The winds off the Philippines raised waves around the China Flyer, tossing the deck and yawing the masts in wild circles. A storm must be brewing, Lothar Schiller predicted. But, worse, he worried about the anger growing inside him at the Englishman, George Fanshaw.
‘Reduce sail,’ he ordered his Indonesian lieutenant, Looi. ‘Topsail and spanker—double reefs.’
In these waters of the South China Sea a wind could fall as quickly as it rose, but Schiller decided not to take a gamble. The precaution of having the sails clewed and furled also gave him time to cool his temper. He did not want to spend another day quarrelling with Fanshaw. In the two months since they had left Madras, it seemed they had done nothing but argue. The disagreements had begun a few days out of Madras when Fanshaw had ordered Schiller to divert from the course to Canton. Determined to find opium to present as a cumshaw in Canton, he had directed Schiller on a meandering course around Borneo, through the Sulu Sea, north to the Philippines and back to the south, risking attack from Sulu pirates. After six weeks of search, they had located a storehouse of opium on the Sulu island of Cherang. Fanshaw had persuaded the natives to sell but, when the last chest had been stowed aboard the frigate, he had ordered Schiller’s men to fire on the village.
Hearing footsteps behind him on the quarterdeck, Schiller turned and saw Fanshaw approaching him.
Speak of the devil, he told himself.
‘A storm brewing?’ asked Fanshaw, face upturned to the clear blue sky. ‘Or merely a lively gust to help us on the last leg of our journey to Canton?’
‘Better be prepared for trouble than sorry,’ answered Schiller in his heavily-accented English.
‘Safe, perhaps. But—’ Fanshaw kept his back to Schiller as he studied the nut-brown hands swinging from the masts. ‘—will not orders to furl sails also slow us down in reaching Macao, Mr Schiller?’
‘We go even more slow, Mr Fanshaw, if we lose all our masts in a storm.’ Schiller’s accent become thicker as anger boiled inside him. If the Englishman did not approve of the way the ship was being sailed, why did he not come right out and say so? Why did he hint and talk in circles, always making sly criticisms?
‘We cannot afford to lose time, Mr Schiller,’ reprimanded Fanshaw, ‘merely because you suspect a storm. We spent more time sailing through the Sulus than I had intended. We’ve already been two months at sea.’
‘I do only what I think best for the ship, Herr Fanshaw.’
‘You would also do well to concentrate on getting us to Canton as quickly as possible.’
Schiller brought up a subject he had raised time and time before. ‘The voyage might go faster, sir, if you let me study all the charts. Not just bits and pieces. One chart today. One chart tomorrow. One chart the next day.’
‘I don’t see how that could speed our passage, Mr Schiller.’
‘Sir, you’ve made this passage up the South China Sea many times, but this is my first venture here. If I could study the islands ahead of us, sir, I might organise the men for sailing; faster time, the right currents. You see, ja?’
‘You have got us this far, Mr Schiller, have you not?’
What the hell! Schiller decided to speak his mind.
‘Why do I feel, Mr Fanshaw, you do not trust me? You don’t even pay me a penny yet. You promised me a fortune if I sailed this ship for you. But you still don’t give me a penny. I cannot even pay the men a little something.’
‘Pay the men? Good heavens, Mr Schiller! Where are these men going to spend money?’
‘Men work better with a few coppers in their hands, Mr Fanshaw.’
Fanshaw’s voice hardened, his diction becoming more clipped. ‘Your men can go back to the gutters of the Black Town where you found them, Mr Schiller, if they don’t like my arrangements.’
Schiller bristled at the remark, forgetting discretion in his resentment.
‘Last week, Mr Fanshaw, you promised to pay the men if they fired on that village.’
‘You mean when you refused to obey my instructions to order them to fire, Mr Schiller?’
‘But the villagers had given us water and food. You got your cargo there. Why should I order their village to be destroyed?’
‘I intend to give the Sulu opium to the Co-Hung as a gift. But I have no intention of letting the Sulus tell everybody who comes along that I’ve been there.’
‘So you fire on them? Is that how you repay generosity and friendship?’ Schiller shook his head disbelievingly. ‘Who were they going to tell? Who is going to know you’ve been there?’
Slyly, Fanshaw answered, ‘Have you not thought, Mr Schiller, that the East India Company might send somebody after us? Have you not heard of the Bombay Marine?’
‘For that you destroy a village? Murder defenceless people?’
