Dead Reckoning (10 page)

“There was a man here of that name when I first arrived. We thought at first that he was French and planned to take him into custody as a possible revolutionary. It appeared, however, that he was a native of Jersey, speaking English with only a trace of
a foreign accent. He had been at sea but had sustained some back injury and came ashore, setting up in business as a small tradesman. His shop, I remember, was near the bridge and he lived with a Malay woman who had several children by him. I supposed at first that he was addicted to drink or drugs but was told by the police that he was merely eccentric. He was said to be especially interested in the primitive people of Malaya and was often to be seen practising with a blowpipe.”

“A blowpipe?”

“Yes, a weapon used mainly in hunting. I have one here.” The Resident took a slender dark-coloured stick from a corner of the room. Delancey saw that it was over five feet long, hollow, and shaped at one end like the mouthpiece of a bugle. His host took a dart made of bamboo, sharp at one end and fitted at the other end with a pith ‘cork.' Inserting the dart, which exactly fitted the blowpipe, Farquhar inflated his cheeks and blew with pursed lips into the mouthpiece, like blowing the bugle but with an almost explosive puff. The dart was embedded an inch deep in the woodwork on the far side of the room.

“It is not lethal in itself,” Farquhar explained, “but the point is dipped in poison from the Ipoh tree. They use the same sort of blowpipe in Borneo, I am told.”

“Do the Malays use it?”

“No, they are more advanced in the ways of civilization. Nor do they live in the jungle. They live along the riverbanks and use firearms. Here, for example, is a small ‘lela' or brass swivel gun of the type they mount in their war prahus.” He pointed to a rather ornate weapon of almost modern appearance.

“Perhaps they learnt about firearms and cannon from the Portuguese?”

“They had no need! The Malays had artillery before the Portuguese reached the Indian Ocean. I have sometimes wondered whether cannon were not actually invented here. This town, I believe, is where spectacles were first manufactured. People ingenious enough for that might have invented cannon as well.”

“But why do you think that probable?”

“Well, they had the blowpipe which embodies all the principles of the firearm except for the explosive. Their Chinese friends and neighbours had the gunpowder. It would require no genius to combine the two ideas. In one way, of course, the blowpipe is superior to the firearm for it is silent. The expert will seldom miss at twenty yards but if he does the monkey or parrot—or human, for that matter—is still unaware of the danger and may be the target for another shot. When Malacca was taken by Albuquerque in 1511 the Portuguese suffered more casualties from blowpipe darts than from the defenders' artillery or elephants. They did not die immediately, of course, the poison often taking an hour or two to produce a fatal result.”

“How interesting!” said Delancey. “But my brother, from what you say, would seem to be no more eccentric than you or I.”

“I am not sure about that. He had gone native, as one might say, and may even have become a Muslim. He went away rather suddenly, no one knew why, but left his Malay woman here. His chandler's shop is kept now by a Tamil but he is still, I suspect, the owner of it.”

“I envy you, sir, your knowledge of the country. When at Penang I was similarly envious of Mr Raffles.”

“Raffles? Well, he speaks Malay but cannot write it, nor has he been in the country very long. One must give him the credit for being at least interested. Francis Light, the founder of Penang,
was the last man who understood the people of the Straits. The present government there is so absurdly overstaffed that the officials only meet each other. They will die before they can tell a Chinese from a Malay.”

“Several have died already, sir, the place being far less healthy than was at first supposed.”

“Aye, they are discovering what I could have told them, that malaria appears as soon as you fell the jungle. Let it alone and you can avoid the disease—except, of course, in the coastal swamps.”

