"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.