“Us and the Limeys, hey, Chief?” Bronson said.
“The Japs, too. And the Frogs and Wops. All of us.” The men began talking and Franks waved his arms. “Keep in mind, this ain’t official,” he said. “Might nothing come of it. General Wu at Hankow is on our side and he could still win up there. But the missionaries are trickling in to the treaty ports, not too fast, I figure so as not to tip our hand, and maybe the day’s coming.”
“A lot of the biblebacks are for the gearwheel, so I hear,” Bronson said. “You figure they might hold back, just to foul up Plan Red?”
“Them at China Light,” Crosley growled.
“They might,” Franks agreed. “I think when we’re sure about that we’ll just go ahead and let ’em take what’s coming to ’em.”
All the men began talking excitedly. Franks went out. He left a wholly different spirit behind him. Things made sense again to the Sand Pebbles.
“I bet the skipper put Franks up to telling us that,” Farren said. “He couldn’t say a thing like that himself, if it’s a military secret.”
“We got to keep it secret,” Restorff said.
The men nodded, grinning at each other. Excited talk was going on at all the tables.
“Plan Red is really short for Plan Red Dog Bite-’em-on-the-ass Shanahan,” Red Dog shouted. “Arf! Arf! Hear that, all you Sand Pebbles?”
“Arf! Arf!” many of them barked back at him.
“Say, this is damn good chow!” Wilsey said. “I’ll have to stop by and tell Big Chew how good it was.”
“I want more. Where’s Wong?” Harris said. “Wong, you slant-eyed son of a bitch, come in here!” he shouted at the closed door.
Plan Red made the whole world look different and better. Pappy Tung’s men had the windows reglazed and the bullet holes puttied and the whole topside repainted. The days continued hot and sultry, with occasional thunderstorms. The Sand Pebbles watched the student parades with indulgent amusement and stared back contemptuously at green-clad soldiers in passing junks. Word came that General Wu had lost Hankow, but he was still holding the walled city of Wuchang across the river. The concessions at Hankow were safe, of course: they were foreign soil, just like consulates. A landing force was ashore guarding them and Fleet ships were gathering at Hankow. It was all going according to Plan Red.
Things became worse ashore in Changsha. The many small unions—they even had one for whores—were lumped into one big worker-peasant union that took more and more unofficial power. They had strike pickets, who wore a dark uniform and carried six-foot bamboo staves, and they were a kind of unofficial police force. One day they arrested Po-han and took him before a kind of kangaroo court. Po-han’s neighbors and tenants all testified that he was a good landlord and had not been one for very long and he got away. Other landlords were not so lucky. They were fined and some were beaten to death. Po-han worked harder than ever aboard ship. He was quiet and worried. So was Burgoyne.
“It gets worse every day,” Burgoyne told Holman. “If we pull out of Changsha, that Plan Red stuff, I’ll just have to get Maily to Hankow.”
He was more hopeful about junks getting through, now that the main fighting had moved downriver from Hankow. He was not a man to be bitter and angry, but he often cursed the gearwheel in his quiet way.
“People want to be friendly and they’re scared to. They’ll get themselves in trouble,” he told Holman. “We’re just poison now.”
There were not many gearwheel soldiers in Changsha any more. They had all gone on downriver to the fighting. But the worker-peasants were setting up a militia. They were just ragged coolies and farmers with red armbands and not one in ten had a gun. They carried big swords and spears and tridents and halberds, stuff left over from the old Empire, and one day a gang of them hauled a small brass muzzle-loading cannon along the bund. The militia often marched in the student parades and they were always good for an extra laugh.
Holman went several times to the Royal Navy Canteen to drink beer. It was a kind of godown shed behind the British consulate on the sand island, with several tables and some old magazines and a dart board. There was very good spirit among the sailors. The Limeys knew about Plan Red too, of course. Some of the younger businessmen would drop in and contribute a bottle of whisky. The treaty women were almost all in Hankow and there was no longer a social schedule in the Changsha Club. Some of the businessmen were the same ones who had been beaten up in the Red Candle, but that was all forgotten. They were a band of brothers against the gearwheel. As Crosley liked to say, “Times like now, all us palefaces got to stick together.”
