Bahram was still there, hours later, when his purser, Vico, burst in to tell him that the cargo of opium in the ship’s hold had broken loose.
Kya? How is that possible, Vico?
It’s happened, patrao; we have to do something, jaldi.
Following at Vico’s heels, Bahram went hurrying down, struggling to keep his footing on the slippery companion-ladders. The hatch that led to the hold was carefully secured against pilferage, and the rolling of the ship made the chains and padlocks difficult to undo. When at last Bahram was able to lower a lantern through the hatch, he found himself looking down upon a scene that defied comprehension.
The cargo in the after-hold consisted almost entirely of opium. Under the battering of the storm, hundreds of chests had broken loose and splintered, spilling their contents. Earthenware containers of opium were crashing into the bulkheads like cannonballs.
Opium, in this form, was of a mud-brown colour: although leathery to the touch, it dissolved when mixed and stirred with liquids. The Anahita’s builders had not been unmindful of this, and a great deal of ingenuity had been expended in trying to make the hold watertight. But the storm was shaking the vessel so hard that the joins between the planks had begun to ‘bleed’, letting in a slick of rain- and bilge-water. The wetness had weakened the hemp bindings that held the cargo in place and they had snapped; the chests had crashed into each other, spilling their contents into the sludge. Waves of this gummy, stinking liquid were now sweeping from side to side, breaking against the walls of the hold as the vessel rolled and lurched.
Nothing like this had ever happened to Bahram before: he had ridden out many a storm, without having a consignment of opium run amuck as it had now. He liked to think of himself as a careful man and in the course of thirty-odd years in the China trade, he had evolved his own procedures for stacking the chests in which the drug was packed. The opium in the hold was of two kinds: about two-thirds of it was ‘Malwa’, from western India – a product that was sold in the shape of small, round cakes, much like certain kinds of jaggery. These were shipped without any protective covering, other than a wrapping of leaves and a light dusting of poppy ‘trash’. The rest of the shipment consisted of ‘Bengal’ opium, which had more durable packaging, with each cake of the drug being fitted inside a hard-shelled clay container, of about the shape and size of a cannonball. Every chest contained forty of these and each ball was nested inside a crib of poppy leaves, straw, and other remains from the harvest. The chests were made of mango-wood and were certainly sturdy enough to keep their contents secure during the three or four weeks it usually took to sail from Bombay to Canton: breakages were rare, and damage, when it occurred, was generally caused by seepage and damp. To prevent this, Bahram generally left some space between the rows so that air could circulate freely between the chests.
Over the years, Bahram’s procedures had proved their worth: through decades of travelling between India and China he had never, in the course of a single voyage, had to write off more than a chest or two of his cargo. Experience had given him such confidence in his methods that he had not taken the trouble to check the hold when the Anahita was hit by the storm. It was the crashing of the runaway chests that had alerted the ship’s crew, who had then brought the problem to Vico’s attention.
Looking down now, Bahram could see crates crashing against the bulkheads like rafts against a reef; all around the hold, hard-shelled balls of opium were exploding upon the timbers, and gobs of the raw gum were hurtling about like shrapnel.
Vico! We have to do something; we have to go down there and secure the chests before they all break loose.
Vico was a large, round-bellied man, of darkly glossy complexion, with protuberant, watchful eyes. Born Victorino Martinho Soares, he was an ‘East Indian’ from the hamlet of Vasai, or Bassein, near Bombay; along with smatterings of many other languages, he also spoke some Portuguese and from the time he entered Bahram’s service, some twenty years before, he had always addressed him as ‘patrao’ – ‘Boss’. Since then Vico had risen to the rank of purser, from which position he not only reigned over Bahram’s personal staff but also functioned as an adviser, go-between and business associate. He had long made it his practice to invest a part of his earnings with his boss and as a result he had himself become a man of no inconsiderable means; he owned properties not just in Bombay, but also in several other places; a devout Catholic, he had even endowed a chapel in his mother’s name.
It was not out of necessity therefore that Vico continued to travel with Bahram but for a number of other reasons, not the least of which was a desire to keep a close eye on his investments. He too had a substantial stake in the Anahita’s cargo and his concern for its safety was no less pressing than Bahram’s.
You wait here, patrao, he said. I’ll get some lascars to help. Don’t go down there on your own.
Why not?
Vico was already on his feet but he turned back to add a warning: Because suppose something happens to the ship? Patrao will be trapped down there alone, no? Just wait for me – I’ll be back in a minute.
This was good advice, Bahram knew, but not easy to heed under the circumstances. He was at the best of times, a restless man: repose was a trial to him and at moments when he was neither speaking nor moving, the effort of self-containment would often result in a small storm of toe-tapping, tongue-clicking and knuckle-cracking. Now, leaning over the hatch, he was met by a cloud of up-welling fumes: the sickly-sweet smell of the raw opium had mingled with the bilge-water to produce a stifling, head-churning stench.
In his youth, when he had been slim, lithe and quick of foot, Bahram would not have thought twice about going down that ladder; now, in his late fifties, his joints had stiffened a little, and his waistline had thickened considerably – but his portliness, if it could be called that, was of the robust kind, his vigour and energy being evident in the golden glow of his complexion and the pink bloom of his cheeks. To wait for Fate to decide matters was not in his nature: throwing off his choga, he began to descend into the hold only to be shaken violently from side to side, as the ladder tilted and swayed.
Crooking his arm around the iron struts, he was careful to keep a tight grip on the handle of the lantern. But for all his caution he was not prepared for the gummy slime that lay underfoot. With the splintering of the crates, the stuffing of dry leaves and other poppy ‘trash’ had spilled out, melting into the sludge. As a result the deck planks had become as sodden and slippery as the floor of a cattle-midden, everything underfoot being coated in a vegetal mess, of the consistency of cow-dung.
When Bahram stepped off the ladder his feet shot out from under him, throwing him face-forward into a heap of dung-like sludge. He managed to turn over, pushing himself into a sitting position, with his back against a wooden beam. He could see nothing, for his lantern had gone out; in moments his clothes were drenched in the muddy sludge, from the tip of his turban to the hem of his ankle-length angarkha: inside his black leather shoes, opium was squelching between his toes.