A River in Borneo, page 4
Over the next few days he realised that the ‘lashing-up’ had eased his pain a good deal and they had begun to wean him off the laudanum. He knew by then that he was in the British Military Hospital and was a lucky man to have been landed in Singapore. He knew too that he was on the mend when he began to think of what would happen to him when he got out having discovered the bundle of papers left in the locker by his bed. A letter in Captain McClure’s distinctive hand-writing informed him that the River Tay’s owner’s agent would look after him and find him a homeward berth, that Mr Cha also held his balance of wages outstanding, less, of course, those sums he had drawn against the ship for a few runs ashore and his mess-bill on board. Mr Cha also had his sea-chest, his sextant, his set of nautical tables, and his two elderly 12-bore shotguns. McClure’s letter finished with a flourish, recommending Mr Henry Kirton for his sobriety, efficiency, and reliability as a ship’s officer to any prospective employer, should such a testimonial be required.
But the sawbones had said he would have a limp; the horror of the implication struck him. A limp would be a permanent disability; it could render him unfit for sea-service, in which case God alone knew what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
After ten days he wrote a note to Mr Cha, requesting him that if the pressure of business allowed it, would he be kind enough to attend the hospital and discuss his, Hal Kirton’s, homeward passage?
He received a courteous reply written in perfect copper-plate script, the nub of which was that Mr Cha had already tried twice to see him but had been told by the medical orderly in charge of the ward that ‘no damned Chinese monkey’ was allowed into a British military hospital.
Kirton attempted to remonstrate with the duty orderly who merely responded that ‘it was against regulations and that he—Kirton—was bloody lucky to have been given a bed there.’ He was, after all, only a merchant seaman and ‘not worth half the buttons on a hussar’s breeches,’ so the best thing for him to do was to ‘lie quiet and get bloody better.’
After a while Kirton managed to raise the subject of his discharge with the senior nurse who only usually put in an appearance with the doctor, whom he now knew as Surgeon Major Jeffries, the assistant chief medical officer of the establishment. Nurse Trimm was scarcely more helpful, though she did evince some sympathy.
‘We’ll send a note to your Chinese friend,’ she said, as though talking to a servant, ‘when you are ready to be discharged and he can come and get you in his rickshaw.’
And with that he had to be content. Nor were his fellow inmates much help to him. Kirton was a species of alien: neither fish nor fowl. They had no way of setting him in the pecking order of the military life, despite the fact that he said—several times—that he was, or had been, the second officer of a smart, barque-rigged auxiliary cargo steamer and was, to boot, the holder of a First Mate’s Certificate of Competency.
Even on the day of his discharge, when Mr Cha duly arrived with his clothes, his blue uniform jacket with its brass buttons, his white duck trousers and small-crowned peaked hat with its gold badge failed to impress, and it was with a great sense of relief that he limped out of the hospital ward on his crutch noting that ‘the damned Chinese monkey’ was allowed to pay his fee before joining his charge in a smart trap.
‘You stay in nice hotel for a few days, Mr Kirton, get more better, then I find a job for you.’
Aware that the nice hotel along with the hospital fees would be drawn from the wages Cha held for him he replied: ‘Thank you Mr Cha, but I think I must get the first ship home, and as a Distressed British Seaman if necessary.’ Such a plan would speed him on his way at no cost to himself and, haunted by the uncertainty of his future, he must eke out his money.
As if reading his mind, the little Chinaman beside him said, ‘You go home England side maybe not get job on ship because your leg no good, eh?’
Kirton nodded dejectedly. ‘Maybe. Yes.’
‘You mallied?’
‘What?’ Kirton was taken aback, both by the Chinaman’s directness and the fact that Cha also considered his career might be at an end. It was one thing to harbour private fears and apprehensions but to have them articulated by a third party practically confirmed their likelihood. There were hundreds of young fit men eager to get to sea and the shipping companies took their pick of them. He might find a berth on some old hooker, but that was not what Hal Kirton wanted in life: He felt a wave of panic rise in his gorge like vomit.
‘You mallied?’ Cha repeated his question.
