China Jewel (15 page)

This Tolchester I am told is quite the expert at throwing with good effect the large American fighting knife, a skill which he developed on his long voyages at sea. The Captain refers to the blade as his Bowie. His favorite Bowie is fashioned from bronze. It is not as sharp as the steel examples, but it creates a particular flash of reflected light from its shine as it flies, something which excites those who watch. I have not seen him demonstrate his skill with this large frontier knife but all say that he is dangerously accurate with the blade. He can put six of them in a tight circle and delights his Chinese audiences many of whom practice with similar knives. His countenance is not that of a vicious man and I am advised that his expertise is not that of a killer but a hunter.

Meikuo was dressed in a white gown far surpassing any worn by the other women and on her neck were strands holding one of the most opulent emeralds ever seen by any there. The large stone was said to have come from the explorations of the legendary Hui Shen himself and it had descended to Fusang. Hui Shen was the legendary explorer which Chinese historians credit with the discovery of what we know as Western South America. This jewel was brought to China from the Americas on a long ago voyage and was called the China Jewel.

I was amazed myself and said to my wife that it was uncanny that such a huge country could produce such a woman as this Cantonese girl. She was like the flower with which the Chinese artists so readily adorn their ceramics, a white peony blossom in the midst of all this risk of fortunes as we all know the tea business can be.

Much enjoyment was had by all dancing to the strains of the latest Europeans fashions and of course the uproarious Yankee Doodle. This the Yankees had made into a fast step that had everyone on the dance floor in merriment.

I have made it my business to further our conversation with this Fusang with the goal of having him take on our trading relationship. To date he favors the American firm with which he deals exclusively. He is a good mercantile target for us as he controls many miles of prime tea growing areas in the up country hillsides. Unfortunately for us his claimed relationship to this famous Chinese explorer Hui Shen prods him to trade with the Americans. I understand that this fascination with American trade does not bring him respect from some in the Chinese government who would like to see him “disappear.” However he has too much money and power in the Chinese court for those officials to do anything about him.

At any rate I arrived at his office near the American factories and he bade me sit in a beautifully carved chair. His office is decorated in the red hues of which the Chinese are so famous and the woodwork was of the Chinese style with many curves. Statues of the Confucian gods were in sight and several portraits of him and his daughter were evident on the walls. I have also heard that he has taken the American captain to his home on the island of Husan, a great honor not usually given to alien traders. The home was pictured in one of the wall paintings, at least I suppose it so, a place with extensive gardens and pillared buildings with upswept rooflines of the pagoda styles. Children were playing in the garden.

He tells me that he intends to travel with Captain Tolchester to the eastern coast of the United States with his daughter soon. I suggested that he might want to extend his trip to France and to perhaps place his daughter in school there as it might be more advantageous than the education in America. Perhaps we can help with placing her in the best situation in Paris. Fusang on the other hand fancies himself eventually living in New York.

Cutter sat back and thought. So with Tolchester it began as a love story. Just like Rosa and he had been. Just like Jamie and Madeline. In a way just like his life with Katy.

In the beginning his love of flowers had entranced him to Rosa's side. This love of plants was his mother’s gift to him. When he was a child he would spend hours with her in the little garden she kept. He helped her with the trimming, learning the names of the plants and how to touch the petals with tenderness. His father had been a Marine and had died in battle. He had all his medals kept in a bank vault. His mother would look at the tender crocus coming through the snow in the spring. She called them “cutters.” She said they fought like her husband against the odds and most of the time lived. She taught him to love the little plants.

In the same way, standing beside Rosa, he came to know the great gardens at her father’s ranch. He could still see the bright red ceibo blossoms at their wedding. She was not like his mother though. She did not have the love of the fight.

He smiled at the thoughts of flowers. Perhaps the old African chieftain had something to do with their breakup in Africa. Rosa never liked the village chief standing in all his natural jungle finery, bedecked with flowers. Jamie had loved him like a grandfather.

