The Sand Pebbles

by Richard McKenna

  “I ain’t going back down there without a gun!”

  “I got the gun.” Lynch slapped his pistol. “Come on, I said!”

  Holman stayed topside. It would be several hours before it was time to warm up the engine. He heard shouting and clanging from below. The hydrokineter on the cold boiler began rumbling very loudly. Lynch was going to force steam.

  Holman loitered along the main deck. Farren and Haythorn had at last gotten some of the deck coolies working. They had to stand right over them. Beside the galley Ellis and Vincent were throwing potatoes at the circling sampans. Duckbutt Randall was trying to stop them.

  “Spuds cost money!” he objected. “Throw coal.”

  “Coal costs money,” Holman said. “Thumb your noses. That’s free.”

  “Throw bullets!” Ellis snorted. “Shoot the sons of bitches!”

  Lynch came on deck, sweating and cheerful. “All fires lit and drawing good,” he told Holman. “Them coolies will stay squared away, now. How about we go have some coffee?”

  “Let’s go,” Holman said.

  In the CPO quarters they drank coffee aromatic with brandy. Lynch was happy about going to Changsha. It was taking the ship off a very bad spot. Things would be all right again, in Changsha.

  “I got my business here cleared up just in time,” Lynch said.

  Renewed shouting started outside. Lynch and Holman carried their coffee cups out to the rail to see what it was. Water was arching and splashing and the same wupan of two days before was trying to come alongside again. Haythorn was keeping it off with the wash-deck hose. A student spokesman was shouting in Chinese. Lop Eye Shing, evil-faced as ever, stood beside the student, balanced on his cane.

  “The Boatmen’s Union has declared a strike on your ship!” the student called in English. “We demand that you permit us to take off the citizens of the Republic of China whom you are holding against their will!”

  Coolies ran and jabbered along the main deck of the San Pablo.

  “Keep your distance, you Bolshevik sons of bitches!” Bordelles yelled from the bow. “Stop making those threats! We will protect our men!”

  A potato hit Lop Eye Shing in the face. He staggered and blinked. Franks came running up to the boat deck.

  “Keep your men below! Don’t let ’em hear those threats!” he told Lynch. “They’re trying to steal our coolies!”

  “Guard the hatch, Jake!” Lynch said.

  Holman ran down. He stopped Chiu-pa and the coolies at the hatch. They went back below without argument. Lynch joined Holman. He had his pistol belted on again. The San Pablo was buzzing like a chopped-open beehive. Men were yelling and running in all directions. Farren and Haythorn were chasing the deck coolies to their quarters. Bronson hustled Big Chew and Jack Dusty aft. Big Chew had on his apron and he was waving a ladle angrily.

  “Are your men all safe, Lynch?”

  It was Bordelles. Lynch said the men were safe. Holman saw Chiu-pa streak aft along the port side, followed by the other bilge coolies.

  “Oh Christ!” he said, pointing. “We forgot the bunker escape hatches!”

  Lynch cursed and ran after them. Clip Clip popped out of the compartment and ran aft. Crosley popped out after him, the cloth still around his neck and lather on half his face.

  “Clip Clip!” he screamed. “Come back here, you heathen son of a bitch!”

  “Crosley! Crosley, lay up to the bridge!” Bordelles barked. “Flag is signaling again!”

  They both ran up. It began to seem stupid to Holman. He thought he would go below and tend the deserted fires. Perna charged by and Holman stopped him.

  “Get below and take the watch,” he told Perna.

  About the decks they were all running and screaming. Out in the circling sampans they were all jumping and screaming. The circle was closing in. No one had time to man the fire hoses. A ship’s boat came alongside. A man in dress blues came up on the quarterdeck with his seabag and looked around unbelievingly.

  “Are you all nuts on here?” he asked Holman. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “This is how we get underway,” Holman said.

  “I’m Krebs, watertender. Who logs me in? Who takes my records and stuff?”

  He was a lean, dark man with a mustache. He waggled his records and pay accounts accusingly at Holman.

  “Pitch ’em anywhere,” Holman said. “Better get in dungarees.”

