VI
On A bright sunshiny day, with the breeze chasing her smoke far ahead,the Nan-Shan came into Fu-chau. Her arrival was at once noticed onshore, and the seamen in harbour said: "Look! Look at that steamer.What's that? Siamese--isn't she? Just look at her!"
She seemed, indeed, to have been used as a running target for thesecondary batteries of a cruiser. A hail of minor shells could not havegiven her upper works a more broken, torn, and devastated aspect: andshe had about her the worn, weary air of ships coming from the far endsof the world--and indeed with truth, for in her short passage she hadbeen very far; sighting, verily, even the coast of the Great Beyond,whence no ship ever returns to give up her crew to the dust of theearth. She was incrusted and gray with salt to the trucks of her mastsand to the top of her funnel; as though (as some facetious seaman said)"the crowd on board had fished her out somewhere from the bottom of thesea and brought her in here for salvage." And further, excited by thefelicity of his own wit, he offered to give five pounds for her--"as shestands."
Before she had been quite an hour at rest, a meagre little man, with ared-tipped nose and a face cast in an angry mould, landed from a sampanon the quay of the Foreign Concession, and incontinently turned to shakehis fist at her.
A tall individual, with legs much too thin for a rotund stomach, andwith watery eyes, strolled up and remarked, "Just left her--eh? Quickwork."
He wore a soiled suit of blue flannel with a pair of dirty cricketingshoes; a dingy gray moustache drooped from his lip, and daylight couldbe seen in two places between the rim and the crown of his hat.
"Hallo! what are you doing here?" asked the ex-second-mate of theNan-Shan, shaking hands hurriedly.
"Standing by for a job--chance worth taking--got a quiet hint,"explained the man with the broken hat, in jerky, apathetic wheezes.
The second shook his fist again at the Nan-Shan. "There's a fellow therethat ain't fit to have the command of a scow," he declared, quiveringwith passion, while the other looked about listlessly.
"Is there?"
But he caught sight on the quay of a heavy seaman's chest, painted brownunder a fringed sailcloth cover, and lashed with new manila line. Heeyed it with awakened interest.
"I would talk and raise trouble if it wasn't for that damned Siameseflag. Nobody to go to--or I would make it hot for him. The fraud! Toldhis chief engineer--that's another fraud for you--I had lost my nerve.The greatest lot of ignorant fools that ever sailed the seas. No! Youcan't think . . ."
"Got your money all right?" inquired his seedy acquaintance suddenly.
"Yes. Paid me off on board," raged the second mate. "'Get your breakfaston shore,' says he."
"Mean skunk!" commented the tall man, vaguely, and passed his tongue onhis lips. "What about having a drink of some sort?"
"He struck me," hissed the second mate.
"No! Struck! You don't say?" The man in blue began to bustle aboutsympathetically. "Can't possibly talk here. I want to know all about it.Struck--eh? Let's get a fellow to carry your chest. I know a quiet placewhere they have some bottled beer. . . ."
Mr. Jukes, who had been scanning the shore through a pair of glasses,informed the chief engineer afterwards that "our late second mate hasn'tbeen long in finding a friend. A chap looking uncommonly like a bummer.I saw them walk away together from the quay."
The hammering and banging of the needful repairs did not disturbCaptain MacWhirr. The steward found in the letter he wrote, in a tidychart-room, passages of such absorbing interest that twice he wasnearly caught in the act. But Mrs. MacWhirr, in the drawing-room of theforty-pound house, stifled a yawn--perhaps out of self-respect--for shewas alone.
She reclined in a plush-bottomed and gilt hammock-chair near a tiledfireplace, with Japanese fans on the mantel and a glow of coals in thegrate. Lifting her hands, she glanced wearily here and there into themany pages. It was not her fault they were so prosy, so completelyuninteresting--from "My darling wife" at the beginning, to "Your lovinghusband" at the end. She couldn't be really expected to understand allthese ship affairs. She was glad, of course, to hear from him, but shehad never asked herself why, precisely.
". . . They are called typhoons . . . The mate did not seem to like it. . . Not in books . . . Couldn't think of letting it go on. . . ."
The paper rustled sharply. ". . . . A calm that lasted more than twentyminutes," she read perfunctorily; and the next words her thoughtlesseyes caught, on the top of another page, were: "see you and the childrenagain. . . ." She had a movement of impatience. He was always thinkingof coming home. He had never had such a good salary before. What was thematter now?