When they would sail together in the small dugout canoe with its flimsy sail, Cutter could still hear the old man saying
“Use the wind. Do not let it use you,”
when Jamie would make another mistake.

“Use the wind. Do not let it use you.”
Cutter thought of the careful sign about Jamie’s hammock on the Peregrine. His son had remembered.

He was of course of his culture, having a wisdom of the earth and plants, yet Rosa could not adapt to this. Her loves were the fine flowers of a cultured garden. Yet little Jamie loved him as he loved his own family, and the chief became a third member of their little household.

The chief had given him the nickname “Sir Flower” or just “Flower.” The natives picked it up. He asked the chief and his men to take him to see beautiful African plants. The people thought it strange that a huge American like Jim was so interested in such feminine interests like flowers. Of course, his American workers would call him the same for a while. When he left Africa the nickname did not stick perhaps because no one dared to call him that for fear of a fist in the face.

It was not all blossoms. He remembered that above a fireplace in the chief’s home, anchored in the stone and wooden wall braces, was a massive bone. It was the head of an animal with sharp tusks projecting from the sides of its mouth. When the chief showed it to Cutter and his son, he said that it had been found long ago and was a special omen of the village. Cutter looked it up in his encyclopedia and found that it resembled the head of a sabre tooth tiger, which roamed these parts until all the tigers migrated to the east and to Asia. Jamie had never forgotten that tiger and mentioned it to Cutter several times when they talked in River Sunday during the crew training. It was probably the only memory the boy had of those days and it was a good one, one of strength, not one of fear and fast firing machine guns in the night.

One night they heard a strong knock on the front door of the cottage. The old chief dressed in colorful regalia and two of his wives stood in the dark. Jamie was having a severe attack of malaria. Despite all the precautions, the netting and medicine, a mosquito had gotten through the boy’s defenses. Cutter had the best doctor flown in to treat Jamie. They were doing what they could to get the boy through his small body’s struggles with the disease.

“I can help the boy,” he said in his husky voice.

“We have doctors,” said Rosa.

“Come inside,” said Cutter, moving in front of his wife and welcoming the chief.

Cutter nodded to Rosa who was forced to stand back. The chief came inside, leaving his wives with several others of his village retinue.

The old man crossed to the boy’s room and entered. He motioned to the child’s nurse to stand back from the child’s bed.

Pulling back the netting the chief leaned over the naked boy. The child was sweating as well as mumbling disjointed words of delirium. He put his hands on the top of the boy’s head, right hand covered by the left as though he were reaching for Jamie’s mind. The Chief spoke several words in melodic phrases using a language Cutter had never heard and did not understand.

A few minutes went by, while Rosa kept nudging Cutter to get the man away from Jamie. Cutter did nothing.

Then the child’s face became more peaceful and the sweating slowed down. He began to sleep calmly.

As he watched the child, the chief said to Cutter, “This is the way of my people, of the ancient people who came before. Some can learn to release the good inside themselves and give it to those who need it to fight the evils attacking them. When enough good is there, the evil must run away in fear.”

Cutter’s mind drifted back to the present and the hum of the great aircraft engines mounted on the wing above his seat. He nodded into a well-deserved sleep, the first in many hours. His last thoughts were of Mary Tolchester’s smoke-stained painting of a beautiful Chinese girl in a white dress wearing a fabulous emerald.

Chapter 12

July 24, 4 PM

River Sunday

As Cutter entered the River Sunday operations, the office was filled with the romantic lyrics and melody of Sting’s song Valparaiso. Doc Jerry, in his own way, was informing all of the team their Peregrine was rounding the treacherous Cape Horn. She had sailed sixty four days out and almost half way to China.

