The Sand Pebbles

by Richard McKenna

  “Can you see figures? Are they in uniform?” he called up to Crosley.

  “All I been seeing is reeds waving, sir,” Crosley said. “There’s a shack in there, too. I can see the roof tiles.”

  “Call the men to general quarters, Mr. Bordelles,” Lt. Collins said.

  That was a slow-clanging gong and a ragged bugle call. Holman had to go below and take the throttle. Lynch came down. He only came to the engine room when drills required him to. They spent an hour working on the toofay. The ship had a different, lively, springy feel to Holman and his ears brought him the picture of what they were doing up there. The machine guns mowed several acres of reeds and Haythorn probed with the three-pounder for the hidden hut. It barked sharply, much like Red Dog. Sweat beaded Lynch’s puffy face and he kept slapping his pistol. There were a lot of bells and maneuvers with the engine, to hold station in the sluggish current. When they finally secured and whistled and steamed on, a scattering of shots still came from the reeds to send them on their way. Lynch was disgusted.

  “It ain’t like the old days. We been getting soft since the war,” he grumbled to Burgoyne. “I tell you, it’s damned bad luck not to have the last shot!”

  22

  The water was very low in the Chien. After they left the delta, Lt. Collins had to climb with his binoculars to the flying bridge to see well across the banks. He saw women out sweeping the rice fields with twig brooms. They made reddish dust swirls in the light breeze. Reddish streaks showed through the whitewash on the mud-walled farmsteads. They were drying and crumbling under the clear, bright sky. The bamboo groves around the farmsteads drooped sadly. Along the banks groups of ragged farmers in conical bamboo hats climbed endlessly on the treadmills that drove their groaning pumps. All that morning the sound of the pumps had followed San Pablo like a reproach. Or menace. The farmers leaned on the bar and climbed with thin brown shanks and they did not turn, as they usually did, to watch San Pablo steam by them. The river swirled clear above white sand in the shrunken channel. It should have been muddy brown and running from bank to bank.

  Lt. Collins climbed down, stopped for a word with Bordelles, and went back into his cabin. He had not seen anyone fishing all morning. He did not like the seeming of things. Paoshan was the furthest reach of his responsibility in Hunan, and he was never sure of it.

  He came out when they tied up to the Japanese pontoon in Paoshan, right after the noon meal. A plank led from the flat steel pontoon to a sandy foreshore that stretched a hundred feet to the stone river embankment. Water should have been lapping the stone. Chinese were massed all along the bank and more were up on the gray, crenelated city wall and a crowd hum filled the air. People were all over the river sands. One group of warlord soldiers was tending a fire and another group of priests and soldiers was slaughtering animals at the water’s edge. They had a bull, a sheep and a pig. The pig squealed and resisted and made a nasty business of it.

  “All lines doubled up, sir,” Bordelles reported. “I think I’ll go aft and watch the show, if it’s all right.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  The chiefs and a few others were by the sickbay. They cleared a space along the rail for the two officers. Most of the crew was on the fantail watching. The priests were clipping and shaving the animals. A stocky Chinese in a gray gown waded out and began to declaim above the river with flinging, emotional gestures.

  “Sir! That’s General Pan!” Bordelles whispered.

  It was indeed the Paoshan warlord. If that fierce, jolly, hardheaded man would put off his uniform and behave like this, things had to be very wrong. The sailors on the fantail had begun laughing. Word came up that General Pan was confessing his sins to the river god. Oh Joy was translating for the sailors, and they were laughing. Lt. Collins sent Franks down to stop it and to quiet them.

  “Tell them it’s religious. They have to respect it,” he said.

  General Pan was a kind of an officer and a kind of a friend, and Lt. Collins did not want to know about his sins. They were best left in Chinese. When Pan went back into the city, Lt. Collins would call on him at the yamen with all due ceremony and then he would learn what the trouble was. By then the chartered sedan chairs would be rigged. Abruptly, he turned and went forward. Bordelles followed.

  “The Chinese are a very ingenious people,” Bordelles said.

  It was one of the ensign’s favorite joking remarks, and sometimes it irritated Lt. Collins. It irked him now. It did not seem in good taste. It did not seem at all a time for joking.