It did not occur to her to turn back overleaf to look. She would havefound it recorded there that between 4 and 6 A. M. on December 25th,Captain MacWhirr did actually think that his ship could not possiblylive another hour in such a sea, and that he would never see his wifeand children again. Nobody was to know this (his letters got mislaidso quickly)--nobody whatever but the steward, who had been greatlyimpressed by that disclosure. So much so, that he tried to give the cooksome idea of the "narrow squeak we all had" by saying solemnly, "The oldman himself had a dam' poor opinion of our chance."
"How do you know?" asked, contemptuously, the cook, an old soldier. "Hehasn't told you, maybe?"
"Well, he did give me a hint to that effect," the steward brazened itout.
"Get along with you! He will be coming to tell me next," jeered the oldcook, over his shoulder.
Mrs. MacWhirr glanced farther, on the alert. ". . . Do what's fair. . .Miserable objects . . . . Only three, with a broken leg each, and one. . . Thought had better keep the matter quiet . . . hope to have donethe fair thing. . . ."
She let fall her hands. No: there was nothing more about coming home.Must have been merely expressing a pious wish. Mrs. MacWhirr's mind wasset at ease, and a black marble clock, priced by the local jeweller at3L. 18s. 6d., had a discreet stealthy tick.
The door flew open, and a girl in the long-legged, short-frocked periodof existence, flung into the room.
A lot of colourless, rather lanky hair was scattered over her shoulders.Seeing her mother, she stood still, and directed her pale prying eyesupon the letter.
"From father," murmured Mrs. MacWhirr. "What have you done with yourribbon?"
The girl put her hands up to her head and pouted.
"He's well," continued Mrs. MacWhirr languidly. "At least I think so.He never says." She had a little laugh. The girl's face expressed awandering indifference, and Mrs. MacWhirr surveyed her with fond pride.
"Go and get your hat," she said after a while. "I am going out to dosome shopping. There is a sale at Linom's."
"Oh, how jolly!" uttered the child, impressively, in unexpectedly gravevibrating tones, and bounded out of the room.
It was a fine afternoon, with a gray sky and dry sidewalks. Outside thedraper's Mrs. MacWhirr smiled upon a woman in a black mantle of generousproportions armoured in jet and crowned with flowers blooming falselyabove a bilious matronly countenance. They broke into a swift littlebabble of greetings and exclamations both together, very hurried, as ifthe street were ready to yawn open and swallow all that pleasure beforeit could be expressed.
Behind them the high glass doors were kept on the swing. People couldn'tpass, men stood aside waiting patiently, and Lydia was absorbed inpoking the end of her parasol between the stone flags. Mrs. MacWhirrtalked rapidly.
"Thank you very much. He's not coming home yet. Of course it's very sadto have him away, but it's such a comfort to know he keeps so well."Mrs. MacWhirr drew breath. "The climate there agrees with him," sheadded, beamingly, as if poor MacWhirr had been away touring in China forthe sake of his health.
Neither was the chief engineer coming home yet. Mr. Rout knew too wellthe value of a good billet.
"Solomon says wonders will never cease," cried Mrs. Rout joyously at theold lady in her armchair by the fire. Mr. Rout's mother moved slightly,her withered hands lying in black half-mittens
on her lap.
The eyes of the engineer's wife fairly danced on the paper. "Thatcaptain of the ship he is in--a rather simple man, you remember,mother?--has done something rather clever, Solomon says."
"Yes, my dear," said the old woman meekly, sitting with bowed silveryhead, and that air of inward stillness characteristic of very oldpeople who seem lost in watching the last flickers of life. "I think Iremember."
Solomon Rout, Old Sol, Father Sol, the Chief, "Rout, good man"--Mr.Rout, the condescending and paternal friend of youth, had been the babyof her many children--all dead by this time. And she remembered him bestas a boy of ten--long before he went away to serve his apprenticeship insome great engineering works in the North. She had seen so little of himsince, she had gone through so many years, that she had now to retraceher steps very far back to recognize him plainly in the mist of time.Sometimes it seemed that her daughter-in-law was talking of some strangeman.
Mrs. Rout junior was disappointed. "H'm. H'm." She turned the page. "Howprovoking! He doesn't say what it is. Says I couldn't understand howmuch there was in it. Fancy! What could it be so very clever? What awretched man not to tell us!"
