The Sand Pebbles

by Richard McKenna

  “The English word is ‘commandeer,’” Liu said. “This is Chinese soil. I have already shown Mr. James my authority under Chinese law to commandeer his school for a battalion headquarters.”

  His voice was quiet, but he was tense. It was very tense and quiet in the courtyard. Mr. James said something about the Chefoo Convention. Bordelles stepped nearer Liu and looked steeply down on him.

  “May I see your authority?” he asked, just as quietly.

  “No.” Liu stepped back. “You have no right even to be here, in uniform and under arms,” he said. “I will have you and your men escorted back to your consulate. If necessary, I will post a guard to see that you stay there.”

  Bordelles jerked visibly at almost every word. His eyes stared and his lips tightened. The Sand Pebbles shuffled their feet, getting set. All the colors were brighter. Bordelles spoke slowly.

  “Let me warn you, Mr. Liu. Any interference on your part with me and my men in the performance of our lawful duty will constitute an act of war against the United States of America.” He paused, to let that soak in. “If your superior officers are not prepared to go to war against America, they will probably disavow your action and make amends.” His eyes holding Liu’s eyes, Bordelles drew his forefinger slowly across his throat. “It has happened before,” he said.

  Liu was pale, too. He did not flinch. Holman felt numbly that two great, groping giants were touching fingertips. When Liu spoke, his English was slurred from tension, but his voice was still quiet.

  “All too often before, but we have had enough of that now,” he said. “I will quote your own history to you, Mr. Bordelles. If you mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

  You know, it could, Holman thought suddenly. Bordelles’ nostrils were white and flaring and all his cheerful farmer look was gone. Liu spoke a command and the green-clad soldiers began to form up. They all had rifles and the noncoms had Mauser machine pistols in the wooden scabbards. There were at least four squads of them. Custer’s Last Stand, Holman thought. Remember the Alamo. It did not seem to have anything to do with him personally.

  “You may have your men sling arms, or you may have them lay down their arms,” Liu said.

  Bordelles was silent as stone. Please. Please, gentlemen, the two missionaries were saying. Be reasonable. Make allowances.

  “You may go under escort or you may go under full arrest,” Liu said. “That is all the choice I will give you, and you must make it now.”

  The missionaries slipped away. Bordelles stood frozen. Time seemed stopped. Liu spoke in Chinese. The noncoms echoed and the green soldiers fixed bayonets. The sudden hedge of bright, sharp steel was like an electric shock that started time again. A veil came over Bordelles’ face. He turned half left.

  “Sling arms,” he ordered, in a choked voice.

  One squad of gearwheel soldiers walked ahead of them and another came behind. All the street people knew. They pointed and taunted and jeered and they came out on narrow balconies and looked out of upper windows to laugh. Some spat or threw melon rinds and street filth. The gearwheel sergeant had to keep shouting at the people to stop it. It was a great, numbing wind of laughter. Bordelles walked sturdy and straight as a mast just ahead of Holman. His uniform was turning slimy. Holman heard it and felt it all, his gunsling chafing and the thud of his own marching feet, but he did not seem to be involved in it personally.

  It was much better when they got outside the wall, on a wider street. The escort halted smartly at the consulate and the sailors went on through the gate. Bordelles went to his room. Without speaking or looking at each other, the sailors threw their guns on their cots and went to the washroom. The coolies had to bring a great deal of water. Afterward, dressed in clean uniforms, they were still silent. The laundry coolie came to pick up the dirty uniforms.

  “No good. Throw away. Makee cumshaw beggar man,” Farren told him. “Nobody can ever wash them clean enough again for me to wear.”

  Heads nodded slowly. They were all in a kind of shock, Holman realized. They were like women who had just been raped. He did not feel badly about it himself. He had the familiar feeling of a dirty job well done, a boiler cleaned or a stretch of bilge mucked out and painted, and he was all cleaned up again and that was behind him. He wished that he were a ready, fun-making man like Red Dog, to cheer the others up. He went over and stood behind Red Dog and squeezed his shoulder.

