A pall of dense mist enshrouded the three Imperial war junks anchored within the harbour’s western arm. Their deck lanterns shone no brighter than yellow smudges in the night.
Horne turned from the starboard windows of his floating prison, wondering again if Fanshaw had been correct in warning him that he would soon be moved from the junk to a land gaol.
His earlier feeling of frustration had mellowed into a calm composure as he systematically considered the options open to him. After trying the door and inspecting the narrow windows lining both sides of the cabin, he abandoned any hope of immediate escape. Even the wooden louvres beneath the windows would be too noisy to remove from their frames. There might be an opportunity to break away from an escort if he was transferred to a prison on land, but he could not plan for that without knowing the size of his escort, or the method of transport.
Instead, he spent his time going over the defence he would present at the court of inquiry George Fanshaw had said he would have to face. The job would be to persuade the interrogators that the East India Company had sent him to Canton to recover the China Flyer and deliver George Fanshaw back to Fort St George. It would be his word against Fanshaw’s if the written orders had been destroyed.
Horne’s case would be simpler if the Chinese gave his Marines a chance to testify about the reason for the mission; but were the men still here in Whampoa? If Fanshaw had not been lying about the Huma being towed back down the Pearl River, Babcock, Groot, Jingee, Jud and Kiro might have rejoined the crew before the ship returned to Macao and the opium depot on Kam-Sing-Moon.
A sound disturbed his thoughts.
Lying motionless on his pallet, he stared blankly at the oil lamp flickering beside his pallet as he listened to the soft warble of a bird.
Why did the call sound so familiar? Where had he heard it before? Bombay? Years ago in England?
The gentle cooing sounded a second time, unobtrusive yet definitely unique.
Bird calls? What do they mean to me? What association do I have with that call and …
The soft tremolo came a third time.
Horne remembered.
It was the same call Cheng-So Gilbert had imitated in his first days out of Madras—the sound of the Whampoa waterfowls that were so delicious to eat.
Swinging his bare feet to the deck, Horne moved to the starboard windows and looked down at the courtesans’ sampans bobbing gently below him. Through the mist, he saw that one sampan had drifted closer to the junk than the others, and that a fat-faced girl was looking up at him.
Was she a late-comer hoping to join the guards’ party on the poop-deck? Or had she purposely been left aboard the sampan by her friends? Or was it possible that …
The waterfowl’s warble came again. Horne moved to look out of the other side of the cabin. There was a face pressed against the panes, and he came to a stop in the middle of the cabin.
Jingee! Hanging by a … rope?
Crossing the cabin in three strides, Horne blew out the lantern beside the bed and fell to his knees. He crawled towards the junk’s larboard windows and pressed his mouth against the low louvres, whispering, ‘What are you doing here?’
Jingee’s voice came to him through the slats. ‘We came to rescue you, Captain sahib.’
‘How did you get here?’
‘We swam ashore and stole boats, Captain sahib.’
‘Where have the Chinese been keeping you?’
‘On the next junk, Captain sahib. Earlier today we saw an Englishman row out to this ship. That’s how we guessed you were here.’
‘That was Fanshaw.’
‘So we guessed, Captain sahib.’
‘Did you all escape?’
‘In two groups, Captain sahib.’
‘Who’s here with you?’
‘Kiro and the Chinaman are with me, Captain sahib. Babcock, Groot, and Jud are below in a sampan from a flower house on shore.’
Horne remembered the fat-faced courtesan looking up at his cabin.
‘Are you armed?’ he asked.
‘Kiro and I have knives.’
Horne explained, ‘I tried opening the windows and removing these louvres, but I can’t do it without creating a disturbance.’
‘I saw you have one guard outside your door, Captain sahib. Are there others?’
‘Yes, but they’re merrymaking with the women. My guard goes and returns. I hear his footsteps.’
‘Shall I ambush him, Captain sahib?’
‘Where’s Kiro?’
‘Knotting a rope to the starboard side. To escape to the sampan.’
‘Cheng-So Gilbert?’
‘Rowing our little boat round to the sampan.’
‘Do we know if the women are trustworthy?’
‘Two have drunk themselves into unconsciousness, Captain sahib. The fat one’s ready to pass out.’
Horne weighed the preparations his men had made—boats, rope, knives. Realising that the escape must be quick and kept as simple as possible, he explained to Jingee how they should proceed.
* * *
Horne tapped lightly on the cabin door. He did not want to arouse the revellers on the poop-deck, but at the same time he had to attract the guard’s attention.
Rapping louder, he paused when he heard footsteps approaching the iron-banded door. Listening more closely he could hear only distant raucous laughter, the giggling of women, the sound of a stringed instrument enlivening the midnight party.
He knocked a third time, venturing in English. ‘Please, I must speak to you.’
As a key sounded in the lock, he prepared an excuse for having the door opened in case Jingee had not reached the agreed spot. The metallic scratch of the key stopped abruptly and, outside the door, he heard a thud.
There was another silence and then the key sounded again in the lock.
Horne stood back from the door as it opened a few inches. He pushed it wider and stepping out of the cabin, spotted the guard slumped on the deck. No one else was in sight. Pulling the guard into the cabin, he shoved him on to the pallet, pulled the blanket over him and crept back to the door.
From the protection of the shadows, he saw the revellers gathered round the glow of their lanterns and charcoal braziers on the poop-deck. Satisfied that he was temporarily unobserved, he hoisted himself on to the cabin roof and, finding the rope knotted there by Kiro, dropped over the starboard side, lowering himself hand-over-hand to the water. Then he released the rope and swam silently towards the sampan.
The boat was sitting low in the water, and Horne pulled himself cautiously aboard, wary of the sampan capsizing under the heavy passenger load.
As soon as Horne rolled aboard, the boat began moving. The chubby courtesan sat propped against the stern but was too inebriated to paddle. As she smiled blankly into the night, Jud and Kiro lay flat on both sides, paddling from prone positions with oars taken from the fisherman’s boat they were towing.
Satisfied with their progress, Horne crawled to the curtained awning, the stench of alcohol assailing his nostrils as he entered. Babcock, Groot and Jingee were there, waiting anxiously between the unconscious bodies of two painted courtesans, loud snores emerging from the women’s gaping mouths.