She read on without further remark soberly, and at last sat lookinginto the fire. The chief wrote just a word or two of the typhoon;but something had moved him to express an increased longing for thecompanionship of the jolly woman. "If it hadn't been that mother must belooked after, I would send you your passage-money to-day. You could setup a small house out here. I would have a chance to see you sometimesthen. We are not growing younger. . . ."
"He's well, mother," sighed Mrs. Rout, rousing herself.
"He always was a strong healthy boy," said the old woman, placidly.
But Mr. Jukes' account was really animated and very full. His friend inthe Western Ocean trade imparted it freely to the other officers of hisliner. "A chap I know writes to me about an extraordinary affair thathappened on board his ship in that typhoon--you know--that we read ofin the papers two months ago. It's the funniest thing! Just see foryourself what he says. I'll show you his letter."
There were phrases in it calculated to give the impression oflight-hearted, indomitable resolution. Jukes had written them in goodfaith, for he felt thus when he wrote. He described with lurid effectthe scenes in the 'tween-deck. ". . . It struck me in a flash thatthose confounded Chinamen couldn't tell we weren't a desperate kind ofrobbers. 'Tisn't good to part the Chinaman from his money if he is thestronger party. We need have been desperate indeed to go thieving insuch weather, but what could these beggars know of us? So, withoutthinking of it twice, I got the hands away in a jiffy. Our work wasdone--that the old man had set his heart on. We cleared out withoutstaying to inquire how they felt. I am convinced that if they had notbeen so unmercifully shaken, and afraid--each individual one of them--to stand up, we would have been torn to pieces. Oh! It was prettycomplete, I can tell you; and you may run to and fro across the Pond tothe end of time before you find yourself with such a job on your hands."
After this he alluded professionally to the damage done to the ship, andwent on thus:
"It was when the weather quieted down that the situation becameconfoundedly delicate. It wasn't made any better by us having beenlately transferred to the Siamese flag; though the skipper can't seethat it makes any difference--'as long as we are on board'--he says.There are feelings that this man simply hasn't got--and there's an endof it. You might just as well try to make a bedpost understand. Butapart from this it is an infernally lonely state for a ship to be goingabout the China seas with no proper consuls, not even a gunboat of herown anywhere, nor a body to go to in case of some trouble.
"My notion was to keep these Johnnies under hatches for another fifteenhours or so; as we weren't much farther than that from Fu-chau. We wouldfind there, most likely, some sort of a man-of-war, and once underher guns we were safe enough; for surely any skipper of aman-of-war--English, French or Dutch--would see white men through asfar as row on board goes. We could get rid of them and their moneyafterwards by delivering them to their Mandarin or Taotai, or whateverthey call these chaps in goggles you see being carried about insedan-chairs through their stinking streets.
"The old man wouldn't see it somehow. He wanted to keep the matterquiet. He got that notion into his head, and a steam windlass couldn'tdrag it out of him. He wanted as little fuss made as possible, for thesake of the ship's name and for the sake of the owners--'for the sake ofall concerned,' says he, looking at me very hard.
"It made me angry hot. Of course you couldn't keep a thing like thatquiet; but the chests had been secured in the usual manner and were safeenough for any earthly gale, while this had been an altogether fiendishbusiness I couldn't give you even an idea of.
"Meantime, I could hardly keep on my feet. None of us had a spell ofany sort for nearly thirty hours, and there the old man sat rubbing hischin, rubbing the top of his head, and so bothered he didn't even thinkof pulling his long boots off.
"'I hope, sir,' says I, 'you won't be letting them out on deck before wemake ready for them in some shape or other.' Not, mind you, that I feltvery sanguine about controlling these beggars if they meant to takecharge. A trouble with a cargo of Chinamen is no child's play. I wasdam' tired, too. 'I wish,' said I, 'you would let us throw the wholelot of these dollars down to them and leave them to fight it out amongstthemselves, while we get a rest.'
"'Now you talk wild, Jukes,' says he, looking up in his slow way thatmakes you ache all over, somehow. 'We must plan out something that wouldbe fair to all parties.'
"I had no end of work on hand, as you may imagine, so I set the handsgoing, and then I thought I would turn in a bit. I hadn't been asleep inmy bunk ten minutes when in rushes the steward and begins to pull at myleg.
"'For God's sake, Mr. Jukes, come out! Come on deck quick, sir. Oh, docome out!'