Kirton shook his head. ‘Er, no, no, I am not married.’
‘Maybe you stay Singapore-side and I find you job here. Make plenty money ...’
Kirton scoffed, replying in the lingua franca of the coast, ‘I make plenty money mean you make plenty money but I savee you want me to do something li’le bit bad.’
‘No, no, Mr Kirton,’ Mr Cha said firmly, beating his robed breast and clearly offended, ‘I straight business man, honest as day long. I have idea for you; by’m’by I tell you ...’ Cha paused, as if considering something; ‘maybe we talk tomollow.’
They did not talk tomorrow, or the day after that, or indeed for a week, by which time Kirton was thoroughly fed-up. In a desperate effort to improve his fitness and improve the strength of his wounded leg he took to the habit of walking along the waterfront every forenoon before returning to his rather mean hotel where he would lie down for an hour every afternoon during the heat of the day, his leg throbbing painfully. If and when the rains came he would get up and, when the deluge had passed, sally out in search of a meal from one of the Chinese stalls on the Esplanade.
He noticed the pretty brigantine lying off Collyer Quay on the very first morning of his daily exercise. That forenoon he had gone in search of a Malacca cane to help him walk, eschewing the use of the crutch he had been reluctantly supplied with by Nurse Trimm and ended up by purchasing a fine sword-stick from the emporium of a Sikh merchant in Change Alley. Captain McClure would have been surprised to learn that the ‘clumsy’ Kirton had been an adept at single-stick aboard the schoolship Canopus. Not that Kirton felt the necessity of having a weapon for self-defence, but the sword-stick was the only cane that the Sikh had in stock that was of the right length to aid him in his perambulations. He was more preoccupied with handling his new acquisition as an aid to his weak leg to take much notice of anything else, but on the third morning the brigantine again caught his eye and on the fourth morning he popped his pocket-glass into his trousers and stopped to give her the once-over.
She was very pretty, about one hundred feet long with a sharp rake to her two masts, a long jib-boom, and a lovely bow and elegant, attenuated elliptical counter. Her hull was dark green with what looked like two gold ribbands which caught the sun. She had a broom hoisted to her mast-head indicating that she was for sale. He did not think the broom had been there the previous day and on the following morning it was gone so that he wondered if his eyes had been playing tricks; after all, he murmured to himself, ‘you have had a blow on the bonce that might account for a hallucination or two, to say nothing of a large quantity of laudanum thereafter.’
Then the following day, whilst staring at the brigantine through his pocket telescope, he felt a tugging at his sleeve. Swinging round he found an emaciated rickshaw ‘boy’ of indeterminate age at his side. Instinctively checking if the contents of his pockets had been tampered with, he brushed the wretch aside, but the man would not go.
‘You b’long Mister Kirton, eh? Mr Cha send me fetchee you, chop-chop.’ The fellow backed away beckoning Kirton to follow him and climb in his rickshaw. ‘Mr Cha pay for lickshaw,’ he said smiling. ‘You no trouble me, Tuan.’
Kirton regarded the man for a moment, recalled his recent purchase, and climbed into the rickshaw. As he sat behind the bony body of the trotting Chinaman, Kirton’s mind drifted to the little brigantine. He had precious little else to think about other than his forthcoming interview with Mr Cha but the acquisition of the sword-stick, the appearance of the brigantine, and the memory of his days in the old Canopus off Neyland at the head of Milford Haven gave him a painful reminder of his circumstances.
Each evening aboard the training ship the boys were allowed an hour of free time before colours, their evening meal, evening parade, prayers, and pipe-down when they were allowed to ‘skylark.’ This customarily meant some form of mock fighting in a ‘bundle,’ or at their most civilised a game of British Bulldog.
One evening, as they charged from one side of the old gun-deck to the other in a riotous game of British Bulldog one of their instructors had appeared on deck and roared ‘Stand-fast!’ at which the cadet-captain had blown his whistle and they had all come rigidly to attention. Such an interruption to their tomfoolery was unusual. The last time it had occurred, one of the cadets, Benning he recalled, had been called out and whisked away before they were allowed to resume their licensed riot. Only later, when he did not appear at dinner did they learn that poor Benning’s mother had died. On this occasion, however, the intervention was for all of them.
