“I must hold you until the American patrol stops by,” the officer told Holman. “You’re lucky to be alive, you know.”
“Yes, sir. I know,” Holman panted.
He was trembling and sweating heavily. He fumbled open his peacoat, to cool off. Now I’ll get a court-martial, he was thinking. Well, it was better for your own side to catch you. Yes, much better. A Volunteer officer walked over.
“This is a friend of mine,” he told the British officer. “I’ll escort him to patrol headquarters.”
It was Graham. His pleasant, homely face looked strange under the round British helmet.
“I shall have to report this,” the young officer said doubtfully. “I shall want name and ship and—”
“Joseph Doakes, U.S.S. Truxtun,” Graham said easily. “Tell you the rest when I come back, Robert. I’ll be responsible.” He took Holman’s arm. “Come on, Joe,” he said.
Holman walked out with him, still panting. It was all very fast and smooth. He began to catch his breath. They turned into Poyang Road.
“Lucky I was on duty,” Graham said. “It’s my last spell of duty, too.”
“Lucky for me, all right.” Holman had a sour, copperish taste in his mouth. “You sure done that smooth,” he said admiringly.
“Things can always be arranged. I owed you a favor,” Graham said. “Glad I had a chance to return it. I’m leaving with the convoy Friday.”
They walked along. Street lights gleamed on wet pavement. No one was on the street.
“I’m curious,” Graham said. “You could get killed over in the native city. What were you doing there?”
“I’ll tell you. Because I want to ask you a really big favor.”
He began telling about Maily and Burgoyne. Graham halted.
“Native women are not wives,” he said. “I’ll bet she’s the same woman Bill Collins spoke to me about.”
“I expect so. Could you possibly take her, sir?”
“Look, Jake. Come in here out of the rain.”
Graham moved into a shadowy doorway. Holman refused a cigarette. Graham lit his own. His face looked sad and thoughtful in the match flare.
“China is a big country, but the American community in China is a lot like a small town. We all know each other,” he said. “You can’t get away from it, this is a case of a sailor shacked up with a native woman. And nobody can keep secrets in China. My wife’s maid is a perfect devil to bring her servants’ gossip.”
“Why a secret? What’s wrong with taking her?”
“It’s … well … we live under American law here in China. Not that I think the U.S. Marshal could or would enforce the Mann Act on me. But we have the sentiment of it.” He pulled deeply on his cigarette. The glow showed his long, honest face twisted with sadness. “I have business enemies. My wife has social enemies,” he said. “They’d make a big thing out of Ed Graham bringing a cabaret girl down to Shanghai.”
Holman shivered. He buttoned his peacoat.
“People always believe the lies,” Graham said. “They want to believe any lie that hurts someone they envy.”
“I guess that’s how it is.”
“Why doesn’t your friend just let her go?” Graham’s voice was sad but kindly. “It’s that kind of a time in the world. In China, anyway. And she is Chinese.”
“He won’t let her go,” Holman said. He could not get angry at Graham. “All right, she’s Chinese. Does that mean she ain’t got any insides, she’s made of paper or something?”
“It shouldn’t make any difference, should it? But in our world I’m afraid it does,” Graham said. “What I meant, though, was—mei yuh fah tzu. The Chinese are fatalists. No matter what, they can bow their heads and go on living.”
“Well, thanks for helping me, anyway.”
“It wasn’t anything. I’m sorry about the other.”
“Mei yuh fah tzu,” Holman said. “Goodnight, Mr. Graham.”
31
Burgoyne was not aboard at reveille. If he came back now, in broad daylight, it would be hard for the officers and chiefs not to see him. If he was not aboard for quarters, it would have to go down on paper.
“I knew it! I knew it!” Farren tugged at his beard. “I logged him in last night.”
“We all done it. We’re all in the same boat,” Perna said.
During breakfast a boat from the flagship delivered Burgoyne under guard to the San Pablo. The Sand Pebbles flocked out. Burgoyne stood there quietly while Restorff, who had the watch, logged him in as a prisoner-at-large. He had a purple swelling on the side of his head and blood on his ear.
“What happened, Frenchy?” Wilsey asked him.