  He rode through noisy, smelly streets in the sedan chair, from the yamen to the mission compound, still shaken by what General Pan had told him. He kept his curtains down and peered through the cracks. He did not like the crowd faces. A sedan chair with curtains up passed him and the passenger was a squealing pig dressed in silken robes. Waves of jeering laughter followed the pig. He had to wait at the main street until a procession passed. They were men and women with headdresses of woven willow branches and they carried smoking joss sticks. They had straw pads strapped to their knees and every third step they would go down and beat their foreheads on the filthy stones. They all had blood on their strained and staring faces.

  At the mission he drank tea in a dowdy American parlor and talked to Reynolds, the senior missionary. He was a stooped, worn man with sparse hair and rimless glasses and a gentle manner. He was very reasonable, for a missionary. He was not one of the anti-gunboat fanatics, like old Craddock at China Light. The two younger men present let Reynolds do the talking.

  “Thank God our womenfolk are at Kuling for the summer,” he said.

  “How about the women at China Light?”

  “Some are still there, I’m afraid.”

  Lt. Collins frowned. It was always simpler if there were no women and children.

  “Mr. Craddock feels safe that far from the city,” Reynolds said.

  “What’s your estimate, Mr. Reynolds?”

  “I … don’t quite know, sir. This is very unusual.”

  “General Pan says the countryside will rise en masse.” Pan had been deeply disturbed. He had tried hard to make Lt. Collins understand that this was something radically out of the ordinary. “What do you know about this man Wing?” Lt. Collins asked.

  One of the younger men jumped up, flushing. “He’s a servant of Satan!” the man said harshly. “He thinks he can coerce the Almighty! He means to blackmail very God Himself!”

  “Please, Mr. Baker,” Reynolds said. “Wing is a native holy man,” he told Lt. Collins. “He’s behind the trouble, all right.”

  They had had a series of bad years in the district and a small famine last year, Reynolds explained. They were weakened. If it did not rain soon they would have a big famine this year and they would all die. So they had begun to make heaven lose face, to force rain. They believed in a vague, impersonal heavenly power that could be symbolized in many ways and influenced, even coerced, by the way they treated the symbols. They had begun to outrage decorum and to beat and revile their wooden idols. That much was old custom in China.

  “Then Wing began preaching that the Christian God was the one inhibiting the Rain Dragon,” Reynolds said sadly. “The people began demanding that we humiliate and coerce our God.”

  Lt. Collins raised his eyebrows. Of course the notion was preposterous, Reynolds went on, but it was hard to make that clear to ignorant Chinese. What they had done was to begin holding every day at noon a mass public prayer for rain, on a bell signal from the mission, as a token of good faith and concern. But Wing had begun a fast, pointedly and publicly aimed at the Christian God. Local geomancers had concurred in a prediction that if it did not rain by a certain day it would not rain all summer. Then Wing had announced that if it did not rain on that day he would burn himself alive on the river sands and the Christian God would have no face left at all.

  “The day is Friday,” Reynolds said. “Today is Tuesday.”

  “General Pan expects them to go berser
k and kill all the Christians in the district,” Lt. Collins said. “What do you think?”

  “You must not let Wing burn himself!” Baker exclaimed. “It’s repugnant to all civilized opinion!”

  “That part is a purely Chinese affair. I have no authority, under the treaties, to interfere.”

  “You could order General Pan!”

  Lt. Collins checked his anger. It was the anti-gunboat missionaries’ habit of siding with Chinese complaints of arbitrary high-handedness which had so gravely undermined the structure of gunboat authority in China since the war. But these men were not anti-gunboat.

  “General Pan expects his own soldiers to join the mob, Mr. Baker,” he said. “He fears for his own life and I have offered him refuge in San Pablo Friday.”

  “We must simply pray for rain and trust God’s mercy,” Reynolds said.

  “I can take you and the China Light people to Hankow. You can collect an indemnity later, for property damage.”

  “What about our native Christians? What about their property?” Baker wanted to know. He was a chunky blond young man.

