Dead Reckoning (12 page)

After the Chinese had received his reward and gone, Delancey was pondering the information so far gained when a sharp challenge was heard forward and it became obvious that another boat
was alongside. He walked forward to inquire and saw by moonlight another sampan, again with one passenger, the Indian who had formed part of the previous deputation. He did not come aboard but called softly that he now remembered some fact which the Tuan Captain might like to know. He knew that he could count on a suitable reward—say, fifteen hundred dollars—and that the whole transaction could remain a secret. “Too late, my friend,” said Delancey and bade his visitor good-night. An hour or so later came another challenge and the sound of another boat alongside. This time it was a Malay prahu, its only passenger the Malay chieftain whom Delancey had already met. He called to Delancey that he did, after all, have some knowledge which might be of interest to the Tuan. It had slipped his memory that morning but had come back to him since. Now, about that thousand dollars . . . “Too late, my friend.” said Delancey,
“selamat jalan.”
He turned in that night with the feeling that he had made some progress with his mission.

There could be no doubt that the information received about the Kapuas River was correct. For Delancey's purpose, however, it was insufficiently precise. Where, exactly, did the
Subtile
refit? Neither the river nor the coast itself was charted and the diagram he had gave no idea of distance. Dared he send a boat up the river? Obviously not. Its presence would alarm the Malays, who would find means to warn Chatelard that his base had been discovered. His better plan would be to procure a Malay prahu and send it up the river with a single officer in Malay costume. Who was he to send? Wayland, perhaps, master's mate? Or Top-ley? Topley had to some extent proved himself. So maybe Wayland should be given his chance? Or would he make a mess of it? He thought that the risk was worth while provided that Wayland had a good petty officer at his elbow and two armed
seamen to keep the Malay boatmen in their place. As a first step, Delancey sent for his commissioned officers and told them what had to be done.

“I propose to send one small party to reconnoitre the Kapuas River and fix the position of Chatelard's base. I propose to lead another and larger party up the Nuri River, leaving Mr Fitzgerald in command of the ship. If you have questions to ask, now is the time to ask them.”

“Might I ask, sir,” said Fitzgerald, “whether the boat expedition up the Nuri River is not a suitable task for the first lieutenant?”

“In the ordinary way, it certainly is,” replied Delancey, “but the man whose help we need happens to be my brother. I have, I think, the best chance of persuading him to do what I want.”

“But isn't the other patrol more proper for a commissioned officer, sir?” asked Northmore.

“It is, but I can't spare a commissioned officer. Mr Wayland is the man I can spare. Should I be lost, it is important that the rest of you know what Wayland has been sent to do. You will be present, therefore, when I give him his orders. Pass the word there for Mr Wayland!” A few minutes later Wayland reported, a burly young man with fairish hair, a red face, and an earnest, well-meaning expression.

“Mr Wayland,” said Delancey, “I have been told that the French privateer
Subtile is
based upon a shore establishment set up in the Kapuas River. I propose to destroy her while she is refitting there. Towards doing this the first step is to locate her base, making a rough chart of the river and indicating where the
Subtile
will be. This must be done secretly, without the knowledge of the Malays whose alliance Chatelard has secured. I
propose to hire a Malay craft with the necessary four oarsmen and entrust you with the mission, assisted by Coxswain Ellis. With him as petty officer you will have two armed seamen but all, like you, in Malay costume. Having made a chart and placed the
Subtile
in position on it, you will report back to me here at the mouth of the river. What will you need apart from your personal arms and those issued to your crew?”

“Well, sir, I'll need provisions for a week, a tent of some sort, ammunition for all arms carried, cooking utensils, and bedding.”

“Is that all?”

“All I can think of, sir.”

“You are forgetting your mission. You will also need paper, pencils, pens and ink with a board to use as desk, a sextant, telescope, compass, chart, and a piece of canvas to protect the equipment. Add to that a Malay dictionary and a notebook in which to keep a log.”

“Yes, sir. Very good, sir.”

“You will leave before daylight tomorrow and should make your preparations now, darkening your skin and purchasing for each man a Malay baju, sarong, and headcloth. What do you know of the language?”

“Very little, sir.”

“Then you will have to learn quickly. Off with you.”

Wayland withdrew and Delancey turned to face the other officers.

“He must do the best he can. I could not spare anyone else. Now I must detail the crew for the launch, complete with a midshipman. I'll take Burnet, I think. It will be good experience for him. We shall need a gun in the bows, Mr Fitzgerald, and canvas enough to make an awning, with axes, saw, hammer, and
nails and plenty of spare rope and twine. See to it, please. Yes, and detail Lakin as coxswain. I'll want two marines with a musket and cutlass for each seaman, and two pistols each for myself, Lakin and Burnet.”

There was a great deal of work to be done but both boats, the hired Malay craft and the launch, were away long before daylight, the one with men disguised but the other with every appearance of a man-of-war boat, lacking only the British ensign.

The Nuri River narrowed quickly as the sea was left behind. It was placid, with a slow current, the jungle coming down to the banks on either side, fringed in places by a belt of mangrove swamp. There were blue hills in the distance with, above them, a high-piled bank of cumulus cloud in white and grey. All was very still, the only noise to be heard being the regular splash of the oars and sometimes a few words exchanged among the launch's crew. By Delancey's reckoning the launch would have about sixty miles to go, following a right-hand tributary ten miles below Djenu. The boat's present speed would be four miles an hour so that it would be a two days' pull, allowing for time to rest the oarsmen. There was an hour for dinner spent on a shell beach below a small headland.