“Over the sea

Home where my true love is waiting for me

Rope the south wind

Canvas the stars

Harness the moonlight

So she can safely go

Round the Cape Horn to Valparaiso”

Doc Jerry sat, his face intent, in front of the large rectangle screen watching the weather track. On the display were the southern parts of the South American continent, the tips of Argentina and Chile as well as the northern section of Antarctica. The satellite feed illustrated a cloud system covering most of the point of land known as Cape Horn. The black avatar for the Peregrine had entered this disturbance. The British boat was through the passage and into the Pacific. The Strand entry was in the passage and close by the Peregrine. The French brig was also ahead and into the Pacific.

“How bad is it?” Cutter asked.

“Bad enough. We’re waiting on their afternoon communication. They have been battling the Cape Horn weather for a few days. Hopefully they will break out soon.”

He stood up and walked to his desk. “Here. Take a look at this chart.” He had the large paper spread out. His finger pointed as he said, “Cape Horn 55 degrees latitude south and 68 degrees longitude west.” He placed a weather printout beside the section of the chart.

“We had some decisions to make as we got to the area. We knew we had to go by the Drake Passage here as the general route was specified by the Chinese race planners.”

“Tell me about the issues,” said Cutter.

“OK. There are two ways to round the Horn. You can go through the Straits of Magellan, which was the original route discovered by the explorers, that is between the mainland and Tierra del Fuego. The problem is that in the constant maneuvering in the narrow channel and with the sudden squalls it can take some ships as long as a month to get through safely.

“The second is the Drake Passage discovered by Drake on his explorations and that is between the rock island we call Cape Horn and the edge of the continent of Antarctica, a space of about five hundred miles. That’s the one the Chinese insisted we use but it is also the roughest. This is a lot faster as it is open water. The current and prevailing winds come from the west to the east like from the Pacific to the Atlantic. When you traverse from the east as we are doing you have to go against the high seas caused by the winds from the west.”

Returning to the large wall monitor, Doc Jerry reminded him of the locations of the other racing boats.

“You can see for yourself that Barlow’s boat, the Willow, is way ahead, and has passed well out into the Pacific. He’s heading up the coast toward Valparaiso and Santiago.”

Cutter pointed to the symbol for the Louis 14. “Etranger has done well too. He got ahead of us as we were working in that new mast and we have not been able to catch up.”

Doc Jerry nodded. “He’s behind the Willow by a hundred miles or so but he’s through the Cape weather.”

The America was close to the Peregrine and slightly behind. “We can’t get it exact with the static in the weather down there. I would say that the Peregrine is ahead of Strand’s boat by a few miles, for sure.”

He added, “You can see it’s the luck of the draw. Catching the winds coming out of the east gives them enough power. That’s why sometimes the fastest ships turned in the slowest times back in the old clipper days.”

Cutter looked confused. “The Peregrine has to sit there waiting in the eastern approaches until the wind changes?”

“Yes. When I was doing my research in planning the traverse of the Cape I studied all the sailing directories. You have to figure that everyone who is anyone in ocean sailing has a comment or a story on going around the Horn. A couple centuries ago, a sailor would get to hang an earring in his left ear for rounding the Horn his first time. They’d also get to piss into the wind.”

Cutter laughed.          

Doc Jerry nodded. “The bathroom was in the bow of the ship, what they called the head, and you had to pee when the wind was behind you. If it was coming at you, peeing was a bit of bravado.”

He went on, “I consolidated all the research. For example when Dana wrote about it in his
Two Years Before the Mast
he was specific about the sails that were used. He was in a brig like our boat and that information was important for Captain Hall’s planning.”

Cutter glanced at the schematic of the Peregrine on the wall to his right.

Doc Jerry said, “You can see all the sails there. When Dana entered the Cape region, his brig was under a north wind with the top mast and top gallant square sails set. She was running south at that time. During the next day a storm came in from the southwest. He and his mates tied off some of the cloth in what was called reefing so a smaller area of canvas was exposed. The ship began to dig into huge waves. The topsails were reefed smaller. Then they close reefed the foretopsail.”