“Until we get our new gunboats built, you will have to depend largely on Mr. Outscout’s flag for your protection,” he told Miss Eckert. “American gunboats in Central China now are a painful local joke.”
He talked about the old Spanish relics, how they broke down and lacked power to get up the rapids.
“The most ludicrous one of all is named the San Pablo,” he said. “Mercifully, the admiral keeps it hidden away down in Hunan.”
Miss Eckert knew he was needling Holman. She joined Holman on deck after dinner. It was dark already. They would reach Hankow in a few hours.
“China Light is hidden away down in Hunan, too,” she said. That was the name of her mission, where she was going to teach English. She was trying to make up for what Johnson had said. “It doesn’t matter what the ships are like,” she went on. “They’re all manned by brave American boys. That’s what really counts.”
Somehow it angered Holman more than anything Johnson had said. She was just too dumb about some things.
“China sailors ain’t exactly clean-cut American boys,” he told her. “The clean-cut boys don’t stay in China.”
He tried to explain. Sailors came to China on a thirty-month tour of duty. If they liked it, if they fitted the pattern of things, they could extend and stay on and in time retire and die of old age in China, if they wanted to. If not, they went back to the States. She saw where he was going with it and tried to change the subject. It hurt her to hear him downgrade himself, even in that roundabout way. But he had to do it. For her sake. She had to learn about the pattern of things and how it did a missionary girl no good at all to be associated with a China sailor.
Holman shifted comfortably in his new bunk and sighed. He was almost asleep.
So a few hours ago he had hurried ashore from the commercial steamer with his seabag on his shoulder and without saying any goodbyes. He would never see her again. And if by some wild chance he did, she would have had time to learn the rules. It would be almost the same as not seeing her.
2
He woke to reveille on a bugle. They were all putting on the white shorts, so he put on undress whites. The head and washroom opened off the rear of the bunkroom and also out onto the fantail. They were clean, airy places with plenty of room and of course no fresh-water rationing. When Holman came back a Chinese messcook was putting gray enamel pitchers of hot coffee on the mess tables and another Chinese was making up Holman’s bunk. He poured himself a cup of coffee at the mess table nearest his bunk.
“You’ll sit here, across from me, old Pitocki’s place,” a red-bearded man said. A white lanyard came from under his beard to a bosun’s pipe in his shirt pocket.
“Thanks,” Holman said.
He sat down. In a chair. A solid wooden chair. The table was solid wood, with a bare, scrubbed top. Only three men to a side. Another table like it stood on the starboard side and there was a larger table aft, where the bunks were two high. The after table was for nonrated men, Holman thought, and even they had chairs. He saw the boatswain’s mate watching him and grinned.
“I’m just taking it all in,” he said. “It’s all right.”
“She’s a home, all right.”
That was the best thing a man could say for a ship, and it was not said of many. The worst thing you could say was “She’s a madhouse.” Holman was not ready to say anything yet. He felt the chair with his body. It was solid, separate, a chair. A regulation navy mess had rickety ten-man folding tables and narrow folding benches that sagged so that all the rumps kept sliding together and often the benches collapsed. Holman’s place was at the head of this table and he could lean back and touch his bunk and locker and just outside the door and around the corner was the engine-room hatch. He knew he was going to like being all gathered together like that. On the other ships he had always been scattered around. The compartment was clean and attractive with white enamel paint and green curtains and varnished wood and bright brass fittings. The deck was polished red linoleum. Forward of the mess tables the sides slanted in to leave a trapezoidal open space set off by two white stanchions. The open space held a wooden barber chair and some gear lockers. It was a fine place.
The other men on his mess, his new messmates, came up and poured coffee and sat down. One was Burgoyne.
“Morning, Jake,” he said. “What you think of the old Sand Pebble by now?”
“I’m still taking it in,” Holman said. “They made up my bunk for me. Do they always do that?”
“Every blessed morning.” Burgoyne grinned.
