China Song

One

Macao
February, 1839

The Pearl River ran brown with silt as it flowed past the city of Canton, snaking through a network of islands to emerge in a broad estuary where its waters blended with those of the South China Sea. Far from shore, the estuary was emerald green, speckled with brush-covered islands that rose sharply upward from their bases. But where it lapped its way along the tiny peninsula of Macao, the Pearl was the color of rich congou tea laced with cream.

High-pooped junks, their heavy sails ribbed like bat wings, and smaller, arch-roofed sampans, which were paddled or poled, glided over the surface of the outer harbor. Their decks were cluttered with nets and baskets, with racks of drying fish, with clotheslines, cats, cooking pots and children. Their occupants paid little attention to the girl who walked along the sweeping crescent of beach that the Europeans called the Praya Grande. All of them had seen fan kuei, foreign devils, before, and even the foreign women were hardly worth a second glance. For the most part, they were tall, rawboned creatures with florid skins and faded eyes. Chinese men did not usually find them attractive.

Even so, when Kathleen Bellamy pulled the pins from her long red hair and let it fly loose in the breeze like a scarlet banner, the boat crews slackened their lines for a moment to look at her and catch their breaths.

Kathleen was nineteen years old and long accustomed to being stared at. By general agreement, she was the most spectacular beauty ever to walk the streets of Macao, and she knew it. In spite of the drab, well-worn gown and sturdy, high-laced walking boots she wore, she turned almost every male head that passed.

Yet Kathleen's was not a conventional prettiness. In a world where daintiness was the measure of feminine beauty, she stood out like a fire lily among violets. She was tall, tall enough to look many a man in the eye. Her robust young body was lush and lithe, and she walked with the easy grace of a tigress.

One could argue, perhaps, that her features were too strong, that the thrust of her chin showed too much willfulness, the height of her brow more intelligence than was becoming to a woman. But none could deny the startling beauty of her eyes, which were the blue-green color of the sea under a cloudless sky, or of that wild mane of dark red hair that never seemed to stay pinned in place.

Her dress, which she hated passionately, was four years old, homemade of serviceable Nanking cotton that had once been dark blue but had long since faded to a dirty gray color. Kathleen's mother had made it for her fifteenth birthday, and now it was too small. It bound at the sleeves and strained at the buttons where Kathleen's full bosom had worn the fabric thin. When she fastened the collar all the way up to her chin, she felt strangled. As soon as she left home, she would unbutton the bodice all the way down to the tops of her breasts, filling in the indecent gap with the jade-green silk scarf that her brother Morgan had sent her from Canton. The scarf was one of the few lovely things Kathleen owned. It was almost as long as she was tall, and it floated back over her shoulders when she wore it around her neck. She wore it often, even though her father raged against the idea of a minister's daughter flaunting herself in bright colors. She loved the silken feel of it, and its deep hue, which brought out the green flecks in her eyes. The scarf was a symbol, a token of rebellion against the father who ruled her life like a despot. How she envied Morgan, three years her senior, who had managed to wriggle out of the paternal grasp long enough to go up to Canton for the trading season.

The Praya, lined with white and pastel-toned colonnaded buildings, teemed with activity. Sampans bobbed at the quays and jetties, piling their cargoes onto the cobblestones. Chinese coolies and women trotted along, their burdens dangling from bamboo poles neatly balanced on their shoulders: ducks, hanging in bunches by their feet, bundles of lettuce and onions, big red hunks of meat, slung on hooks, baskets -- baskets for everything. There were special baskets for crabs with tops that curved inward, baskets for chickens and long baskets, closed at both ends, for pigs.

Sedan chairs, their silk curtains mysteriously closed, jogged past, borne on sinewy shoulders. Macao, unique in all the world, was a delicious melange of Portuguese and Chinese culture. With Chinese permission, the Portuguese had occupied this tiny peninsula for three hundred years. The homes, business houses and public buildings were, for the most part, Iberian in style, with arched colonnades, wrought-iron balconies and tile roofs. But the sights, sounds and smells of Macao were unquestionably Chinese.

