by F. M. Parker
“‘I assure you the voyage will be the most severe punishment. Mattoon and Dokken have shanghaied many of my countrymen for the ships that go south for seals and whales. The shanghaied Chinamen are sold to the most ruthless of the cruel, renegade captains. They are worked like slaves for two or three years before the ships return. Some of the Chinamen die in those cold waters. When the ships have almost reached San Francisco again, the remaining Chinamen are thrown overboard. All the profit from the skins and whale oil taken during all that long voyage goes to the white captain and the few white seamen aboard. Now Mattoon and Dokken go into the storms of the cold seas on that same journey.”
“You run too big a risk,” Errin said. “Those two will live and return to San Francisco to take revenge on us. Now we must always be on guard against them.” Scom Lip could have also sent Levi and him on that some voyage.
“I agree they are strong, tough men. Though both were wounded by Ke during their capture, I want them to survive the hard, never-ending labor and the cold storms.”
Scom Lip leaned tensely forward, his eyes glistening. “Can’t you imagine Mattoon’s and Dokken’s dreams of revenge as their ship once again draws close to San Francisco? For three years they will have waited for this one moment, the moment when they can come ashore and wreak vengeance on you two and me. But before the ship sails through the Golden Gate to San Francisco, the captain and the other crewmen will set upon those two and throw them into the sea to drown.”
“You have badly underestimated Mattoon,” Errin said. “He will have convinced the crew long before that time to mutiny and take over your ship. He will promise them a fortune from his own money when they arrive back here, and they would also have your ship and the sealskins.”
“There is no chance of that happening,” Scom Lip said with a wave of his hand. “The captain is my brother, and the crewmen are all Chinese, many of them my relatives. No, Mattoon and Dokken are doomed men. Their deaths will be slow and lingering. Three years will seem like a lifetime to them. Making an enemy suffer is like making love to a woman, it should be extended for the longest possible time.”
“Our way would have been more certain,” Levi said.
“But you would not have made them bear the full measure of pain.”
“The thing is done,” Errin said. “But I’m surprised at what you did. You told me that a Chinaman shouldn’t raise his hand against a white man.”
“If there is danger of being caught, that is true. However when you burned the saloon and told the bartender you, a white man did it, that made it safe for me to act.”
Scom Lip looked at Errin and Levi with an amused expression. “I knew you would want Mattoon to know that you were indeed the ones who burned his saloon, and further that you had arranged for my help in shanghaiing him to sea on a Chinese ship, so I told him that. He seemed quite angry at you two.”
Scom Lip was indeed a trickster, thought Errin. He looked at Levi, who only shrugged.
“I have sent our mutual enemies off to certain death,” Scom Lip said. “Now please know that I want only to be your friend. In San Francisco friends are very important. Doubly so to businessmen such as you and I here on the waterfront.”
“It’s over, finished,” Errin said to Levi.
Levi nodded in agreement as he studied the tong chieftain. Scom Lip would be a very dangerous friend, one who could turn against them at any moment. They would have to watch him carefully. “Friends are always valuable,” he said.
“To show you that we’ve no hard feelings, we’ll work some of your countrymen,” Errin said. “Have two hundred of your strongest men meet me at the docks in Sacramento tomorrow. I have thousands of acres of land to clear of brush and to level for farming.”
“They will be there as you ask, and you have my deep thanks.”
* * *
In the breaking dawn, the crippled clipper ship fought its way eastward through the huge, white-capped waves. The fierce winds of the past two days had blown themselves away to other regions of the world. Behind it, the winds had left a shattered, splintered stub of the tall mainmast. The shorter foremast and aftmast carried every sail that the crew could crowd on. Below decks, men labored without end at the two pumps fighting the cold sea water pouring in through the cracked hull of the ship. They were losing to the sea.
“Goddamned heathens,” Dokken cursed as he helped Mattoon tighten the downhaul of the foresail. “They should learn how to sail a ship. They almost sunk us. Maybe they still will.”