“They pick up your dirty clothes and wash and iron ’em and stow ’em clean back in your locker,” the red-bearded one said. The others called him Farren.
“They mend your clothes,” the round-faced machinist’s mate said. “When something wears out, they survey it and make you a new one. You always got a locker full of clean, new clothes.” His name was Wilsey.
They all began telling Holman things. Just about everything a sailor had to do for himself on other ships was done for him on this one. They all watched Holman, wanting to see surprise and pleasure in his face, the same delight they had felt when they first came aboard this ship. Holman felt it, but he would not show it. He did not like being pushed to feel, or pretend to feel, anything, and he thought there must be a hidden catch in all of this.
“It’s a pretty good deal,” he said. “How in hell do you pay for all that service?”
Farren shrugged. “They squeeze. They squeeze the bejesus out of everything,” he said. “And they collect from us on payday.”
“It ain’t never very much,” the craggy, white-haired electrician said. “We call it our club dues,” Restorff said.
He was a stubby, brown, blunt-faced gunner’s mate, and he sat on Holman’s right. Farren sat across from Holman. On other ships the engineers always lived and messed separately. It was going to be strange eating with topside sailors. They had a Chinese messcook named Wong to wait tables in the crew’s mess, Farren said. Another one named Lemon took care of the CPO mess. The ship’s cook and master of the galley was named Big Chew, and he was the best cook in China. All the sailors nodded agreement to that. Wong was bringing in rations on separate plates to the other tables. Burgoyne stopped him and asked for bacon and hot cakes.
“Jake, we run a short-order breakfast on here,” he said. “Wong’ll fetch you anything you want.”
“Ham, bacon, hot cakes and eggs,” Farren said. “Any combination.”
“And all you want,” Harris, the electrician, said. He clicked his teeth. They were big and white and looked false. “I love fried eggs,” Holman said.
On Fleet ships you always got eggs scrambled and padded with cornstarch, except for the hard-boiled eggs that went with corned beef hash. Only now and then on a Sunday you might get a couple of cold, burnt, leathery fried eggs, and you never got more than two. When Wong brought Holman’s order, on a platter because a plate wouldn’t hold it, Holman looked fondly at the six hot cakes and the dozen fried eggs. The eggs were well cooked but not burnt and all the yolks stood up unbroken. He let his pleasure show at last, in his face and voice.
“By God, she is a home!” he said.
“She ain’t much to look at, but she’s a home,” Restorff agreed.
They were all grinning at Holman, sharing his feeling.
“Looks like you got competition, Harris,” Wilsey said. “Harris is the chow hound on this mess,” he told Holman. “He’ll try to ruin your appetite with filthy talk at dinnertime, so there’ll be more for him.”
“He used to drive old Pitocki away from the table sometimes,” Farren said. “Harris is the foulest-mouthed bastard alive.”
“Prong you and all your relations and all your ancestors back to George Washington,” Harris told Farren amiably, between clicking bites of ham.
“You see?” Farren said. “That’s the only way Harris knows how to say good morning.” He grinned through his beard.
“I got a cast-iron gut,”
Holman said. He was dabbling hot cake in egg yolk and eating it. “I’m going to like this ship.”
“She ain’t much on liberty, but she’s sure enough a home and a feeder,” Burgoyne said.
Outside the bugle blew officers’ call and then assembly and they all trooped aft to stand quarters for muster. The sun was bright on the brown river and many brown junks and sampans were out there. The San Pablo deck coolies were working in undress whites without insignia, and Holman felt he looked more like the coolies than like the real sailors in their shorts. He would have to have some shorts made for himself.
“We fall in here, to starboard,” Burgoyne said.
The whole crew made only one double rank across the fantail, with the needle nose of a one-pounder gun projecting over their heads from the boat deck rail above them. At their backs, doors led into the head and washroom and a central hatch led down to the Chinese quarters in the hull. A wooden grating two feet above the deck filled the semicircular stern and covered the rudder quadrant. The captain, a short, dark, stern-looking lieutenant, stood on the grating against the varnished wheel with the bare flagstaff angling up behind it. A bigger, awkward-looking ensign stood on deck with the backs of his legs against the grating and out in front of him three chiefs faced the sailors.
