'Plenty of chill on the wind, eh, Jeff?'Ĭooper nodded briefly. Brock was no man to bait, and they could not afford open enmity with him yet. Brock,' Tillman said quickly, inwardly angry at his young partner's loose tongue. His clothes were rich and the knife at his belt was jeweled. 'Be you spitting to clear yor throat, or spitting on the Empire?' Tyler Brock was nearing fifty, a big, one-eyed man as hard and as permanent as the iron he had been forced to peddle in Liverpool as a youth, and as strong and as dangerous as the fighting merchant ships he had escaped to and at length had come to rule as head of Brock and Sons. 'I thought the British Empire'-he spat deftly to windward-'had enough of that sort of colony.'īrock's hand strayed near his knife. 'Oh, that's the sort of colony you want, Mr. An' who's to pay upkeep of Hong Kong, eh? Us and our trade, by God!' Everything we be needing'll have to come by sea. There be no fields or streams, no grazing land. 'A colony's got to have arable land and peasants to work the land, Mr. And no Chinese interference at long last.' Plenty of room to build our homes and warehouses. 'Plenty of room to careen and refit all our ships. 'The harbor's the best in these waters,' Cooper said. It's open ports on the China mainland we be needing, and you knowed it, by God!'

'The future of the China trade's here now-good joss or bad joss.'īrock stared down at him. 'Joss' was a Chinese word that meant Luck and Fate and God and the Devil combined. 'I'll tell thee right smartly, this whole godrotting flyspeck be bad joss!' Brock said. He was thickset and ruddy, and came from Alabama. 'Very bad!'Ĭooper's partner, Wilf Tillman, stiffened slightly, feeling the underlying edge to the younger man's nasal voice. He was a lean, hook-nosed American from Boston, his frock coat black and his felt top hat set at a jaunty angle. 'It's bad joss to curse on a Tuesday, Mr. 'Eight bells were time to raise the flag,' Brock said, his voice rasping with impatience. Near them were the untidy knots of sailors who had just fought the flagpole into the stony soil. An honor guard of twenty marines was drawn up in two neat lines beside the flagpole, the scarlet of their uniforms a sudden splash of color. They were all waiting for the Royal Navy officer to begin the ceremony. Scattered about them were other clusters of traders, and officers from the expeditionary force. He was standing on the foreshore with two of his fellow China traders. 'The whole of China at our feets and all we takes be this barren, sodding rock.'

'A pox on this stinking island,' Brock said, staring around the beach and up at the mountains.

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