“I see the missionaries inside, through that window there,” Bordelles said as they were tying up. “Under guard, I suppose.”
Lt. Collins went down to the quarterdeck to receive them. Packing cases cluttered the area and he saw with annoyance that an oil leak from one of them was staining the white teak. The box was labeled GRAHAM EXPORTS. The missionaries came out of the shack. The three men had no coats and they had blood on their shirts. Their faces were cut and swollen. The two women were not marked. They came aboard first. The younger one with the two children was hysterical. Loose hair straggled down her contorted face.
“We’ve been robbed and beaten and insulted!” she shrieked accusingly at Lt. Collins. “My babies have had nothing to eat since yesterday!” They were not exactly babies. The girl was almost old enough to interest the sailors, who watched curiously from aft. “It’s all your fault, up there at Wanhsien!” the woman cried. “Innocent babies have to pay!”
“It was the British at Wanhsien, ma’am,” Lt. Collins said. “We have the honor to be Americans.”
“You’re all the same wicked men of force and violence!”
Lt. Collins beckoned Jennings over. “Take them topside, do what you can for them,” he ordered. They would berth in the sickbay. He turned to the three men. “This isn’t all of you,” he said. “Where is Mr. Craddock?”
“They remain under the sheltering hand of our Lord,” one of the men said. “We who fled have already been punished for our little faith.”
Lt. Collins felt dismay. “How many stayed?” he asked crisply.
“Four. The Craddocks, Miss Eckert and Mr. Gillespie.”
“Did they send their waivers with you?”
“They sent no waivers. They trust a stouter shield and a more dreadful sword than yours, Captain.”
A sailor snickered. Lt. Collins frowned.
“Go with the others. I have no more time for you,” he told the men. “Farren, take them to the CPO quarters.”
Farren grinned his sympathy. “Up the ladder, you guys!” he told the missionaries, shooing with his hands.
Pan’s soldiers were still on the pontoon and their officer was talking in Chinese to Shing. Shing turned, balancing on his cane, and said the officer had an urgent message from General Pan.
“Genlah Pan speak ship go othah side chop chop,” Shing interpreted. “He speak you, no sailah man, come shohside.”
Lt. Collins asked questions. It turned out Kuomintang agitators were in town inflaming the people over Wanhsien. The ship was strictly boycotted. It was clear enough that Pan was preparing to submit to the gearwheel and he did not want to be compromised by a courtesy visit from his old friend Lt. Collins.
“Tell him I understand,” Lt. Collins said.
He went up to his cabin. He had a decision to make. If they had only sent their waivers, he could leave them at China Light with a clear conscience. He thought he had never loathed missionaries more than at this moment. They all wanted to play Christ and suffer for the sins of other men—wicked men of force and violence—but what they suffered was only the consequences of their own vanity. Stupidity. Cunning and bad faith. Not sending those waivers was no oversight. He slapped his table and thought about it. Then he rang for Yen-ta.
“Ask Mr. Bordelles to come here.”
“Tom, you’ll have to take the motor pan to China Light,” he told Bordelles. “Get those people or get their signed waivers. Take four men, armed of course.”
“I’ll just hustle ’em all down to the boat,” Bordelles said cheerfully. “I’d like that.”
“No. They’re still citizens of a free country,” Lt. Collins said. “But try to persuade them. And don’t lose any time.”
Bordelles went out. It was late afternoon. It would be almost morning before he could return, at the best. At the worst … Lt. Collins drummed with his fingers. Someone knocked at his door.
“Come in,” he said.
It was Chief Welbeck, looking harried. “Sir, they’re all griping,” he said. “That woman’s on my neck for milk and eggs for her babies. Jennings put her on me, damn him!”
“She’s hysterical. Give her canned milk.”
“She knows they got fresh milk in town, at that Christian dairy,” Welbeck said. “Nobody can shut her up. God and President Coolidge, not to speak of Comyang, are going to hear about it, if she don’t get milk.”
Lt. Collins smiled. “You’ll just have to grin and bear her, Chief. Don’t try to shift her to my neck. Tell her we’re boycotted, and that’s that.”
