all save Tregembo, who followed his captain out of affection, though he would never admit it was more than duty. Drinkwater looked at the men closely as they plied their oars. They looked well enough on their diet of, what had they christened it? Ah yes, he recalled the crude jest, the coarse synonymous phrase for coition, bird's nest pie.

'River's more or less deserted, sir,' remarked Acting Lieutenant Frey beside him.

It was true. Though sampans and a few small junks moved up and down the river, the normal volume of traffic with which they had become familiar was no longer visible.

'I suppose they know what we're up to, Mr Frey.'

'I suppose so, sir.'

It was all an appalling tangle, Drinkwater mused. At Macao an affronted Portuguese population were suffering the occupation of the Company's sepoys, anxious to see the British gone. In the European 'factories' at Canton an increasingly beleaguered group of merchant agents were anxious to get out of China at least some of the huge deficit owed by the native merchants. The mandarins and Viceroy, organs of the Imperial civil

service, had to maintain their own 'face' and power, while at the same time obeying the orders of the Emperor in Peking who, celestially indifferent to the fate of Canton, wanted all contact with the fan kwei, the barbarian 'red-devils', broken off. Meanwhile at Whampoa the ship-masters and the Select Committee wanted to use Drury's armament to force the Chinese to pay up and the Viceroy to permit trading to continue. Drury, declaring the whole thing a 'complex, crooked, left-handed, winding mode of proceeding', had himself joined the boat operation to stop the matter getting entirely out of hand.

Beside Drinkwater, Frey suddenly craned his neck and stared ahead. Drinkwater followed his gaze. The roofs of Canton were coming into view. The tall, narrow-fronted buildings of the factories, marked by the flag-poles and the flaunting foreign colours, lay downstream from the more distant pagodas and the yellow walls of the city which rose from a higgledy-piggledy mass of scratch-built housing clustered about its buttresses.

'Canton ...', muttered Frey, speaking without knowing it. Drinkwater smiled inwardly. He must remember to call in the midshipmen's journals in a week or two, and see what Mr Frey's skill with brush and water-colour made of the scene.

'Boats ahead, sir!' The call came from the barge's bow. Drinkwater stood up, steadying his knee against a thwart. In the next boat Dawson did the same.

They were strung across the river, lying to a boom of ropes, eight or nine heavy junks, and just below them, sampans which appeared to be full of armed men, men with what looked like medieval hauberks of heavy cloth or leather over their, robes, and small metal caps with horsehair plumes.

'They've got bows and arrows, sir!' reported the bowman, and the sailors and marines burst out laughing with good-natured contempt.

Drinkwater, appraising the cordon of junks, judged the passage of the river effectively barred, unless they were going to break Drury's injunction not to open fire. He cast a quick look at either bank. There were cavalry drawn up and though they

would be seriously hampered by the multitude of people that stood curiously along the margin of the river, the entire mass was a formidable barrier to their progress.

'Easy there, Mr Frey, easy ...'

'Pull easy, lads ...'

The oarsmen slackened their efforts and Drinkwater heard Drury hailing him.

'Cap'n Drinkwater! I'm pushing on ahead ... do you hang back in my support. My interpreter tells me one of the junks bears an admiral.'

'Very well, sir. And good luck.'

Drury waved his hand and sat down again. Drinkwater saw him lean forward and exchange remarks with the interpreter. Dawson's face was set grimly.

'Oars, Mr Frey.' He turned and waved to the boats astern. As Dawson's barge pulled forward, the flotilla followed Drinkwater's example, their oars lifting horizontally, silver drops of water running along the looms, while the boats slowed, gliding in the admiral's wake.

Drinkwater watched as a perceptible ripple of excitement seemed to transmit itself from one bank to the other via the armed junks, at the sight of the single boat detaching itself from the others.

'What the devil's the admiral trying to do?' muttered Mount.

'Negotiate, Mr Mount,' said Drinkwater, 'and I'll trouble you not to open fire without my express authority.' Drinkwater repeated the order to the lieutenant in the adjacent boat, with instructions to pass it along the line. Drury had been explicit upon the point.

'Why the devil did he bring us then?'

'Something the celestials call "face" I believe, Mr Mount,' said Drinkwater, still watching Dawson's barge as he closed the hostile junks. 'A kind of ritual posturing to decide who shall have the upper hand in a matter. Ask Ballantyne to enlarge on the point ...'

Admiral's standing up, sir,' reported the bowman.

'Eyes in the boat,' snapped Frey as the idle and curious

oarsmen turned their heads to see what was happening.

'Bloody hell!'

A ground swell of voices like the stridulation of cicadas had accompanied their approach to the cordon. Against it they quite clearly heard Drury's voice and the shrill interpretation. The remarks had been cut short by a dense volley of stones that sent up tiny plumes of water all round Drury's boat.