At nightfall the party camped on a small sandy island only twenty yards from the swampy shore. They were plagued by mosquitoes, which the smoke from the camp fire did little to disperse, and there were alligators to be seen on the far bank of the river. Delancey had allowed himself one luxury and only one: a piece of mosquito netting with which to cover his head at night. Frustrating the mosquitoes, it added to the heat and left him the more exhausted. He roused his men in the small hours, hoping to make good distance before the heat of the day began. By that evening they had in fact reached the point at which the
tributary joined the main river, having seen only the occasional Malay kampong with a few fishing craft glimpsed in the distance. They camped again near the confluence and spent another night fighting the mosquitoes, this time in a clearing which had once been planted with rice. Early next day they passed close to a village built on piles over the water where swarms of naked children played with dugout canoes. An hour later they saw a long roof among the trees, set back from the river, and Delancey concluded that this was his destination.

The longhouse, approached by a path from the riverbank, must have been over two hundred feet long. The living quarters were on a platform some ten or twelve feet above the ground and under a steep attap roof. There were some padifields beyond and some goats and poultry wandering around. The primitive inhabitants, nearly naked, gazed at Delancey and his men with curiosity but without fear. They had plainly seen Europeans before and Delancey guessed that there were Dutch traders to be seen, on occasion, at Djenu. The diminutive men who came to greet the visitors were evidently Ibans or Sea Dyaks and quite ready to offer hospitality. They were short, dark men, strongly built, wearing only a loincloth or sirat but with blue-black tattooing on their bodies. Some of them wore a sheathed parang, rather like the West Indian machete. They led Delancey to the end of the longhouse where there was a shaky bamboo ladder. Leaving his four seamen to squat in the shade, Delancey climbed the ladder and found himself in a wide veranda stretching the whole length of the building. This, he could see, was the village street in which people met, conversed, and worked. Opening on to the veranda, on his left, were a succession of rooms in which the families slept. He realized at once that this was the coolest building he had entered since coming to the East. The air space
between ceiling and roof provided insulation while the sketchy nature of side-walls, partitions, and floor allowed air to circulate freely throughout. He looked about him with interest, The inhabitants to be seen were mostly bare-breasted women and naked children, the men having presumably gone out to work, fish, or hunt. They looked up as Delancey passed but were too well mannered to stare or point and some were too shy even to smile. He strolled past successive groups at work, each falling silent as he passed, and looked into successive rooms, most of them unoccupied. An older Iban, self-appointed guide, was trying to explain something to him but in a language of which he knew nothing. He pointed, however, and Delancey, following the indication, went on to the end of the longhouse. There, in the last room of all, clad in tattered shirt and trousers, a bearded and haggard European lay asleep on some rice matting. So wild was his appearance that Delancey could only with difficulty identify his brother Michael. Beside him was an opium pipe and his was evidently the drugged sleep of an addict. Considered as a possible ally, Michael was completely useless—so much seemed obvious. For all practical purposes he might merely be regarded as dead.

R
ICHARD DELANCEY knew all too little about drug addiction but he supposed that Michael must eventually wake up, perhaps later in the day. Would he then take more opium? He thought of removing the temptation but decided to leave a note instead. On a piece of paper he wrote in capital letters: YOUR BROTHER RICHARD IS HERE TO SEE YOU AND WILL CALL AGAIN TOMORROW. Propping this note where Michael must see it, he walked back the way he had come, greeting the folk he saw with a wave and a smile. The Ibans were friendly enough but he had no means of conversing with them, or of gaining their friendship. His main problem was how to keep his men occupied for perhaps two days and this he solved on his way back to the boat.

“After dinner,” he announced to his boat-crew, “we shall build a proper landing-stage here, felling the timber as necessary and making it long enough to bring in a prahu alongside. This will be our gift to the people of the longhouse whose guests we are.”

The rest of the day was spent in this useful activity, the Ibans watching with amazement as the structure took shape. Before dark they came down in procession and brought with them a supper of chicken and rice with some potent, sickly, and bittersweet liquor called tuak served in coconut shells which Delancey made his men treat with extreme caution. They slept ashore that
night and work was resumed in the morning, the landing-stage being finished off with a hand-rail and an attap roof to keep the sun off. Whether the lbans thought it an improvement he was never to know but he thought that they were, initially, more surprised than grateful. While the work neared completion Delancey went up to the longhouse again and went once more to the room at the far end. Michael, he found, was awake but in an ugly mood.

“You!” he growled. “You! Why must you come here? Why seek me out? Why couldn't you let me be?” He fell back on the rice matting and mopped his forehead with a trembling hand. “I've had enough of your rotten world with its governors and captains, its cravats and stockings, its customs and laws. I'm through with it, d'ye hear? I'm done with it, and I'll have nothing to do with your rotten war either, nothing at all. There are the French with their revolutionaries and rebels, their renegades and ruffians, and here are the British with their King and their Company, their Articles of War, and their articles for sale. Ah, I was part of the system once, chief mate and in line to become master. I was a gentleman once but could take no more of it and came ashore. I've moved further and further away from the whole stinking system, coming at last to join my friends on this remote river. And who comes to drag me back to the treadmill? My own younger brother! You, Richard, the one of us who obeyed the teacher, kept to the rules, never stepped out of line! But let me tell you that you are wasting your time. I shan't leave with you. I shall stay here where all is quiet. I'll smoke another pipe and presently forget that you exist. You come too late, Richard, you come too late . . .”