  “Arf! Arf!” he said.

  “Go to hell,” Red Dog said.

  He did not even look up to say it. Holman went to his own cot and sat down and read a Country Gentleman. In about an hour Franks came to take them back to the ship. There was not going to be any more landing force at the consulate.

  Once aboard, they began coming out of it. When the feeling was spread over all the Sand Pebbles, it did not weigh so heavily on the men of Bordelles’ section. Harris cursed furiously, and it raised all their spirits. The incident had been reported to Comyang in Hankow and it would probably go all the way to Coolidge in Washington. There would be a very big flareback, the Sand Pebbles told each other. More American gunboats, and very likely British and Japanese gunboats too, would come to Changsha. There would be a showdown with the gearwheel and they might even shell the city. Talking about it, they grew almost cheerful again.

  But Farren sent Oh Joy to fetch Clip Clip. He had Clip Clip cut off all his hair and beard and then shave it all to smooth, white skin. He kept testing with his fingertips.

  “Shave against the grain,” he told Clip Clip. “Get this little patch here. And here. And here.”

  Farren looked like a pale stranger when it was done. He had a strong, handsome face. There was a dimple in his chin that no one had ever seen before.

  For three days they waited for the big flareback. Radio traffic was heavy. Lt. Collins seemed to spend half his time ashore. On the fourth day he had the crew mustered aft for a talk, and they knew they were finally going to get the dope. Facing them from the stern grating, framed by the big hand-steering wheel behind him, Lt. Collins looked very serious.

  “Men, we are plunged into a new and strange situation,” he began. “The first thing we must do is to try to understand it. The students are the key to it. I want you to understand about the students.”

  Chinese respect for the students was a hangover from the old Imperial days, when scholars had been the most powerful and important people. It was a kind of superstitious worship of learning. It had some weird angles. Ignorant coolies thought the printed word was sacred. Everywhere in the cities they had stone receptacles for waste paper with words on it and someone would take the words away and burn them reverently. Missionaries had been mobbed and even killed when they used newspapers for toilet paper. But the weirdest thing of all was that the Chinese believed anything in print had to be true.

  “The students are supporting Chiang Kai-shek,” Lt. Collins said. “They put lies in print and send the material ahead to the army. Other students read it to the people and even to General Wu’s soldiers and they believe it. They are undermined before they go into battle. They desert or surrender. General Chiang has done very little honest fighting in this campaign.”

  Heads nodded. That explained a lot of things, in a way.

  “Now about the particular lies they use,” Lt. Collins went on.

  They blamed all troubles, droughts, floods, epidemics, bandits, famines, locusts and warlord battles on the treaty powers. They were promising the people a kind of Chinese heaven-on-earth as soon as they canceled the unequal treaties. All warlords who obeyed the treaties were running dogs. The students spread fantastic lies about the treaty people.

  “For instance, our little sortie against the pirates last month,” Lt. Collins said. “They fired first, and we killed only one pirate. But the consul has a clipping from a local newspaper stating that we killed thirty unarmed people, including women and children. They have suddenly begun making similar fantastic charges against gunboats on the main river. That is why we have the
new orders not to fire back blindly against ambushers, because if we do the students will make another big lie of each occasion. We are up against lying as a matter of planned strategy, and it forces a new counter-strategy on us. Because you cannot stick a bayonet into a lie.”

  Farren muttered. Lt. Collins looked sharply at him.

  “What did you say, Farren?”

  “You can always stick a bayonet into a liar, sir,” Farren said.

  “Yes, and the unkilled liars will call him ten women and children.” Lt. Collins shook his head. “We are fighting lies now, not armed men. It is an accident of history that we in San Pablo, here in our home port of Changsha, are the first American armed unit to come face to face with this new thing. How we face it can make it our great honor or our disgrace. I intend that it shall be our honor. Now, then!”

  He slapped fist into palm and scanned them all. Holman stiffened involuntarily. All the men stiffened.