“You’re a fool,” Mattoon said disgustedly. He also hated the Chinamen, but he admitted they were fine sailors. Nobody could have forecast the storm that came out of the night. Nor the giant rogue wave, towering tall as the foremast, that knocked them on their beam end and cracked the hull. As the ship had rolled back onto keel, the mast had snapped under the combined stress of the powerful wind and the weight of the wet sails. Part of the crew had manned the pumps. The others had chopped loose the broken stays, shrouds and wood of the mainmast and had thrown them all over the side into the sea.
Mattoon looked to the east. This was the beginning of the fourth day on the ship. The storm had struck in the dark of the first night. After the loss of the mast and the leak that poured hundreds of gallons of water into the ship’s hold each hour, the captain had reversed course and made way as best he could for San Francisco. With the loss of the mainmast, the ship could carry but a fraction of the sails she normally raised. The race between sinking under the flood of water and reaching the safety of land was swiftly becoming a very close thing.
There was no sign of land, not yet. Still, California could not be far beyond the horizon. There he would escape, he somehow knew it. Then he would make Scanlan and Coffin and the Chinaman suffer as no man had ever suffered before.
The Chinese captain, from his station near the helmsman, saw Mattoon look in the direction that land should soon appear. He put his hand on the butts of the two pistols in his belt. Scom Lip had warned him about the prowess of Mattoon. And the second white man was not to be underestimated. What should be done with them now that the ship was being forced back to San Francisco? Should they be thrown overboard? He considered the plan Scom Lip had described for the deaths of the two men.
The captain shouted at two of his strongest men, both armed with sharp knives, and motioned for them to come with him. He pulled his two pistols, cocked both weapons, and moved upon Mattoon and Dokken.
Chapter 30
Mattoon stood in the center of the sail locker in the bottom of the ship. He swayed to the pitch and roll of the vessel. The expression on his injured face was fixed, his concentration intense.
Dokken sat on the big bolts of sailcloth piled against a bulkhead. He watched Mattoon by the small amount of light that came in through the tiny porthole set in the hull of the ship. The man had been in that position for more than three hours. Dokken had tried to question Mattoon about the plan he had briefly outlined and had received a snarled curse and told to shut up.
Dokken ached in a hundred places from the brutal blows he had received when he was captured. His face felt mangled. Fortunately none of the blows had crippled him. Mattoon was in even worse condition. His face was a gruesome, bloody mask. His right ear had been nearly torn from his head and the tattered remnant was a mass of dried blood. Many lesser wounds were purple and swollen. Through the wounds, the man’s eyes glared out with a ferocious, predatory animal expression. Dokken was glad he was not the enemy of the man.
Mattoon’s senses were riveted upon the motion of the ship.
He had determined the rhythm of her pitch and roll to the wind and the waves running under her keel. Now he had to wait.
He cursed himself for having been taken prisoner by Scom Lip’s club-swinging tong fighters outside his home. They had poured down from their hiding place on the roof of the covered walkway like a dark waterfall. The battle had been close in and fierce. He had shot one man before his pistol had been knocked from his
hand. Then the tong men had swarmed over him, beating him savagely. They had carried him nearly unconscious from his yard and dumped him into the bed of a wagon waiting in an alley a short distance away. Dokken was thrown in beside him, and the wagon hauled them away along the foggy streets to the waterfront. Scom Lip and Captain Chou of the sailing ship were at the top of the gangway when the two white men were dragged aboard. The captain called his crew of Chinamen near while Scom Lip taunted Mattoon with what would happen to white men shanghaied aboard a Chinese ship. Then four seamen forced Mattoon and Dokken below deck and locked them in one of the ship’s holds.
Mattoon felt the incipient change in the motion of the ship. Mainly the pitch, the alternating rise and fall of the ship’s bow and stern, was growing less pronounced. Then shortly came the weakening of the roll. The ship must be approaching the entrance to San Francisco Bay and its protected waters.
“We’ve just entered the Golden Gate,” Mattoon said.
“I can feel the difference too,” Dokken replied.
“Get ready to go ashore.”
“I’m going to kill that little yellow heathen Scom Lip.”