“Fall in, sailors!” each chief said separately to his gang. “Atten-shun! Answer up to muster!”
The sailors wore black shoes with white socks rolled to their shoe tops. The chiefs and officers had white shoes and ribbed white socks that came up to their knees. That, and their regulation uniform caps, was their only difference from the white-hatted sailors. Lynch, the chief machinist’s mate, was a man who looked big more with whisky bloat than with muscle, and his face had a flabby, sagging look. He was being very military.
“Burgoyne!”
“Here, sir!”
“Holman!”
“Here … sir.”
You were not supposed to have to say “sir” to a chief after boot camp. Holman hated to say it to anyone. It was his private trouble to hate everything like this muster and not be able to explain why even to himself. But he could stand it for a while, and then he would have his way of getting out of it. On the stone-faced river bank to his left Holman saw from the corner of his eye the mob of watching coolies, all brown skin and blue rags and gaping faces under broad bamboo hats or head rags. The Chinese were always gaping at the ocean devils. Ordinarily, Holman could ignore them as completely as other sailors did.
“Front and center!” the ensign barked. When the three chiefs heel-clicked to attention in line before him he snapped, “Report!” and each chief saluted and reported all hands in his department present or accounted for. The ensign returned each salute and said, “Very well!” and then about-faced and saluted and told the captain what the captain could not help already knowing.
“Very well!” the captain said, saluting down at the ensign.
The ensign about-faced. “Posts!” he snapped, returning the chiefs’ triple salute, and the chiefs ran off their clean, brisk, square-cornered little dance in reverse and all was as before.
Maybe that’s it, Holman thought. From the first “Here, sir!” they had all been telling each other what everybody already knew, and it had to be very serious and set and precise, as if it meant something important, but it did not mean anything at all. It was like extra rocker arms and idler gears in a machine, to click and spin and bob and make a show, and do nothing except soak up power that should go to the machine’s real work. Well, at least it’s a show for them coolies, Holman thought. Thank Christ it’s over.
It was not over. A quartermaster came on from port, with a seaman and a Chinese trailing him. The seaman held the colors in their triangular fold, breast high in two hands, and the Chinese had a shiny bugle under his arm. The quartermaster stepped up on the grating and saluted the captain.
“The clock reads eight o’clock, sir,” he said.
“Make it so,” the captain said.
Almost instantly eight bells began striking from the bridge and the Chinese bugler snapped his bugle to his lips. On the last bell, he blew attention.
“Atten-shun!” all the chiefs barked.
Chiefs and officers about-faced and stood at salute. The bugler blew colors and the quartermaster hoisted the colors quickly to the peak of the staff, where the river breeze caught them and streamed them rippling toward the watching coolies on the bank. The quartermaster stood at salute until the bugler blew carry on. Then he fell back into ranks.
This was battleship stuff. The rule was that the smaller and more isolated the ship, the less you had of military crap, and this ship should have least of all. But here they were pulling battleship stuff.
“Take stations for physical drill,” the ensign ordered.
Holman set his jaw grimly. They were not going to leave out anything. He hated physical drill. The men opened out and spaced off with extended arms. Two of the chiefs and the ensign stood to one side and the big chief boatswain’s mate stepped up on the grating to lead the drill. He had a tanned, open face and a powerful voice and yellow hair thick on his arms and crowding out the open neck of his shirt. His name was Franks.
“Jumping jack!” he said.