  “It is our military honor to obey orders without question,” Lt. Collins said soberly. “I will not go further into the background of our orders. I will say only that our government has decided for the present not to treat the current fighting as just another warlord squabble. For the time being, we will treat it as an authentic civil war in which we must be very carefully neutral. We will avoid the least shadow of suspicion of interference in any purely Chinese affair. We will cruise only between treaty ports and we will put armed parties ashore only in concessions. We will not use force to protect American property. We may use force to protect American lives, but only American lives, and only when it is not possible to protect them in any other way.”

  He paused for breath and wiped his face and hands with a handkerchief. It was very warm, but he was sweating more than he needed. Holman could feel the stir of dismay running along the ranks.

  “Some of you, our shipmates, as we all know—” He stopped and coughed. “It was an unpleasant experience. But it was not dishonorable. Understand that. It was highly honorable. It was a magnificent display of moral courage. I am proud of every man who took part in it. I want you all to understand about moral courage. I know it is not easy. We are trained to fight men, not lies. We are trained to face death and wounds, not public scorn. But to win this fight against lies, we must find the moral courage to endure public scorn and even personal indignities without flinching or retaliating. That is the sacrifice the service of our nation demands of us now. I know we all have the moral courage to make it. And that is all I have to say to you. Are there any questions?” His eyes swept the ranks. “Yes, Farren?”

  “You’re saying there ain’t going to be any big flareback, ain’t you, sir?” Farren said.

  “Not for the time being. I’ve explained, it’s not that kind of struggle.”

  They broke ranks and all they carried away with them was the heavy knowledge that there was not going to be any big flareback. The whole ship was feeling dismally like that hour or so on the consulate veranda, Holman thought.

  “This is a council of war, gentlemen.” Lt. Collins smiled wryly. “The new kind of war.” Bordelles and the three chiefs sat around the table with him. They all had coffee. “Franks, how would you say the men are taking it?”

  “Not a bit good, sir.” Franks shifted. “I hear a lot of griping, the bad kind. They been shoving and kicking the ship’s coolies around. I’ve had to raise hell with Ellis and Stawski about that.”

  “How do we know them coolies ain’t all pulling for the gearwheel, behind them stupid, flat faces they got?” Lynch asked.

  Franks smiled grimly at Lt. Collins. “You see?” his eyebrows said.

  “Now that the Woodcock’s in port, they’ll open their canteen at the British consulate,” Bordelles said. “The men can go there and drink beer, get off the ship, anyway.”

  “Won’t help, sir, not if I know sailors,” Franks said. “They’ll just pick fights with the Limeys.”

  “Well, what do you suggest, Chief?”

  Franks scratched his head. “Can’t think of anything, here in port, sir,” he said. “But next time we go cruising and get shot at, it would help a lot if we fired back.”

  “Provided we can see our targets.”

  “We can always pretend we see them,” Bordelles said.

  “We are presumably men of honor,” Lt. Collins said coldly. He had been expecting one of the chiefs to suggest that, but not Bordelles.

  “We don’t all have to see ’em, sir,” Franks said. “We could put somebody up in the crosstrees, somebody with sharp eyes and a good imagination.”

  Bordelles smiled. All the heads nodded. Lt. Collins frowned.

  “No,” he said. “In this ship we will obey orders to the letter.”

  Franks shrugged. There was a painful silence. Then Welbeck spoke.

  “It would help if they knew what was coming. If they could see an end to it,” he said. “It would help my morale too, if you want the truth, sir.”

  Lt. Collins steepled his fingers. “I don’t know what’s coming,” he said. “I’ve talked several times to the new Hunan Commissioner for Foreign Affairs. I think he wants to be decent and reasonable. But he seems to have little authority over the troops and even less over these worker and peasant unions they are forming. If that goes on, I don’t know what’s coming.”

  “Well, then, damn it!” Lynch said. “Excuse me, sir.”

  “Their Bolshevik advisers,” Bordelles said. “Bolshevism is what’s coming.”

  “A possibility.” Lt. Collins nodded. “The problem seems to be, what strategy will best prevent that? Not all their leaders are Bolshevist. Chiang certainly is not. But he is strongly nationalist. He will abrogate the treaties if he is not stopped, make no mistake about that.”