“Lop Eye Shing wants to send that bilge coolie over to get milk,” Welbeck said. “You know, sir, the one that got eggs for us last summer. He was raised here and he’s got relations in the city.”
“Why tell me?”
“I thought I better, sir. I don’t know what the score is.”
His impulse was to forbid it. Damn the yapping woman! But it would be ignoble, their kind of mean and narrow action, if he had no better reason. If the coolie wanted to go ashore, he had every right to. It was really Shing’s responsibility.
“I suppose the man wants to go?” he said.
“He’s scared but willing,” Welbeck said. “He acts kind of proud to be singled out for it.”
“He wants to visit his relatives and pick up the milk while he’s at it?”
“Something like that, I guess, sir.”
“Well, he’s Shing’s man. If it’s all right with Shing, it’s all right with me.”
“Yes, sir,” Welbeck said. “I’ll tell him go ahead.”
After a moment Lt. Collins went out on deck. He was uneasy. Pan’s soldiers were gone. Shing was aft, at the boat-deck rail. Lt. Collins joined him. Shing verified that the man really wanted to go. Together they watched him cross the sands, shoulders square, swinging a basket. He was dressed like any other coolie, in an open jacket and the droop-seated black trousers. He got up on the bund and into the tunnel-like city gate with no trouble.
“I don’t like it,” Holman said. “Things ain’t right here.”
“He was proud to go,” Burgoyne said. “Po-han likes to help.”
They were sitting on the workbench. Holman rattled the vise handle.
“I wish I’d been there. I’d’ve stopped it,” he said.
“What’s that noise?” Burgoyne said.
It was a crowd yelling. Lt. Collins went into the bridge. “Call Franks!” he snapped at Crosley. People were boiling out the city gate and running from either side along the bund. The boat party, Lt. Collins thought. Nine people. “Repel boarders! On the double!” he snapped at Franks.
“Hell!” Holman slid off the workbench.
“Repel boarders! Repel boarders! Jump, you bastards!”
Holman ran topside. Lynch was jerking open the arms locker. A black tongue of people was thrusting out the arched gateway. All along the bund they were streaming in to a center. The center was somebody running.
Po-han!
He had lost his jacket and he ran swinging something white and they poured down the stone steps after him like a stream of cannibal ants. Their shrill, high, screaming “Sa-a-ah! Sa-a-ah!” was like a fiery wind. Feet pounded the boat deck. Someone thrust a riot gun into Holman’s hands. “Over their heads if they touch the pontoon! Shoot to kill if they cross it!” Franks roared. “Wait the word! Wait the word!”
Sand slowed Po-han. He labored leaping. A stick thrown like a spear struck his legs. He fell and the mob flowed over him.
“Hold fire! Hold fire!”
The mob swirled and milled. They had the coolie on his feet, jerking and slapping him. Many were gray soldiers. Strangely, Shing came on the bridge. He was a godsend. Lt. Collins thrust the hailing trumpet at him.
“Offer ransom!” he said. “Speak I pay money. One hundred dollar.”
Shing shouted in Chinese. Purely Chinese affair. Orders. Neutral. The boat party. Wanhsien. Women aboard. Lt. Collins thought in flashing atoms. Soldiers with long poles, bark still on them
, pushed through the mob. Ransom the only way. No official funds. They were daring the ship to shoot, Shing said. Wanhsien! The soldiers lashed their poles into a tripod and hoisted the coolie with a rope to his hands bound behind him. Out of my own pocket, then.
“Tell them two hundred!” he snapped at Shing.
Po-han dangled, pitching forward. Holman could see the strain in his ridged belly muscles, arms and shoulders. He was looking at the ship. Someone on the bridge was yelling in Chinese. Three soldiers grasped Po-han around the waist and legs and surged their weight on him. He dropped abruptly as his shoulder joints burst, and he screamed.
Someone on the bridge screamed, “You dirty sons of bitches!” Another cracked voice, Lt. Collins: “Back, Haythorn! Back from that gun. God damn your soul don’t fire!” Franks roared a caution aft. Holman’s ear buzzed. His guts were frozen. He was paralyzed.
