Amitav Ghosh - Flood of Fire

Yet, despite the pounding, the Chinese artillery continued to fire, hour after hour. Every time a gun was knocked out another would appear somewhere else.

Meanwhile fires were blazing in various parts of the city and crowds were milling about on the roadways. Through all this the foreign enclave had remained unscathed, for the British warships had been instructed to direct their fire away from it. This special treatment did not long escape the notice of the townsfolk: with the foreigners beyond their reach the foreign enclave was now the only target on which they could vent their rage.

In the small hours of the night a large crowd was seen to be advancing upon the enclave. A detachment of Royal Marines was sent over to rescue the Americans who had stayed behind; they were whisked away just as the crowd poured into the enclave.

From the safety of the Aurora the merchants watched as the doors of the factories were battered down. Then the crowds rushed inside, to carry away whatever they could find. After the buildings had been emptied they were set alight.

The factories were all lavishly constructed, with fine wooden panelling and parquet floors. They burned mightily, with upcurling plumes of fire shooting out of their doorways and windows.

The merchants on the Aurora watched in horror as the factories went up in flames. The spectacle was poignant even for Zachary whose acquaintance with the Thirteen Factories was very brief. Some of the other merchants had frequented those buildings for decades; some had accumulated vast fortunes there. Many began to weep.

By the time the sun rose the buildings had been reduced to charred skeletons.

After breakfast the senior merchants on the Aurora were summoned to a meeting on the Nemesis . On returning, Mr Burnham told Zachary that British gunships had destroyed dozens of war-junks and fire-boats during the night; as for guns, so many had been silenced that the number was yet to be computed. On the British side the toll was negligible: some injuries, a couple of dead, and a few lightly damaged ships. The Nemesis had been swiftly repaired and she had seen a great deal of action afterwards. In a single sortie the steamer had destroyed forty-three war-junks and thirty-two fire-rafts.

But the Chinese offensive was far from exhausted, said Mr Burham: it was thought that they still had many fire-rafts and attack-boats in reserve. The mopping-up operations would continue for a while yet: once completed the British forces would probably launch a punitive attack on the city, to demonstrate, once and for all, that these attempts at resistance were futile and that no more prevarication would be tolerated.

In the meantime the merchant ships anchored at Whampoa were to remain where they were until such time as a convoy was organized to take them to Hong Kong Bay. Zachary was to stay with the Ibis until the convoy departed; he was to proceed to Hong Kong with the other merchant ships.

‘And you, sir?’ said Zachary to Mr Burnham.

‘I’ve been asked to stay on in Canton for a while,’ said Mr Burnham. ‘When you get to Hong Kong would you be so good as to tell my wife that I’ll be back in a fortnight or so, after this bit of nonsense has been sorted out?’

‘Yes of course, sir,’ said Zachary. ‘I’ll go over to see Mrs Burnham as soon as I get there.’

*

At Hong Kong Bay it was so sultry that morning that Paulette woke up wondering whether she was in the grip of a fever. Her sheets and her nightclothes were drenched in sweat — yet inside her, at her core, there was an icy feeling of disquiet.

But when she mentioned it to Fitcher he said there was no reason to worry: it was just that the weather had taken an odd turn. The temperature had risen sharply and he had a feeling that a big storm was on the way.

During his time in southern China Fitcher had become familiar with the signs of an approaching typhoon: the sudden heat, the stifling humidity and the stillness of the air were to him as much harbingers of a ‘big blow’ as a falling barometer. So certain was he of this that he went out to the western end of Hong Kong Bay, in a boat, to see whether clouds had appeared on the southern horizon. That was the direction from which typhoons usually came, sweeping up from the south to lash the coast, battering Macau, Hong Kong and Kowloon before travelling northwards to Canton and beyond.

But there was not a cloud anywhere to be seen that morning; the sky was a flat white mirror, radiating heat.

The storm would not break for a while yet, Fitcher told Paulette, and it would probably be preceded by a few showers and spells of rain. That was how it usually happened: there was no immediate reason for concern.

All of this made sense to Paulette yet her mind was not set entirely at rest. Fitcher understood then that she was fretting about something else and he urged her not to go to the nursery that day; there was no need, he said, the caretakers would be able to manage perfectly well on their own.

But Paulette decided that she would go over to the island after all — despite the heat it would be better to be at work than to fret on board.

So the Redruth ’s gig set off, as it did every day — except that today the water, like the air, was unnaturally still: the boat’s ripples carved grooves upon its glassy surface.

Paulette was sitting with her back to the bows and as they drew closer to Hong Kong one of the oarsmen told her to turn around. Glancing over her shoulder she saw that dozens of people had gathered to form a ring around something lying on the beach.

A memory stirred of another day, two years ago, when a body had been washed in by the tide. Her heart lurched and she told the oarsmen to row faster, faster. When the gig pulled up to the shore she leapt out and went running across the beach.

She had to push past a number of people to get through the ring. At the centre lay a man’s body. The wet clothing was pierced all over with rents and slashes — but there was no mistaking that ragged jacket and the shapeless trowsers.

A stout, elderly man was squatting beside the body; he had covered the face with a piece of cloth but on seeing Paulette he took it off.

‘Mistoh Freddie Lee.’

It turned out that the old man was Freddie’s landlord in Sheng Wan village. The night before, he said, a couple of men had come to the house asking for Freddie. They had said that they were friends of his and that he was to meet them on the beach.

Freddie had responded warily when the message was conveyed: ‘Who they ask for, eh?’

‘Freddie Lee,’ the landlord had said, and this had settled Freddie’s doubts.

‘Only friends call me that, ne?’

He had put on his hat and set off for the beach.

That was the last time he was seen alive.

Around Canton the attacks and counter-attacks, the explosions and bombardments continued for three long days, to the accompaniment of a continuous and rising din — the howling of unseen mobs, the panicked cries of children, the crackling of flames.

On the British side the fighting and shooting was done entirely by the navy; the infantry battalions that had been brought to Whampoa remained on their respective ships, at Whampoa, through this time.

The confinement was particularly trying for the Bengal Volunteers since they had been at Whampoa for many weeks already. To make things worse, on the second day of the offensive, there was a sudden change in the weather, which became increasingly torrid and sultry. Without a catspaw of wind to stir the air the stench of the bilges permeated every corner of the ship, making it as hard to remain below deck as it was to venture out into the sun.