The War of the Dragon Lady (15 page)

Jenkins leant across and put his hand on Simon’s arm. ‘Now, listen, bach sir,’ he said. ‘This is no time to break up our partnership. You’re as brave as a lion, I know that, and you’re cleverer than General Roberts and General Wolseley put together. But you
need
me, you know you do. I can do the killin’ while you do the thinkin’. We’re a
good team, but not so good, with respect, when we split up. Whatever you say, anyway, I shall come with you.’ He turned to the Chinaman. ‘An’ you, Changy, should stay ’ere an’ write to yer mother.’

Chang, his face set, shook his head. ‘You need interpreter,’ he said. ‘You don’t get through lines without talking. I go, too.’

Simon made one last effort. ‘But you can’t swim and you hate the water,’ he said to Jenkins.

The Welshman shook his head. ‘Who was it that swam … well, sort of … across that river in Matabellyland ’oldin’ on to your ’orse’s tail?’ He turned to Chang. ‘An’ you said, didn’t you, Changy, that there aren’t any crocs in this river?’

Chang nodded affirmatively.

‘There you are, then. What time do we go?’

Fonthill looked hard at his old friend. If there was one thing that Jenkins hated more than heights and crocodiles it was water. For him to volunteer to hang on to a piece of timber and float downstream in a fast-flowing river was the epitome of courage. But for all of his idiosyncrasies, Simon had never met a braver man than Jenkins. It was not like either of them, however, to be sentimental. So he merely smiled and nodded. ‘Oh, very well, but I call this insubordination. We leave as soon as it is dark and when we have managed to pull some driftwood out of the river.’

He shook his head disparagingly. ‘It’s going to be a big load and it looks as though we shall need something like Brunel’s “Great Eastern” now. We don’t take rifles, just the Colt revolver, and we will need to pack our clothes tightly in our waterproofs. Try and get some rest now. It could be a long night.’

The three dozed intermittently through the day, to a background of artillery and rifle fire. Then, just before dark, Fonthill made his way to the rear wall of the arsenal, that which faced the river. The water lapped at its high walls but, true enough, to the right where the wall turned at right angles, a thin tongue of land jutted out, containing just enough scrub of cover to anyone watching from downriver or the opposite bank. As the water swirled up to it and round, it had collected enough driftwood to found a timber yard. Prominent amongst the detritus was the trunk of a medium-sized tree, which still had branches protruding from the base, to which a few, sad traces of foliage still clung.

Simon nodded his head. That would suffice.

As dusk settled on the river, the three set out from a little post gate near the promontory. With them came Admiral Seymour and four barefooted sailors. Fonthill and his companions had stripped down to their underpants and clutched bundles of their Kansu uniforms, wrapped in their waterproof capes. The warm air engulfed them and even the water was tepid as Chang and the four sailors waded out, their backs bent low, to retrieve the tree.

Seymour clutched Fonthill’s hand. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘that you go to the right bank when you are abreast of the railway on your left. Be careful not to be swept to your right up the canal as you meet the “buffalo head” of the river. I don’t know who is in charge at Tientsin, but tell him that we can hold out here for quite some time but that, if we hear nothing for a week, we shall try and break out to reach them.

‘Good luck, my dear Fonthill. May God go with you.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ They shook hands as the tree trunk was pushed to the bank. Simon stole a glance at Jenkins. Despite the humidity,
the Welshman was shivering. He avoided Fonthill’s gaze but waded out and hesitantly climbed onto the trunk, lying prone on it, his legs slightly apart to maintain balance, with one hand clutching his bag and the other holding on to a branch that rose vertically just by his head.

‘That’s good, 352,’ whispered Fonthill. ‘The river is not turbulent so you should be quite safe if you hold on tight and spread your legs apart to keep your balance. Chang, you hold onto that branch to the right and I will take the left side. Kick with your feet if this bloody thing starts to drift to either side. Right. Here we go.’

There was a distinct muttered cry of ‘Oh, bloody ’ell’ as the two swimmers pushed the log away from the strip of land and the current caught it, causing it to roll a little. Then it righted itself and Fonthill and Chang kicked their feet in breaststroke fashion to propel it into the centre of the river. Once there, Simon felt the full surge of the river as they were taken up by the current.