  “I am only responsible for American lives and property,” Lt. Collins said. He was deciding that he did not like Baker. “I’ll take as many as I have room for.” He turned to Reynolds. “I want to ask a favor, Mr. Reynolds. Will you go to China Light and persuade them to come in and take refuge on the ship before Friday?” Reynolds looked dubious. Lt. Collins smiled grimly. “I know,” he said. “But you will be more likely to persuade them than I would be. At least the women and children.”

  “I’ll try,” Reynolds said.

  “Good! And thank you for it!”

  Lt. Collins finished his tea and stood up. The other men rose.

  “What about our native Christians?” Baker pressed.

  “Most of them can take shelter with relatives in the country,” Reynolds said. “This is China, Mr. Baker. We’ll build up again.”

  “They can bring death on their relatives in the country!” Baker would not smooth it under. “You and General Pan simply have to do something, Lt. Collins!” he almost shouted.

  “I’m not God. I can’t make it rain,” Lt. Collins told him evenly. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

  On the way back he heard the drums and gongs all around him in the city. People still crowded the bund. Over their heads he could see the ship, solid and gunned and comforting. His chair tilted down the inset stone steps to the sands, the bearers yelling for gangway and jostling the water coolies trying to come up with their yoked wooden buckets slopping. He got out of the chair on the pontoon, beside the small office-waiting room with the Japanese flag atop it. The sailors were all along the rail aft, watching another ceremony. Even Randall, on the quarterdeck watch, was too busy staring at it to know that his commanding officer had returned.

  Chinese with wild, angry faces were holding over the fire a bamboo platform with a wooden god image on it. The god’s paint was blistering and the crowd shrieked and howled. They moved the god off the fire and seized buckets of water from the water coolies and doused him. Their yelling and drumming and gonging rose in crescendo. They flung the empty buckets away and the water coolies went humbly to refill them. The sailors were all pointing and laughing. Lt. Collins caught Randall’s eye.

  “San Pablo … boarding!” Randall cried in confusion.

  He ran to the gangway to salute. Lt. Collins brushed angrily by him and went to his cabin and sent for Bordelles.

  “Muster the men aft. I want to talk to them,” he said.

  He had a few minutes to plan what he would say. The men probably had a garbled story by now, but they had no sense of the gravity of the situation. In a way, that was good. He did not want to shake their superb confidence.

  Facing them on the fantail, he told them what he thought they should know. “The people know they are all going to die and it affects their minds,” he said. “The least we can do is to respect their ceremonies and humor them in anything they think might help. General Pan has ordered that no animals be killed for food, no fish caught and no eggs broken, until it rains. We can only get vegetables from the beach.” He paused. They were taking it well. “I expect you all to keep a decent silence about the decks during their ceremonies,” he went on. “I want the deck watches doubly alert. We must be prepared for unexpected outbursts.”

  They nodded gravely, glancing at the mob along the bund. They were good, steady men. Lt. Collins dismissed them and went to the bridge and called a repel boarders drill. He thought it might have a good moral effect on both sides. It went very nicely, as San Pablo sprang to arms. The bugle sang high and clear, running feet thudded, guns swiveled, cutlasses flashed on the main deck, and steam roared and billowed amidships. One by one in hearty voices the shouted reports came in. Bordelles made the rounds and returned smiling.

  “Perfect, sir. They’re really on their toes.”

  “Very well. Secure from all drills.”

  In his cabin, with coffee, they talked it over. Bordelles did not think the China Light people would come in to safety. Craddock would just say, as he was so fond of saying, that he dared to trust God rather than guns, implying that whoever did not was both cowardly and heathen.

  “I’m glad it’s Mr. Reynolds going out there and not me,” Bordelles said.

  “Well, I hope they come in.”

  “So do I, sir, but they won’t.” Bordelles shook his head. “Maybe it’ll rain. I hope it rains.”

  “Double up all sentries tonight, Tom. Give them a pep talk.”

  Lt. Collins took a turn around the boat deck before he went to bed. There were still a few people on the bund, with bobbing paper lanterns, and drums were going in the city. The fire on the sands burned redly, soldiers crouched beside it. He could just make out the sacrificial animals in the glow of the ship’s stern light. They lay side by side on a low platform, their legs folded neatly beneath them, and willow branches had been stuck into the sand all around them. They were clean-shaven, except for their heads. The water chuckled along in front of them and they looked cool and pale and peaceful there together.

