Mean Sun (19 page)

I saw Mr. Woodman wildly waving his arms to catch our attention. He pointed to something off our stern. I could see nothing, but what I imagined. Then I glimpsed the dim luster of a lantern a ways off, no larger than a pebble, drawing along our starboard.

“We have a lantern below,” said Jacobs to Hall. “Fetch it here. Bring the girl up, too.”

Hall returned with the unlit lamp and Wen Xi.

“You listen, lady,” he said to her, cupping his ear for emphasis. “They call. You tell me.”

Wen Xi, red-faced and frightened, absorbed his request. Moments later, another cry came from the ship at our larboard. A cry from the sister ship returned the call.

“Well?” demanded Jacobs.

“They say ‘no ship,’” she said. She pronounced the word several times in Chinese. “No ship, no ship.”

“Fine,” said Jacobs. “Now teach those words to Mr. Wren here.”

Wen Xi repeated the phrase to me and I repeated it back. She repeated it once again, correcting my stresses, and I practiced it a few times more. She nodded.

The lamp grew larger for a time, then receded again for a time then waxed larger. I still could not see the outline of the starboard ship, when out of the grey the indistinct scratches of spars of the larboard ship and its lamp seemed to come out of nowhere.

“Light the lamp,” ordered Jacobs Mr. Woodman. “Stand on the prow and hold it aloft.” The lamp was lit and Woodman did as directed, skipping and stumbling in his panic. “Now, Mr. Wren, in your best Chinese, sing your heart out.”

Pitching a hopeful glance at Wen Xi, I stepped to the larboard rail. I drew in a deep breath and cried out the words. To my horror, there was no response. I looked over to Wen Xi for approval. She nodded.

“Again, Mr. Wren!” said Jacobs.

I gave a second cry. Mr. Woodman was holding his lamp high and plain. The seconds seemed to stretch into hours. Finally, the voice from the ship replied. She came hard about and wore off to the southwest.

We listened for the ships and felt their wakes clip our bow, then nothing.

“Let’s finish up here,” said Jacobs.

Wen Xi observed the main sail then spoke to Mr. Jacobs.

“You write me on sail,” she said to Jacobs, who eyed her as if she was a squawking seagull. She slapped the palm of her hand on the sail. “My name! My name!”

“What does she give, here, Wren?” asked Jacobs.

“Something about writing her name.”

“On the sail?”

“I believe so, Mr. Jacobs.”

“Why in Hades would we do that?”

Wen Xi looked anxiously from me to Jacobs.

“Write name,” she repeated adamantly, smacking the sail again. “Emperor ships see my name.”

“She means that we’ll not be attacked by the emperor if we put her name on the mainsail.”

“Do we have paint then?” said Jacobs. “Have a look, Wren.”

Pigment powders were fortunately in abundance in the small chart room, all the decorative colors of the junk. In a pan I mixed a concoction of all the black and orange pigments until it was rich and pasty. I found a round brush, as large in diameter as my arm, and shortly returned to the deck.

The repairs to the main sail were complete. I presented the brush to Wen Xi and held the mushy pan of pigments. She dipped the brush and strode over to the sail. In giant Chinese characters she sketched out her name, until it covered the canvas like the royal crest.

“We must depart before nightfall,” said Jacobs. “Make ready. We’ll hoist her, and hope this old bucket has legs.”

Chapter 15

Out of the Fog

As darkness fell, the wind shifted and became our friend. I returned to the cabin and found Mr. Brooks in the company of Lord Douglas, who was pouring over one of my charts, which told me he had been foraging through the piloting trunk Mr. Grimmel had prepared for me. Large beads of sweat were on Mr. Brooks’ forehead and shoulders, his breathing labored, and his voice barely a whisper.

“When do we make port?” asked Greyson, still scrutinizing the map.

I replied with a haphazard guess: “Two, maybe three days from the mouth of the river.” I then addressed Mr. Brooks. “The wind is rising, sir. The fog will blow off shortly.”

Mr. Brooks stirred.

“The ships.”

“No sign of them, Mr. Brooks.”