Kathleen sidestepped an eel vendor. His living wares writhed in twin buckets balanced on the ends of a split bamboo that dug into the flesh of his bare shoulder. The sight of those gleaming, snakelike bodies sent a shiver up her back. She had never tasted eel. . . or squid, for that matter, or the funny little amber pickles called tea melons that were sold from a dim doorway around the corner from the Ma Cho Temple. Except for rice and cabbage, Kathleen's father regarded Chinese food as "heathen's fare" (or "'eathen's fare," as he would say, since he had brought from home the Cockney habit of dropping his h's). Kathleen and Morgan were forbidden to touch it. At home they ate porridges, stews, biscuits and salt beef shipped all the way from Calcutta.

A child brushed passed her, a ragged little boy with slanting eyes and a basket of dried, salted plums slung over his skinny arm. Kathleen smiled, feeling the weight of a single copper in the pocket of her skirt. She touched the lad's shoulder. He turned swiftly, startled that one of the foreign devils would pay him any mind. "If you please," she said softly in Cantonese, holding out the coin and gesturing toward the plums. He took the coin solemnly, his eyes huge as he bit into it with his crooked little teeth. He reached into the basket, took a handful of the shriveled pinkish-brown treasures and counted ten of them into Kathleen's waiting palm. Then, almost as if he were unable to contain his fright any longer, he scurried away like a small crab and was lost in the crowd.

Kathleen popped one plum into her mouth and put the others in her pocket. The taste made her mouth pucker -- sweet, sour and salty all at the same time. A bit of China on her tongue. Her father would scold her if he knew. . . Pleased with herself, she strolled on down the Praya toward the water stairs, her hair fluttering like a red flame in the afternoon breeze.

The harbor near the Praya was too heavily silted to permit the approach of large ships. They anchored off the Typa, the small island that lay a mile and a half south of Macao. Their passengers and crews were conveyed to the mainland by round-topped sampans, expertly manned by young Chinese girls who chattered to their English-speaking clients in pidgin. "You wantchee go boat? One dolla. Can?"

The girls were clean and pretty and wore their hair in long pigtails. Bamboo hats shaded their faces from the glare of the sun. They kept their little boats spotless. Kathleen had heard it whispered that for the right price they would give a man more than a boat ride, but her brother Morgan had said it wasn't true. A friend of his had tried, he'd told her, laughing as he said it, and the girl's father had chased him into the water with a fish cleaver.

She missed Morgan. The Macao winter had been long, with him gone off to Canton. Soon he would be home again. . . home, to sit and talk with her, to tease and be teased and to bear with her the brunt of their father's tyranny, Morgan. She sighed deeply, overcome by a wave of loneliness. Her hand caressed the green scarf he had given to her. Something in her spirit reached out to him across the distance, as if mere wishing could bring him nearer.

She swallowed the lump in her throat, suddenly troubled. A dim premonition of danger had crept over her senses. She glanced up and down the Praya, then turned back toward home, weaving her way among the strolling nut sellers and clusters of boys playing at dice and fantan.

Without knowing why, Kathleen walked swiftly. She had a vague sense of being pursued, not by any human menace, but by some grim black cloud of foreboding that would not go away. Once, as a child of three, she had awakened from an afternoon nap screaming her brother's name. Her mother had searched the house in vain for Morgan, and had finally run to the nearby millpond to find the boy thrashing in the water, half-drowned. Some people said Kathleen was fey, that she was gifted with a sixth sense, especially where Morgan was concerned.

Outside the stuccoed governor's palace, she paused for breath, and the blackness caught and enveloped her. Her pulse began to pound. Morgan! her senses shrilled--

"Kathleen!" The young Portuguese dandy had stepped out of the gate of the governor's palace and seized her arm with one hot hand. Joaquin Luis Silveira was the governor's nephew, and as such was accustomed to having his way.