  He could not go to sleep. The mock fire danced shadows on his window. Drums and the far, ceaseless groaning of the treadmill pumps assailed his ears. He pondered what General Pan had tried so hard to say in his inadequate English.

  They were all going to die and they knew it. There was a heavenly order that sent rain and an earthly order that died if it did not get rain, and the two were tied together. The people pleaded and they died patiently and when they had had enough of that, they struck. They mocked heaven and scorched their wooden idols. Wild, angry destruction of all earthly authority symbols to wound their heavenly counterparts. General Pan was such a symbol. So were all the missionaries, with their treaty privileges. So, pre-eminently, was San Pablo. It was a tortured, irrational Chinese version of the rational doctrine that all authority was coupled with a commensurate responsibility.

  They could not come to grips with the Christian God. There was just no way of getting at Him. He did not have to give a damn about Chinese or anybody else, unless He pleased to. He could only be supplicated, never coerced. Or could He? Did this holy man Wing know what he was doing?

  A sleep-edge vision shaped itself: the great, collective beast refusing death, rising to rend with powers and methods unthinkable—Lt. Collins was jolted fully awake. He turned on his light and smoked a cigarette.

  It was blank nonsense. Nonsense, but their acts based on it would be real. Stick to that level. He had to get the Americans out safely. That was all his responsibility. He would get the China Light bunch aboard somehow, if he had to go out there and plead with each one individually. He would hate that, but he would do it. Their lives were his responsibility.

  Firmly he lay down and turned off the light. Firmly he stopped his thoughts and listened to nothing but the tread of the deck sentry. Quite soon he drifted off and slept soundly.

  He slept late. Crackling rifle fire brought him o
ut on deck in his pajamas. A file of warlord soldiers on the city wall was firing into the sky to stir up the Rain Dragon. They were doing that every morning, General Pan had said, to comfort the people. Franks and Bordelles came up, worried, and Lt. Collins explained about the Rain Dragon. He sent Franks down to reassure the men on the main deck.

  “Pan hinted that I should fire my guns every morning too,” he told Bordelles. “I think Pan half believes that stuff. He’s nervous.”

  Bordelles chuckled. Down on the main deck the sailors were laughing.

  Lt. Collins ate breakfast alone in his cabin. Yen-ta brought him scrambled eggs and a glass of milk. Mr. Reynolds was trying to break down the Chinese prejudice against milk and he was very proud of his little dairy run by native Christians. He always sent out a quart of milk every morning that the ship was in Paoshan. Lt. Collins pointed at the milk.

  “Take away!” he told Yen-ta. “Throw away!”

  He did not like milk. It was from the glands of female animals. The Chinese were right about milk. It was unmanly stuff. He did not want the eggs, either. If the crew was going to have to do without eggs, he did not want any being saved back for the chiefs and officers.

  “Can catch plenty egg,” Yen-ta assured him. “Evahbody catch plenty egg.”

  It was a nervous day. Muster and drills ran off snappily, with a bit too much vigor. Chinese still moved restlessly on the bund and down on the sands. Only the everlasting water coolies were behaving normally. A few high white cumulus clouds drifted across, trailing cool shadows, but they were not going to rain down any rain. They had slowly shifting, fantastic shapes. Perhaps that’s where the Chinese get their notion of a Rain Dragon, Lt. Collins thought.

  He spoke to Welbeck about the crew’s mess. San Pablo did not have refrigeration and they had to buy fresh stores as they used them. Welbeck said Big Chew could make out very well with vegetables and dry stores for a few days. One of the engine room coolies had relatives in Paoshan and he was smuggling eggs out to the ship. The hens were not obeying the warlord’s order, Welbeck said, chuckling. The coolie was the same one who had made all the trouble in Changsha; he was coming in handy now. Shortly afterward Lt. Collins saw the coolie, Po-han, come aboard with a heavy basket. On impulse, he stopped and commended him. The coolie grinned proudly, showing two gold teeth, and Lt. Collins felt good about it. He did not remember ever having commended one of the Chinese boatmen before, but that fellow had real ship’s spirit.