"The fellow scared all the sense out of me. I didn't know what hadhappened: another hurricane--or what. Could hear no wind.
"'The Captain's letting them out. Oh, he is letting them out! Jump ondeck, sir, and save us. The chief engineer has just run below for hisrevolver.'
"That's what I understood the fool to say. However, Father Rout swearshe went in there only to get a clean pocket-handkerchief. Anyhow, I madeone jump into my trousers and flew on deck aft. There was certainly agood deal of noise going on forward of the bridge. Four of the handswith the boss'n were at work abaft. I passed up to them some of therifles all the ships on the China coast carry in the cabin, and led themon the bridge. On the way I ran against Old Sol, looking startled andsucking at an unlighted cigar.
"'Come along,' I shouted to him.
"We charged, the seven of us, up to the chart-room. All was over. Therestood the old man with his sea-boots still drawn up to the hips andin shirt-sleeves--got warm thinking it out, I suppose. Bun Hin's dandyclerk at his elbow, as dirty as a sweep, was still green in the face. Icould see directly I was in for something.
"'What the devil are these monkey tricks, Mr. Jukes?' asks the old man,as angry as ever he could be. I tell you frankly it made me lose mytongue. 'For God's sake, Mr. Jukes,' says he, 'do take away these riflesfrom the men. Somebody's sure to get hurt before long if you don't.Damme, if this ship isn't worse than Bedlam! Look sharp now. I wantyou up here to help me and Bun Hin's Chinaman to count that money. Youwouldn't mind lending a hand, too, Mr. Rout, now you are here. The moreof us the better.'
"He had settled it all in his mind while I was having a snooze. Had webeen an English ship, or only going to land our cargo of coolies in anEnglish port, like Hong-Kong, for instance, there would have been noend of inquiries and bother, claims for damages and so on. But theseChinamen know their officials better than we do.
"The hatches had been taken off already, and they were all on deck aftera night and a day down below. It made you feel queer to see so manygaunt, wild faces together. The beggars stared about at the sky, at thesea, at the ship, as though they had expected the whole thing to havebeen blow
n to pieces. And no wonder! They had had a doing that wouldhave shaken the soul out of a white man. But then they say a Chinamanhas no soul. He has, though, something about him that is deuced tough.There was a fellow (amongst others of the badly hurt) who had had hiseye all but knocked out. It stood out of his head the size of half ahen's egg. This would have laid out a white man on his back for a month:and yet there was that chap elbowing here and there in the crowd andtalking to the others as if nothing had been the matter. They made agreat hubbub amongst themselves, and whenever the old man showed hisbald head on the foreside of the bridge, they would all leave off jawingand look at him from below.
"It seems that after he had done his thinking he made that Bun Hin'sfellow go down and explain to them the only way they could get theirmoney back. He told me afterwards that, all the coolies having worked inthe same place and for the same length of time, he reckoned he would bedoing the fair thing by them as near as possible if he shared all thecash we had picked up equally among the lot. You couldn't tell one man'sdollars from another's, he said, and if you asked each man how muchmoney he brought on board he was afraid they would lie, and he wouldfind himself a long way short. I think he was right there. As to givingup the money to any Chinese official he could scare up in Fu-chau, hesaid he might just as well put the lot in his own pocket at once for allthe good it would be to them. I suppose they thought so, too.
"We finished the distribution before dark. It was rather a sight: thesea running high, the ship a wreck to look at, these Chinamen staggeringup on the bridge one by one for their share, and the old man stillbooted, and in his shirt-sleeves, busy paying out at the chartroom door,perspiring like anything, and now and then coming down sharp on myselfor Father Rout about one thing or another not quite to his mind. He tookthe share of those who were disabled himself to them on the No. 2 hatch.There were three dollars left over, and these went to the three mostdamaged coolies, one to each. We turned-to afterwards, and shovelledout on deck heaps of wet rags, all sorts of fragments of things withoutshape, and that you couldn't give a name to, and let them settle theownership themselves.
"This certainly is coming as near as can be to keeping the thing quietfor the benefit of all concerned. What's your opinion, you pamperedmail-boat swell? The old chief says that this was plainly the only thingthat could be done. The skipper remarked to me the other day, 'There arethings you find nothing about in books.' I think that he got out of itvery well for such a stupid man."
[The other stories included in this volume ("Amy Foster," "Falk: AReminiscence," and "To-morrow") being already available in anothervolume, have not been entered here.]
Typhoon Page 7