“Five hundred! Tell them, Shing!”
The coolie hung nearly straight, twirling slightly. A red-sashed soldier climbed on a boulder and beat at his mouth with a knife handle, then dug with the point. Gold teeth. Lt. Collins signed Crosley to take Haythorn’s machine gun. Wanhsien. Boat party. Orders. Crosley’s steady. The coolie was bending his head back and back but he could not get away from the knife.
“Oh jesus oh jesus oh jesus,” Burgoyne was saying.
“Steady!” Lynch said. “Keep station, Jake!”
“Go to hell.”
He ran up the ladder and forward and into the bridge. Bronson stopped him.
“Get out of here, Holman! Back to the waist party!”
“Go to hell. We got to shoot. Do something.”
“He ain’t American. We got our orders.” “He’s a shipmate.”
Their faces were chalk white on the bridge. Lop Eye Shing was hailing with the trumpet. Po-han screamed again and again. The red-sashed soldier was pulling off a thick strip of skin and muscle slanting down Po-han’s left ribs. He was tugging and cutting. Po-han’s face was one bloody scream.
“Offer a thousand!” Lt. Collins told Shing. He turned inboard, white, sweat-streaming. “Holman, get back to your station!”
“Go to hell. Shoot. Do something.”
The officer drew his pistol. “Go below or I’ll shoot you for a mutineer!” He whispered it hoarsely. His eyes were terrible.
Bronson was tugging at Holman’s arm. Holman slammed his gun butt into Branson’s belly and the quartermaster went down.
“Shoot, God damn you!” Holman said. “Shoot somebody, you yellow son of a bitch!”
He could feel his flesh reaching out for the healing bullet. He locked on Lt. Collins’ eyes and he could hear Po-han wailing and wailing in half-voiced words. They were all frozen there. Then Lop Eye Shing turned around, evil-faced, saying something.
“Po-han talkee too much no can,” he said. “Po-han talkee somebody shoot he.”
“Oh God!” The pistol lowered. “Yes. Yes.” Lt. Collins looked around the bridge. “Who—”
“I will, sir.”
Crosley was holding a rifle. Holman jerked it away from him.
“Not you, Crosley,” he said.
He chambered a cartridge and took aim with the bridge rail as rest. He followed Po-han’s head with the beaded foresight, rolling, rolling, and Po-han saw him and held his head still. Holman sagged his stomach muscles and in a quiet place far back in his mind he said Good-bye, Po-han. He squeezed the trigger. He saw the head jerk and he knew that it was all right now.
He stood erect, trembling. Bronson was still down, gasping and retching. Weakness washed through Holman. No one spoke. He crossed the bridge and threw the rifle out into the river. The splash seemed to release him. He ran for the engine room.
They anchored again in midstream to wait for the boat party. Holman ran everyone out of the engine room. They were afraid of him.
He tended the fires and water. He oiled and rocked the engine. He did not want to stop moving. The planks bridging the naked bilges were slippery with oil. He sprinkled more sand on them. Sand was in the bilges, all along the bare, red-leaded ribs of the ship. That sand was going to wear hell out of the bilge pump.
Burgoyne came on the gratings and said, “Chow, Jake,” quietly. After a few minutes he went away.
It was dark. He heard them talking on the quarterdeck. They were pulling themselves out of it in the only way they knew. That sign on him says “running dog,” Oh Joy told me. Crosley’s frog voice. He sure didn’t run fast enough that time. Harris. A general laugh. Stawski? Arf! Arf! Someone shushed fiercely and the voices faded. The buzz behind Holman’s left ear did not fade.
Franks stood at the head of the port ladder. “Jake, you got the eight-by on the quarterdeck,” he said. “Double guard tonight.”
Holman looked up. “Not me,” he said. “I got the watch down here.”
“We all know how you feel. Duty’s the stuff to take your mind off it.” Franks’ voice was kindly. “You got to do your duty, Jake.”
“All I got to do is die someday. I’ll never stand a topside watch again. Nor go to quarters. Not on this ship.”
“However you want it, Jake. For now.” Franks went away.