  “Don’t know if I got any. I left half my gear on the Truxtun,” Krebs said. “I hate these pop transfers!”

  Big Chew came forward across the quarterdeck like a locomotive. He was pushing Ellis and Vincent ahead of him by main strength. They were trying to push Big Chew aft. They were all screaming at each other. Ellis backed into the seabag and fell sprawling. Big Chew hurled Vincent against Krebs and charged up the boat deck ladder. Krebs slapped his records down on the log desk.

  “You’re all nuts on here!” he shouted at Holman. “I hate coal burners! I hate this Goddamned floating madhouse already!”

  “That’s the spirit!” Holman said.

  Franks came into the bridge. “They’re raising hell, sir,” he said. “They want to come up on deck. They want to talk to you.”

  “Not under this duress,” Lt. Collins said. “Later, when we’re underway. Keep them below. Don’t let them hear those threats.”

  He rubbed his temples. Pain throb tolled in his head like a bell. He could not stand any more of the roaring and screaming and the whole grotesque business. Crosley, his face scaly with soap, came down from the signal bridge with another message. Lt. Collins read it.

  “I’ll talk to one man,” he told Franks. “Have them choose a spokesman.”

  Big Chew burst into the bridge, caroming off Franks.

  “Cap’n! Cap’n! No moh can stop this side!” he blurted. “S’pose no go shoh side, bad ting happen!” His fat face was agitated.

  “They can’t touch any of you aboard my ship, no matter what they are saying,” Lt. Collins said. “I will protect you. On my word of honor.”

  “No can, Cap’n! No no no can!”

  “We are going to Changsha. You will be safe there.”

  Big Chew waved muscular arms and spouted pidgin. He seemed to be saying that it would be even worse in Changsha.

  “Franks, do you suppose they want me actually to hold them prisoner until we get underway?” Lt. Collins said. “To avoid retaliation and so on?” He rubbed his temples. “Big Chew couldn’t tell me that officially, of course. But what do you think?”

  Franks thought it was quite possible. Big Chew got the drift of their talk. He howled.

  “No, no, Cap’n! I speakee you plopah!” he insisted. “Allo Chinese man wanchee go shoh side! Chinese man no moh tlostah this ship!”

  “Don’t trust this ship, eh?”

  It was like a blow in the face. A bucket of icy water. He turned his back and walked stiffly across the bridge. Below, the clamor was rising to a peak. The sampans were crowding right in to the ship’s side, careless of hoses soaking them. They did not trust his ship, he thought. That cut deeply. But perhaps justly. It was simply not down anywhere on paper, what was command responsibility for coolies. Officially, there were not any coolies. It would be so much more simple if that were true in fact. He turned around.

  “Let them go, Franks,” he said.

  They went like rats. They scrambled across the rail with bales and boxes and bundles into the waiting boats. In a few minutes they were all gone. The wupan headed upriver to the native bund. All the propaganda sampans tailed on to make it a triumphal procession. The shouting and the tumult died away.

  The Sand Pebbles were stunned. The decks seemed bare, the river empty. The abrupt silence pressed into their ears. They gathered uneasily in the littered compartment. The coffee pitcher was empty. Tullio took it to the galley to fill it. He came back with it and said their dinner was burning on the range. They all looked at Duckbutt Randall. They were remembering that he was a rated ship’s cook
. Duckbutt would not meet their eyes.

  “Like rats, they went!” Crosley rubbed the unshaven side of his face. “Clip Clip was first one across the rail!”

  “They’re gone. They’re all gone,” Restorff kept saying.

  He seemed to hope someone would contradict him. They were all looking into each other’s outraged faces to find comfort for their own outrage. Lynch came in, red-faced and breathing heavily. He looked at them, hands on hips.

  “Stawski! Wilsey! Harris!” he said. “Get below and help Perna raise steam! Holman, start warming up the engine.”

  “I’m an electrician, Lynch,” Harris said. “I got nothing to do with steam.”

  “I just now give you something to do with it,” Lynch said.

  “Wait a minute, Lynch!” Crosley jumped up. “We ain’t still going to Changsha, for God’s sake? We can’t steam without coolies! You know that!”