Mr. Brooks muttered something else that I couldn’t hear, then fell into a wheezing fit and spat up blood.

“Sir?” I asked.

“Make sail,” interjected Lord Douglas impatiently. I hesitated. “He said to set sail, Mr. Wren.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

I promptly relayed the order to Mr. Jacobs.

The large lateen was the first to be set. She cracked rudely and wobbled as if tumbling from bed, then pivoted on her backside into the running breeze and spread like a fan. The junk began to glide smoothly over the green water. The fog was also running quickly and its silky veils were sweeping over our masts and dragging across our deck.

We were sailing blind, and I feared that at any moment we might collide with our enemies. Hall and his mates stepped lively
along the deck to the smaller foresail. Without the encumbrance of the square-sail rigging, she was brought up with light effort, and shaking the fog from her, spread like her sister.

To correct our course, I lit another stick of incense and it was steadily devouring its way down toward my fingers.

“Fog is breaking up,” cried out Mr. Hall.

Mr. Jacobs acknowledged him with a helpless shrug.

“Mr. Wren,” said Jacobs, “when we break out they could be waiting for us. I pray your lines are sharp, mister, for we may find ourselves in a horse race.” He turned to Mr. Hall, blasting, “Prepare the mainsail, Mr. Hall!”

His little crew folded the batten panels into their proper order. The three strands of cordage were set, and the luff hauling parrel was re-threaded up to the yard hauling parrel. The tack line was inspected, drawn and tested. After several minutes, Mr. Hall called out.

“Every batten is secure from luff to leech, sir.”

“Haul away!” cried Jacobs.

Up the sail went, almost soundlessly. One batten after another filled its cheeks. At full height, like the others, the sail did a dainty pirouette as the tack lines were drawn. She steadied, the battens stiffened to their full extent; the prow of the ship leveled her head and the junk began to cut the waves like a serpent through a misty meadow.

“Load that cannon, Mr. Woodman,” ordered Jacobs.

In an instant the ship shot out into clear weather, the long sodden fingers of the fog still clinging to our sheets. Above us were twinkling stars and a waning moon, which lit the painted crest on our sail in brassy relief.

“Two ships off the port bow!” came a cry.

Our pursuers were waiting a league away, patient as spiders. It appeared, however, that we had caught them dozing, for we continued for some minutes before there was a stir aboard either of them. We hoped to ease past, when suddenly in tandem their sails blossomed and they were flattening a trail in pursuit.

With our mainsail repaired and the running lead we’d spun out, the ships had to exert themselves to gain a hand’s length on us every league. Still, they persisted and persisted throughout the long, moonlit night, doggedly determined to nip our tail. The moment my incense had burnt out I called to Mr. Jacobs to wear to larboard, into the broad reach, heading west by northwest. The sails and tack lines strained nervously as the junk sliced into the sea with renewed energy. Behind us, our shadows held tenaciously on.

“We must lighten her,” Mr. Jacobs sang out. “Ship the cannon and anything else we can find.”

Our only weapon was heaved into our wake along with various stores and items we discovered in the hold, and soon even that small advantage of speed was lost to the two ships. No one tracked the match more avidly than Wen Xi, who stood at the stern.

Mr. Woodman, who stood near me, looked from Wen Xi to the ships, then back again.

“They will not return without her,” he remarked. “It means their heads.”

By dawn, little had changed in our distances, and we knew, barring damage to our hull from some floating calamity, time was in our favor. Mr. Jacobs separated the crew in two watches, with the first sleeping four hours, and then on again. There was not a man aboard whose body was not wracked with exhaustion. I stretched myself out on the deck and gathered scraps of the patching cloth together for a pillow.

When I awoke both the ships were gone. We were alone in the ocean.

“They broke off and headed west,” Mr. Hall informed me, grinning like a schoolboy. “Galloping off to India, no doubt. There will be two more pirates on the high seas.”