One day Holman was drinking beer with Farren, Restorff and Banger Knox and two businessmen came in. One was the tall man named Van.
“Sure. Sit down here,” Farren said.
They had a bottle of Peter Dawson. The smaller, kewpie-faced man was named Wilbur. They were wearing tough khakis and leather boots. Farren admired their boots.
“I’m glad the women are gone so we can dress the way we please,” Van said. He stretched out one long leg. “I like boots. They’re heavy on the feet and they clamp close around the leg,” he said. “You feel you could stomp and kick and not get hurt yourself.”
“Like tight leather gloves,” Perna said, at the next table. “In Seattle the cops wear leather gloves with a patch of sheet lead under the backs. They backhand you and it’s lights out, boy!”
The Peter Dawson went around and was quickly emptied. Van and Wilbur talked about their troubles with strikes and pickets. They were very bitter about the gunboat orders, especially the part about not protecting property. They thought it was just an invitation to the gearwheel to loot the palefaces. They were most bitter against the missionaries.
“They send lies back to the States and get their church people to write letters to Congressmen,” Wilbur said. “Nobody in Washington knows what the score really is in China.”
“The missionaries have ’em thinking this Chiang Kai-shek is another George Washington,” Van said. “They want to pull the gunboats out and just turn China over to him. If we had our way, there’d be more ships in here and we’d enforce the treaties to the hilt.”
The strange thing was that the missionaries were taking a worse beating from the gearwheel than anyone else. Van and Wilbur explained that, getting angry, interrupting each other, each one anxious to say it his way. Less than one percent of Chinese were Christians and most of them were rice Christians, Van said, but the missionaries made out back home that all China was on the verge of turning Christian. The missionaries had a soft life in China and damned few of them would even be able to make an honest living on their own, and they knew if they told the truth about China they would break their own rice bowls.
“They want to throw the rest of us to the wolves, to save their rice bowls,” Wilbur said.
They blamed the anti-Christian troubles on the treaties and the gunboats, Wilbur went on. They were trying to make points with the gearwheel. They were trying to pretend that they never had had any part in the unequal treaties. That made the two men angriest of all.
“They came in under the treaties as forcibly as opium ever did!” Van said. “They grabbed themselves a damned sight better deal under the treaties than we’ve ever had!”
“They’re not fooling the students for a minute,” Wilbur said. “The students say Buddha came to China on a white horse and Christ came on a cannonball.”
Holman had heard that before. He laughed just the same. Van and Wilbur went on talking. The people to consider were the ninety-five percent of Chinese who never thought about flags and treaties and only wanted to go on farming and working and doing business in peace. They were the real Chinese. The civilians were more worked up about it all than the sailors were, because they didn’t know about Plan Red.
“It’s a time to close ranks and the missionaries won’t close up on us,” Banger summed it up. “Very kittle folk they are, you might say.”
“I wish Harris was here,
” Van said. “I dearly love to hear him take off about the missionaries.” He was scowling and somber.
“It can’t just go on forever,” Farren said. He was growing his beard again and he was red-fuzzy all over his head and face. “Sooner or later something will happen to blow the lid off.”
“The shooting will start and the missionaries will just have to take their bloody chances,” an English sailor said.
“And I do hope it’s bloody!” Van growled.
The lid blew off at Wanhsien, in the Yangtze gorges. The news came to Changsha in late afternoon and the city boiled with excitement. So did the San Pablo. H.M.S. Cockchafer and two other British gunboats had fought the Wanhsien warlord, who was not a gearwheeler. It was a hundred and fifty sailors against fifteen thousand troops and it was a great victory. Later in the evening word came that the British had been driven off with a quarter of their force killed or wounded, but they claimed two thousand Chinese casualties. The French gunboat Gree had stood by through the whole fight and done nothing to help. That last seemed a bad omen to the Sand Pebbles.
“Them Frogs will all get the moral Croyx de Garry,” Harris sneered.
In the morning Burgoyne came aboard with mud splashed on his white uniform and he was bleeding from a cut above his eye. He had had to run from a street mob. “They’re crazy mad over in town,” he said. He told Holman privately that during the night someone had pitched Maily’s two black goldfish out of the pond, to die on the dirty stones.