He kept his head low, so that the water lapped his chin, and stole a glance to either side. Campfires glowed on both banks, but they were, of course, more numerous on the right bank, facing the arsenal.

He could make out no figures in the darkness and they seemed to be undetected. Thank goodness the trunk was not yawing and Simon offered up a fervent prayer that Jenkins would continue to lie supine, looking from the bank like some gnarled, knotted protrusion in the middle of the tree.

After the heat of the day, it was not at all unpleasant drifting down the river in the comparative cool of the night. They passed several junks moored for the night on the banks but nothing was moving on the river except them, as either he or Chang kicked out to maintain
their position. He soon realised that the young Chinaman was like an eel in the water and, after a time, he left it to Chang to correct their position whenever the need arose.

Fonthhill became aware that their biggest danger would arise if they met shoals of shallow water, for, despite the recent rains, the long drought had severely reduced the river level. Several times he felt his feet kick the bottom as they wandered a little from the deeper channel in midstream. He took comfort, however, from the fact that Seymour had told him that there were no rapids marked on the map above Tientsin.

As they drifted, he began to address the question of when and how they would forsake their tree and gain the riverbank. He had no watch, of course, but he tried to record the position of the pale moon in the dark sky above him and also to assess the speed of the current.

Seymour had estimated that it seemed to be between one and two miles an hour, say one and a half. That meant that, given they were six miles from the foreign concessions, they should be abreast of them after about four hours. Good, that meant that they would arrive still in darkness. How he would successfully navigate the ‘buffalo head’ junction, he had no idea, except to keep to the left side of the river – if, that is, he knew when they had reached the junction, for little could be seen of either riverbank at the moment.

He was startled by a sudden grunt and then a low moaning sound. He let himself slip back to the rear of the trunk and raised an enquiring eyebrow to Chang, who was on his back and allowing his feet to trail behind him, fluttering in the stream, as though he always used this form of transport to travel on the Pei Ho. The Chinaman grinned and pointed forward. Jenkins, he who was terrified of water, was fast asleep and snoring!

Fonthill crept back up the log and firmly held Jenkins’s ankle. He was anxious that his comrade should not suddenly wake up and upset their makeshift boat. The Welshman came to with a start and Simon hissed, ‘I told you you would enjoy the trip but don’t go to sleep, for God’s sake.’

‘Oh, sorry, bach sir.’

A light flickered from the right riverbank and then, suddenly, a rifle exploded with a crack and a dart of flame. The bullet hissed into the water behind Fonthill, who breathed, ‘Nobody move. Keep perfectly still.’

Another shot was fired which splashed even further behind and then the river lapsed into silence once more. ‘I think he was just amusing himself,’ called Fonthill softly. ‘A bit of nocturnal target practice to amuse himself on the long night-watch.’

‘As long as ’e wasn’t shootin’ at crocodiles,’ grunted Jenkins.

The water seemed to be turning cold and a shiver ran through Fonthill. He estimated that they had been in the river for about three and a half hours, although the moon had now slipped behind what seemed like a thick bank of cloud. Ah, rain would be a good thing! Under its cover they could land easily enough. But the night remained dry.

A new and hitherto hidden danger of the river, as Jenkins had discovered, however, was that their method of transport proved to be soporific and Simon felt himself drifting off to sleep, despite – or perhaps because of – the coldness now of the water. He was rudely stirred from his drowsiness when the trunk hit the bank and was immediately sent swirling around, jettisoning Jenkins in the water with a resounding splash. Fonthill immediately struck out for him
and caught him by the arm, as he began to thrash the water.

‘On your back and keep quiet,’ he hissed into his ear. Simon slipped behind the Welshman, thrust both hands under his armpits and began kicking to take them to the riverbank. He realised that Chang was at his side, helping to hold up Jenkins, but that the tree trunk, with their bundles of clothing caught in the thrusting branches, was floating away downstream.

At the same moment, there was a babble of voices from up above them on the bank and, looking up, Simon saw half a dozen rifles thrust towards them and as many faces – Chinese faces, of course – gazing down at them in consternation.

‘Chang,’ called Simon. ‘Tell them not to shoot.’

They scrambled ashore under the threatening rifles and Chang shouted, ‘I think they shoot us now as spies.’