His breath was damp in her ear. "Tonight, my sweet?" he whispered.

"Maybe." Kathleen tossed her head and pulled away from him, remembering how he'd kissed her with his tongue the last time, and how his hand had crept upward, cradled her breast and then ripped loose the top four buttons of her dress before she'd panicked and run away. He would want as much and more next time, and Kathleen was not sure she was ready to give it to him.

Joaquin, not to be discouraged so easily, slipped an arm around her waist and eased her toward the gate. He was tall and elegantly slim, with a narrow chin, a fussily curled mustache and smoldering black eyes fringed with long lashes.

"Tonight," he insisted. "In the grotto. Don't tell me you can't get away, queridinha, or that you don't want to. I know better."

"My father--"

"Your father! That old touro! You can outsmart him! Come here, don't be in such a hurry. . ."

He reeled her in like a struggling fish. In a moment, he would have her inside the gate. Desperately, she glanced up and down the street. A slight figure with a parasol was coming up along the south end of the Praya.

"Pris! Priscilla!" Kathleen called, waving.

The dainty figure waved in return. Joaquin released his quarry with a sigh. "Tonight, Kathleen. And don't disappoint me!" He vanished inside the gate.

Kathleen raced down the Praya to meet her friend.

"Joaquin again?" Priscilla Robards was exquisitely small, with dark hair, warm brown eyes and skin like white porcelain. "Kathleen, your father would have apoplexy if he knew!"

"So? He doesn't have to know."

"But a Catholic? You can't be serious about him!"

Kathleen fell into step beside her friend, swinging her arm so that it whipped the side of her skirt. "If you're talking about marriage, Pris, no, I'm not serious. But Joaquin's amusing, and at least he's a man. Can I help it if all the English and Americans -- all the interesting ones at least -- are cooped up in Canton?" She sighed. Every year, in the fall, the merchants and their staffs migrated up the river to Canton for the six-month trading season. There they spent their winters, confined to a complex of buildings known as the Factories, where no women were allowed. In March, they returned to spend the summer with their families in Macao.

"They'll be home soon," said Pris, with a little skip of her feet. "And what will poor Joaquin do then? I wouldn't lead him on like that if I were you, Kathleen."

"Oh, Joaquin's harmless enough. And if I hurt him, he'll mend." Kathleen forced a smile. The brief encounter with Joaquin had taken her mind off the black premonition for a few moments, but now it had returned, stronger than ever.

"Harmless? I'm the one who helped you sew your buttons back on so you could go home! Remember?" Pris twirled the handle of her pink silk parasol. "Oh, Kathleen, I have the most exciting news! I was coming to tell you. My father's coming back early -- and he's bringing Morgan with him! I just got his letter!"

The blackness grew and darkened. "When?" Kathleen asked softly.

"Soon! Within the next few days, if he can get clearance -- Kathleen, you look so strange -- what's the matter?"

"Nothing. Nothing, dearest Pris." Kathleen squeezed the fragile hand. The blackness was closing in, enveloping them both. "It's only that I'm surprised. Come on, let's walk a little."

Kathleen shortened her stride to keep pace with Priscilla's dainty steps. A Portuguese woman glided past them, her features hidden by the folds of the dó, the long, flowing mantle she wore that covered her head and most of her body. Two sway-bellied Chinese pigs ambled along the Praya, snuffling for bits of fish and discarded vegetables.

From out of the corner of her eye, Kathleen studied her friend. Although she had never seen her homeland, Pris Robards was an American. She'd been born in Macao almost seventeen years ago. Except for a few trips with her father to Manila and Singapore, she'd spent all the days of her life on that little spit of land which was only half a mile wide and less than three miles in length from its southern tip to the barrier gate that marked its boundary with China. Priscilla's mother had died giving her birth. The girl had been raised by doting Chinese amahs, as a result of which she spoke Cantonese like a native.