  “Bolshevism is Russian nationalism,” Bordelles said.

  “They are trying to make it seem Chinese nationalism. The consul is sending urgent reports. No one at home—” Lt. Collins broke off. He was not going to criticize the government.

  “I don’t savvy that stuff, sir,” Franks said. “Neither will the sailors. For them, it’s got to be simple.”

  “You’re right, Chief!” Lt. Collins nodded vigorously. “It’s beyond all our competence. We will simply carry out our orders.”

  “Hell, maybe Wu will kick the tar out of the gearwheel up at Hankow,” Bordelles said. “The other northern warlords are moving troops down. We don’t have to assume Chiang’s going to win.”

  “That would sure fix things, wouldn’t it?” Welbeck said hopefully.

  “Yeah, but Wu’s still losing, from all the scuttlebutt,” Franks said. “The guys got to see some clear way out of all this, sir. Even if it’s pulling the ship clear the hell out of China, the way the missionaries want. Even if it ain’t true. But they need to see some kind of end, sir.”

  Lt. Collins thought about that. An idea was forming. It took shape as the council dragged on. The sailors were what they were, very fine men of their kind, but they needed help in this strange situation. As he thought out a possible help, it began to seem more and more pleasing and plausible even to himself. It was indeed a help. He grew impatient and dismissed the council.

  “Wait a moment, Chief. I want to talk to you,” he told Franks.

  The chow was very good, but they were all griping. They were beginning to repeat themselves, Holman noted.

  “Us moral heroes!” Harris sneered. “I’m a moral coward, myself. I say kill the slopeheaded, gearwheeling sons of bitches!”

  “If we got to run when we get shot at, let’s run all the way out of China,” Farren said. “Might as well, all the good we can do.”

  “This ship can’t go to sea,” Burgoyne said. “It ain’t seaworthy.”

  “We ought to put in for a transfer, every last bastard of us, and sign it in a round robin,” Wilsey said. “That’d make Comyang take notice.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Burgoyne said. “Put in for your own transfer.”

  Harris slammed down his coffee cup, slopping it. “
You want to go back to scrubbing your own clothes, Wilsey? Eating beans and diving your own bilges? Sleeping in bunks four high with somebody’s dirty ass in your face every which way you turn?”

  “No, I don’t,” Wilsey said. “I just meant—”

  “Then stick it out with us moral heroes!” Harris said. “Let’s fight for what we got, any way we have to.”

  Chief Franks came into the compartment, husky and cheerful looking, and stood between the two stanchions forward of the mess tables. The men all stopped eating and looked at him.

  “Sailors, I got something to say,” Franks began. “It ain’t official. I’m an enlisted man, just like you are, and what I got to say is only my idea of what the score is. But I don’t want it repeated, and I don’t want the wrong people to hear it.”

  His serious manner impressed them. “Get out of here, Wong!” Bronson ordered. Men got up and closed the doors and stood by them. Others pulled down windows. Franks nodded approval.

  “All right, here’s how I figure it,” he said. “These gearwheelers are all Bolsheviks and they sprung up out of nowhere without warning. They don’t give a damn about human life and we do, and that’s why they got us by the balls. Because we got missionaries, with a lot of women and kids, scattered all through China, and if we start anything now, the gearwheelers will take it out on them. But once we got all our sheep in the barn, it’ll be a different story. I guess you all heard something about Plan Red?”

  Heads nodded eagerly. Plan Red was an old scheme for all the treaty power gunboats to work together in case of another emergency like the Boxer Rebellion.

  “Well, I’ll tell you about Plan Red,” Franks went on. “First, everybody pulls in to the treaty ports. If it’s real bad, we give up Chungking and Changsha and fall back on Hankow. But we can get the whole fleet up to Hankow. We put in troops to hold the concessions there and we got China split from Hankow to the sea. Then we counterattack, back to Changsha and Chungking, and we’ll see who’s got who by the balls then.” He grinned fiercely. “That’ll be the day, sailors!”