“Just her two,” Burgoyne said. “It’s a sign, Jake. I told Po-han go ahead and fix up a junk passage for her soon as he can.”
The student parade that day lasted all day and it was frenzied. They stayed on the bund opposite the gunboats screaming and shaking insuiting signs. One was a crude cartoon of a sailor with a baby stuck on his bayonet. The signs claimed twenty thousand people killed at Wanhsien. That was how they lied, the Sand Pebbles commented. The right way was always to claim the other side got hurt worse than you did. It threw you off when they claimed that themselves and even beat your claims. Chinese had no pride at all.
More news came in. The treaty power consuls were calling all Central China missionaries in to the treaty ports. All Western China was exploding with rage. The British scaled down their claim to about two hundred enemy casualties at Wanhsien. Women and children were to be pulled back all the way to Shanghai. It seemed to be Plan Red, all right. All day the Sand Pebbles stayed on deck, ready for anything. Lt. Collins would not let Burgoyne go ashore. It would have been suicide to climb up on the bund in a navy uniform. Po-han went ashore.
During the night a few holdout missionaries sneaked into Changsha, disguised in Chinese clothes. American destroyers reached Hankow and the large gunboat U.S.S. Duarte was ordered from Hankow to Changsha. The crippled British gunboats with their wounded aboard were turned back by gearwheel artillery fire at Hanyang, just above Hankow. The American destroyer U.S.S. Stewart had steamed up there and blasted the gearwheel guns to bits and brought the little gunboats safely into port. The Sand Pebbles repeated that proudly. It was the real Plan Red spirit. Late in the day a telegram came to the consulate from Paoshan. The China Light people were afraid for their lives and they wanted a gunboat to come and take them out.
“Wouldn’t you know it!” Crosley said in disgust.
No one thought the San Pablo would go. Paoshan was not a treaty port. The water was very low in that end of the lake in September, perhaps already too low. The China Light people had had their warning and their chance to get out while commercial steamers still ran, and it would serve them right to be left there. Holman worried to himself about Miss Eckert. He was glad when orders came from Comyang the next morning for the San Pablo to get the China Light people and take them to Hankow.
It was a frantic day. They began raising steam. A number of civilian passengers came aboard. One was Wilbur. Bales and boxes of merchandise lined the main deck on both sides. They would make good bullet shielding for the superstructure. Ping-wen had trouble getting enough coal. Big Chew was ashore trying to get extra food. Po-han was still ashore trying to get Maily aboard a junk for Hankow. When the coal was aboard and steam raised, Lynch wanted to report ready to get underway. He and Holman were in the engine room.
“Let’s hold off awhile, Chief,” Holman said. “Po-han ain’t back. Frenchy’s up on deck watching for him.”
“We can steam without Po-han. This is war, boy!” Lynch rubbed his hands. “Plan Red! I’ll report ready.” He did so.
“Stand by and rock engines for the time being,” Bordelles called back. “We have to wait for Big Chew to come aboard.”
Holman gave Wilsey the throttle and joined Burgoyne on the main deck. Burgoyne was very nervous. He was tugging his mustache and working the snuff in his lower lip.
“The hell of it is, Po-han don’t know we’re sailing,” he said. “He might just wait till morning.”
There was nothing to do but watch and hope. Big Chew and Jack Dusty came aboard, with only one basket of vegetables, and there was not much hope left. On the bridge they tested the whistle and siren with a hoarse blast and wail, the signal for getting underway. Pappy Tung and his men went forward to raise the anchor. The anchor windlass began to clank and the hoses were going. Pappy Tung was cursing in Chinese.
“There he comes!” Burgoyne shouted, and began coughing.
Po-han was on the stone steps, waving his arms and arguing with a sampan man. Burgoyne was choking and coughing. He had breathed in some of his snuff. Po-han came alongside just as the anchor broke water and the screw began to thresh. Holman and Burgoyne reached down hands to pull him scrambling aboard. He came up grinning, showing his gold teeth.
“I heah whistle,” he said. “I sabby ship go. What place go?”
“Paoshan,” Holman said.