Pris twirled her pink parasol, looked up at Kathleen and laughed. "I envy you so," she said in a voice that was like a little bell. "The wind musses my hair. The sun gives me freckles. But being out of doors only makes you more beautiful, Kathleen." Priscilla sighed wistfully. She was wearing a leghorn bonnet over her dark brown curls. Her dress was new and of the finest cream-colored Shantung silk, cut modestly round at the neck, with long, full sleeves. Her neat little hands were encased in hand-crocheted lace mitts.

"Envy me?" Kathleen threw back her splendid head and laughed out loud, a sound that would have horrified her father. "God's blood, Pris, how could you envy anyone?" Kathleen swore not from habit but from studied, deliberate intent. It gave her an identity of sorts, a separateness from other girls she knew. Pris never reproached her for it. Perhaps that was one of the reasons the two of them had remained friends for so long.

"Look at you, Prissy!" Kathleen ran a hand through her flame-toned hair. "You're a lady! Fine clothes, fine manners -- and the loveliest eyes! Why, most girls would give a fortune for lashes as long as yours! And look at your father! Blake Robards, taipan of the fourth-largest trading company on the China Coast! You've got everything!" Involuntarily, Kathleen's eyes darted to her own faded gown.

Pris had missed nothing. "I've a new bolt of silk," she said with a smile. "It's pale blue -- oh, it would be wonderful on you, Kathleen! And my dressmaker's not busy now. . ."

Kathleen squeezed the small, lace-enclosed hand. "You're a gem, Pris, but you know my father would never let me accept it."

Priscilla nodded, tightening her lips and looking down at the cobblestones in silence as they walked. Kathleen hurt for her friend and for herself, for that was the one insurmountable barrier between them. Reverend Bellamy would never let his daughter accept anything Blake Robards had purchased with money he'd made in the opium trade.

Opium, the most hated and most desired commodity on the China Coast, was shipped in from India and Turkey by British and American traders to be sold clandestinely at Lintin Island in the river's estuary or carried up the coast to be smuggled ashore at night. It was no secret that the great trading hongs, including Blake Robards's own Red Eagle Line, had made their vast fortunes not in bringing Manchester textiles and raw India cotton into Canton nor in shipping silk, rhubarb root and huge quantities of tea back to their homelands, but in smuggling illegal opium into China.

The reason for the smuggling, as Kathleen had heard Priscilla's father explain, was simple enough and perfectly justified in many eyes. The demand for Chinese goods, especially tea, was great in Europe and America. The quantity of Western items that could be sold in China, however, was very limited. The Chinese had been self-sufficient for more than two thousand years. Although they welcomed the bales of raw cotton, which were sent to spinners in Nanking, they had little use for most foreign commodities. To put it simply, the Western nations had almost nothing that the Chinese wanted to buy.

Thus, the Chinese had become the sellers, the Westerners the buyers. The buyers were spending money, the sellers making it. Silver was flowing into China from Europe and America at a frightening rate. Something had to be done. Some item had to be found that the Chinese would buy in large amounts.

The solution was opium.

For centuries, the Chinese had grown the white opium poppies and harvested the potent sap that came from their pods. Its use, however, had been chiefly medicinal. The amount and quality of the drug produced had not been high enough to cause widespread addiction. The Westerners had changed all that. Over the past several decades, illegal importation of opium had risen to such a scale that it now exceeded the total price of all Chinese exports combined. The silver was flowing in the other direction now, back into Western pockets.

"There's no other way," the voice of Blake Robards echoed in Kathleen's ears as she walked south along the Praya beside Kathleen. "D'ye think we'd be trading in opium if those cursed Chinee would open their ports and let us take our goods to the people the way we'd like? Can't you see that if the Chinee want opium, they'll get it one way or another -- from others, if not from ourselves?"

