Amitav Ghosh - Flood of Fire

Two days from Hong Kong Bay the lookout spotted Philip Fraser’s brigantine heading towards them. The two vessels hove to abreast of each other and Zachary went over for a meal.

Mr Fraser had much news to pass on: the British fleet had returned to the Pearl River estuary to await the opening of negotiations with Qishan, the new viceroy of Guangdong. One of the Plenipotentiaries, Admiral George Elliot, had fallen ill; he had resigned his command to Commodore Bremer. Captain Elliot was now the sole Plenipotentiary which was a matter of no little chagrin to many in the expeditionary force. Among his fellow officers Captain Elliot had gained a reputation for being too soft on the Chinese; the prevalent feeling was that nothing would come of his strategy of talk-talk-talk; that the Chinese were only using this time to build up their defences. Many officers took the view that Peking would make no concessions until it was given a bloody nose and they ridiculed the Plenipotentiary for his illusions. Many regarded him as a vacillating fool and did not hesitate to say so. Derisive nicknames abounded — Plenipot, Plenny-potty, Plenny-pissy-potty and so on.

In the meantime, the British fleet had been augmented by several more warships including a revolutionary new vessel: the Nemesis , an ironclad steamer, the first of her kind to venture into the Indian Ocean. Mr Fraser had been given a tour of this marvellous vessel and he could not stop talking about her. The Nemesis was made almost entirely of metal; there was so much iron on her that a special device had to be fitted on her compass to correct the deflection. Her two massive paddle-wheels were powered by engines of one hundred and twenty horsepower which daily devoured eleven tons of coal. Yet the draught of this mighty vessel was so shallow that she could operate in waters of no more than five feet! This was because she had two keels that could be raised and lowered. Her armaments too were such as to induce awe: she carried two thirty-two-pound pivot guns, capable of shooting shell or canister, five brass six-pounders, and ten iron swivels; in addition there was a tube on the bridge between her paddle-wheels, for the launching of Congreve rockets.

It was thought by many, said Mr Fraser, that the Nemesis would forever change the nature of naval warfare: she was expected to serve as a secret weapon, striking terror into the Chinese.

Along with all the other news, there was a snippet that was of particular interest to Zachary: Mr and Mrs Burnham had arrived in China on their ship, the Anahita . Mr Fraser had met them at Hong Kong Bay and they had both been very pleased to hear of Zachary’s successes on the coast.

The news prompted Zachary to crowd the Ibis ’s masts with sail, sending the schooner skimming across the waves.

*

Chusan, and the progress of the campaign in the north, were subjects of much discussion in the sepoys’ tents in Saw Chow. News was sparse in the early weeks but it was generally understood that the fighting had been light and Chusan had been taken with very few casualties.

But as August turned into September ominous rumours began to circulate, of outbreaks of sickness and disease. Kesri heard that sick and dying soldiers were being transported back from Chusan to the southern sector. The word was that they were being sent to Macau, to be accommodated either in the Misericordía or in a mansion that had been turned into a hospital.

Then one day news arrived that a contingent of sick sepoys from their brother unit — the other company of the Bengal Volunteers battalion — had been sent back from Chusan and were now languishing in the Misericordía. Kesri went to Captain Mee to ask if the reports were true; not only did the captain confirm them, he also gave Kesri permission to take a group of NCOs to Macau, to visit the sick sepoys.

Since their arrival in China the sepoys had not once set foot in Macau. Although this visit was anything but a pleasure trip, they were glad to have an opportunity to see the town. Nor were they disappointed: Macau made a tremendous impression on all of them, most of all on Kesri. Their group happened to land near the temple of A-Ma, the goddess of the sea, and Kesri could not resist going in to have a look. He was amazed by the number of things that looked familiar — the incense, the idols, the sacred trees, the carved figures that guarded the gates. Kesri had known of course that many Chinese were Buddhists but not till then did he have any sense of the similarities between their dharma and his own.

Afterwards, walking to the Misericordía, the sepoys got lost in the town’s winding lanes. But at every turn there was someone to ask directions from, not just in English but also Hindustani — there were Goans everywhere, running shops, patrolling the streets, guarding doors. A squad of Goan sepoys even showed them their barracks and gave them gifts of fruit.

The Misericordía was a sombre, grey building. The compound was very crowded and no one paid them any attention. Fortunately Kesri spotted Rosa, who recognized him from the Hind : she led the way to a small, dark room at one side of the building — this was the ward in which the sick sepoys were housed.

On inquiring about the conditions in Chusan, Kesri learnt that the initial seizure of the island had indeed been relatively uncomplicated, as he had thought — it was in the aftermath of the fighting that things had taken a hellish turn. Epidemics of fevers and other diseases had broken out; hundreds of sepoys and soldiers had been struck down by chronic, uncontrollable dysentery. In the field-hospital mattresses were packed so close together that the attendants couldn’t get through without stepping on sick and dying men.

The basic problem lay in the high command’s ignorance of the island, said the sick sepoys. Their campsites had been chosen without due regard for the terrain: the fact that the low-lying areas of Chusan were dotted with swamps and marshes had not been taken properly into account. As a result the troops had been exposed to noxious vapours and deadly miasmas. Often their tents would be flooded by rising waters. One detachment of sepoys had set up camp on a hill, but only to be beset by foul odours; the smells were so persistent that they had decided to dig down, in the hope of finding a solution to the mystery. Within a few inches of the surface they had hit upon skulls, skeletons and rotting bones: it turned out that the ‘hill’ was a burial mound. The officers had decided that the mound was a source of contagion and had ordered that it be blown up. The explosion had resulted in a crater of coffins and corpses.

On Chusan, said the sepoys, fresh water was so difficult to find that they had sometimes had to drink from the ditches that irrigated the rice-fields. Provisions, most of which had been procured in Calcutta, were scanty or rotten, infested with weevils and fungus: it was evident to the sepoys that someone had earned huge profits by providing substandard supplies. Yet so dire were the shortages that the commissariat had been forced to keep on buying, at vastly inflated prices, from the merchant vessels that had accompanied the occupying force on its northwards journey.

And then there was the heat, which even the sepoys had found hard to cope with: for the white soldiers it had been almost beyond endurance. On top of that, the occupiers had also had to cope with the unrelenting hostility of the island’s inhabitants. Because of the bounties offered by the Chinese authorities the soldiers had not been able to relax for a minute, for fear of being murdered or kidnapped. A few who had let down their guard had paid a steep price, among them a captain of the Madras Artillery who had been set upon by a mob and whisked away to the mainland: his Indian servant had died in the fracas.