The Sand Pebbles

by Richard McKenna

  When the job was done and all of them had gone up except the watch coolie, it was nearly midnight. Holman felt tired and good. He felt satisfied at finally getting his hands on the machinery, and he was not going to let it go again. He made a pot of coffee and sat on the workbench drinking a cup of it. Wilsey came down in whites to write up the log. He spread out a rag and sat beside Holman on the workbench and had a cup of the coffee. They talked about Chien.

  “Them keys gone. Who’d ever’ve thought about that?”

  “Everybody, after today,” Holman said.

  “Yeah, I guess. But you just never know, do you?”

  “You can know if you want to,” Holman said.

  They heard noise topside. The landing force was back. Perna and Stawski came down and poured coffee and sat on the workbench. It was the first time they had ever come down off watch to drink engine room coffee. Wilsey told them about the keys.

  “It was them keys gone, huh, Jake?” Stawski said. “You sure it was them keys gone done it, huh?” He was eager about it.

  “Sure. Hell, yes,” Holman said. “What else?”

  “It was them keys, all right,” Stawski said.

  “All shows to go you,” Wilsey said.

  “We brought a missionary doctor back to look at Chien,” Perna said. “He’s up there now.”

  “They was all holed up in their compounds and the doctor didn’t want to come out,” Stawski said. “The skipper really blistered his ass for him, way Bronson tells it.”

  “Wish I’d heard it,” Wilsey said. “Prong missionaries.”

  “I was just thinking, working on that bearing,” Holman said. “Any of you guys ever figure out just what it is you do, when you fit a bearing?”

  “You spot and scrape and take leads,” Wilsey said.

  “Yeah, but why? What do you mean by fit?”

  “Well, fit. Everybody knows that.” Wilsey waggled his foot out in front of him. “Just fit. Like your foot in a shoe.”

  “In a bearing, it means equal distribution of load,” Holman said.

  “So what?” Perna said.

  They didn’t want to talk about bearings. Perna told about the rioting. The mob was out in the streets, all right, yelling and milling, but the Sand Pebbles had gone right on through to the warlord’s yamen. Lt. Collins had offered very politely to help the warlord stop the rioting and the warlord had declined politely and sent out his soldiers to do it alone. In a few hours they had the streets clear and quiet. The Sand Pebbles had gotten a good chow out of it, but Franks would not let them drink the warlord’s samshu. Afterward, they had checked all the missions. No palefaces had been hurt. Only a few native Christians had been killed.

  “One mission, they offered us all a glass of milk,” Stawski said.

  “What started them rioting anyway?” Holman asked.

  “Some slopeheads claimed they saw a missionary woman boiling babies,” Perna said. “So they all went wild.”

  “Them missionaries ought to be more careful who they let see ’em, when they’re boiling babies,” Wilsey said.

  8

  Chien still had life in the morning, like an ember in ashes. The mission doctor wanted him to die on the San Pablo. When a Chinese died in a mission hospital, a story always started that the missionaries had murdered him so they could use his eyes to make camera lenses. If Chien died ashore, it might renew the rioting.

  After breakfast Bordelles took his landing force section on a boat trip to a rural mission about fifteen miles from Paoshan. The city looked normal, gates open in the gray stone walls and the line of water coolies chanting and slopping up the stone steps from the river. Not far above the city Farren turned the motor sampan into a broad creek. With his red beard under his white sun helmet and his strong, tanned bare legs, Farren looked like a pirate at the tiller. Bordelles sat beside him. Holman, Crosley, Tullio, Red Dog and Ellis sprawled on the thwarts in the waist.

  “You’re gonna light a fire under China Light, huh, Mr. Bordelles?” Red Dog said.

  “Going to try,” Bordelles said. “Anyway, it won’t hurt to show the flag and a party of armed men to any bandits down off that mountain today.”

  Holman sat up straight. China Light was Miss Eckert’s mission. He wondered if he might see her. He wished he had not spoken so harshly that last time they had talked.