At the end of an interesting conversation Delancey obtained from Farquhar the loan of a Portuguese police sergeant called De Souza who spoke Malay and was indeed a native of Malacca. With De Souza as guide he soon found himself outside the shop where his brother would seem to have lived. There were some noisy children in the street, possibly his own nephews and nieces, and De Souza's inquiries finally led him to the Malay woman with whom Delancey's brother had lived. She was fat and middle-aged but must once have been attractive. She was also suspicious, apprehensive, and shy, resolving to divulge the minimum of information about anything. After many evasions and periods of silence, she finally admitted to having known Tuan Delancey. Where had he gone? She said at first that she did not know. After further questioning she said something about the islands to the south. De Souza suggested Riau, Lingga, Bankka, Billiton, and Celebes but she merely shook her head. Could she mean Borneo? She again shook her head but with less emphasis. Delancey suggested some place-names in Borneo; Sambas, Singkawang, Djawi, Pontianak, Matan . . . Watching her carefully, Delancey thought he detected some slight response to the name Pontianak. At this point De Souza intervened, pointing out
that the final “K” in Pontianak should not be pronounced. When he said the word correctly there was a long pause and she finally muttered “perhaps.” She was now asked why he had gone there. The conversation which followed was so long and frustrating that Delancey's attention wandered to the shop's stock in trade and finally to the Tamil shopman. “Would
he
know?” he asked finally, and De Souza repeated his question in Malay. Another long conversation followed and De Souza finally offered Delancey what little information he had gleaned from these two sources:

“So far as I can understand, Tuan, and I know no Tamil, this woman's husband knew of some tribe, some people, who needed his help. Or else perhaps they would be led by him. He went to join them, meaning to return some day. I am not at all sure of this but I can get no more out of them. I think, but I'm not certain, that he had been to this place before.”

Delancey thanked the woman for her help and gave her some money. She looked more cheerful after that and actually volunteered a further bit of information. Her Tuan had not gone alone but had other men with him in a war prahu. At that point the interview ended and Delancey asked De Souza whether he had ever seen an outrigger boat at Malacca. Here again there were language difficulties and Delancey had finally to make a drawing on his sketching paper. By the time he had finished he was surrounded by an admiring crowd, few of whom identified his boat as such, but one Malay broke into rapid comment which De Souza finally translated. “He says, Tuan, that there is such a boat here now, drawn up on the beach, and that it comes from Bintan.” This meant nothing to Delancey but De Souza said that Bintan was in the Straits of Singapore.

Led by their Malay guide, Delancey and De Souza walked southward along the beach and presently found the catamaran
pulled up under some overhanging palm trees. Her crew were not to be found but everyone agreed that they were not local men. Was the boat used for fishing? No one tried to answer that question but all agreed that a boat of this kind must sail very swiftly. A fisherman suggested that the boat's owner might use it to visit his relatives. Delancey did not pursue his inquiry any further but thanked De Souza for his assistance and presently went back to his ship.

He felt certain now that his guess had been correct and that Chatelard's success was due to information received. That it was delivered by fast-sailing catamaran seemed more than probable, and Bintan was central to the area in which the
Subtile
was known to operate. What was strange was that such clues as he had to Chatelard's base and his own brother's whereabouts pointed alike to the western shores of Borneo. He wondered wildly whether his brother might turn out to be a French spy. Then he rejected the idea as absurd. His brother might be eccentric, romantic, dissolute, or even deranged; he would not believe that he could be disloyal.

Before sailing from Malacca, Delancey was introduced by Farquhar to a retired Portuguese priest who had made a study of the aboriginal folk of the Malay Peninsula and the islands of south-east Asia. This was Father Miguel Silvestre, small, white-haired, and diffident, with eyes agleam behind his spectacles, an Orientalist of some note. In his missionary efforts he had found that followers of Islam were seldom if ever converted to Christianity, that Chinese paid little attention to his preaching but that the primitive tribesmen had only the crudest kind of nature worship and were therefore, in theory, fair game for missionary effort. The basic difficulty was to learn enough of their language to approach them, a difficulty made worse by the fact that each
tribe seemed to have its own dialect. After many years of effort Father Miguel could point to no considerable body of converts. He could, however, claim to have collected a great deal of information.