They all jumped and clapped their hands together above their heads twenty times. Then he gave them the windmill and touch-toes and twist-belly, each one twenty times, slashing with his hairy arm as he counted cadence in a great voice, starting with a roar and trailing off, “ONE … two … three … four,” over and over. The captain stood quietly watching it, and he made a picture against the big wheel with the flag streaming above him. Franks gave them pushups on a two-count and they all brought their faces right down to the deck, still damp from scrubbing. They finished with stationary double time. Franks started it as mark time, and he marked time himself, not counting, and all the sailors kept pace with him. Franks raised it slowly through quick step to double and to double-quick, they all following the rhythm of his feet, then faster still, as fast as they could run in place, knees pumping, elbows jogging, teeth bared, Holman with a growing ache in his side, no voices but the sob of breath and the slap of many feet building and building a stupid thundering stampede going nowhere faster and faster until Jake Holman could not stand it any longer and Franks roared, “Ship’s compan-EEEE … halt!”
The ensign came forward. “Resume ranks!”
They fell in, red-faced, puffing, tucking in shirt tails and wiping sweat. The coolies on the bank probably figured it was some kind of joss pidgin, Holman thought. Chinese believed all ocean devils were crazy, and stuff like this gave them a right to think that.
“Fall out!” Lynch said.
Franks sounded his bosun’s pipe. “Now d’ye hear there, fore and aft, all hands turn to!” he bellowed. “Commence ship’s work!”
It made no difference that all hands were right there in front of him and he could have spoken in an ordinary voice.
They broke ranks and headed forward. Lynch held Holman for a handshake and a short talk. He did not ask the usual things about past experience with machinery and so on. He only said welcome aboard and we really been needing a man to take old Pitocki’s place and you got yourself a real pair of man’s shoes to fill on this ship, Holman. Holman was still burning inside from the drill.
“How come good old Pitocki ever left this ship?” he asked.
“He died last winter in Changsha. Typhus, they said.” Lynch’s manner turned cold. “Pitocki had twelve straight years aboard this ship. He could’ve retired, and he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t even go up for chief.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” Holman said. He was not really sorry.
“Well, take today to get settled in,” Lynch said. “Tomorrow we’ll look around the engine room and get you squared away down there.”
A fat little Chinese in a black skull cap and gray gown popped out of the hatch behind them. “Ho, you, Ho-mang,” he said. “Must makee sew sew pidgin.”
“This
is Sew Sew,” Lynch said. “He wants to take a template off you, for your uniforms. You need shorts.”
“A template?” Holman stared.
Lynch laughed. “How we do it on here. Well, take it easy.”
He went forward. Sew Sew had a narrow board with a set of strings dangling from it. It had a big Chinese character in red at one end and smaller ones in black above each cord peg.
“This befoh time belong P’tocki,” Sew Sew said. He held it at arm’s length and looked from the dangling strings to Holman and back again. “My tinkee you litee bit all same P’tocki,” he said.
Each cord was a body part measurement. One by one, Sew Sew tried Pitocki’s cords on Jake Holman’s body and he snipped pieces off the too-long ones, and when they were too short he made new ones. It felt weird to Holman. He was bigger than Pitocki around biceps and chest, but Pitocki was longer in arm and leg and bigger around the belly. It built up a weird feeling of standing inside Pitocki’s ghost, with here one of them sticking out and there the other. Sew Sew muttered each time he had to change a cord. To him, all sailors were lumpy, forky objects to be covered smoothly with cloth and it would be very nice if they were all exactly the same size and shape. Sew Sew finished his template and held it up and gazed at it and he looked pleased. He said he would make six suits of shorts and they would be in Holman’s locker the next morning.
“Make four suits of dungarees, too,” Holman said.
Sew Sew looked doubtful. “Sampabble any man no wanchee too much dunglee,” he said.
“My wanchee foh piecee dunglee,” Holman said firmly.
When he made himself the place he wanted on this ship, he was practically going to live in dungarees.
In the captain’s day cabin Lt. Collins and Ensign Bordelles sat at the round, green baize-covered table. They had cups of coffee on the table and the various parts of Holman’s service record lay spread out before them.
“Tom, I doubt the man,” Lt. Collins said. “I never saw this pattern before in a service record.” He tapped a sheet with a pencil. “Eight ships in eight years. Only bad apples get bounced around like that.”
The Sand Pebbles Page 3