  It was a clear, sunny morning and they had a lunch packed under the stern sheets. It began to seem like a picnic to Holman. The creek wound through green fields. It was stone-banked much of the way and overhung by drooping willow and mulberry trees. Children rode on water buffaloes that grazed along the bank. Other children tended duck flocks. They beat the ducks with bright rag scraps at the end of strings dangling like whips from long bamboo poles. The ducks quacked, but it did not hurt them. The children ran and hid and the buffaloes tossed their heads and snorted, when they saw the boatload of armed ocean devils. Then the children peeped out again, very curious. But the grown people working in the fields or floating down to Paoshan in sampans filled with garden stuff only stared with blank faces.

  Away from the ship, Bordelles was quite democratic. He was tall and gawky, with a big nose and chin that would make a fine admiral’s mask someday. Holman began asking him questions about China Light. He learned that it was more than just a church and a school. It owned a lot of surrounding farmland. Hundreds of Chinese lived there, and about a dozen palefaces. It was supposed to be under the fat warlord in Paoshan, but it was also claimed by the bandit chief on the mountain, who was squaring around to fight the warlord.

  “A few more years and he’ll be the warlord,” Bordelles said. “Poor old General Pan will be going hungry up on the mountain.”

  The men laughed. The mountain was a long purple wall off to the left. It came down steeply, without foothills, to the river flood plain. They were getting near enough to make out steep ravines, blue-shadowy with timber. A lot of camphorwood and tung oil came from the mountain, Bordelles said.

  “Tell him about Old Man Craddock,” Farren said.

  “I seen him,” Holman said. “He was on the steamer I rode up from Shanghai.”

  “Did he speak to you at all?” Bordelles asked.

  “Once or twice,” Holman said. “Not very kindly.”

  Bordelles chuckled. “He wouldn’t. Not old Craddock.”

  Craddock was a leader of a group which blamed all anti-Christian trouble in China on the treaties and gunboats, Bordelles explained. He had started a petition to have the San Pablo kept out of Tungting Lake. The people at China Light had notified the consul in Changsha that they were renouncing their personal treaty rights. They wanted no gunboat protection and no reprisals or indemnities, whatever might happen to them. Of course they could not do that. As American citizens, they were as much bound by the treaties as the Chinese were. The consul had told them so.

  “They know it and they like it,” Crosley growled. “They’re just making looksee pidgin for the slopeheads.”

  China Light was an independent mission. There were no higher echelons to bring pressure on Craddock, Bordelles went on. The China Light people would probably refuse to obey an evacuation order, if the consul had to send one out. So Lt. Collins had composed a waiver they would all have to sign individually.

  “They’re good. Read ’em one, Mr. Bordelles,” Red Dog urged.

  Bordelles read one. It stated that the undersigned chose to ignore consular advice to evacuate in full knowledge of the risk of harm to himself and embarrassment to the United States of America. “I swear before God that this is my own uninfluenced private and personal decision, and I hereby release the U.S. Government from all further responsibility for my welfare,” the waivers ended.

  “They sign after they’ve had a warning,” Bordelles said. “Might not be so easy, then. I have to make old Craddock sign a receipt for these and a promise to mail them to Changsha, if they ever refuse to evacuate.”

  “He’ll give you a bad time, Mr. Bordelles,” Tullio said.
“I’ll give him one right back.”

  “They’ll run from real trouble, Craddock out in front,” Crosley said.

  “Don’t be too sure about old Craddock.”

  Bordelles told them about the file on Craddock in the consulate at Changsha. His mission up north had been wiped out in the Boxer. His wife and several others had been killed. He got a big indemnity for them out of the Boxer Settlement, which also opened Hunan to missionaries. He married again and led the rush into Hunan, founding China Light in the same year the San Pablo had come to Tungting Lake. He was wiped out again in the 1910 riots and with the indemnity for that he bought enough local farmland to make the mission self-supporting. He owned it like a ranch.

