China by Edward Rutherfurd (latest novels to read TXT) 📗

Trader watched. The large Dutchman, once awake, moved with surprising speed. From under an awning, he dragged two large wicker baskets and opened them. One contained cheaply bound books; the other was full of pamphlets, in colored paper wrappers. Then he came to the wheel.

“Bibles?” asked Read.

“Gospels, Mr. Read, and Christian tracts. In Chinese, of course. Printed in Macao.”

“To convert the heathen?”

“That is my hope.”

“Strange way to convert people, if I may say so—off the side of an opium vessel.”

“If I could preach the Gospel ashore, sir, without being arrested, I should not be aboard this ship,” the big man replied. He looked at the skipper. “Which cargo do we sell first?”

McBride indicated Trader. The Dutchman turned to John. “I have your assurance that the cargo is all Patna and Benares. No loose Malwa cakes.”

“All properly packed, tight in balls,” said John. “Top quality.”

“Will you trust me to negotiate the prices?” the missionary asked. He saw John hesitate. “It will be better that way.”

Trader glanced at McBride, who nodded.

A strange fellow, this big Dutchman, John thought. A speaker of many tongues. God knows how many years he’d been out in the East trying to convert the heathen of a land he could not enter.

And now, it seemed, he must place his fortune in the Dutchman’s hands.

“All right,” he said.

—

The smuggling boat was a long, slim, unpainted vessel, with square sails and thirty or forty oarsmen, all armed with knives and cutlasses, at its sides. Scrambling dragons, the Chinese called these boats. From whatever quarter the wind came—or if there was no wind at all—a scrambling dragon could maneuver at speed, and it was hard to catch.

The smugglers had no sooner come alongside than a small, tough, barefooted fellow with a pigtail, dressed only in knee-length cotton breeches and an open shirt, climbed quickly aboard and went straight to Van Buskirk.

The negotiation was amazingly brief, conducted in Cantonese, which the Dutchman seemed to speak fluently. After a few words, the smuggler dived down into the hold with the captain and selected a chest, which was carried up on deck by two of the hands. Taking a sharp knife, he cut the gunnysacking from around the wooden chest and prized open the pitch seal. A moment later, the chest was open and he was riffling through the packing filler, removing the matting to reveal the upper layer of twenty compartments containing the spherical cakes of opium, like so many small cannonballs, each tightly wrapped in poppy leaves.

Taking out a ball and scraping back the leaf, the man wiped his knife on his shirt and then worked it a little way into the hard, dark opium cake beneath. Then he placed the blade in his mouth. After closing his eyes for a moment, he nodded sharply and turned to Van Buskirk.

Less than a minute later, after a quick-fire exchange, the deal was done.

“Fifty chests, at six hundred silver dollars each,” the Dutchman announced.

“I’d hoped for a thousand,” said John.

“Not this year. His first offer was five hundred. You’re still making a profit.”

Before they had even finished speaking, the crewmen were hurriedly bringing up chests on deck, while others began to lower them over the side to the scrambling dragon. At the same time, a chest of silver was being hauled up. As soon as it was on deck, the Chinese smuggler began to count it out. Bags of coins, ingots of silver, he made a pile on the deck while the captain calmly watched.

Van Buskirk, however, seemed to have lost all interest in the transaction now. Rushing to his wicker baskets, he delved into the first one and pulled out a pile of books. “Help me, Mr. Trader,” he called out. “It’s the least you can do.”

Trader hesitated. The silver was still piling up on the deck. But Read obligingly went to the other basket, scooped up an armful of tracts, and, holding them under his chin, walked to the side of the ship and dropped them into the smugglers’ vessel below, while the Dutchman did the same thing with his gospels.

“Read them,” the Dutchman instructed the Chinese oarsmen below, in Cantonese. “Share the Word of God.”

The business of loading the opium was progressing now with astonishing speed. A human chain had been formed so that the heavy boxes were flowing from hold to deck and from the deck over the side as smoothly as a snake. By the time that Van Buskirk and Read had each collected two more armfuls of literature and distributed them, the loading was complete and the Chinese smuggler was leaving the ship.

“Tell him to wait,” Trader called to the Dutchman. “I haven’t checked the money yet.” But Van Buskirk appeared unconcerned, and to Trader’s dismay, the smuggler was over the side and his oarsmen were pushing away. He saw both Read and the captain smile as the missionary calmly closed his wicker baskets before coming over to where the pile of silver lay.

“You think he may have shortchanged you?” Van Buskirk asked. He gently shook his head. “You will soon learn, young man, that the Chinese never do that. Not even the smugglers. Your silver will be exactly correct, I assure you.”

And as he stowed the money in his strongbox, Trader discovered that this was indeed the case.

—

For two more hours they continued on their way. It was a fine day, and the sun’s rays were dancing cheerfully upon the sea. He and Read stood together by the ship’s rail. Several times they saw schools of flying fish skimming over the water.

They’d been enjoying the scene for a while when the American gently observed: “I’ve been trying to figure you out, Trader. You seem a nice fellow.”

“Thank you.”

“The men in this trade are a tough crowd, mostly. I’m not saying you couldn’t be tough. But you seem a little finer. So I’m wondering what’s driving you. Something you’re running from, something you’re searching for. Sure as hell, something’s eating you. So I’m wondering: