Kyril Bonfiglioli - All the Tea in China

“Aye aye, sir,” said the Second in a thin voice. He leaned over and plucked up the end of the smouldering length of punk which lay coiled in the tub, meaning to light his cheroot. The Captain chose to take this as a piece of nonchalance which, in his mood at that time, was the same as insolence.

“And Mister, secure the ship, if you please. No lights of any kind” — the Second flipped his cheroot over the side — “the galley fire to be out in five minutes. Two lookouts at the mast-head, each responsible for the other’s vigilance, on pain of flogging. I’ll write that on the watch-keeper’s slate and you’ll be so good as to initial it.”

“Aye aye, Sir,” said the Second in the most expressionless voice I have ever heard.

“And, Mr Van Cleef,” the Captain said to where I lurked in the shadows against the lee rail, “reassuring though it is to have your presence so continually on the quarter-deck, I fear we are depriving you of the opportunity to carry out your duties in the lazaretto and the specie-room.”

“Aye aye, Sir,” I said briskly. You cannot go far wrong on ship-board if you say “aye aye, Sir”: almost any other remark can be misconstrued.

As I slipped below I heard the Captain, while still on the companion-way, rasping out an order to Blanche to be ready in four and one half minutes. I gritted my teeth a little, for I was in love with Blanche, as I think I have made clear; moreover, there had been no time in Whampoa to meet any of the adept young ladies Peter had spoken of. My hand on the brass handle of my cabin door, I heard Knatchbull raise the sky-light and address the Second yet again.

“Mister, you understand that ‘secure ship’ means that boarding-nets are to be rigged, do you not?”

“Aye aye, Sir. The nets are being broken out now. They should be in place in precisely four and one half minutes.”

Who would have thought that the bloodless Second would have a sense of humour? It makes me happy to think that his last words were his first jest.

I closed the door of my cabin, kicked off my boots and reached for the plate of delicate eatables beside my bunk. I was at something of a loss as I lay down, for there was nothing to read except the Bible and nothing to think about except the Captain exercising his recondite connubial rites upon Blanche, a few feet above my head. As I munched the doctor’s “tabnabs” I strained my ears for the crack of the lash, the stifled scream, but all was drowned in the patter of bare feet upon the deck as the watch rove the boarding-nets into place, the occasional muffled curse and thud as a seaman lost his footing and a strangled cry of anguish as some clumsy fellow caught his finger, I supposed, in the tackle.

At a loss for pastime, I reached under the bunk and fished out the fat, flat mahogany box which contained my expensive revolving pistol. I drew the charges and loads and cleaned each chamber carefully. The watch on deck seemed to be making a great deal of noise about their task of rigging the boarding-nettings, they were yelling and blundering about like drunken men — woe betide them, I thought, if they disturb the Captain at his pleasure.

Yes, sure enough, there was the sound of his cabin door flung open, and a crash as (I hoped) he tripped over a chair and fell heavily. As I finished reloading and fitted the first percussion-cap onto its nipple, Peter flung open our cabin door. I looked up idly. Peter proved to be a huge yellow man with a shining naked head and a shining naked sword in his hand. There was a blood-curdling screech — from both us I fancy — then I shot him in the face. Just such another fiend took his place in the doorway, waving an even larger sword above his head. Time seemed to stand still as I carefully fitted another cap and shot him in mid-spring. His sword bit deep into the foot of my bunk and his blood hosed out in three or four great gushes: I must have severed the aorta. I dragged the two of them right into the cabin (so that they would not attract attention) then bolted the door and sat on my bunk, shaking uncontrollably. When I could master the use of my fingers again I reloaded the two expended chambers, re-capped all with infinite care, span the cylinder. Above my head, from the Captain’s cabin, came a frantic, rhythmical thumping and pounding, a sound that none but a nun could mistake for anything but what it was.

Inside my head the battle began: valour and honour strove to come to grips with and strangle slippery cowardice, who dodged and whined and hid behind the furniture of my mind. Was I a craven hound? Could I skulk behind a bolted door while the woman I loved was being abused and polluted by murderous savages?

Yes, I could. Yet there is some inner resource, deep inside us dastards, which rises up in times of terror and makes us ignore the commands of common sense. Somewhere, close by, a cannon roared; I was too bemused to wonder why or whence but the noise drove me to my feet. I unbolted the door, opened it a crack. Whooping, half-naked, blood-slobbered Chinese — some ten or a dozen — were pouring down the companion-way to the specie-room. I stole out and drew closed the water-tight teak door they had passed through and silently shot the great brass bolts. A-tiptoe, quaking, I mounted until I could just peer out, my nose at deck-level. Much of the tarry standing rigging of the main and foremasts was alight and by its gleam I could see a rabble of pirates forrard, crouched ready to storm the fo’c’sle and only held at bay by the occasional crack of a well-aimed pistol from its darkened recesses.

Behind and above me on the poop there was a stamping and shuffling and Peter’s voice, cracked with desperation, screaming “Dogs! Dogs!” Now my cowardice had quite crept away and in a moment I was on the poop, where Peter stood astride the body of the Second Mate, his back to the binnacle, a Chinese sword in one hand and a pistol in the other, daring them to come on.

“Hold quite still for a second, Peter!” I shouted, and fired past his ear at a gigantic pirate who had stolen up behind him. The man fell, but Peter’s assailants now turned to me — only to be dazzled by the blinding light of a dozen flare-rockets which turned the night into noon-tide. A speaking-trumpet blared from the sea: “All white men, flat on your faces on the word ‘three’. One, two …” I stared at the loom of a great ship which was almost aboard us — on her deck was a double rank of scarlet-coated men, those in front kneeling, the others standing. I flung myself to the deck. “… THREE” blared the loud-hailer and a withering blast of musketry swept the decks clear of pirates.

“Boarders away!” came the stentorian bellow and, with a mighty cheer, a host of sturdy, cutlass-armed bluejackets jumped over the side of their ship and landed thunderously onto the pirate lorcha which was grappled to our side. In another instant they were swarming into our John Coram , our own men were joining them from the fo’c’sle and the pirates were being hunted down like rats. I seized a midshipman, perhaps fifteen years old, his eyes wild, his dirk bloody.

“Down there!” I yelled into his ear, pointing at the door I had bolted. “A dozen of the swine!” Then I rushed to the Captain’s cabin.

As I burst in I stumbled over a hard, round object — the Captain’s head. This stumble saved my life, for a pistol banged and the ball whirred over my head. Lying on the ground, I shot the man who had tried to kill me, then the man who was squatting, dazed or drugged, in a corner of the room, all passion spent. The man on the bed, hunkered between Blanche’s out-spread thighs, was wearing the Captain’s stove-pipe hat; he was oblivious of all around him as he pumped and pounded at her belly. It was necessary to walk beside him and clap the pistol to his temple so as to shoot him without danger to Blanche. His rapt convulsions did not falter until his brains were splashed onto the bulkhead.