‘Some of you,’ the instructor boomed portentously, ‘will work out your sights in the best appointed chart-rooms of the finest mail steamers afloat ... others on an upturned cask on the deck of a South Seas schooner ... and the time to choose is now!’
This had set them all talking about the future over that evening’s meal and Hal Kirton clearly remembered being torn between the two images, each of which possessed an allure of its own. In the end—and being a young man of caution having only an unmarried older sister left alive—he had made his choice. If the River Tay had not been a first-class mail steamer she was a crack vessel, belonging to a first-rate steam navigation company—the Scottish River Line—and he had been immensely proud of being her second officer.
Now, however, with his career prospects in grave doubt, even the brigantine—which had clearly seen better days, and had reminded him of that South Seas schooner whose attraction had vied with a steamship all those years earlier—suddenly seemed utterly beyond his reach.
Mr Cha had commercial premises close to the waterfront just behind the godowns of the European merchants and forwarding agents. Its exterior bore the legend that its business was that of ‘Shipping, Forwarding and Commission Agent,’ and beneath this a proud addition proclaiming that the House of the Green Dragon was the Sole Agent for the Scottish River Line of Glasgow as well as a couple of Scandinavian shipping firms. Inside an imposing counting-house a score of Chinese clerks, or cranis, laboured; from this large room a staircase led to the roof where a constant lookout was kept during daylight hours for the signals of ships for which Mr Cha acted as Singapore agent. At the rear of this office was a substantial godown policed by half-a-dozen tall Sikhs, each man armed with a P53 Lee Enfield rifle and wearing blue tunics and green turbans.
Kirton was met at the doorway by the senior tally clerk, who introduced himself as Lee and who conducted Kirton up a flight of stairs to Cha’s private quarters. In a large room almost the size of the counting-house below and smelling heavily of incense and something else, Cha sat at a low table smoking a small opium pipe. As Kirton was ushered in, the old towkay laid the pipe aside and clapped his hands, whereupon a young woman in a long blue robe brought in tea. After dishes of the beverage had been set before Cha and his guest, the old Chinaman asked, ‘How you feel now Mr Kirton?’
‘Fine, thank you, Mr Cha. Ready to go home as soon as possible.’
‘What doctor say about your leg, eh?’
‘You mean my limp?’ Cha nodded. ‘That I will have a gammy leg for the rest of my life.’ Kirton tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
‘Gammy mean no good, eh?’ Cha enquired and Kirton nodded. ‘Maybe end all your happiness, eh?’
‘If you mean my career at sea, that is a distinct possibility ...’
‘Distinct possibility,’ Cha repeated, as though testing the phrase with which he was not entirely familiar. ‘How you like to stay here one, two year, make money, be captain?’
Kirton frowned. What was the old chap talking about? He thought that he had put that idea firmly out of the old Chinaman’s head days ago; he certainly did not wish to become an agent’s runner with a phoney title. As for becoming a ship-master, well that was out of the question. ‘Mr Cha, I don’t think you understand, I am not qualified to sail as master, having only a first mate’s—Da Foo’s—certificate of competency.’
‘Da Foo velly good; Da Foo good enough to be captain of small vessel under other flag, not Blitish ...’ Cha paused to let the possibility sink in. ‘My fliend Captain McClure say you good seaman, but he wanchee you found berth quickly. I have small sailing ship, I just buy it. I think you like. I know you look at it everly day. She under allest by Admilalty Marshal, now I buy her ...’
‘The brigantine? The brigantine anchored off Collyer Quay?’ Kirton suddenly felt his heart hammer in his breast at the sudden flood of possibilities that presented themselves to his imagination.
Cha nodded. ‘She velly good li’lle ship. I have survey done. You can take it back to your hotel and lead it, but more better to go aboard tomollow, have a look-see for yourself.’
Kirton’s brain was racing. ‘But what flag?’ he asked.
