painted in yellow stripes, which came down through the ceiling and passed directly through the middle of the table, and went so far as to look beneath the table-cloth, to see it continuing down through the deck below.
Riley had left the right side of the table entirely for the Chinese guests, and had them shown to places there, but they did not move to sit when he and the officers did, which left the British in confusion, some men already half-seated and trying to keep themselves suspended in mid-air. Bewildered, Riley pressed them to take their seats; but he had to urge them several times before at last they would sit. It was an inauspicious beginning, and did not encourage conversation.
The officers at first began by taking refuge in their dinners, but even that semblance of good manners did not last very long. The Chinese did not eat with knife and fork, but with lacquered sticks they had brought with them. These they somehow manoeuvred one-handed to bring food to their lips, and shortly the British half of the company were staring in helplessly rude fascination, every new dish presenting a fresh opportunity to observe the technique. The guests were briefly puzzled by the platter of roast mutton, large slices carved from the leg, but after a moment one of the younger attendants carefully proceeded to roll up a slice, still only using the sticks, and picked it up entire to eat in three bites, leading the way for the rest.
By now Tripp, Riley’s youngest midshipman, a plump and unlovely twelve-year-old aboard by virtue of his family’s three votes in Parliament, and invited for his own education rather than his company, was surreptitiously trying to imitate the style, using his fork and knife turned upside-down in place of the sticks, his efforts meeting without notable success, except in doing damage to his formerly-clean breeches. He was too far down the table to be quelled by hard looks, and the men around him were too busy gawking themselves to notice.
Sun Kai had the seat of honour nearest Riley, and desperate to keep his attention from the boy’s antics, Riley tentatively raised a glass to him, watching Hammond out of the corner of his eye for direction, and said, ‘To your health, sir.’ Hammond murmured a hasty translation across the table, and Sun Kai nodded, raised his own glass, and sipped politely, though not very much: it was a heady Madeira well-fortified with brandy, chosen to survive rough seas. For a moment it seemed this might rescue the occasion: the rest of the officers were belatedly recalled to their duty as gentlemen, and began to salute the rest of the guests; the pantomime of raised glasses was perfectly comprehensible without any translation, and led naturally to a thawing of relations. Smiles and nods began to traverse the table, and Laurence heard Hammond, beside him, heave out an almost inaudible sigh through open lips, and finally take some little food.
Laurence knew he was not doing his own part; but his knee was lodged up against a trestle of the table, preventing him from stretching out his now-aching leg, and though he had drunk as sparingly as was polite, his head felt thick and clouded. By now he only hoped he might avoid embarrassment, and resigned himself to making apologies to Riley after the meal for his dullness.
Riley’s third lieutenant, a fellow named Franks, had spent the first three toasts in rude silence, sitting woodenly and raising his glass only with a mute smile, but sufficient flow of wine loosened his tongue at last. He had served on an East Indiaman as a boy, during the peace, and evidently had acquired a few stumbling words of Chinese; now he tried the less-obscene of them on the gentleman sitting across from him: a young, clean-shaven man named Ye Bing, gangly beneath the camouflage of his fine robes, who brightened and proceeded to respond with his own handful of English.
‘A very— A fine—’ he said, and stuck, unable to find the rest of the compliment he wished to make, shaking his head as Franks offered, alternatively, the options which seemed to him most natural: wind, night, and dinner; at last Ye Bing beckoned over the translator, who said on his behalf, ‘Many compliments to your ship: it is most cleverly devised.’
Such praise was an easy way to a sailor’s heart; Riley, overhearing, broke off from his disjointed bilingual conversation with Hammond and Sun Kai, on their likely southward course, and called down to the translator, ‘Pray thank the gentleman for his kind words, sir; and tell him that I hope you will all find yourselves quite comfortable.’
Ye Bing bowed his head and said, through the translator, ‘Thank you, sir, we are already much more so than on our journey here. Four ships were required to carry us here, and one proved unhappily slow.’
‘Captain Riley, I understand you have gone round the Cape of Good Hope before?’ Hammond interrupted rudely, and Laurence glanced at him in surprise.
Riley also looked startled, but politely turned back to answer him, but Franks, who had spent nearly all of the last two days below in the stinking hold, directing the stowage of all the baggage, said in slightly drunken irreverence, ‘Four ships only? I am surprised it did not take six; you must have been packed like sardines.’
Ye Bing nodded and said, ‘The vessels were small for so long a journey, but in the service of the Emperor all discomfort is a joy, and in any case, they were the largest of your ships in Canton at the time.’
‘Oh; so you hired East Indiamen for the passage?’ Macready asked; he was the Marine lieutenant, a rail-thin, wiry stump of a man who wore spectacles incongruous on his much-scarred face. There was no malice but undeniably a slight edge of superiority in the question, and in the smiles exchanged by the naval men. That the French could build ships but not sail them, that the Dons were excitable and undisciplined, that the Chinese had no fleet at all to speak of, these were the oft-repeated bywords of the service, and to have them so confirmed was always pleasant, always heartening.
‘Four ships in Canton harbour, and you filled their holds with baggage instead of silk and porcelain; they must have charged you the earth,’ Franks added.
‘How very strange that you should say so,’ Ye Bing said. ‘Although we were travelling under the Emperor’s seal, it is true, one captain did try to demand payment, and then even tried to sail away without permission. Some evil spirit must have seized hold of him and made him act in such a crazy manner. But I believe your Company officials were able to find a doctor to treat him, and he was allowed to apologize.’
Franks stared, as well he might. ‘But then why did they take you, if you did not pay them?’
Ye Bing stared back, equally surprised to have been asked. ‘The ships were confiscated by Imperial edict. What else could they have done?’ He shrugged his shoulders, as if to dismiss the subject, and turned his attention back to the dishes; he seemed to think the piece of intelligence less significant than the small jam tartlets Riley’s cook had provided with the latest course.
Laurence abruptly put down knife and fork; his appetite had been weak to begin with, and now was wholly gone. That they could speak so casually of the seizure of British ships and property – the forced servitude of British seamen to a foreign throne— For a moment he almost convinced himself he had misunderstood: every newspaper in the country would have been shrieking of such an incident; the Government would surely have made a formal protest. Then he looked at Hammond: the diplomat’s face was pale and alarmed, but unsurprised; and all remaining doubt vanished as Laurence recalled Barham’s sorry behaviour, so nearly grovelling, and Hammond’s attempts to change the course of the conversation.
Comprehension was only a little slower in coming to the rest of the British, running up and down the table on the backs of low whispers, as the officers murmured back and forth to one another. Riley’s reply to Hammond, which had been going forward all this time, slowed and stopped: though Hammond prompted Riley again, urgently, asking, ‘Did you have a rough crossing of it? I hope we do not need to fear bad weather along the way.’ This came too late; a complete silence fell, except for young Tripp chewing noisily.
Garnett, the master, elbowed the boy sharply, and even this sound failed. Sun Kai put down his wine glass and looked frowning up and down along the table; he had noticed the change of atmosphere: the feel of a brewing storm. There had already been a great deal of hard drinking, though they were scarcely halfway through the meal, and many of the officers were young, and flushing now with mortification and anger. Many a Navy man, cast on shore during an intermittent peace or by a lack of influence, had served aboard the ships