Priscilla, Kathleen realized, had mixed feelings about opium. On the one hand, it fed and clothed her. It bought her silks and laces and paid the rent on the elegant Portuguese villa that looked out over the Praya. To forsake opium would be to forsake all. Yet when she went to church on Sundays and heard Reverend Archer Bellamy, Kathleen's father, thunder from the pulpit about the evils of opium and the depredations it wreaked on the Chinese body and spirit, Pris squirmed uncomfortably. Once, last summer, when Reverend Bellamy had waxed especially strong against the wickedness of those who lived by "the devil's wages," the wives of three wealthy opium traders had stood up and walked out. They had never returned to the little white chapel that adjoined Macao's Protestant cemetery. Priscilla, however, had stayed. She had stayed, Kathleen suspected, because of Morgan.

At the thought of Morgan, the black premonition pressed in on Kathleen again, oozing like smoke into the cracks and corners of her mind no matter how she fought to keep it out. She could be wrong, she told herself again and again. Morgan was probably fine. He was most likely helping Blake Robards take a final inventory of the trade goods before the return to Macao, and was safe as a babe in its mother's arms. She would not think of it!

Priscilla had been silent, her great dark eyes focused inward on her own thoughts.

"Where are you, Prissy?" Kathleen squeezed her arm. She was amused by her friend's frequent dreamy spells.

"Oh." Pris blinked. "I was only thinking. . . how nice it will be to have my father home again."

"Your father!" Kathleen hugged her impulsively. "You're such a mouse! It's my brother you're thinking of! He'll be home, too!"

Priscilla did not reply, but a pink flush had begun to creep upward from her throat to her pale cheeks and temples.

"Come on!" Kathleen coaxed. "Everyone knows you're sweet on Morgan! And if it's my blessing you want, why, you have it!"

Pris only shook her small head in useless denial and blushed to the roots of her hair. Kathleen laughed, too long and too loudly, as she struggled to push away the blackness. Pris was the lucky one, she told herself -- and not just because she had beautiful clothes and a rich, indulgent father. Kathleen envied her friend most of all because here in this isolated corner of the world, with only a handful of young men to choose from, Priscilla had found someone to love. It was true that Morgan did not yet return that love. He acted as if he still saw Pris as a little girl. But Priscilla was growing up. Surely it was only a matter of time. . .

As for Kathleen herself, she had scrutinized every eligible man who'd come to Macao in the past three years. Some of them had been attractive, and any number of them had wanted her. She had flirted with some, kissed a few and garnered herself a reputation as a hussy. Yet none of them had stirred her deeply. She had never been in love, and her body was as untouched as her heart.

In her own way, Kathleen adored Macao. She relished its pungent blend of East and West, of Moorish arches and Chinese pagodas, of bully beef and crumpets and sweet-sour dumplings. She never tired of wandering through Macao's Chinese sections, filling her eyes, ears and nose with Oriental delights. But she was nineteen years old now, a grown woman with a woman's passions.

And the Macao she had once loved so much was slowly becoming the prison of her desires.

Blake Robards leaned on the rail of the schooner and peered out into the mist -- mist so heavy that it formed droplets on the dark stubble of his cheeks and chin. Damn Canton, he thought. Damn the fog, and rot the Hoppo who'd delayed giving him his departure chop until midafternoon, so that he'd barely cleared the Bogue by sundown and was forced to anchor in the estuary till dawn. Only a fool would try to make Macao in the dark.

And blast Morgan Bellamy, who'd come up missing that morning, only to be found, after a search of several hours, passed out cold, his face half-buried in the mire of Hog Lane, a stinking, crowded alleyway that ran down between the Parsee and New English Factories. Hell, Blake Robards cursed under his breath, it was a wonder the lad hadn't suffocated!

Young Bellamy's misadventure had been a disappointment to Robards. He'd taken a liking to the boy in spite of the fact that his father was a starch-faced prig. Morgan was bright and ambitious. He'd tended well to his duties as an assistant clerk. Aye, Robards told himself, the lad had shown promise. In fact, Morgan Bellamy had exhibited only one fault: There was apparently very little he would not do for money.

