China by Edward Rutherfurd (historical books to read TXT) 📕

“There is nothing better to engender good feeling than a banquet,” he replied. “Send him word that I should like to discuss matters very soon, and I am making preparations for a feast we can all enjoy.”

But days went by, and Elliot did not reply.

—

At first they didn’t see the Nemesis. It was hidden behind some sailing ships. Shi-Rong was standing beside old Admiral Guan, on a small hill just upriver, from which they had an excellent view of the first two forts between which the British ships must pass.

Shi-Rong glanced up at the admiral’s face. How splendid the old man was. Even the British sailors admired Guan, he’d heard, for his gallantry. “Some of our local peasants think the admiral’s descended from the Chinese war god,” he’d told the marquis. “He looks the part,” the marquis had agreed.

The marquis had been taken aback, a week into January 1841 as the barbarians reckoned it, when Elliot, having lost patience, had suddenly appeared with his fleet and made straight for the mouth of the Pearl River. But by the time Shi-Rong asked if he might go to join the admiral to see the action, the new governor had quite recovered himself. “The pirates can do nothing against the forts,” he said. “The admiral’s battle plan is excellent. The British will be begging for terms by tomorrow.”

Now, looking through his brass telescope at the approaching British ships, Shi-Rong remarked to the admiral: “You have prepared a trap for them.”

“I try to learn from my mistakes,” Guan replied. “So tell me what I’ve done.”

“In the first place, you’ve run a big chain under the water, at the upstream end of the forts. The British won’t be able to see it, but it’ll catch them while our battery cannon pound them to bits.”

“Good. What else?”

“You’ve kept a fleet of war junks up here. But I imagine they’re out of range of the British guns.”

“A tempting target, if the British could come close enough. But they can’t.”

“Why is that?”

“Shallows. Even if the British finally get past the chain and head towards my ships, they’ll enter shallow water, and there they will run aground.”

“Clever.” And Shi-Rong was just thinking how lucky he was to be there when he saw something strange. Two of the leading British ships were peeling apart to reveal, astern of them, a vessel unlike any other he had seen. It had a funnel belching smoke of some kind where the central mast should have been. On either side of the ship were huge paddle wheels. And strangest of all, the entire vessel appeared to be made of iron. “What in the world is that?” he cried, and handed his spyglass to the admiral.

Guan gazed through the telescope in silence. “I don’t know,” he said at last.

This was the Nemesis.

—

The iron ship didn’t make the first move, but one of the two warships in front of it. Sailing into the entrance of the river, it passed in front of the guns of the nearest fort. At once a cannon roared. Then another, then a third. The first two cannonballs fell just short; the third clipped her rigging. She took no notice at all. Again and again the Chinese cannon fired. Most of the shots now went over the British vessel. Just before reaching the hidden chain, having established the range of the fixed Chinese cannon, and as if to say, “Thank you very much,” the ship neatly put about.

“I think the British must know about the chain,” said Shi-Rong.

This was hardly surprising. There were at least a hundred unemployed watermen in the gulf who would gladly have told them for a silver dollar.

Now the other wooden warship took up a safe position farther downstream and fired a trial shot. “It’s shooting at the fort,” the admiral exclaimed in astonishment.

The first ship also fired a trial shot. Both, from their different angles, were aimed at one corner of the battery’s granite wall. At their second attempt, the gunners of both ships found their mark. The granite wall was not breached, but Shi-Rong could see that it was damaged.

And then the bombardment began. Steadily, taking their time, with well-trained accuracy, the British smashed the gun embrasures one by one. Other ships, including the iron Nemesis, joined in. More than once—Shi-Rong wasn’t sure from which ship they came—mortar shells were lobbed over the walls into the battery, where they exploded with devastating effect.

“I didn’t know they’d do this,” Admiral Guan said humbly. Shi-Rong could see there were tears in his eyes. But there was nothing the admiral could do. Not now.

Nor was there anything Guan could do when boatloads of British marines pulled rapidly ashore, ran around the sides of the forts, and fell upon their defenders from above. It was a massacre.

They destroyed the fort on the opposite side of the big river in the same way. Then they smashed the pilings that held the great chain across the river and began to move upstream towards the war junks.

“They cannot reach them,” the admiral cried out. “They cannot!” And he would have been right—if all the British ships were made of wood.

But now, as Shi-Rong watched in horror, the Nemesis came into her own. Like a metal monster from another world—a world of iron gods, where even the winds that filled the sails of ships counted for nothing—the Nemesis could ignore the riverbed, too. For the iron ship’s draft was so shallow that it passed clean over the underwater sandbanks as it headed straight for the war junks moored helplessly ahead.

And then, like a dragon breathing flame, it sent out a thunderbolt.

Neither Shi-Rong nor the admiral had even seen a Congreve rocket. They had no idea such a thing existed: a rocket carrying explosives. When a Congreve rocket hit its target, it produced an explosion that made the most powerful mortar shell look like a firecracker. And fate had decided that the first rocket the Nemesis fired that day should find the war