  “Give him his due, he’s a tough old devil,” Bordelles said.

  They tied up at a stone jetty near a cluster of huts in a bamboo grove. Farren and Ellis stayed as boat guards. Bordelles led the four others in single file, arms slung, along a raised flagstoned path that was like a dike through fields blue with fat cabbages. The mission was about a mile away. It was a very long brick-walled compound with tiled roofs and treetops showing above the wall and the U.S. flag on a pole rising highest of all. Chinese huts scattered off from one end of it, into the fields. Bordelles took a branch of the path that led to the other end. It was hot walking under the high sun and dust stuck to their sweating bare legs and arms. Farmers in the fields watched them pass from under wide bamboo hats. They crunched across packed gravel and stopped before big wooden, ironbound double gates. The gates were closed. Bordelles knocked on the small side door. No one answered. Bordelles frowned and spat.

  “Not a word out of you men from here on,” he said. “You in particular, Shanahan.”

  “Arf arf, sir!” the Red Dog said softly, and they all grinned.

  Bordelles drew his pistol and fired a shot into the ground. An old Chinese opened the side door, but he kept it on a chain and he could not understand anything. Finally a bearded white man came and flung the door open and stood there.

  “You are impatient, Mr. Bordelles,” he said. “I wish you had not done that.”

  He was Craddock. He was tall in a black suit, with a beak nose and fierce eyes deepset under shaggy eyebrows. His black beard was streaked with gray and he radiated power like an admiral. Bordelles was not abashed.

  “And I wish you had answered my knock,” he said. “I’ve come on duty, Mr. Craddock. To check your safety and discuss changes in our evacuation plan.”

  “We are in God’s care here and we are all right.” Craddock had a deep, harsh voice. “All you accomplish, by coming here with your arms and your uniforms, is to imperil our standing with the Chinese. And we will never evacuate China Light, sir!”

  “So you wrote the consul. That’s why I’m here, sir.” Bordelles was being very formal. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

  “We are talking.”

  “I have papers you must read. I would prefer to talk privately, indoors.”

  Bordelles took a step toward the door. Craddock did not budge.

  “No doubt your arms are your warrant for forcible entry,” he said.

  Bordelles flushed scarlet. “Not at all, sir,” he said tautly. “My men are tired, hungry and thirsty. I thought you might have a sterilized stone you could give them.”

  “You are pleased to mock me, sir. Very well, come in.” Craddock stepped aside from the door. “I must ask you to leave your arms and cigarettes in the gate house.”

  They went in. “Put your cigarettes on that shelf, men,” Bordelles said.

  “The arms too, if you please, sir,” Craddock said behind them.

  “I am not free to please, sir. We are ashore on duty under arms,” Bordelles said. “Go ahead through, men.”

  It was abruptly cool and clean and green inside the wall. Three big white clapboard houses with green shutters lined each side of a flagstoned street. They were set back among trees and rose arbors and flower beds on neat lawns marked off by white picket fences. All the houses had downstairs and upstairs verandas with white railings and rocking chairs. Nobody was in sight except some coolies sprinkling water on flower beds and borders. It was a sharp change from the hot, dusty cabbage fields.

  “This way, please.”

  Craddock passed them with quick, chopping strides, stiff and angry, and they followed him up the path to the first house on the right. A house servant in a gray gown came out and Craddock gave him sharp orders in Chinese. He led the sailors around by the side veranda to a back porch and pointed to some benches. He was being very snotty, in a Chinese way. They sat down, leaning on their rifles upright between their knees, and looked at each other disgustedly.

  “I guess we ain’t going to get any chow,” Crosley said.

  “Don’t look like it,” Holman agreed.

  Crosley was a signalman, a squat, ugly little man with a big head, pop eyes and a wide mouth like a frog. He had a hoarse, croaking voice to match his face.

  “That cheap, biblebacked old devil!” he said.