Cha shrugged. ‘Maybe Siamese flag; maybe flag of Sultan of Tidore, or Sultan of Sulu, I need to decide ...’
‘And what trade will you engage her in?’
‘Oh, usual inter-island tlade, copra, coconut, gutta-percha—good freight rates for gutta-percha jus’ now—maybe some rattans, plenty t’ings to fill small ship like this. Sometimes take passenger and personal effects. But Captain,’ Cha said smiling subtly, ‘you neglect your tea ...’
‘That is most discourteous of me, Mr Cha, please forgive me.’
Kirton felt his mood shift alarmingly. Old Cha had a reputation throughout the Laird fleet; the Scots directors in Glasgow were the only British owners to employ as agent a company run by a Singaporean Chinaman. No-one was quite sure how the two businesses had come together some thirty years earlier when the old East India Company had finally lost its monopoly of the China trade, but the scramble by enterprising ship-owners eager to fill the vacuum had led to what was known as the Scottish River Line quickly hitching its wagon to the House of the Green Dragon.
The old man waved aside the apology. ‘It is good for young man to be excited by distinct possibility,’ Cha said savouring the phrase and nodding sagely. ‘Now, before you make up your mind, you go aboard ship tomollow, make survey for yourself, and come back here in evening. About six o’clock. We discuss business then.’
CHAPTER TWO
The Brigantine
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, DESPITE THE DULL AND PERMANENT ACHE in his leg, Kirton woke with an unusual feeling of optimism and it took him a moment or two to fathom its origin. An hour earlier than had become his custom he was on Collyer Quay and hailing a sampan only to be intercepted by Cha’s boat-man.
‘No, no, sir. Boat all make leady for you. Mr Cha make special order.’
Kirton stared intently at the brigantine as they approached her. Distance had certainly lent enchantment to the eye for she looked shabby and down-at-heel as the sampan approached her. As they drew closer he could see that in her rigging there were a number of what seamen called ‘Irish pennants,’ loose ropes’ ends from which the whippings had worked off, or the result of rot and the parting of the strands, yarns, and fibres. These were particularly obvious in the ratlines and along the foot-ropes on her foremast yards where the servings had frayed adrift. And while she retained what did indeed look like two gold ribbands, her green paintwork was patchy and peeling, though the copper visible above her waterline looked in good condition. She was light, of course, devoid of any cargo, though she would have contained some minimal ballast.
Taking his eyes off her he stared at the boat-man and made a circular gesture with his right hand.
‘You take me right round, please.’ The boat-man nodded, used to taking ships’ officers round their vessels to check trim and read their draughts.
They circled the vessel not five yards off her and Kirton reviewed her with a keen eye, sensible that she might be his first and only command, a vessel in which he might make a quick pile which would save him from destitution if he was lucky. She certainly had more than mere pretensions to good looks, for the sweep of her sheer was lovely, though he thought the rake of her masts excessive, marking her as a real old-timer. From where he now sat bobbing alongside her, her two masts soared into the sky for around one hundred feet, he guessed, roughly the same as her length, if one excluded her bowsprit and jib-boom. The foremast crossed three yards, a fore course, a topsail yard, and a topgallant, which, he judged, meant that she had a deep topsail. He thought of his recent adventure trying to disarm such a sail and viewed this one with suspicion. He would have to have a crew to match such an ungainly beast. On the other hand, being a brigantine her mainmast was more simply rigged, with a spanker boom and gaff, and a tall topmast that undoubtedly bore a large triangular gaff-topsail, though no sails were bent on the yards nor nestled along the other spars. The yards were not exactly cock-billed, but they were not squared and appeared to have braces of some light or local rope, not much more substantial than the flag halliards on the River Tay, and they were devoid of blocks.