I had come to like Mr. Hall. He was a happy fellow who always had an engaging smile and a sympathetic word. He was a man on life’s journey and loved the trip. At the tiller his dark eyes were draw with fascination to nature’s grand theatre, where broiling sunsets and tiny leaping fish held equal parts. His joyful presence had a cheering affect on the crew, and on me in particular, for he
could read my concerns and lead me away from them with a joke or a story.

Much was riding on my judgment, and here, too, Wen Xi’s presence calmed my stormy doubts. Once the ships had disappeared, she was always close at hand, watching me work, always ready with a tender, heartening smile.

Lord Douglas had not left the cabin through the night and all that day. Several times he had dispatched someone to rinse Mr. Brooks’ bandages in the salt water. At mid-day, after taking my shots, I entered the cabin to report our position to Mr. Brooks. Lord Douglas was still in his seat beside Mr. Brooks, his eyes rimmed with fatigue.

“I came to report our position,” I began.

“He doesn’t hear you, Wren,” said Greyson.

“Shall I wake him?”

Greyson waved the suggestion away and then rolled out a map, which he held out to me.

“What do you make of this?” he said, setting a knuckle on a speck of land. “Xiaosanmen Island.”

I studied the map.

“It lays in a busy lane, my lord,” I replied. ‘My orders are to keep to blue sea.”

“The ball must be removed soon or he’ll die.”

I examined the map again. The island was large beside the others scattered around it. A town, Mawan, was clearly marked. A detour might bring us there within a day, but navigating a ship to this speck in the great China Sea filled me with dread.

“Well?” pressed Greyson.

“I can’t do it, sir,” I said, my voice betraying my fear. “My skills as a pilot are not that fine.”

“You underestimate yourself.”

“No, sir, I do not,” I retorted adamantly. “If we make the latitude by my octant, precisely to the minute we’d have to hold it firm and run down a westing. More than a hair’s breadth off and we’d be lost.”

“We can’t let the man die,” said he. “If you can make it to the Pearl River—”

“The Pearl River is a continent beside this!” I said, cutting him off harshly, then spinelessly adding: “
I’d
be lost.”

“You could dead reckon your position, could you not?”

The trepidation and anguish I had secretly been holding within me suddenly came flashing through the muzzle.

“Out of sight of land?” I exclaimed loudly. “In a chopping sea? To fix a position, it must be done by the hour, after every change of speed, after every fix, and every line is plotted. Atop a still, English pond on a windless day this would be a test! In God’s name, I don’t know that the lines I’ve fixed to now are true! How could I lay a plot any man could trust?”

I didn’t know what to expect from Greyson after my quailing outburst. Greyson’s gaze turned back to Mr. Brooks, then to me.

“Don’t lay his death to me, my lord,” I beseeched.

“The present isn’t the time to doubt your course,” said Greyson with cool reproach. He gazed out the door into the glinting sunlight, then shot one more irritated glance at me. “Well, if I don’t kill him, the ball most certainly will. It’s too dark in here. We must take him outside.”

Instead of guilt for my cowardice, however, I felt the strange satisfaction a thief feels when he’s cleared of his crime.

Mr. Brooks was carried out of the cabin and laid on his stomach under the bright sun. His tunic was removed, and the dressings. The open wound on his back had risen up wide and high, the color of a pewter spoon. It was fetid and oozed a mixture of thick fluids and blood. Mr. Brooks gasped like a drowning man at each jostle.

“We are none of us surgeons,” said Woodman, as he and the other two marines set Brooks down.

“I’ll need a pair of sharp knives to dig the ball out,” said Lord Douglas, “fishing line and a needle to sew up the wound.”

Looking at Mr. Brooks’ face, its youthfulness struck me; not a wrinkle or a blemish compromised that beatific countenance. The
shadow of Death, however, roved just under those features, vanishing and reappearing like clouds on the surface of the sea.

The items were discovered and Lord Douglas ordered the marines to take hold of Mr. Brooks’ arms and legs. He probed the wound with a knife; to my surprise, Brooks barely registered a response. Angling himself to his best advantage under the sunlight, he cut the wound open and enlarged it across its bias. Blood was streaming in earnest and I could not discern ball, flesh or skin.