Free China Flyer by Porter Hill

time.’
    ‘You say one thing, then another, Mr Fanshaw,’ Schiller persisted. ‘You tell me to think about the future and then donot tell me what the future is.’
    ‘Everything in good time, Mr Schiller,’ Fanshaw repeated smugly. Again, he raised his head, studying the flapping canvas.
    Hell! Schiller cursed himself for ever getting mixed up with a cad like Fanshaw. He had inquired about the man in Madras before agreeing to sail him to China. Fanshaw enjoyed a good reputation as a Company merchant but had no personal friends. Schiller’s doubts about his integrity had started when Fanshaw had begun demanding complete secrecy over the forthcoming voyage. He had even refused to tell Schiller the name of the ship he would be sailing, or the nature of the voyage, until a fortnight before they were to leave. When Fanshaw had finally confided that he wanted Schiller to commandeer the China Flyer, the latter had refused to be part of the venture. Who needed to spend the rest of his life in gaol? His resistance had collapsed, however, when Fanshaw had promised him more gold than he had ever dreamt of. He had co-operated with the criminal plan.
    Schiller was as angry with himself as he was with Fanshaw.
    * * *
    Damned lumbering German! George Fanshaw slammed the door of his cabin, furious at Lothar Schiller’s badgering questions. Why couldn’t an underling take orders and keep his peace?
    Fanshaw considered all the members of a ship’s crew—from the captain down to the lowest loblolly boy—to be no different from grooms, ostlers, porters or footmen. All were servants in his view.
    Fanshaw knew about servants. His family had been in domestic service for five long, abject generations. Only through hard work and dedication to self-improvement had Fanshaw himself been able to climb out of subserviency and carve a niche for himself in, if not the gentry, at least the merchant class.
    The transformation had been systematic and of long duration.
    First, changing his surname from Fykes, Fanshaw had found employment far away from England, in India. As a clerk for the East India Company, he had developed an educated accent, watched the mannerisms and dress of his social betters, and spent every free minute studying the dialects of the people with whom the Company traded.
    Now he moved across the cabin’s pitching deck, undoing his stock and peeling off his frock-coat in the stifling heat as he gloated over what was to be the most important step in his climb to a higher class.
    At present, the East India Company had a trade monopoly with China. No other British company had ever successfully challenged its exclusive trade with Canton. The families of the Company’s founders were now entrenched in England’s highest society—as well as enjoying great wealth.
    It had occurred to Fanshaw a few years ago that, with ample financing and the correct political connections, some brilliant man—or group of men—could break the Company’s grip on trade with the Manchu mandarins. Then, twoyears ago, on a return visit to England, he had met Benjamin Cowcross, a stockholder in numerous ships sailing to the Orient. Cowcross had expressed casual interest to Fanshaw in making more than his usual seventy-five per cent from his investments with the Company. Private meetings ensued between the two men, Cowcross impressing Fanshaw as a coarse man but somebody with an adventurous business sense; Fanshaw impressing Cowcross with his knowledge of China and the lucrative trade with the Chinese.
    Cowcross had listened avidly to Fanshaw’s plan for setting up a company to rival the East India Company. But he worried that the plot might be exposed. He did not want to be excluded from investing in further Company ventures. Finally, he had promised Fanshaw that he would make him a partner in a trade syndicate if an oath could be procured from the Manchu government that they would trade with a second British company.
    The pitching of the cabin’s deck