They passed round the bow and Kirton was astonished at the length of the sharply steeved jib-boom: almost a third of the vessel’s length, he thought, though later he learned this was not quite so. Her quite lovely clipper bow bore no figurehead, only some elegant scroll work and her name, though the weather had rendered this illegible despite its being carved into the woodwork of her sheer strake. Passing down the port side they reached the stern, a long overhanging counter. He could see more lettering there, in better condition than that forward, along with some gingerbread-work, but so long was her overhang that it was virtually invisible from a boat a few yards off since it faced almost directly into the water. Returning to the starboard waist where a tattered pilot ladder hung down her topsides, Kirton grabbed the man-ropes and tried the wooden rungs before trusting his body-weight to it; he had no desire to end up in hospital again.
But the sawbones had said he would have a limp; the horror of the implication struck him. A limp would be a permanent disability; it could render him unfit for sea-service, in which case God alone knew what he was going to do with the rest of his life.
After ten days he wrote a note to Mr Cha, requesting him that if the pressure of business allowed it, would he be kind enough to attend the hospital and discuss his, Hal Kirton’s, homeward passage?
He received a courteous reply written in perfect copper-plate script, the nub of which was that Mr Cha had already tried twice to see him but had been told by the medical orderly in charge of the ward that ‘no damned Chinese monkey’ was allowed into a British military hospital.
Kirton attempted to remonstrate with the duty orderly who merely responded that ‘it was against regulations and that he—Kirton—was bloody lucky to have been given a bed there.’ He was, after all, only a merchant seaman and ‘not worth half the buttons on a hussar’s breeches,’ so the best thing for him to do was to ‘lie quiet and get bloody better.’
After a while Kirton managed to raise the subject of his discharge with the senior nurse who only usually put in an appearance with the doctor, whom he now knew as Surgeon Major Jeffries, the assistant chief medical officer of the establishment. Nurse Trimm was scarcely more helpful, though she did evince some sympathy.
‘We’ll send a note to your Chinese friend,’ she said, as though talking to a servant, ‘when you are ready to be discharged and he can come and get you in his rickshaw.’
And with that he had to be content. Nor were his fellow inmates much help to him. Kirton was a species of alien: neither fish nor fowl. They had no way of setting him in the pecking order of the military life, despite the fact that he said—several times—that he was, or had been, the second officer of a smart, barque-rigged auxiliary cargo steamer and was, to boot, the holder of a First Mate’s Certificate of Competency.
Even on the day of his discharge, when Mr Cha duly arrived with his clothes, his blue uniform jacket with its brass buttons, his white duck trousers and small-crowned peaked hat with its gold badge failed to impress, and it was with a great sense of relief that he limped out of the hospital ward on his crutch noting that ‘the damned Chinese monkey’ was allowed to pay his fee before joining his charge in a smart trap.
‘You stay in nice hotel for a few days, Mr Kirton, get more better, then I find a job for you.’
Aware that the nice hotel along with the hospital fees would be drawn from the wages Cha held for him he replied: ‘Thank you Mr Cha, but I think I must get the first ship home, and as a Distressed British Seaman if necessary.’ Such a plan would speed him on his way at no cost to himself and, haunted by the uncertainty of his future, he must eke out his money.
As if reading his mind, the little Chinaman beside him said, ‘You go home England side maybe not get job on ship because your leg no good, eh?’
Kirton nodded dejectedly. ‘Maybe. Yes.’
‘You mallied?’
‘What?’ Kirton was taken aback, both by the Chinaman’s directness and the fact that Cha also considered his career might be at an end. It was one thing to harbour private fears and apprehensions but to have them articulated by a third party practically confirmed their likelihood. There were hundreds of young fit men eager to get to sea and the shipping companies took their pick of them. He might find a berth on some old hooker, but that was not what Hal Kirton wanted in life: He felt a wave of panic rise in his gorge like vomit.
‘You mallied?’ Cha repeated his question.
Kirton shook his head. ‘Er, no, no, I am not married.’
‘Maybe you stay Singapore-side and I find you job here. Make plenty money ...’
Kirton scoffed, replying in the lingua franca of the coast, ‘I make plenty money mean you make plenty money but I savee you want me to do something li’le bit bad.’