“Patrol caught me,” Burgoyne said. “I didn’t tell them bastards in Flag nothing. You guys ain’t in trouble.”
He had an animal glare in his mild brown eyes. He turned, with slashing motions, and pushed through them to the engine room hatch.
“Leave him alone, you guys,” Holman told the others.
He followed Burgoyne down into the engine room. Burgoyne stood leaning with his hands on the workbench, head bowed. Holman stood quietly behind him.
“Want to talk about it, Frenchy?”
“All I’d tell ’em in Flag was that I got drunk in the Limey canteen and went over to a whorehouse I knew about in the native city,” Burgoyne said. “Tell ’em that topside. Tell ’em they ain’t none of ’em in trouble account of me.”
“I’ll tell ’em.”
“Reason they caught me.” Burgoyne coughed suddenly, deep in his chest. “The block committee threw us out last night. We sat in that alley back of the place all night, wrapped in our pukow. I didn’t sleep … guess I was dopey. Anyway …”
“Jesus, Frenchy!”
“I run eight blocks, Jake,” Burgoyne said in a stronger voice. “They kept shooting at me but they couldn’t hit me. Only in the ear.” He touched his ear. “Then I run smack into a second patrol and they clubbed me down with rifle butts. I didn’t give up easy.”
“Where’s Maily now?”
“Settin’ in that alley, with her gear.”
“You better get in dry clothes, Frenchy. Eat something.”
“After while,” Burgoyne said. “Jake, I didn’t give up easy.” He shuddered all over and coughed again. “I’ll just set here a spell, first,” he said. He sat down on the workbench. “Just leave me be, Jake. I got to think what to do.”
After quarters Lt. Collins was called to the flagship. It was about either Burgoyne or Pappy Tung, the crew surmised. They hoped the ship was not in trouble, but they were glad to see the long agony over for Frenchy Burgoyne. They thought his sixteen-year clear record would save him from naval prison.
Mei yuh fah tzu, Holman kept thinking.
A large wupan with two stumpy masts tried to come alongside. Uniformed students and civilian Chinese filled it. Franks drove it back with the fire hose.
“We wish to speak with your captain,” a student in the bow hailed.
Three coolies sculled it with a big, rope-anchored yuloh. A redheaded woman in the bow was making notes on a pad. She was either a missionary or a Bolshevik.
“Red hair. She’s one of them Reds, all right,” Bronson said.
“Hey, watch that stuff!” Red Dog said.
The student hailed again. Bordelles came to the bridge wing.
“Tung Chi-fu has confessed that you have opium aboard,” the student shouted through cupped hands. “We ask that you surrender it to be destroyed.”
“Below, there!” Bordelles shouted. “Hit ’em with that hose!”
The water arched out again, but it would not reach. The Sand Pebbles argued angrily. Someone said they must have tortured poor old Pappy Tung. Someone else recognized Pappy Tung standing in the waist of the wupan. Ping-wen was there too.
“We know exactly where it is aboard,” the student shouted. “We ask that you submit to a joint inspection.”
“This is a United States ship of war and you can go to hell
!”
Bordelles rang it out like bells. The student shrugged.
“We came prepared for that,” he shouted.
The people in the wupan stretched a sign between the stumpy masts. In big red letters on white, it read: POISONERS OF CHINA! GIVE UP CONTRABAND! The wupan began a slow circling of the San Pablo, just out of firehose range.
It was a damp, gray day. Clouds hung heavy and low. The Sand Pebbles were disturbed at the enormity of the lie. The ship coolies gathered in a knot on the fantail, jabbering excitedly.
“Why the hell they picking on us?” Duckbutt Randall kept asking.
“San Pablo … boarding!” Farren shouted.
Lt. Collins fairly leaped aboard. “Send all the chiefs to my cabin, on the double!” he snapped at Farren. “Tell them side arms!” He ran on up the ladder.
The search party went pistoled and grim-faced aft and down to the Chinese quarters. More coolies popped up on deck. In about ten minutes the search party came up. Each man carried three or four wicker-cased packages the size of bowling balls. Lynch caught Holman’s eye in the crowd.