It was a wager, Robards had learned after he'd grilled the crew, that had set young Bellamy's feet on the road to disaster. A wager made in jest, of two hundred silver dollars to any man who could spend a night on one of Canton's infamous floating flower boats and return to the Factories alive the next morning. Any fool who'd been at the Factories for more than a season would have known it was a joke. The ornate floating brothels that decorated the riverbank, where the girls lolled on the balconies, smiling and beckoning, were forbidden to the non-Chinese. Within remembered years, only two foreigners had penetrated their carved, swinging doors. One man had been tossed out violently within minutes. The other man had gone in and had never been seen again.

Morgan Bellamy had been half-dead when they found him in Hog Lane. His pockets had been empty and he'd reeked of samshu, that devastating Cantonese concoction of rice liquor, tobacco juice and arsenic that was sold as "number one chop rum" in dingy booths along Hog Lane. When even a good dousing in the river had failed to rouse the lad, Robards's suspicions were confirmed; along with the samshu, Bellamy had been drugged.

They'd dried him off and stowed him in a secluded bunk below decks, where he was still sleeping soundly, snorting and whimpering occasionally like a hurt animal. Blake Robards dismissed him from his mind and turned his thoughts ahead to Macao.

He had no regrets in leaving Canton a month ahead of schedule. His legal goods had been sold, his three former Indiamen, big vessels purchased from the old East India Company, bound for home, their holds laden with tea; and his four clippers were racing to the Red Sea ports to claim the prime of the Turkish opium harvest. There was nothing to hold him to Canton, and he hated the place. He hated the stale confinement of the Factories. He chafed in the company of the other American traders, such a pious lot that the more easygoing British had dubbed the American Factory "Zion's Corner." He had even grown tired of the Cantonese girls smuggled discreetly into his rooms by his comprador, Wu Hung-li, who bought supplies and managed the Chinese help.

Not only that, but Wu Hung-li had brought him a secret rumor, a rumor that the emperor had it in mind to strike a new blow at the opium smuggling. Wu had heard that a special commissioner with imperial powers was headed south from Peking and would be at Canton before the end of the season. Characteristically, Robards had kept the news to himself. If there was a way the information could be used to his advantage, he would use it. Meanwhile, he'd gotten his opium clippers as far away from Canton as possible and he'd wrapped up his own affairs there at once, leaving Wu Hung-li to close up his offices in the American Factory.

Aye, he reflected, but he'd had a bellyful of Canton this year. He longed for the freedom of Macao, the comfort and privacy of his own house and the sight of his daughter's face.

Priscilla. Now there was another worry. She was growing up, and it was time he sent her to his sister in Boston. Macao was no place for a young lady, especially a lass as comely as his little Pris.

He'd seen the way she looked at Morgan Bellamy. Although he hadn't really noticed Morgan looking back, he'd been concerned enough to invite the lad up to Canton with him for the season. Young Bellamy had leaped at the chance. He'd been wild with restlessness in Macao. It was plain to see that he lacked his father's vocation for preaching, but he was energetic, ambitious and anxious to get ahead in the world. The China trade had absorbed and fascinated him.

But Morgan Bellamy was not the man for Pris. He was young, poor and lacking in refinement. Worse, he had a wild streak in him, a touch of the devil that no one could predict or control. Why was it, Robards wondered, that preachers' sons were so often full of Old Nick? Well, never mind. He'd keep the lad with him, perhaps, and one day young Bellamy might make a good first mate or chief clerk. But Robards would be damned if he'd have him as a son-in-law!

Yes, Boston was the place for Pris, and as soon as he'd gotten settled, he'd send her packing. His sister had married well, and had fine social connections. She'd find Pris a proper husband. A man with money, land, ships and perhaps an honorable position. Blake Robards leaned his chin on his fist and stared out into the darkness. He could see his Pris as the wife of a governor, perhaps, or a senator, elegantly gowned, presiding at balls and banquets. He smiled to himself and stroked his chin. Before he knew it, he could have a whole pack of grandsons; and maybe some of them would come back to the China Coast to take over the Red Eagle Line when he passed on.