‘No, no, Mr Kirton,’ Mr Cha said firmly, beating his robed breast and clearly offended, ‘I straight business man, honest as day long. I have idea for you; by’m’by I tell you ...’ Cha paused, as if considering something; ‘maybe we talk tomollow.’
They did not talk tomorrow, or the day after that, or indeed for a week, by which time Kirton was thoroughly fed-up. In a desperate effort to improve his fitness and improve the strength of his wounded leg he took to the habit of walking along the waterfront every forenoon before returning to his rather mean hotel where he would lie down for an hour every afternoon during the heat of the day, his leg throbbing painfully. If and when the rains came he would get up and, when the deluge had passed, sally out in search of a meal from one of the Chinese stalls on the Esplanade.
He noticed the pretty brigantine lying off Collyer Quay on the very first morning of his daily exercise. That forenoon he had gone in search of a Malacca cane to help him walk, eschewing the use of the crutch he had been reluctantly supplied with by Nurse Trimm and ended up by purchasing a fine sword-stick from the emporium of a Sikh merchant in Change Alley. Captain McClure would have been surprised to learn that the ‘clumsy’ Kirton had been an adept at single-stick aboard the schoolship Canopus. Not that Kirton felt the necessity of having a weapon for self-defence, but the sword-stick was the only cane that the Sikh had in stock that was of the right length to aid him in his perambulations. He was more preoccupied with handling his new acquisition as an aid to his weak leg to take much notice of anything else, but on the third morning the brigantine again caught his eye and on the fourth morning he popped his pocket-glass into his trousers and stopped to give her the once-over.
She was very pretty, about one hundred feet long with a sharp rake to her two masts, a long jib-boom, and a lovely bow and elegant, attenuated elliptical counter. Her hull was dark green with what looked like two gold ribbands which caught the sun. She had a broom hoisted to her mast-head indicating that she was for sale. He did not think the broom had been there the previous day and on the following morning it was gone so that he wondered if his eyes had been playing tricks; after all, he murmured to himself, ‘you have had a blow on the bonce that might account for a hallucination or two, to say nothing of a large quantity of laudanum thereafter.’
Then the following day, whilst staring at the brigantine through his pocket telescope, he felt a tugging at his sleeve. Swinging round he found an emaciated rickshaw ‘boy’ of indeterminate age at his side. Instinctively checking if the contents of his pockets had been tampered with, he brushed the wretch aside, but the man would not go.
‘You b’long Mister Kirton, eh? Mr Cha send me fetchee you, chop-chop.’ The fellow backed away beckoning Kirton to follow him and climb in his rickshaw. ‘Mr Cha pay for lickshaw,’ he said smiling. ‘You no trouble me, Tuan.’
Kirton regarded the man for a moment, recalled his recent purchase, and climbed into the rickshaw. As he sat behind the bony body of the trotting Chinaman, Kirton’s mind drifted to the little brigantine. He had precious little else to think about other than his forthcoming interview with Mr Cha but the acquisition of the sword-stick, the appearance of the brigantine, and the memory of his days in the old Canopus off Neyland at the head of Milford Haven gave him a painful reminder of his circumstances.
Each evening aboard the training ship the boys were allowed an hour of free time before colours, their evening meal, evening parade, prayers, and pipe-down when they were allowed to ‘skylark.’ This customarily meant some form of mock fighting in a ‘bundle,’ or at their most civilised a game of British Bulldog.
One evening, as they charged from one side of the old gun-deck to the other in a riotous game of British Bulldog one of their instructors had appeared on deck and roared ‘Stand-fast!’ at which the cadet-captain had blown his whistle and they had all come rigidly to attention. Such an interruption to their tomfoolery was unusual. The last time it had occurred, one of the cadets, Benning he recalled, had been called out and whisked away before they were allowed to resume their licensed riot. Only later, when he did not appear at dinner did they learn that poor Benning’s mother had died. On this occasion, however, the intervention was for all of them.
‘Some of you,’ the instructor boomed portentously, ‘will work out your sights in the best appointed chart-rooms of the finest mail steamers afloat ... others on an upturned cask on the deck of a South Seas schooner ... and the time to choose is now!’