Fonthill’s brain raced. ‘Tell them that we are not spies,’ he said, ‘but that we are English and come from Peking with an important message for General … damn … what’s his name … from Sir Claude MacDonald. We came by boat but it overturned in the shoals and we have been forced to swim. Make it sound good, cousin, for God’s sake.’

Chang burbled away urgently while the three stood in their underpants, water dripping from them. A shamefaced Jenkins stood, clenching and unclenching his fists, his great moustache looking as though his nose had caught a water rat. ‘Sorry, bach,’ he murmured, ‘all my fault. I’ll take this lot on while you dive back into the river and get away. That’s best.’

‘You’ll do nothing of the kind. That way we will all be shot. And, anyway, it was my fault for falling asleep. We will just have to see if we can talk our way out of this.’

It seemed that Chang was not having much success, for a rifle butt was suddenly swung into his face, knocking him to the ground.

Fonthill strode forward. ‘That’s enough of that,’ he said, with the confident and reprimanding air of a British colonel. ‘You do not hit that man again.’ And he wagged his finger in the face of the antagonist. ‘We are British soldiers and …’ The muzzle of the man’s rifle was suddenly thrust sharply into his stomach, winding him and causing him to bend over and drop onto one knee.

Jenkins sprang forward and delivered a perfect left hook onto the jaw of the soldier, sending him staggering, before the Welshman was felled with a rifle butt from behind.

Grimacing, Fonthill looked up at the hostile faces all around him. They were, he realised, all Kansus. Their eyes, set in Mongolian faces, regarded him quite expressionlessly. These were the toughest, most vicious soldiers in the Empress’s army, little more than bandits, rapists and killers, led by the biggest brigand and foreigner-hating man in all China. As he watched, he saw the man Jenkins had struck walk forward and aim his rifle at the dazed Welshman’s head and pull back the bolt.

Then the name came to him. He stood erect. ‘General Tung Fu-hsiang,’ he said firmly. ‘Take us to him.’ Then he repeated the name. ‘General Tung Fu-hsiang.’ He embraced the three of them with a whirl of his arm. Then gestured from his breast and then vaguely to the south. ‘General Tung Fu-hsiang.’

Chang pulled himself to his feet, his eye half closed, and began speaking in Chinese again.

Whatever he said, that and Simon’s firmness had an effect, for they were pushed forward with rifle muzzles. Fonthill became aware of the
sound of artillery fire, much closer now, and they were being marched towards it. After five minutes they saw campfires and all three were forced to their knees by blows from rifle butts into their backs and left under a guard of two men on the edge of the camp.

‘Are you all right, the two of you?’ asked Fonthill.

‘Me ’ead is singin’ but it’s me pride that’s wounded mostly,’ grunted Jenkins. ‘Sorry, bach sir, for sleepin’ at me post and fallin’ off into the water. It looks as though I’ve got us into a fine mess.’

‘Don’t talk rubbish.’

Chang squinted across at Simon with his good eye. ‘I think, cousin, that they now believe you that you have message for general and they go to fetch officer. But I think they will be jolly angry when they find you have no message.’

Fonthill shrugged. ‘I’ll think of something. I had to stop them shooting us out of hand. They’re Kansus, aren’t they?’

‘Yes. Not very nice people.’

‘By the sound of the guns, we are very near the settlements, if only we can get out of here.’

Jenkins looked down at his nakedness. ‘If we get through the lines, we’ll probably be arrested for indecency. Or catch cold and die of flu.’

Eventually, an order was barked from out of the semi-darkness and they were bundled forward, rifles at their backs, until they reached a large tent. Inside, a Kansu was seated at a trestle table. He was dressed and looked exactly the same as the soldiers but he was obviously an officer, for he was treated with great deference by the escorts. He spoke rapidly to Chang.

‘He want our names and where we come from and why we go downstream on log,’ he explained.

Fonthill nodded. ‘Give our names and ranks – captain and sergeant. You are our interpreter. Do
not
say that you are the son of a missionary. Explain that we escaped from Peking with a personal message for the general from Sir Claude MacDonald, the senior minister in the legations. We made for the river, where we hired a small boat. Upriver it hit an obstruction during the night and overturned, throwing us into the water. We were all asleep on deck in just our undergarments because of the heat. We found this log floating and hung onto it, because we were all poor swimmers.’