By means of using an interpreter (for the priest knew no English) Delancey managed to gain some knowledge of the aboriginal and other tribes of Borneo. Along the coast and up the rivers of Borneo there were Malays, Javanese, Bugis, and Chinese, usually living under the rule of a Malay Sultan: such rulers being established at places like Balikpapan, Pontianak, and Sambas. Further inland were the aborigines, the Kayan and Kenyah people of the Batang Kayan River, the Murut and Kelabit tribes, and the Sea Dyaks or Ibans who live on the northern tributaries of the Kapuas River. Certain Malay tribes had taken to piracy, notably the folk on the Kapuas River owing allegiance to the Rajah of Limbung. Their war prahus were based on Kurtanalia, south of Pontianak, a place within easy striking distance of the Karimata Channel, itself the approach to the Straits of Sunda. In all this piratical activity the Sea Dyaks up the River Nuri played no part and their patron, the Rajah of Djawi, was equally innocent. There had been wars in the past between the Kapuas Malays and the Nuri Sea Dyaks but the pirates had won and the men of Djawi had been compelled to make peace and pay tribute. In the light of this information it seemed to Delancey that Chatelard might base his operations on the Kapuas River, having reached with the Rajal of Limbung some agreement which gave the Kapuas Malays a share of the booty taken. If this were the situation, Chatelard was in alliance with pirates of the most cruel character, and this shed a new light on his character and motives. Before their conversation ended, Delancey asked Father Miguel whether he had known that other Delancey who had lived at Malacca. It soon
appeared that they had been at least acquainted. Where had he gone? Father Miguel had been told that he was in Borneo, somewhere near Pontianak. Why had he gone there? The reply to this was hesitant but the priest thought that Michael Delancey, of whom he obviously disapproved, had some plan for trading with the Ibans, presumably in damar and rattan. He knew no more than that and of Chatelard he knew nothing at all. At the end of his inquiries Delancey had learnt all too little about Chatelard's plans for commerce destruction. He knew enough, however, to start making a plan of his own.

Quitting the anchorage off Malacca, Delancey took the
Laura
southward down the Straits, calling at every port and questioning each merchantman he met. He could obtain no news of the
Subtile,
last definitely seen off the Little Andaman, and so had no idea whether she was ahead of him or behind him. Off Lingga, however, he saw for the first time a Malay catamaran at sea. Northmore called him on deck and handed him the telescope with the words “something of interest, sir!” For her size the outrigger canoe carried an extraordinary press of sail and was coming up astern of the
Laura
at a remarkable speed. The frigate had been under easy sail but Delancey now decided to make a race of it. “Mr Northmore,” he said, “crowd all sail and see if you can keep ahead!” It was a beautiful day with bright sun and high-piled cumulus cloud, a stiffening breeze from the north-east and a glimpse to starboard of Tanjong Djabung. The crew hurled themselves into action as the orders were shouted. “Set the top-gallants! Way aloft! Haul taut and make fast! Set the royals! Set the flying skysails! Set the foretopmast staysail! Set the flying jib! Set the weather stunsails!”

For an hour it looked as if the frigate were holding her own. Then the breeze began to slacken and the outrigger canoe began
to creep up, being seen on the
Laura
's windward quarter and then on her windward beam. Despite every effort that could be made the Malay craft began to draw ahead. Studying her through his telescope, Delancey felt pretty confident that she was the boat he had seen on the beach at Malacca. She had a crew of three and was going like the wind. Delancey had an insane impulse to sink her but realized that his whole theory was guess-work and that he had no solid fact to justify a suspicion, let alone a brutal gunfire. The
Laura
was fairly out sailed and the native craft vanished into the distance. Orders were then given to reduce sail and the voyage continued under all plain sail.

Delancey considered that his commissioned officers must now be taken into his confidence. If he were to die it was essential that they should know what his plan had been. He invited them to dinner and talked to them while the decanter circulated, reading first the orders he had received.

“So our task is to find and destroy the
Subtile.
Note, please, that it is our only task. Were we to hear of some other opportunity—a possible prize, a French sloop, say—we should not be entitled to go after her. Nor must we bring the
Subtile
in as a captured enemy privateer. Our orders are to destroy her and this we shall do. We have, however, to find her first. Studying all the facts available to me, I have come to the tentative conclusion that Pierre Chatelard has some sort of base in western Borneo. He has certainly been around the Straits for over a year without returning to the Ile de France. He must have refitted somewhere close to his cruising ground. There is evidence, moreover, that he has good sources of information and that news reaches him quickly about any possible prey. I think you all saw the native craft which overtook us earlier this afternoon. My guess is that Chatelard receives intelligence and warning by just such a fast-sailing
craft and probably by that one. Having no such system of communication myself, I am compelled to rely upon mere guess-work. You will realize, gentlemen, that I am very much in the dark and it may well prove that all my guesses have been incorrect.”