This had set them all talking about the future over that evening’s meal and Hal Kirton clearly remembered being torn between the two images, each of which possessed an allure of its own. In the end—and being a young man of caution having only an unmarried older sister left alive—he had made his choice. If the River Tay had not been a first-class mail steamer she was a crack vessel, belonging to a first-rate steam navigation company—the Scottish River Line—and he had been immensely proud of being her second officer.
Now, however, with his career prospects in grave doubt, even the brigantine—which had clearly seen better days, and had reminded him of that South Seas schooner whose attraction had vied with a steamship all those years earlier—suddenly seemed utterly beyond his reach.
Mr Cha had commercial premises close to the waterfront just behind the godowns of the European merchants and forwarding agents. Its exterior bore the legend that its business was that of ‘Shipping, Forwarding and Commission Agent,’ and beneath this a proud addition proclaiming that the House of the Green Dragon was the Sole Agent for the Scottish River Line of Glasgow as well as a couple of Scandinavian shipping firms. Inside an imposing counting-house a score of Chinese clerks, or cranis, laboured; from this large room a staircase led to the roof where a constant lookout was kept during daylight hours for the signals of ships for which Mr Cha acted as Singapore agent. At the rear of this office was a substantial godown policed by half-a-dozen tall Sikhs, each man armed with a P53 Lee Enfield rifle and wearing blue tunics and green turbans.
Kirton was met at the doorway by the senior tally clerk, who introduced himself as Lee and who conducted Kirton up a flight of stairs to Cha’s private quarters. In a large room almost the size of the counting-house below and smelling heavily of incense and something else, Cha sat at a low table smoking a small opium pipe. As Kirton was ushered in, the old towkay laid the pipe aside and clapped his hands, whereupon a young woman in a long blue robe brought in tea. After dishes of the beverage had been set before Cha and his guest, the old Chinaman asked, ‘How you feel now Mr Kirton?’
‘Fine, thank you, Mr Cha. Ready to go home as soon as possible.’
‘What doctor say about your leg, eh?’
‘You mean my limp?’ Cha nodded. ‘That I will have a gammy leg for the rest of my life.’ Kirton tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
‘Gammy mean no good, eh?’ Cha enquired and Kirton nodded. ‘Maybe end all your happiness, eh?’
‘If you mean my career at sea, that is a distinct possibility ...’
‘Distinct possibility,’ Cha repeated, as though testing the phrase with which he was not entirely familiar. ‘How you like to stay here one, two year, make money, be captain?’
Kirton frowned. What was the old chap talking about? He thought that he had put that idea firmly out of the old Chinaman’s head days ago; he certainly did not wish to become an agent’s runner with a phoney title. As for becoming a ship-master, well that was out of the question. ‘Mr Cha, I don’t think you understand, I am not qualified to sail as master, having only a first mate’s—Da Foo’s—certificate of competency.’
‘Da Foo velly good; Da Foo good enough to be captain of small vessel under other flag, not Blitish ...’ Cha paused to let the possibility sink in. ‘My fliend Captain McClure say you good seaman, but he wanchee you found berth quickly. I have small sailing ship, I just buy it. I think you like. I know you look at it everly day. She under allest by Admilalty Marshal, now I buy her ...’
‘The brigantine? The brigantine anchored off Collyer Quay?’ Kirton suddenly felt his heart hammer in his breast at the sudden flood of possibilities that presented themselves to his imagination.
Cha nodded. ‘She velly good li’lle ship. I have survey done. You can take it back to your hotel and lead it, but more better to go aboard tomollow, have a look-see for yourself.’
Kirton’s brain was racing. ‘But what flag?’ he asked.
Cha shrugged. ‘Maybe Siamese flag; maybe flag of Sultan of Tidore, or Sultan of Sulu, I need to decide ...’
‘And what trade will you engage her in?’
‘Oh, usual inter-island tlade, copra, coconut, gutta-percha—good freight rates for gutta-percha jus’ now—maybe some rattans, plenty t’ings to fill small ship like this. Sometimes take passenger and personal effects. But Captain,’ Cha said smiling subtly, ‘you neglect your tea ...’
