Hong Kong, one steamer short

The Rangoon left Calcutta at noon on Friday 25 October with myself, Mrs Aouda, Passepartout and, as I learned later, a gentleman named Fix, who kept to his cabin with a persistence I put down to seasickness. The ship was a fast one of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, iron-built, about seventeen hundred tons. I had no complaint of her engines. I had several of the weather.

We touched at Singapore on Thursday 31 October at four in the morning, half a day ahead of the timetable, to take on coal. I went ashore with Mrs Aouda for two hours, by carriage, because she had not seen the place and because it is unreasonable to keep a guest confined to a deck while the stokers work. The roads were well kept. The air smelled of nutmeg and something sweeter that she identified, without hesitation, as the flower of a tree whose name I did not retain. She has a better memory for gardens than I have for anything except figures. We were back aboard at ten. The ship sailed at eleven.

01 A day lost in the China Sea

From Singapore to Hong Kong is about thirteen hundred miles. The Rangoon was due on Tuesday 5 November. The north-east monsoon had other views. On the 3rd the wind came round hard against us and the sea rose with it, short and steep, so that the ship pitched rather than rolled and the screw raced each time her stern lifted clear. The captain reduced speed. He was right to. I said nothing to him and went on with my game in the saloon, where the cards slid off the table twice and were retrieved twice.

I will set down the arithmetic, since it was the only thing aboard that remained steady. I had left Calcutta two days in hand. A day lost to the storm meant one in hand at Hong Kong, provided the Carnatic for Yokohama kept her advertised sailing. If she had already sailed, I would have none.

Passepartout took the storm personally. He stood at the rail for most of two days scowling at the waves as though they had insulted his master. Mrs Aouda asked me whether I was not anxious. I told her that anxiety had never yet moved a ship forward by a single yard, and that I had made a habit of not paying for things that gave me no return. She looked at me for some time after that. I believe she thought it a cold answer. It was meant as a practical one.

Anxiety has never yet moved a ship forward by a single yard.

We came into Victoria harbour at a quarter past five in the morning on Wednesday 6 November, twenty-four hours late, and, so far as I then knew, one steamer short.

02 The Carnatic gone

The pilot who came aboard told me that the Carnatic was in port with a boiler under repair and would not sail until the following morning. The storm had cost me nothing after all. I noted the fact in my book with a satisfaction I did not show, went ashore, and saw Mrs Aouda settled at the Club Hotel. I had brought her to Hong Kong in the expectation of finding a cousin of hers, a merchant named Jeejeeh, who could give her a home. I enquired at the Exchange. He had left the colony two years before and was thought to be living in Holland. She took the news with more composure than I should have been able to show in her place, and I said, before I had quite decided to say it, that she had better come with us to Europe. She accepted. I mention it because it changed a great deal, though I did not know that at the time.

I sent Passepartout to the docks at about eleven to book three cabins on the Carnatic. He did not come back.

I waited for him at the hotel until evening, then went to bed, since sitting up would not produce him. In the morning he still had not returned. His bed had not been slept in. I went down to the quay myself. The Carnatic was gone. Her repairs had been finished early and she had sailed in the night, some hours before her time. There was no other steamer for Yokohama for a week. I also learned, from a clerk at the shipping office, that a Frenchman answering Passepartout's description had been seen going aboard the Carnatic very late, in a condition the clerk described with some delicacy as unsteady.

I record here, in fairness to him, that I did not know until Yokohama why he had gone without me or why he had not sent word. I assumed some misunderstanding and I was wrong in the kindest possible direction. He had been led into a smoking-house by Mr Fix, who wanted me kept in Hong Kong and wanted my servant unable to tell me so, and had been given drink and then a pipe until he could barely stand. He found his way to the ship on duty alone, which is more than most men would have managed. He tells it himself in another place, and better than I could.

At the time, all I had was the fact. One steamer, one servant and every hour of margin were gone. I had six weeks and a half left, a lady in my care, and a carpet bag of banknotes. I went along the waterfront to look for a boat.

Read nextFour days on a pilot boatWhat I found on the waterfront, and what it cost.