Taps went. He sprinkled more sand on the planks. He cleaned the fires savagely, slicing clinkers, hoeing ash and red coals out on the floorplates. He made a sulfurous hell with the cooling hose and gulped it into his lungs. The choking burn relieved him.
Burgoyne was on the throttle platform. His face was sad.
“It’s midnight, Jake. Give me the watch. Turn in.”
“Get out of here, Frenchy.”
“It had to be, Jake. Orders. It’d been sure death for the boat party, maybe all hands. Remember Wanhsien.” Burgoyne gulped. “Po-han understands, wherever he is now.”
“Where he is now. Where is he? Get out, Frenchy!”
“I loved him too. I loved him like a brother.”
“You can’t—Get out, or I’ll slug you!”
“It happened, Jake. It’s past and done. You got to let it be a thing that happened.”
“You want to know something ain’t happened yet?” Holman breathed through flared nostrils. “Maily’s knocked up.”
Burgoyne flinched. “Jake! What you saying? That ain’t so.”
He put out a hand. Holman struck it down.
“It’s true. She told me herself, that first day in.”
“She would’ve told me first of all.” Burgoyne’s face was working. “If it’s true, why didn’t she tell me?”
“You figure that out,” Holman said harshly. “Go topside to figure it out. God damn you, now maybe you’ll leave me the hell alone!”
Burgoyne went up, his shoulders drooping. Sometime later Big Chew came down quietly and left a covered bowl of food beside the hot well. Holman threw bowl and all into the trash can.
All night he moved like a prowling animal, keeping his hands busy, and it was right behind him. If. If. A chain of ifs, from his first hour aboard.
Po-han was still there, in the smooth, quiet stroking of the pumps he had rebushed. The quick, pulsing throb of the dynamo. The high, sculptured steel- and brass-gleaming engine. Deep in the foundations of the engine, Po-han was there.
Hammah hammah hammah.
He saw Po-han in the curling flames and heard him in the whispering steam and the trickle of water into the hot well. It all came from the sun and it went where everything went. Along the way it shaped itself so you could know it, in a laboring engine or a warm and breathing man; you joined and mixed and knew. But you could not stop or hold it. It never ran backward. It went where everything went because it was everything.
Wild white horses. Wild white horses.
You could not repair a dead man. The engine was only metal. He groped his hands along the smooth, hard links and rods and columns and he could not touch Po-han. He struck the engine column until his knuckles bled, soothed by the pain, but the engine did not feel anything. It was just metal. It could not give anything back.
&nb
sp; Po-han was not there. He was not anywhere. They should name a destroyer after him, but they did not even have his name written down on paper. They never would have. Tonight they laughed and tomorrow they would hardly remember. Po-han was a coolie. One grain of sand.
Po-han would never be there again, smudged and oily and grinning, his eyes dancing with a new idea. Po-han was alone on the dark river sands, hanging from broken shoulders. His fires were out, his wild white horses charged off and lost in the big, dark sky.
You, me, can do, Jehk.
Can do. Can die. Must die. But everything else is voluntary. All night the buzz behind his left ear did not stop once. Can die, it was saying.
Near morning Bordelles came back with the China Light stragglers. Holman let the steaming watch come down and they got underway at dawn. He kept the throttle. He would not eat or drink or speak to anyone. They all kept clear of him. It was plain that they thought he was crazy. He found a kind of wild, pleasant freedom in being crazy. He had not filled in the auxiliary log sheet all night and he did not start a steaming log. At the end of the first hour Crosley whistled the voice tube.
“What you making, up and down, up and down?”
“I don’t know,” Holman said. “What do you care? You know where you are.”
“I got to have it for the log.”
“Wipe your tail on the log. We’ll still get there.”
“Well, by God—”
Someone hushed Crosley. They did not call down for readings again. By the end of the day Holman was feeling groggy and weak and all the lights had colored haloes. He knew he could not last through another night. After they anchored, Jennings came down. His eyes looked round and solemn behind his rimless glasses. He let Holman’s bitter words just slide off him.
The Sand Pebbles Page 38