  “Bordelles broke a few off in him,” Tullio said. “He’s giving him hell in there right now.”

  From time to time they could hear voices rise angrily somewhere inside the house. A servant came at last, with a basket of damp towels and bowls of tea. The sailors swabbed their faces and arms and legs with the towels, for momentary freshening. The towels were tepid instead of hot. They were getting second-chop treatment. Crosley scowled at his bowl of tea.

  “Don’t drink this slop, guys,” he warned. “They prob’ly pissed in it.”

  “Watch it!” Tullio whispered sharply.

  Shirley Eckert was seated at her desk in the faculty office when she heard the shot. She went to the open window and saw Mr. Craddock stride angrily across to the gatehouse. She knew the gunboat was in Paoshan and the danger was supposed to be past. She was still nervous. Then armed sailors in white sun helmets and shorts came through the gatehouse. They swung along jauntily. Mr. Craddock took their officer into his house and sent the sailors around to the back veranda. Shirley lingered at the window.

  “I hope you’re not alarmed, Miss Eckert.”

  She turned. Mr. Gillespie had come in. His brown hair was rumpled and his tanned, pleasant face looked concerned.

  “I thought that shot might have alarmed you,” he said. “It’s only a bit of navy arrogance. Mr. Craddock will soon get rid of them.”

  “He’ll be rude to them, you mean?”

  “Well … very formal.” Gillespie smiled. “Their coming here is deliberate provocation, you understand. They know they’re not wanted here.”

  Shirley was not sure she did not want them. Gillespie noted her hesitation.

  “Our only chance to carry on our work in China lies in breaking the association in Chinese minds between gunboats and missions, at least China Light,” he said. “That officer could just as well have come alone, in civilian clothes, if he had to come at all. He is deliberately trying to strengthen the association.”

  “I know,” Shirley said.

  They had all been telling her about it. It was true enough. But something was not right.

  “All right, Mr. Craddock will be rude,” Gillespie said. “The Chinese will see and talk about his rudeness. Thus he makes this visit weaken the association rather than strengthen it, as they mean it to.”

  She nodded. Gillespie sat on a desk corner, one leg dangling.

  “The men. The sailors,” she said. “They can’t help it. They have to obey orders.”

  “They’re hard men who have chosen a hard life.”

  “They’ll think we despise them.”

  “We must persuade the Chinese that we do.” He leaned forward. “They come flaunting rifles,” he said. “Rifles are for killing people, killing Chinese, in this case. How could we honestly welcome them, even without Chinese watching us?”

  Mr. Gillespie was an evangelist, not one of the teachers, but he had been quietly attentive and helpful to Shirley in getting settled at Chi
na Light. She did not want to disagree with him.

  “I think I will just go down and see if they want water,” she said.

  “I’m sure Mrs. Craddock will have tea and towels sent out to them.”

  If she dares, Shirley thought. Mr. Craddock utterly dominated his fragile wife.

  “Then just to say hello,” she said. “One friendly word.”

  He stood up, frowning slightly. “I’ll go with you.”

  “No. Please,” she said. “Not against your convictions, Mr. Gillespie. I’m new and ignorant. It won’t spoil anything, if I go.”

  He protested. She went out alone, taking stock of herself. She had on a tan dress with long sleeves and of course no makeup. She was having to let her hair grow out and she had scarcely enough yet for the skimpy knot she kept it in. Loose wisps straggled. She had to walk slowly so that perspiration would not soak through her dress. She was not going to charm anyone. But she could speak a friendly word.

  As she went down the side veranda of the Craddock house, she heard the old man’s angry voice inside. On the rear veranda one of the sailors whispered, “Watch it!” fiercely, as if danger threatened. The four men jumped to their feet facing her, each with his rifle. It was awkward. She scanned their faces and words would not come. Then, with a small thrill, she recognized the big, square man.

  “Mr. Holman!” she said. “I’m so glad to see you again!”