Fan-Tan by Marlon Brando & Donald Cammell

Author:Marlon Brando & Donald Cammell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780307264275
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2005-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

The new moon rose to the southeast as the Iron Tiger (which is what her men called her) lifted anchor and was towed out of the anchorage by a boatload of sailors singing a song of their own, the inevitable gong announcing each stroke of their black oars. Then in a freshening southwest breeze Annie watched her sails climb. They were gold in color, made of a fine canvas of cotton and jute, but it was a somber, muddy gold that did not compete with that of her banner. To hoist the mainsail they used a windlass with four men on it, for the battens of these big lug sails (six a sail in Kuantung vessels) were of massive lashed bamboo fifty feet long.

Madame Lai did not reappear from her cabin. Annie leaned on the poop taffrail, paying close attention to the working of the ship (“boat” did not seem an adequate word, he had to admit that). There was a lot of casual talking and joking among her seamen that would have appalled the master of a Western vessel, but they were such experienced men that their efficiency was not impaired. Pools of gold light swung across her decks from the lanterns hung on her masts. These decks were dark with tung oil and were caulked with that white caulking of remarkable strength and elasticity that the Tankas called chunan.

A couple of miles south of Macao, Captain Wang Ho went about into the wind on a southeast heading. The moon and the light upon the sea were of an extraordinary greenish color, and in this dizzying light Annie now saw a wonderful sight. Heading straight out toward them from round the lee shore of Macao came a canoe paddled by forty men. She was a dragon boat, a war canoe near sixty feet long. Annie had seen one of them being careened on some island and remembered how he could see his face in her upturned bottom, so polished and smooth was its surface.

The canoe must have been making a good fifteen knots, plowing through the choppy seas like a beaked serpent, the waters arcing from her stem in a luminous spume. The power and rhythm of her paddlers reminded Annie of the Polynesian crews who always made a man stand and watch with awe as they raced back from the fishing grounds, dividing great seas with their art and their courage.

Captain Wang Ho trained his big night glasses on the canoe, Bausch and Lombs they were, and suspiciously like those favored by heavyweight masters in the British merchant marine. A moment later the junk hove to and waited for the message, for it was a message that the canoe was bringing to her.

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