“Get below, Jake!” he ordered. “Clear out the coolies!”
The only coolie was the man on watch. Holman sent him up. Lt. Collins and the others brought their packages into the fireroom. Only the center furnace of the port boiler was burning. Holman swung open the fire door and they all pitched their packages in on the bed of coals.
“Leave the door open,” Lt. Collins said. “I want to see it burn.”
His voice was sharp, his lips white. The wicker casings caught fire. The stuff melted and fried out, spreading and bubbling, almost smothering the fire. The furnace became blue-smoky. The open fire door spoiled the draft. Holman mentioned it to Lynch.
“Slice it!” Lynch said.
Holman worked the long slice bar up through the grates. Coals and clinkers showered down. Pink flames broke through the frothy, smoking surface. They were all stooped looking into the furnace, their faces red and sweating. Bronson came down and shook Franks’ arm.
“Chief! The smoke’s spreading right above the water!” he said. “They can smell it from here to Shanghai, for God’s sake!”
They could smell it in the fireroom, too. Everybody in China knew that heavy, oily, sweetish smell.
“Lynch! Mask it, somehow!” Lt. Collins snapped.
“Rubber, Jake!” Lynch yelled. “Oil and rags!”
Holman ran for the roll of sheet rubber they used in making gaskets. Lynch threw in armloads of oily rags. Then he coaled the fire heavily, slammed the fire door, and gave it maximum draft.
“There, by God!” Lynch said, puffing, hands on hips.
The fire roared. The opium smell in the fireroom thinned out. Holman glanced at the steam gauge.
“Watch steam, Chief!” he warned.
Lynch tapped the gauge. The pointer jumped past the red mark. Lynch’s eyes bulged.
“Christ! She’s gonna pop!”
“Don’t blow safeties!” Lt. Collins said.
“Hit ’er with feed, Jake!” Lynch yelled.
He kicked the ashpan door shut. Holman ran out and twisted open the feed check. The feed pump pounded.
“Start pumps, Frenchy! Kill steam!” Holman shouted at Burgoyne.
It was too late. The safeties popped, with a sustained roar. The mountaining steam flickered its shadow over the engine room skylight. Sweet-stinking black smoke spread like a pall above the ship and its circling wupan satellite. The San Pablo was roaring up all the world to come and witness her disgrace.
Through it all Burgoyne sat unmoving on the workbench with his head in his hands. He was sunk in his own trouble. But the Sand Pebbles had forgotten about him in the ship’s larger trouble.
At dinner, they were all angry at the mess tables. They hacked their teeth into their food and chomped and glared and wrangled. They could still hardly believe it. It was treachery. They wondered which coolies were involved.
“Every slant-eyed, slopeheaded one of ’em, I bet!” Harris snorted.
They agreed that no one could blame the ship or Lt. Collins for it. The coolies were just aboard working for squeeze and cumshaw. They had no official connection with the ship.
Holman could not get Burgoyne to eat dinner. He would not even speak or look up. Holman went away sadly. He was haunted by the thought that Maily and Burgoyne might have been caught in the backlash of the mob he had stirred up.
Well, mei yuh fah tzu. It was not much comfort.
Lt. Collins went back to the flagship. Canteen liberty was stopped for that day. Only Lynch got ashore. He was busy selling his teashop. His wife and her kid cousin would be going to Shanghai in the convoy Friday. In mid-afternoon a motor launch made the gangway and two white civilians tried to come aboard. Crosley had the watch. He stopped them.
“Nobody comes aboard and nobody leaves,” he said. “Them’s orders.”
The men broke out cards to show him. The older one, a thin, gray man, tried to step up on the quarterdeck. Crosley put a hand on his chest.
“Take your hands off me, sailor!” the old man snapped. “I’m a taxpayer and a representative of the press. Any day I can’t come aboard an American warship, I want to know about it!”
“This is the day, Joe,” Crosley said.
Bordelles came. He looked pale and stern. He backed up Crosley.
“It’s splashed all through the native press that your servants have been smuggling opium,” the thin man said. “Give us a statement.”
“See the Flag Secretary. I can’t talk. Orders from way, high up.”
