"South or not, the next warships in my waters get blown out of my waters! Basuhiro, send men at once to Osaka an--"

"Wait, Ogama-dono," Yoshi said quickly, wanting time to think. "Basuhiro, what is your council?"

The little man said at once, "Sire, for the moment presume it is Osaka and we should, together, prepare at once to defend it. I have already sent spies urgently to discover the fleet's course as best I can."

"Good." Ogama shakily wiped rain out of his face. "Their whole fleet in my Straits...

I should have been there."

Basuhiro said, "It is more important for you to guard the Emperor against his enemies, Sire, and your commander was correct not to fire on the single ship. Surely it was a decoy to smell out your strength. He was right not to give away your defenses. Now the trap is baited should you wish to close it. Because only one enemy warship sneaked back and bombarded some easy positions and left hastily, I surmise their fleet commander was afraid, was not prepared to attack or land troops to start the war that we will end."

"Yes we will. A ruse? I agree.

Yoshi-dono," Ogama said with finality, "we should have done with it and start the war. A surprise attack on Yokohama, if they land at Osaka or not."

Yoshi could not answer at once, almost sick with a sudden apprehension that he tried to hide.

Eight warships? That's four more than sailed to China so the gai-jin have reinforced their fleet. Why? To retaliate for the Satsuma murders, but more particularly, Ogama's attacks on their shipping. And they will do it as in China. The gai-jin ship was sunk in the Taiwan Straits, but they decimated China's coast hundreds of leagues away.

What is their easiest target in Nippon?

Yedo.

Has Ogama realized this and his secret plan is just to provoke the gai-jin? If I was the gai-jin leader I would destroy Yedo. They do not know it but Yedo is indivisible from our Shogunate. If Yedo ends, the Toranaga Shogunate ends and then the Land of the Gods is open to rape.

Therefore this will be prevented at all costs.

Think! How to bottle the gai-jin, and Ogama whose answer is to put our heads on their block-- not his. "I agree with your wise counselor, we should prepare to defend Osaka," he began, his stomach churning. Then his anxiety for the safety of Yedo bubbled over. "Whether Osaka now or later, a war fleet has returned. Unless we are very careful war is inevitable."

"Enough of being careful." Ogama leaned closer. "I say whether there's landing at Osaka or not, we excise the boil on our balls and exterminate Yokohama. Now! If you will not, so sorry, I will."

BOOK THREE

Saturday, 29th November

BOOK THREE YOKOHAMA Saturday, 29th November: "We passed the fleet two days back, Mr. Malcolm, Jamie," the clipper captain said genially, hiding his shock at the change in Malcolm whom he had known since birth and had laughed and drank with barely three months ago in Hong Kong--the drawn sallow features, strange haunted eyes, the sticks he needed to walk or even to stand with. "We were under full sail with a Force Six aft and going like the clappers, they were riding it leisurely, wise, for they surely wouldn't want to lose any of the coaling barges they towed."

His name was Sheeling and he had just come ashore from his ship, Dancing Cloud, her arrival unexpected. He was forty-two, a tall, bearded, weatherbeaten man, twenty-eight years with the Noble House. "We just saluted them and kept going."

"Tea, Captain?" McFay asked, automatically pouring, knowing from long experience this was his preferred drink. During a voyage he always drank it ladened with sugar and condensed milk, day or night. They were in Malcolm's suite at the big table and like the tai-pan, Jamie was hardly listening, his eyes also on the sealed mail pouch, embossed with the Noble House crest, under Sheeling's left arm.

Instead of a left hand Sheeling had a hook.

When he was a midshipman on an voyage along the Yangtze River trading opium, pirates of the White Lotus fleet had surrounded their lorcha and in the fight his hand had been cut off.

Afterwards he had been commended for his gallantry.

His beloved idol, Dirk Struan, had brought him back from the brink, then put him with the fleet's chief captain, Orlov the Hunchback, with orders to teach him all he knew.

"Ta'," Sheeling said with a smile, and took a large swallow. "Excellent, Jamie! Of course I'd prefer a large whisky as you know but that'll have to wait until Honolulu--I plan leave right smartly, just came t--"

"Honolulu?" Struan and Jamie said, almost in the same breath. This was not a normal call for their clippers racing across the Pacific for San Francisco then to hurry back again.

"What's your cargo?" Malcolm said, almost adding "Uncle Sheeley" the name he had used in the good days of his youth.

"The usual, tea and spices for 'Frisco, but I've orders to first deliver mail to our agents in Hawaii."

"Mother's orders?"

Sheeling nodded and his grey eyes looked back at him pleasantly. He had heard the undercurrent and knew part of the problem existing between mother and son--Malcolm's engagement and her opposition the private talk of Hong Kong--but was under strict instructions not to mention it.

"How is business there, in Hawaii?"

Malcolm asked, a new shaft of anxiety going through him. "Did she say?"

"No, Mrs. Struan just ordered me to stop there."

A gust rattled the office shutters. They glanced out of the window. In the bay the three, rake-masted clipper was at anchor, taking the swell prettily, her sails ready to be hoisted again, soon to hurtle seawards and ride the wild winds or good winds or bad, whatever that lay ahead. The three men were filled like sails with pride and Sheeling felt warmed that he ruled such a queen of the sea. He turned his attention back to Malcolm and absently scratched an itch on his neck with his hook. "I was ordered here for the same reason: mail!" He gave him the pouch.

"May I have a receipt please."

"Of course." Malcolm nodded to Jamie who began to write it out. "What's the latest from Hong Kong?"

"I'd say most would be in the pouch, but I've brought the latest papers, both Hong Kong's and London's--I left the bundle in your office downstairs." Sheeling gulped the tea, anxious to be on his way. This would be his fourth Hawaiian visit over the years and he knew the beauty of their girls and their rare, joy-filled loving nature, money hardly a consideration, so unlike Hong Kong, Shanghai or anywhere else he had ever been. This time I'll buy some land, secretly. Different name. It's Hawaii for me next year when I retire, that's where I'm going and no one any the wiser. The thought of sailing off for good, of leaving his wife, an accomplished nag, and rapacious children in London, Daddy buy me this, Daddy buy me that--not that he saw them often--pleased him.

"I meant local news in Hong Kong,"

Struan was saying.

"Oh. Well, first your family's in fine fettle, Mrs. Struan, your brother and sisters though young Duncan had another bad cold when I left. As to Hong Kong, the races are as good as ever, so's the food, Mrs. Fortheringill's is still booming in spite of a recession, the Noble House stays on course as you'd know better than me, along with the usual rumors that all's not well, probably spread by the Brocks, but that's just more of the usual and never changes." He got up.

"Thank you kindly, I best be going, must catch the tide."

"Won't you at least stay for lunch?"

"No, thanks, I'd better be off an--"

"What rumors?" Malcolm said harshly.

"Nothing worth repeating, Mr. Malcolm."

"Why don't you call me "tai-pan" like everyone else?" Malcolm said irritably, fear of what might be in the pouch eating him. "I am, aren't I?"