George Fraser - Flashman and the Dragon

You must bear with my historical lecture, for I have to show you how things stood if you are to understand my tale. For all the official coolness between Pekin and ourselves, commerce was still going on between our traders and Canton (which we continued to hold) but the Carpenters were right to wonder how long it might continue, with our invasion imminent. Which brings me back to the point where I agreed to escort their cargo of poppy up the Pearl, with the prospect of a jolly river cruise, sixteen hundred sovs, and a fine frolic with dear Phoebe when I got back to Hong Kong.

Mind you, as I leaned on the rail of the lead lorcha bearing up beyond Lintin Island two days after our picnic, with the rising sun rolling the fog-banks up the great estuary, I could honestly say it wasn’t either the cash or the lady that had made me turn opium-runner. No, it was the fun of the thing, the lure of sport-without-danger, the seeking for fresh sights and amusements, like this magnificent Pearl River, with that wondrous silver mist that I suppose gave it its name, and its fairy islets beyond the Tiger’s Gate, and the dawn breeze rippling the shining water and filling the sails of the stubby junks and lorchas and crazy fisher-craft – and the pug-nosed, grinning Hong Kong boat girl rolling her poonts on the thwart of a sampan and shouting: ‘Hi-ya, cap’n! Hi-ya! You wanchee jiggee no wanchee jiggee? You payee two hunner’ cash, drinkee samshu? Jollee-jollee!’

‘Who you, Dragon Empress?’ says I. ‘Come aboard, one hunner’ cash, maybe all-same samshu.’ They’re the jolliest wenches, the Hong Kong boaters, plump little sluts who swim like fish and couple like stoats. She squealed with laughter and plunged in, reached the lorcha in a few fast strokes, and was hauled inboard, all wet and shiny and giggling in her little loin-cloth. Anything less like an angel of Providence you never saw, but that’s what she was; if I’d guessed, I’d ha’ treated her with more respect than I did, slapping her rump and sending her aft for later. For the moment I was content to muse at the rail, enjoying the warm sunshine and the distant green prospect of Lintin, where the coolies could be seen languidly pursuing the only two occupations known to the Chinese peasant: to wit, standing stock-still up to the knees in paddy-water holding a bullock on a rope, or shifting mud very slowly from one point to another. Deny them these employments, and they would simply lie down and die, which a good many of them seemed to do anyway. I’m told that Napoleon once said that China was a sleeping giant, and when she awoke the world would be sorry. He didn’t say who was going to get the bastards out of bed.

I put this to Ward, the skipper commanding the two lorchas which made up our little convoy. He was a brisk, wiry, bright-eyed little Yankee about ten years my junior, and though he hadn’t been in China more than a month or two, you couldn’t have wished for a smarter hand at the helm of a lorcha, or a sharper tongue when it came to keeping the Chinese boatmen up to the mark; he was a young terrier, and had learned his trade on American merchantmen, with a mate’s ticket, damn-your-eyes, which was fair going at his age. For all that, he had an odd, soft streak; when one of the Chinks was knocked overside by a swinging boom, and we lost way fishing him out, I looked to see Ward lay into him with a rope’s end for his clumsiness, or hang him from the rail to dry. But he just laughed and cuffed the Chink’s head, with a stream of pigeon, and says to me:

‘I fell overboard on my first voyage – and what d’ye think I was doing? Chasing a butterfly, so help me, I was! Say, I was a lot greener than that Chink, though! C’mon, ye blushing Chinese cherubs, tailee on makee pull! Pullee, I say! Tell ye what, colonel, it takes an awful lot o’ these beggars to do one man’s work!’

That was when I observed that the Chinese were the idlest rascals in creation, and he frowned and chuckled all together.

‘I reckon,’ says he. ‘But they could be a fine people, for all that. Give ’em someone to lead ’em, to drive ’em, to show ’em how. They got the prime country in creation here – when they find out how to use it. Say, and they’re smart – you know they were civilised while we were still running around with paint on? Why, they had paper an’ gunpowder centuries before we did!’

‘Which they use to make kites and fireworks,’ says I. It was plain he was an old China hand in the making – and after a few weeks’ acquaintance, too. ‘As for their civilisation, it’s getting rottener and more corrupt and decadent by the minute. Look at their ramshackle government—’

‘Look at the Taipings, if you like!’ cries he. ‘That’s the new China, mark my words! They’ll stand this whole country on its head, ’fore they’re through, see if they don’t!’ He took a big breath, smoothing his long black hair with both hands in an odd nervous gesture; his eyes were shining with excitement. ‘The new China! Boy, I’m going to get me a section of that, though! Know what, colonel? – after this trip, I might just take myself a long slant up the Yangtse and join up with ’em. Tai’ping tieng-kwow , eh? The Kingdom of Heavenly Peace – but can’t they fight some? I guess so – and you may be sure they’re on the look-out for mercenaries – why, a go-ahead white man could go right to the top among ’em, maybe make Prince even, with a button on his hat!’ He laughed and slapped his fist, full of ginger.

‘You’re crazy,’ says I, ‘but since they are too, you’ll fit right in, I daresay.’

‘Fred T. Ward fits in anywhere, mister!’ cries he, and then he was away along the deck again, chivvying the boatmen to trim the great mainsail, yelling his bastard pigeon and laughing as he tailed on to the rope.

Not only China-struck, but a well-fledged lunatic, I could see. Of course he wasn’t alone in having a bee in his bonnet about the Taipings; even the European Powers were keeping an anxious eye on them, wondering how far they might go. In case you haven’t heard of them, I must tell you that they were another of those incredible phenomena that made China the topsy-turvy mess it was, like some fantastic land from Gulliver, where everything was upside down and out of kilter. Talk about moonbeams from cucumbers; the Taipings were even dafter than that.

They began back in the ’forties, when a Cantonese clerk failed his examinations and fell into a trance, from which he emerged proclaiming that he was Christ’s younger brother – a ploy which, I’m thankful to say, I never tried on old Arnold after making a hash of my Greek construes at Rugby. Anyway, this clerk decided he had a God-given mission to overthrow the Manchoos and establish ‘the Tai’ping’ – the Kingdom of Eternal Peace or Heavenly Harmony or what you will. He went about preaching a sort of bastard Christianity which he’d picked up from missionary tracts, and in any normal country he’d either have been knocked on the head or given a University Chair. But this being China, his crusade had caught on, against all sense and reason, and within a few years he’d built up an enormous army, devastated several provinces, thrashed various Imperial generals, captured dozens of cities including the old capital, Nanking, and come within an ace of Pekin itself. Getting madder by the minute, mark you, but among the millions of peasants who’d rallied to him and swallowed his religious moonshine, there were some likely lads who plotted the campaigns, fought the battles, and imposed his amazing notions of worship and discipline on a sizeable slice of the population.

This was the famous Taiping Rebellion, fn2the bloodiest war ever fought on earth, and it was still going great guns in ’60. Countless millions had already died in it, but neither the Imperials nor the rebels looked like winning just yet; the Imps were besieging Nanking, but not making much of it, while various Taiping armies were rampaging elsewhere, spreading the gospel and piling up the corpses, as not infrequently happens.