The old man argued. He had been to Flag and gotten a runaround and he was angry about it. “Right here’s where the story is!” he kept saying. Bordelles could not placate him by saying that he was under orders. The old man began to threaten.
“If an American warship has been smuggling opium, the American people certainly want to know about it!” he said. “My paper can break an admiral like a matchstick, if he tries to dupe the American people!”
“My admiral can break me like a matchstick,” Bordelles said.
“Let me, Jason.” The chubby, younger man in the tan coat took over. He tried to trap Bordelles. “Give us a little something, like crumbs for the birds,” he wheedled. He had a smooth Irish voice. “We won’t quote you. How many of the sailors are involved?”
“Sorry.”
“Deny it, then. Call it Red propaganda. Where do you think the stuff came aboard?”
He could not charm or trap Bordelles. In the end, he threatened too.
“The American people can make it very hot when they get their moral dander up,” he said. “Talk and protect yourself. We’ll protect you.”
That snapped Bordelles’ patience. His face turned red.
“Shove off, or I’ll turn the firehose on you!” he commanded.
They chugged off, very angry. Crosley watched them go, hands on hips.
“Them sons of bitches. Them God damned cannibals,” he said unbelievingly. “Picking on their own people! What in hell’s the matter with ’em?”
Even Harris was glum at supper. The men talked in low voices about the power of Stateside newspapers. They knew in a vague way that many Stateside newspapers, like Borah and Kellogg and even Coolidge, seemed to be pro-gearwheel. They blamed all that on the missionaries sending lies home. But now the newspapers had their own reporters in China, and they had seen a sample that afternoon. It gave them a shadowy, cut-off, stabbed-in-the-back feeling. It was a nasty, unpleasant feeling.
“I guess even Coolidge is scared of the papers,” Farren said.
“The papers kind of are the American people,” Wilsey agreed. “Like the guy said.”
They only mentioned Burgoyne once.
“You’d think, with all this new trouble, Comyang’d forget about hanging Frenchy,” Farren said.
“Once the machine starts grinding, they always hang you,” Harris said gloomily.
It was a very subdued supper. The
y were all afraid the machine was grinding for Lt. Collins and the whole San Pablo.
At sunset the mocking wupan went away. It had circled the ship all day like a grinning hyena. When Haythorn announced the captain’s return, the men all drifted to the quarterdeck. They just wanted to stand there shoulder to shoulder while Lt. Collins came aboard. It was a kind of closing ranks in the face of trouble.
Lt. Collins did not look at them, but they knew he understood. He went up to his cabin looking worried and angry. A few minutes later Burgoyne came on the quarterdeck. He would not speak or look at anyone. He went up the ladder to the boat deck like a mechanical man.
“He’s going to see the skipper,” someone whispered.
They waited, wondering, not talking. Franks came to the head of the ladder.
“Holman down there?” Holman pushed forward. “Come up here, Jake, Franks said.
Holman went up. Burgoyne was standing behind Franks.
“Frenchy just told the skipper he won’t be a prisoner-at-large,” Franks said. “You and your engineers will have to stand watch and guard him.”
“Don’t put a guard on me, Chief. I might have to kill him,” Burgoyne said. He coughed rackingly, bending over. “Hold me with metal, something stronger than muscles,” he said. “Shackle me to the rail, or something.”
Franks looked at Holman and shook his head pityingly. Holman felt a brief flash of the hell that Burgoyne had been in all day. He understood. Burgoyne had to keep trying while life was in him. Suddenly Holman wished that the patrol that morning had killed Burgoyne. Mei yuh fah tzu would not work for an American.
They shackled Frenchy Burgoyne with a leg iron from his ankle to his bunk rail. He lay there, fully dressed and on his back. His face was deep-lined and hard as iron and he would not speak. Only his fierce, animal eyes were alive, turning and shifting. He made it very uncomfortable in the compartment.
The Sand Pebbles stayed out on deck until taps. Then they went in and to bed with none of the usual joking cross-talk. Holman had a hard time going to sleep. He caught himself thinking some very strange thoughts.
The Sand Pebbles Page 45