“Scom Lip has maybe two hundred men who take his orders and we don’t know what they’d do if he was killed. So we’ve got to plan very carefully. No one will care if Scanlan and Coffin die. You and I will see that they die in the worst possible way.”
“It’s going to be a damn cold swim to shore,” Dokken said.
“And a long one. In about five minutes we’ll be directly off North Point. We must get off the ship when she’s closest to land. When you reach the main deck, head straight for the starboard rail and go over the side.”
Mattoon knew North Point well, the head of the long peninsula that enclosed the southern portion of San Francisco Bay. Captain Chou would hold as near the center of the bay inlet as possible and that would mean a swim of about half a mile to reach land.
“Get that yardarm out from under the sail canvas,” Mattoon said. His captors had unknowingly made a major mistake when they had locked Mattoon and Dokken in the hold with the bolts of canvas, replacement cloth for the ship’s sails that would be blown away by storms during the long voyage. They had overlooked, buried beneath the canvas, the half-dozen extra yardarms, fifteen-foot lengths of tough oak wood designed to be attached to a mast to carry a sail. No better battering ram than the yardarms could be found.
“Right,” Dokken replied. He dragged a yardarm from under the mound of sailcloth. He hoisted one end and held it.
Mattoon picked up the opposite end of the yardarm. “The crew will be scattered around the ship with several of them aloft working sail. So there should be only a few to get in our way and try to stop us. Now let’s break that hatch and get out of here.”
“Call it.”
“Back up against the far bulkhead,” Mattoon said. “We’ll make a run and hit the hatch with everything we’ve got. Don’t let anything or anybody stop you.
“Now!” Mattoon cried.
They charged forward, legs thrusting. The thick end of the yardarm struck the hatch near the latch with a thunderous boom. The iron locking bolt on the outside of the hatch ripped loose from its rivets and flew across the passageway. The hatch popped open and slammed back against the bulkhead.
Mattoon dropped his end of the yardarm and leapt ahead the few paces to the ladder that led up to the main deck. He mounted the ladder in three long steps and jumped out onto the main deck of the ship.
To Mattoon’s surprise, fog drifted aft over the ship. Both bow and stem were almost invisible in the mist. Men hung in the rigging awaiting orders to change sail once the quiet water of the bay was reached and the open ocean was behind them. Two seamen were coiling line off to Mattoon’s right. Both wheeled around and looked at him with startled expressions.
Mattoon sprang across the deck toward the ship’s railing. He saw the two seamen quickly pull long-bladed knives from scabbards on their belts and fearlessly spring to intercept him.
Mattoon laughed at the men, hardly more than half his size. He could break their necks and be over the side before others could arrive to assist them in stopping him. Still the two would have to be prevented from cutting and laming him with their knives. He must be able to swim ashore.
Moving swiftly, Mattoon passed in front of the nearer seaman. He thrust out his long right arm to fend off the second man. The heel of his hand caught the small sailor in the forehead. The man’s charge was stopped abruptly and he was rammed backward.
Mattoon sprang onto the combing of the railing and instantly kicked off into space. He plunged down feet first to the sea. The cold water engulfed him. He spread his arms, caught the slippery water, and stopped his descent. Swimming powerfully, he stroked away from the ship and up at an angle. He surfaced half a ship’s length away. Shivering he treaded water and waited for Dokken.
From the hatchway, Dokken saw the Chinese seamen rush at Mattoon, the first one missing his knife strike, and Mattoon stiff-arming the second. Then the men turned to Dokken and crouched poised to go either left or right to block his escape. One shouted a loud warning to alert the ship’s captain and other crewmen.
Dokken snatched up a thick coil of rope from the deck and lunged for the ship’s side. He hurled the rope out ahead of him. Uncoiling as it sailed through the air, the rope went straight at the seamen’s faces. One man’s hands flashed up to ward off the rope.
The second man nimbly dodged aside and avoided the rope. Then he immediately reversed directions and leapt back valiantly trying to reach Dokken. He slashed with his knife as Dokken went past him. The keen-edged blade sliced into Dokken’s forearm.