‘That is most discourteous of me, Mr Cha, please forgive me.’
Kirton felt his mood shift alarmingly. Old Cha had a reputation throughout the Laird fleet; the Scots directors in Glasgow were the only British owners to employ as agent a company run by a Singaporean Chinaman. No-one was quite sure how the two businesses had come together some thirty years earlier when the old East India Company had finally lost its monopoly of the China trade, but the scramble by enterprising ship-owners eager to fill the vacuum had led to what was known as the Scottish River Line quickly hitching its wagon to the House of the Green Dragon.
The old man waved aside the apology. ‘It is good for young man to be excited by distinct possibility,’ Cha said savouring the phrase and nodding sagely. ‘Now, before you make up your mind, you go aboard ship tomollow, make survey for yourself, and come back here in evening. About six o’clock. We discuss business then.’
CHAPTER TWO
The Brigantine
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, DESPITE THE DULL AND PERMANENT ACHE in his leg, Kirton woke with an unusual feeling of optimism and it took him a moment or two to fathom its origin. An hour earlier than had become his custom he was on Collyer Quay and hailing a sampan only to be intercepted by Cha’s boat-man.
‘No, no, sir. Boat all make leady for you. Mr Cha make special order.’
Kirton stared intently at the brigantine as they approached her. Distance had certainly lent enchantment to the eye for she looked shabby and down-at-heel as the sampan approached her. As they drew closer he could see that in her rigging there were a number of what seamen called ‘Irish pennants,’ loose ropes’ ends from which the whippings had worked off, or the result of rot and the parting of the strands, yarns, and fibres. These were particularly obvious in the ratlines and along the foot-ropes on her foremast yards where the servings had frayed adrift. And while she retained what did indeed look like two gold ribbands, her green paintwork was patchy and peeling, though the copper visible above her waterline looked in good condition. She was light, of course, devoid of any cargo, though she would have contained some minimal ballast.
Taking his eyes off her he stared at the boat-man and made a circular gesture with his right hand.
‘You take me right round, please.’ The boat-man nodded, used to taking ships’ officers round their vessels to check trim and read their draughts.
They circled the vessel not five yards off her and Kirton reviewed her with a keen eye, sensible that she might be his first and only command, a vessel in which he might make a quick pile which would save him from destitution if he was lucky. She certainly had more than mere pretensions to good looks, for the sweep of her sheer was lovely, though he thought the rake of her masts excessive, marking her as a real old-timer. From where he now sat bobbing alongside her, her two masts soared into the sky for around one hundred feet, he guessed, roughly the same as her length, if one excluded her bowsprit and jib-boom. The foremast crossed three yards, a fore course, a topsail yard, and a topgallant, which, he judged, meant that she had a deep topsail. He thought of his recent adventure trying to disarm such a sail and viewed this one with suspicion. He would have to have a crew to match such an ungainly beast. On the other hand, being a brigantine her mainmast was more simply rigged, with a spanker boom and gaff, and a tall topmast that undoubtedly bore a large triangular gaff-topsail, though no sails were bent on the yards nor nestled along the other spars. The yards were not exactly cock-billed, but they were not squared and appeared to have braces of some light or local rope, not much more substantial than the flag halliards on the River Tay, and they were devoid of blocks.
They passed round the bow and Kirton was astonished at the length of the sharply steeved jib-boom: almost a third of the vessel’s length, he thought, though later he learned this was not quite so. Her quite lovely clipper bow bore no figurehead, only some elegant scroll work and her name, though the weather had rendered this illegible despite its being carved into the woodwork of her sheer strake. Passing down the port side they reached the stern, a long overhanging counter. He could see more lettering there, in better condition than that forward, along with some gingerbread-work, but so long was her overhang that it was virtually invisible from a boat a few yards off since it faced almost directly into the water. Returning to the starboard waist where a tattered pilot ladder hung down her topsides, Kirton grabbed the man-ropes and tried the wooden rungs before trusting his body-weight to it; he had no desire to end up in hospital again.