Po-han said he had just put Maily and her gear aboard a junk that would sail in the morning for Hankow. He pointed it out, but it was too far up the bund for them to be sure which one. Burgoyne had tears in his eyes from his coughing spell. He was getting control of his voice.
“Well, thanks, Po-han,” he said. “You’re a real shipmate.”
“Laodah have got Kuomintang papah,” Po-han said. “I think go Hankow no tlobbah.”
“We’re going to Hankow too, Po-han,” Holman said.
“I just wish I’d had a chance to say good-bye to her,” Burgoyne said.
“She’ll be all right. She’ll be waiting for us in Hankow, Frenchy,” Holman said.
He was thinking that Po-han had not had a chance to say good-bye to his family, either. That was how it was with sailors.
26
In places the lake bottom lay almost bare, green-slimed mud and coarse grass sallowing. San Pablo followed the drowned channel and her bow wave crumbled mud from the banks. Fish teemed in the shrinking patches of water. Chinese in hundreds of sampans competed with millions of white birds at harvesting the trapped fish. The breeze brought human yells and bird screams and a smell of greenish rot.
Lt. Collins spent his days on the bridge. He was depressed. Under the new ruling San Pablo had no right in that end of the lake any more. He was to get the missionaries out quietly, avoiding incidents at all costs. He thought of how San Pablo had first opened up the lake with a famous cruise to Paoshan. China was still a shadowy Empire in those old days and they had protested it was a breach of the treaties because Paoshan was not a treaty port. Fighting Bob Evans was C-in-C Asiatic. He had said his interpretation was that the gunboats could go anywhere in China they could find water to float their keels. He had made it stick and the right automatically extended to the other treaty powers; it had been a factor in opening up Central China. It was San Pablo’s modest mark on history and now history was erasing it. This would be San Pablo’s last cruise to Paoshan.
In the Ta An narrows they passed a stranded timber raft. The people would have to live in the matshed village on top of it until the spring flood floated them again. Not far beyond the raf
t they were fired upon from ambush. They got up the hinged armor flaps and ran out of range. Most of the bullets hit the stack. It was probably all of the ship that could be seen from the ambush. The tall stack was covered already with patches over bullet holes. It was weakened by rust inside that fretted all the way through in places, and it was just one more sign that San Pablo had almost lived out her days.
The sailors on the bridge took the ambush well. Plan Red was sustaining them. But one of the passengers, Wilbur Venn, was on the bridge, and he would not let it go.
“Great stuff, hey, Bill? Something to write home about!”
Lt. Collins smiled sourly. He did not like to be called “Bill” on his own bridge.
“I’ll fight too, if you have to fight,” Venn said. “So will Pollard. We know your orders and all that but, I mean, if it’s forced on you, just give us guns.”
Lt. Collins nodded. He hated warlike civilians almost as much as he hated belligerently peaceful missionaries. Fighting was for professionals. Venn would not stop talking.
“It’s just not natural, Chinamen shooting and white men running,” Venn said. “It’s against nature. Next thing you know, this guy Tunney’s going to beat Dempsey.” He waited for a response. “Bill, I’ll bet you ten and the drinks Tunney wins,” he said. “We’ll settle at the club in Hankow.”
“No.” Lt. Collins turned his back. He despised Venn.
“Hey, Wilbur, I’ll bet you ten on that,” Crosley said.
“You figure Dempsey’ll take him, do you?”
“Nobody living can beat Jack Dempsey,” Crosley said scornfully. “He’ll beat the meat off the bones of that damned gyrene.”
Venn went over to talk boxing with the sailors. Lt. Collins went back to his thoughts. They were not any more pleasant.
In the delta the rice tops had a silver-frosty bloom. The patchwork fields rippled in the breeze like greensilver pools. Blue hills to the south grew more clear, with red-orange patches of autumn leaves and the dark green of camphor, the lighter green of tea groves and bamboos, red earth and whitish rock. Beyond the delta the banks rose high on either side and many white sandbars humped above the clear water. The sandy foreshore at Paoshan lay white and bare. The bund and the city wall were almost deserted. Only a squad of Pan’s gray soldiers were on the pontoon and the Japanese flag was gone from the pontoon office.
The Sand Pebbles Page 37