Jan Slauerhoff - The Forbidden Kingdom

I felt something cold on my forehead. I tried to brush it away, still absorbed in receiving the signals, but my hand was grasped, and another claw grabbed me round the neck, while yet another pulled my hand off the signal key and several at once tugged at the headphones.

How did all those hands come to be on me at the same time? I was able to look up for a moment, and then my head was forced down again. The radio cabin was full of Chinese: I had never realized so many people could fit into it; less than half the number of white men could have done so. Even without a revolver against my temple I would not have been able to resist. I could not move, the cabin was so full. They tied me up, then some of them left the cabin, leaving four behind, who smashed the dynamo; they knew what they were doing. I had to show them where the elements were and they were destroyed too. Then I was carried outside. The bridge was full of Chinese, and the Captain stood among them. We were thrown into a cabin together. Some of us were injured and at first were able to lie down, but the engineers were also stuffed into the cabin one by one, so that everyone had to stand up again.

There was no great problem if one did not resist and waited calmly: the ship was steered into a shallow bay until it ran aground. Then the pirates left the ship with the valuables, went ashore somewhere among the mountains and immediately disappeared, while we stayed on board until a torpedo boat with a shallow draught came and took off the rest of the crew, or a storm finished us off. The pirates could not be caught, and the ship could not be refloated. That was the normal outcome. If the torpedo boat came quickly and one had kept one’s possessions, one could just sign on for another ship. The company’s losses were covered by the insurance.

This time it was different, frighteningly different. Usually about twenty men attacked the ship, whereas this gang numbered at least a hundred, as many as there were crew. And then the way they acted proved that there were as many leaders as foot soldiers. Normally one of the officers has to steer the ship with a couple of revolver barrels trained on him. This gang did not need a helmsman. The third different thing was… the typhoon, which only I knew about. If we kept heading straight for the shore, we were bound to encounter it, as we would be heading straight for it.

Fortunately the Captain was standing next to me, so that I could whisper news of the approaching catastrophe in his ear without causing panic among the others. He went pale, motioned me to be quiet and wait until one of the Chinese came by and then ask to speak to the man in charge. It was morning before they brought us some food, which was actually to make a mockery of us. We did not have a hand free, or the room to raise it to our mouths. It was put on the corner of a cupboard, to taunt us. I tried to signal that I wanted to speak to their chief, as did the Captain, but they didn’t understand us.

Fortunately they had also taken the Chinese contractor or comprador prisoner. He was probably part of the plot, but even if he was they obviously wanted to save his face. To that end the comprador endured hunger, thirst and near-suffocation with us, and I must say with great composure. So he was still subject to the Captain’s authority and translated his request.

A quarter of an hour later I and the comprador were untied and taken forward to the Captain’s cabin. Five Chinese were sitting there. On the table revolvers lay among whisky bottles. Four of them were sitting on the bunk, while the fifth occupied the Captain’s office chair. Beneath a black mask hung a grey moustache. The man was very fat and scarcely moved. I had a suspicion that he was a white man. The Chinese fired questions, the comprador translated, and one of the four retranslated. I told them about the last signal I had received and warned them that we were heading for a typhoon if we kept on this course. The chief muttered incomprehensibly, and we were grabbed again and taken back to the cabin where we were being held. The comprador whispered to me: “Because of his superior wisdom he knows all about currents and typhoons, and doesn’t need the Westerners’ machines.”

Fine, I thought, if that’s how you want it. I hope he’s caught in the middle of it with his superior wisdom. But actually I expected him to use our advice to his advantage, and have them change course. I was wrong, but I’m convinced that he, and he alone, realized the importance of the warning, but could not pay any attention to it in front of the others without forfeiting his authority.

At first, though, the chief’s wisdom seemed superior to the sensitive instruments of Zi-Ka-Wei. For two days we sailed across a calm sea. We were tied a little less tightly, and the sickest of us could lie in the two bunks, and we could eat food. The Captain and the second engineer suffered worst, as we were given no alcohol at all. The Captain especially was going visibly downhill, shivering, stuttering and weeping.

On the third night it arrived after all, despite the fat chief’s wisdom. We saw nothing of the storm. Now no one could lie down any more and still we were thrown on top of each other at intervals. It went on for two days. Three men died. The Captain went mad and started biting; all his teeth were knocked out. The rest could scarcely breathe. If it had lasted a few hours longer we would all have suffocated. But the door opened, and the wind had dropped, though the waves were still splashing up sky-high. But things soon improved. In the afternoon we were laid out on the deck, and buckets of water were thrown over us till we got up, and then we had to drag the bodies to the railings; we refused to throw them overboard, and they lay there for hours, until another high wave came and did the job for us and washed them away.

How could it be so calm the following day? The sea was no longer a swirling mass of water, we were floating in a soft blue mist, with a few brown islands beside us and a few ragged clouds above us. We no longer felt our bodies, and pain and exhaustion were forgotten. It was as if the hurricane had abolished gravity. We sailed on, and the clouds faded into a complete blur, but the islands were becoming more numerous; in the evening hosts of them lay off a low, hazy coast. The sky above seemed like the real world, where between vertical cliffs wide fissures opened onto azure seas.

Between them the Loch Catherine drifted like a foreign body, a meteor, hurled down onto a still fluid planet that had come to rest but not yet found solidity. The ship floated into the bay.

The next morning we lay a hundred metres from the sandy shore. This time the pirates seemed not to be content with carrying off cash and precious possessions. All tools, all the iron and copperware, loose equipment and provisions were landed and carted off by hundreds of coolies to a large shed further inland. The lifeboats were lowered and pulled up onto the beach. All the indications were that the pirates had had enough of going on board as passengers and as in the old days wanted to fit out pirate junks for themselves. It was possible that those on board were on a mission to obtain materials.

AFTER THE LOCH CATHERINE had been thoroughly plundered and looked like a stripped wreck, we were also taken off. We were tied by the arm two by two and taken ashore escorted by four Chinese soldiers. Then the ship’s engines were started and it was freed from its moorings. It swung rudderless across the bay, and quickly ran aground. The engines went on churning for a while, then grated to a halt, and the ship formed a new cliff at the entrance to the bay.

The black iron cauldron in which the food for the deck passengers was always cooked had also been brought ashore. The cook was busy preparing a meal for us. Then the comprador distributed the portions as we moved past him in a line. He had now finally discarded the mask of a fellow-prisoner, and handed us the bowls with a grin. He saw the humour of the reversal of roles with an almost Western sensitivity. But he gave a kick to a few of us whom he hated especially, and he spat in the engineer’s face.