Dokken felt the sharp pain but did not slow. The damn heathen had gotten lucky. Without touching the railing, he launched himself head first up and over the ship’s side.
He hit the sea and arrowed downward. His arms flared and he began to pull himself upward. His head popped into the daylight and he cast a look around for Mattoon.
“This way,” Mattoon called. “Over here.” He saw the ship gliding past in the fog. Orders were being shouted on board, however there would be no time for the captain to put gunners on the deck to fire down on them before the ship was past and out of sight in the fog. Further, with his ship rapidly taking on water, the captain wouldn’t halt her and lower small boats with armed crewmen.
Dokken swam up near Mattoon. “My arm’s cut and bleeding.”
“The cold water will slow it. Follow me to land.”
“Do you know which direction to go in this fog?”
Mattoon treaded the heaving, bone-chilling waves and stared into the gray, impenetrable fog. North Point lay hidden someplace south of them. At this moment he knew south should be at a right angle to the ship’s course. However the evening tide would be running seaward with a speed of three to four knots. In the long swim to the point, the tide, though it could not be felt, would carry them a long distance off course and they could miss land entirely and end up in the open sea. He looked at the wind riffling the water. It was slow and steady and blowing toward the sea. It could be seen and felt and would help guide them.
“This way,” Mattoon called over the water to Dokken.
He swam off bucking the waves with strong strokes. To compensate for the tide carrying them out to sea, Mattoon swam at an angle into it, maintaining his course by holding the wind in his left eye.
* * *
“It’s time to have Chun’s casket sealed for shipping,” Levi said, struggling to prevent his voice from breaking. God! How he hated those words for they meant that never again would he see that lovely face.
“Levi, do you want me to go to the mortuary and have it done?” Errin asked.
“No, but would you go with me and help take the casket to the dock? The ship leaves on the morning tide.”
“Glad to. Are you sure you want to send her back to China?”
“She’ll rest more peacefully there in the same soil as her ancestors.”
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br /> “All right, if you say so. I’m ready when you are.”
Levi opened the office door and went out onto the sidewalk. Errin blew out the lamp and followed. They halted while Errin locked the door behind them, and waited a few seconds longer to let their eyes adjust to the darkness of the falling night.
“It’s a black one,” Errin said. They should have left earlier, but business matters had prevented that. He led to the small wagon parked on the street. He didn’t think Levi felt like driving, so he took up the reins of the horse himself. He clucked the animal into motion.
At the first cross street, Errin stopped the horse to allow a surrey loaded with prostitutes heading for whorehouses on The Embarcadero go by. The two oil-burning lanterns hanging on the front of the vehicle glowed like giant yellow eyes in the gloomy night. In the light cast by the lanterns, Errin noted a buggy had halted behind his wagon. There were several other vehicles on the street so he thought nothing more about the buggy as it followed along at their rear. A few blocks later Levi and Errin arrived at the mortuary.
Levi stepped down from the wagon and, slump shouldered and silent, looked in through the window of the mortuary. A lamp sat on a table near the far wall and cast a frail light over the undertaker’s parlor. Chun’s casket rested upon a satin covered table in the center of the parlor. The lid was open and he could see the pale cameo of her face. Errin came up beside him. It was good to have a friend near you in such a time of loss and sorrow.
Errin caught Levi by the shoulder. In all his life, Errin had had only two friends. The first was little crippled Swallow, whom he had come to know aboard the English prison ship and who had died in their effort to escape. To his great good fortune, when he had first stepped upon the beach of his new country, he had encountered Levi who had taught him the value of having a truly honest man for a friend. Brave Swallow and brave Levi, what a fine pair of men. Errin was the better for knowing them.
Errin felt the wooden sidewalk beneath his feet move as a weight was put upon it. As he turned to see who it was, a brutal blow struck him in the back of the neck. He was catapulted head first into the window. Sash and panes of glass broke against his head and shoulders. He crashed down on the floor of the undertaker’s parlor among the debris of the window.