'Advance!' signalled Drinkwater, and the assorted gigs and cutters, spreading out in a long line, pulled forward once more, closing the admiral whose oarsmen held water not twenty yards from a large, three-masted junk upon whose deck a knot of richly robed mandarins could be clearly seen.

Drury continued expostulating, moving his hands, though they could hear no more than the drone of his voice above the rising chatter of the vast crowd.

More stones plopped about him, some skimming across the placid river or falling alongside the supporting boats. Then suddenly it was not a volley. A sharp cry from the commanding junk and the jerk of a baton launched a hail of well-aimed missiles against the British. Ten yards away Drinkwater saw a marine drop his musket and clap his hands to his nose as blood gushed brightly through his fingers. Men moved dangerously in the boats as knocks and shouts told where others took blows and the boats received damage.

'Up marines, and present!'

Mount's order rang across the water and the marines in all the boats stood up and levelled their muskets. The sudden elevation of the soldiers further rocked the boats and Drinkwater realised they were blocking his view and that he had himself been standing for some moments.

'Hold your fire, damn you!' Drinkwater bellowed, suddenly seeing Dawson's face turn and blench at the proximity of the other boats. Drury turned too, took in the situation at a glance and bent to consult his interpreter.

He straightened up again and looked round. Astern of the admiral's barge the boats had drawn up in line abreast, their oarsmen dabbing at the river to maintain station against the

current. Stones continued to fall about them. One concerted volley seemed flung with concentrated viciousness, hitting several men in Russell's longboat. Stung by this furious assault her men suddenly dug in their oar-blades and, with a bending of looms, the marines in her were standing up again, cocking their muskets. Other men in other boats were being hit and cries followed one another with mounting rapidity. Men were shouting now; another boat moved forward and more marines, no longer hesitating like their officers, were flicking off their frizzens and snapping back the hammers of their flintlocks.

'Hold your fire!' roared Drinkwater. Drury had been adamant upon the point, this was to be a show of force only. To defy this mob with lead would call down a vengeful horde and the only result would be death for all of them, and a particularly senseless death at that.

'Hold your fire!' Drinkwater shouted again.

'Back-water and hold your fire, damn your eyes!' Drury, frustrated in his attempt to communicate with the Chinese admiral, was himself bull-roaring at his men. His pugnacious spirit was held in admirable check amid a crescendo of noise as cymbals and gongs now enhanced the cries of the Chinese and the curses and mutterings of the British. The marines lowered their muskets irresolutely, and sat down to lessen the target area they presented to the hundreds of Chinese who, leaning from the junks and sampans, seemed provided with an endless supply of pebbles and stones.

'They are driving us out as devils, sir,' volunteered Frey, 'that is why they are beating the gongs ...'

'Your intelligence is ill-timed, sir,' snapped Drinkwater. 'Sit down, damn you!' he shouted at a midshipman who, in the Dedaigneuse's cutter was standing in her stern sheets, waving his dirk and uttering a stream of obscene invective at the obdurate Chinese.

'Sit down at once and hold your tongue, sir!'

Even in such extreme circumstances the incongruity of the boy's torrent of filth annoyed Drinkwater. They were all

over-wrought and he was aware that his silencing of the midshipman was a vent for his own pent-up feelings.

Then suddenly it seemed as if a dark cloud had passed over them and their eyes were assailed by a sibilant vibration that rent the air above them. The volley of arrows splashed into the river astern of them, clearly aimed over their heads in intimidation. And then came a mighty roar, so sudden after the unnerving noise of the arrows that men's faces paled in fear, and so close that the wave of concussion and heat that seared them sizzled hair and added the sharp stink of its frizzing to the blast of powder. Their boats rocked dangerously. The huge bell-mouthed cannon, concealed until that moment by rush matting draping the sides of a war-junk, vomited a red and yellow tongue of fire.

No shot or langridge came from the dragon's mouth, but the message from its black muzzle was potent enough: the Chinese were not open to negotiations. Admiral Drury was waving the boats back. Dawson's barge was crabbing round, swinging her bow downstream. Willingly now the others followed suit and, helped by the current, dropped swiftly down towards the refuge of their ships.

Astern of them the clamour of the Chinese and their gongs rose to a victorious crescendo to which was now added the snap of fire-crackers. Banners waved and the huge dragon gun spat tongues of fire at their retreat. Aboard the greatest of the junks, the Viceroy of Canton received the congratulations of his court.

On either bank cavalry kept pace with them for a mile or so, then fell back, and their last sight of the citizens of the great city was a single draped palanquin that watched them from a low rise on the levee.

The red curtains fluttered a little as the brass ferrule of a telescope was withdrawn, and a few minutes later the bearers, obeying some command from within, swung it round and headed back towards Canton. Alongside it trotted a little Indian boy with an impish face and almost pointedly prominent ears.