The deck was silent except for the tread of the watch. Robards inhaled the muggy odor of the river and listened to the slap of the waves against the stern. He knew the Pearl River Estuary as well as he knew his own bed. North of him lay the Bogue, a long, straight channel whose steep banks were lined with Chinese forts. Upstream of the Bogue, the river curved and meandered through treacherous bars and shoal, past Whampoa Island, where the trade vessels anchored, and on up a maze of channels to Canton itself. Except for a few intrepid Catholic priests, no Westerner had been beyond Canton.

Below the Bogue, the land opened like a woman's thighs. The estuary was forty miles across where it met the sea, with Macao on its western shore and a jagged cluster of islands on the east that rose up from the sea in hills. Barren Lantau was the largest; then towering Hong Kong, where ships sometimes stopped for fresh water. The others were smaller - - Lamma, Tsing Yi, Cheung Chau and a myriad of others that were no more than dots on the charts. For the most part, they were rough, waterless places, uninhabited except for occasional fishing villages.

Near the center of the estuary lay Lintin Island, where the great receiving hulks, their masts removed, rocked at anchor, floating warehouses for the raw opium that the clippers brought in from the docks of Calcutta or from ports on the Red Sea. There the Chinese opium smugglers and dealers picked up their illegal cargo in long, slender boats known as "scrambling dragons" or "fast crabs," although they more closely resembled centipedes with their double lines of rowers, whose oars worked in furious unison like the legs of some huge water insect.

The Chinese authorities knew about Lintin. They knew and they did nothing, aside from an occasional reading of the Tao Kuang emperor's edict against opium. How could they do more, when practically every mandarin and customs official on the South China Coast was growing rich from his cut of the smuggling profits?

The irony of the situation never failed to amuse Blake Robards. The straight, pious faces of the Chinese authorities as they collected their "squeeze" for allowing the opium chests to be brought ashore; the mock pursuits staged by the war junks once their quarry, usually an opium clipper, was safely out of the range of their antiquated guns.

It was a lively business for a man who liked it, which Blake Robards did, and a profitable one as well. But he wanted Pris away from it. If she stayed in Macao, her prospects were dim. Marriage to some poor young clerk like Morgan Bellamy or, at best, another opium baron like himself. It was no life for a gentle girl.

It was a shame he hadn't married again, Robards told himself. He'd have had growing sons by now, and a man needed sons. Silently, he listened to the river as it rippled past the bow of the schooner. There was still time, he told himself. He was only forty-six, still strong-limbed and hard-bellied, and he'd fathered at least three half-breed bastards by his Chinese mistresses. God only knew where they were by how.

Maybe he'd go back to Boston with Pris, get her settled and stay long enough to do some courting. The thought excited him. He hadn't had a non-Chinese woman since his wife died. He'd make sure she was young and good-looking, he promised himself as he took a deep breath, flexed his shoulders and stared out into the night.

An absence during the long months required for the journey to Boston and back was not practical, he reasoned, but perhaps it would not be necessary. There were women in Singapore, in Manila, in India. And the prettiest of them all, perhaps, was right in Macao. Robards ran a hand along the rail and resolved to take a closer look at that red-headed Kathleen Bellamy, his daughter's friend. She just might be the one for him. True, her father would fight the match, but Robards would have young Morgan on his side, and even the old preacher could be bought. Any man could.

Blake Robards was so absorbed in his thoughts that he did not hear the rhythm of sculled sampans as they slid up alongside the schooner. He did not even hear the muffled cry from the man on watch as the pirate's dagger slit his throat.

Robards was not even aware that anything was amiss until he felt strong arms grab his neck from behind. He twisted, grunting like a bull, and threw the man across the deck, but there were others, too many of them, and he was unarmed. They swarmed over him, hacking at him with cutlasses. He bellowed an alarm, then whirled to face them.

Something struck the back of his neck. He cried out. Then his mind burst in a sheet of red and died suddenly into a blackness that was darker than the night itself.

Copyright © 1982 by Elizabeth Lane