‘Your men were quite ready to act, Mr Schiller, when they found there was money in it for them.’
‘Blood money,’ Schiller said. ‘And you still haven’t paid them for that crime. You even fail to pay your … blood money, Mr Fanshaw.’
‘Mr Schiller, I refuse to discuss this any further with you. You would be wise to forget the past and concentrate on the future.’
‘Yes, Mr Fanshaw. What about the future?’ Schiller folded his muscle-knotted arms across his chest. ‘You and I have still not discussed what happens after we leave China. Where do we sail from Canton? Do we collect cargo there and return to Madras? Have you signed to join a convoy to England? What are your plans?’
‘I’ll explain everything to you in good time.’
‘You say one thing, then another, Mr Fanshaw,’ Schiller persisted. ‘You tell me to think about the future and then do not tell me what the future is.’
‘Everything in good time, Mr Schiller,’ Fanshaw repeated smugly. Again, he raised his head, studying the flapping canvas.
Hell! Schiller cursed himself for ever getting mixed up with a cad like Fanshaw. He had inquired about the man in Madras before agreeing to sail him to China. Fanshaw enjoyed a good reputation as a Company merchant but had no personal friends. Schiller’s doubts about his integrity had started when Fanshaw had begun demanding complete secrecy over the forthcoming voyage. He had even refused to tell Schiller the name of the ship he would be sailing, or the nature of the voyage, until a fortnight before they were to leave. When Fanshaw had finally confided that he wanted Schiller to commandeer the China Flyer, the latter had refused to be part of the venture. Who needed to spend the rest of his life in gaol? His resistance had collapsed, however, when Fanshaw had promised him more gold than he had ever dreamt of. He had co-operated with the criminal plan.
Schiller was as angry with himself as he was with Fanshaw.
* * *
Damned lumbering German! George Fanshaw slammed the door of his cabin, furious at Lothar Schiller’s badgering questions. Why couldn’t an underling take orders and keep his peace?
Fanshaw considered all the members of a ship’s crew—from the captain down to the lowest loblolly boy—to be no different from grooms, ostlers, porters or footmen. All were servants in his view.
Fanshaw knew about servants. His family had been in domestic service for five long, abject generations. Only through hard work and dedication to self-improvement had Fanshaw himself been able to climb out of subserviency and carve a niche for himself in, if not the gentry, at least the merchant class.
The transformation had been systematic and of long duration.
First, changing his surname from Fykes, Fanshaw had found employment far away from England, in India. As a clerk for the East India Company, he had developed an educated accent, watched the mannerisms and dress of his social betters, and spent every free minute studying the dialects of the people with whom the Company traded.
Now he moved across the cabin’s pitching deck, undoing his stock and peeling off his frock-coat in the stifling heat as he gloated over what was to be the most important step in his climb to a higher class.
At present, the East India Company had a trade monopoly with China. No other British company had ever successfully challenged its exclusive trade with Canton. The families of the Company’s founders were now entrenched in England’s highest society—as well as enjoying great wealth.
It had occurred to Fanshaw a few years ago that, with ample financing and the correct political connections, some brilliant man—or group of men—could break the Company’s grip on trade with the Manchu mandarins. Then, two years ago, on a return visit to England, he had met Benjamin Cowcross, a stockholder in numerous ships sailing to the Orient. Cowcross had expressed casual interest to Fanshaw in making more than his usual seventy-five per cent from his investments with the Company. Private meetings ensued between the two men, Cowcross impressing Fanshaw as a coarse man but somebody with an adventurous business sense; Fanshaw impressing Cowcross with his knowledge of China and the lucrative trade with the Chinese.
Cowcross had listened avidly to Fanshaw’s plan for setting up a company to rival the East India Company. But he worried that the plot might be exposed. He did not want to be excluded from investing in further Company ventures. Finally, he had promised Fanshaw that he would make him a partner in a trade syndicate if an oath could be procured from the Manchu government that they would trade with a second British company.
The pitching of the cabin’s deck brought Fanshaw’s thoughts back to the present.
He gripped the edge of the desk, listening to the screech of the wind as it tore through the rigging.
Damn! That German lout was right. A storm was brewing.
Frustrated at the possibility of losing more time on this voyage, Fanshaw saw that he must persuade Schiller to press ahead, whatever the weather.
Before he left the cabin, however, he paused to put on his frock-coat and stock. A gentleman must always look the part, and never let the underlings see him improperly attired.