Chapter Twenty Five.
“The Heathen Chinee.”
“What a rum place!” cried Larkyns, when the ship was safely moored and Captain Farmer had gone off in his gig to pay his respects to the admiral, whose flagship lay hard by, all of us then having time to look round and survey the strange and picturesque surroundings—semi-European, semi-Oriental, all tropical—of Singapore harbour, the capital of the Straits Settlements and great port of the Eastern Archipelago, amid which we now found ourselves. “I’m blowed if it doesn’t look like the pantomime of ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’ at Drury Lane!”
“That’s not at all a bad simile, youngster,” observed the commander, who was just coming down from the poop, after seeing everything snug and that the awnings had been spread over the decks, with windsails rigged up leading through the hatchways to introduce what air there was to the heated atmosphere below. “Only, instead of forty, I should think there were forty thousand thieves amongst that crowd of Asiatics, with their serpent’s eyes and slimy bodies! It looks like a water picnic, does it not?”
It was certainly a wonderful and varied scene that we gazed at over the hammock rail, the glaring sun overhead, the vividly blue sea stretching up to the white beach in front of the busy-looking town and the verdant hills beyond, with white villas nestling amid the green, like Madeira, and big, gru-gru palms and agaves, with other odd, broad-foliaged plants to tell that we were in more outlandish latitudes; while, skimming over the glassy blue water, that turned to an emerald green in its depths and was so transparent that the sandy bottom could be seen, with various molluscs crawling about amongst the algas, were hundreds of boats of every description—from the trim-built man-o’-war’s cutter down to the slipper-like sampan and aboriginal coracle of as queer construction as the catamaran of the Coromandel coast or the war canoe of the Sandwich Islands.
Other even queerer craft lay at anchor like ourselves, only further up the harbour, chief amongst them being Chinese junks of every size, from the huge, travelling tea-chest from Woosung or Amoy of three or four thousand tons burthen, down to the “junklet” from the nearer provinces of the Celestial Empire of lesser proportions.
But, all were alike in form, veritable facsimiles of the picture of the Great Harry of the time of Henry the Eighth, which I remember seeing in an old book on history when I was cramming up for my examination and looked at every work I could come across in order to increase my store of knowledge.
These junks all had great, staring, goggle eyes painted on their bows on either side, John Chinaman believing that without these fanciful addenda his stagey-looking craft “no see no piecee walk can do.”
Their sails also were very funny, being huge mats, of trapezoidal shape, that resembled so many Venetian blinds.
These sails were hoisted on tall poles of eighty to hundred feet in height, without a joint, while their floating rattan cables completed their theatrical appearance, circling round their prows with the tide like snakes.
In addition to these were likewise any number of Malay prahus and “prams” from Borneo and Celebes and the Philippine Islands generally; Arab dhows and “grabs” from the Persian Gulf; English-captained, Lascar-manned trading vessels from Calcutta and Madras; fishing schooners from the Torres Straits and Sydney, laden with cargoes of sea-slugs, for Chinese consumption; besides merchant ships from every port in Europe—although, I noticed that the British and American flags were decidedly in the ascendant.
All this heterogeneous collection of vessels, of every known nationality and rig, come hither at all seasons, but the Chinese junks mostly when the north-east monsoon sets in to blow them along with their favourite stern wind.
They resort here as to a common meeting ground or exchange mart, to swop their cargoes, the silks and teas and spices and precious gums of the East being bartered for the manufactures and merchandise of the West; while the keen though sleepy-looking Dutchmen, Chinese, Jews, Parsees, Siamese, Englishmen and Yanks, who negotiate and this interchange of wares manage to conduct the bargaining in their various lingoes by the aid of a polyglot dialect of their own, chuckling over the dollars and cash and cowries as they rake them in with the impression that they are getting the best of the deal, when all the time, perhaps, they are being cheated themselves!
So Commander Nesbitt now told us, kindly particularising the various points of interest to us two youngsters and explaining all we did not know, which meant pretty nearly everything, as he had served in these waters before; while to Larkyns and myself Singapore and its migratory population, with their prominent characters and characteristics, were all new, as, indeed, they were to most of the fellows in the gunroom, excepting Mr Stormcock and Plumper, the fat senior mate, both of whom, like the commander, had previously been on the station and were acquainted of old with the place and its people.
But neither Larkyns nor myself need have been in any hurry to make our observations; for, we had ample opportunity of learning all we wished to know, and a good deal more, too, of Singapore and its surroundings, as we remained here over six weeks.
The Candahar had orders to await the coming of Admiral Hope from England by the overland mail, in succession to Admiral Sir Michael Seymour, whose period of service had expired before the former left London to take up his commission.
In order to understand the position of affairs leading up to the events I am now about to speak of, in which, possibly, I took a more prominent part than I might have chosen had I been given the option, I may mention that through the action mainly of the last-named officer, in capturing Canton and forcing his way almost up to the gates of Pekin, which seemed to bring the Imperial Ruler of the Universe and Emperor of the Sun, Moon and Stars to his senses, the series of intermittent wars between Great Britain and China, which had been waged at intervals since the year 1840, breaking out again after more than one temporary cessation of hostilities, like a smouldering fire ever and anon bursting into flame, had been, it was sanguinely believed by the authorities, brought to a permanent close by the Treaty of Tientsin, signed in 1858.
This treaty, however, which as Lord Elgin, our plenipotentiary, wrote home to warn the Government, had “been extorted only from the fears” of the Chinese, was not to be ratified until the succeeding year, the date of our arrival on the scene; where the Celestials hoped that they might by then have time to prepare themselves for a renewal of the struggle, although, of course, our wise men in office never thought of such a thing, implicitly giving faith to the assurances of the pigtailed mandarins that peace was as good as settled, and that friendly relations betwixt ourselves and the yellow-skinned descendants of the great Confucius would be resumed and their ports open to our trade at the time fixed—only, not till then!
How those blandly-smiling mandarins must have twinkled their little pig eyes and tossed their pigtails in gay abandon at the simplicity of the “Outer Barbarians” whom they thus beguiled in the usual “Heathen Chinee” fashion, as we subsequently discovered to our cost, although this is anticipating matters.