Who?

Captain Elliott, the British Representative. He got word of the trouble somehow and came hurrying down from Macau with a team of sepoys and lascars. If the mob had still been in the Maidan his men would probably have opened fire. Who knows what would have happened then? Luckily it was all over by that time.

So what did he do, Captain Elliott?

He called a meeting and gave a speech, what else? He said the situation was getting out of control and that he was going to see to it personally that British boats were no longer used to bring opium into Canton.

Oh?

Sitting up slowly, Neel put a hand to his head and found that a bandage had been wrapped around it.

And Sethji? Is he all right?

Yes. He’s fine. He’s gone to the Club to have dinner with Mr Dent and Mr Slade. Everything’s quiet now, the trouble’s over. Except for the uprooted fences and broken glass in the Maidan, you wouldn’t know it had happened.

*

‘It is going exactly as I had predicted,’ said Dent gloomily, looking at his plate. ‘Instead of protecting our liberties Captain Elliott intends to join hands with the mandarins to deprive us of them. After his speech of today there can be no doubt of it; none at all.’

A steward had appeared at Dent’s elbow as he was speaking, bearing a tray of Yorkshire pudding: Bahram was no lover of this concoction but it did not escape his notice that the version being offered today was quite different from the dining room’s usual soggy staple – it was steaming hot and freshly risen.

Bahram had never known the Club’s staff to be as solicitious as they had been that evening: it was as if they were trying to make amends for the chaos of the day. Earlier, one of the stewards had come up to him and whispered in his ear: knowing of his fondness for Macahnese food he had offered him items that were not usually served in the Club – crisp fritters of bacalhau, char-grilled octopus and roast-duck rice. Bahram had accepted gladly but now that the rice was in front of him, topped with succulent slices of mahogany-coloured duck, he found he had lost interest in it.

Slade’s appetite, on the other hand, seemed only to have been whetted by the riot: having already wolfed down an enormous helping of roast beef, he now helped himself to some more.

‘It is unconscionable, I tell you! Completely and utterly unconscionable that Captain Elliott should take it upon himself to issue these fiats. Why, it seems to be his intention to offer himself to the Celestials as the chief officer of their police and customs!’

‘Shocking, is it not,’ said Dent, ‘that he should direct his strictures specifically at British traders?’

‘It is but proof of his ignorance of the situation in China,’ said Slade. ‘He seems to be unaware that this so-called system of “smuggling” was pioneered by the Americans. Was it not a Boston schooner, the Coral, that first sent her boats upriver with opium?’