  “The skipper don’t know it. We’re sailing, all right.”

  They were shocked. They looked at each other. Franks came in. He looked tough and angry also.

  “How about it, Franks?” Crosley appealed to him. “The water’s too low by now for us to get to Changsha, ain’t it?”

  “If it is, we’ll winter on the first sandbar we get stuck on,” Franks said. “On deck, you topside sailors! The skipper wants a scrubdown before we get underway.”

  They got to their feet, muttering. “Come on, Crosley. You’re deck force,” Ellis said.

  “I ain’t either! I’m bridge gang!” Crosley said. “How about it, Chief?”

  “You’re bridge gang in your spare time, if I decide you can have any,” Franks said. “Get out there and man them scrubbers, you dunnigans, before I start banging heads together!”

  Duckbutt Randall stood up. His pale blue eyes were wide open and he was pinching his thick lower lip.

  “I guess I better go to the galley,” he announced, to no one in particular.

  It was three o’clock before they could get underway. Holman had the throttle. Harris was oiler. Krebs, Perna, Wilsey and Stawski were stoking. As soon as the engine began turning over, the steam began to drop. Harris went to the fireroom and cursed them. They screamed curses back. It was seeming like the end of the world to them out there with shovels in their hands, Holman knew.

  “We got to have more stokers,” Harris told Holman. “Get some deck apes down here. They can at least pass coal.”

  As the San Pablo passed each ship in man-o’-war row, she exchanged the customary salutes. They had to give the saluting signal by whistle from the bridge. When they passed the last warship and the stately stone customs house, the bridge rang for ten knots. Holman called on the voice tube.

  “I can’t even hold the turns I’m making,” he told Bronson.

  “You got to. Make ten knots. We rang for it.”

  “Bells don’t make steam. Let me talk to Bordelles.”

  Over the voice tube he told Bordelles about the steam dropping.

  “I’ll send Vincent and Ellis down,” Bordelles said. “Make as near ten knots as you can. We want to leave port in style.”

  Vincent and Ellis came down in whites, looking mutinously unhappy. The shovel scrape increased. The steam steadied. It began to climb. Harris came to the throttle platform.

  “Well, here we go in a cloud of horseshit,” he said morosely.

  There was a sharp crack high above, and a screeching, rending noise, and the roar of escaping steam. It was up on deck. Harris ran. Voices howled in the fireroom and ash doors slammed. The bridge rang stop. Holman closed the throttle and ran to the gratings and secured steam to the whistle and siren. The steam blast halted. The anchor rumbled down.

  Holman went up to the boat deck. The top two-thirds of the tall, skinny stack was canted forward at about a twenty-degree angle. They were all standing at a safe distance looking at it, with dismay in their faces. Lynch was almost hysterical. He was shaking both fists above his head and his face was red as fire.

  “I’m going to kill that Stawski!” he screamed. “I’m going to kill that thick Polack son of a bitch!”

  When he had slacked the stack guys, Stawski had skipped the forward guy. When the stack expanded, the unslacked guy had put a one-sided strain on it and made it buckle. It was weakened with rust inside.

  “Stop that, Chief!” Lt. Collins said sharply. His face looked frozen with disgust. “Get busy and straighten it up again,” he ordered.

  “We ain’t got the men and the gear, sir,” Lynch said. “It’s a dockyard job. We can’t go to Changsha, not now, sir.”

  All the Sand Pebbles nodded thoughtfully.

  “Pull it upright with the after guy,” Lt. Collins said. “Franks, you take charge of it.”

  Franks took charge. The ship was still off the outskirts of Hanyang and Chinese crowded the riverbank to watch. Franks tightened the after turnbuckle slowly, levering it around with a crowbar. The guy strained and thrummed. The stack groaned and creaked and showered down rust. The men were all holding their breaths. Then, with a raucous screech, the stack buckled a second time. The top one-third canted aft at a jaunty, rakish angle.

  No one cursed. They gave a general sigh. The frozen disgust on Lt. Collins’ thin face did not change. Franks threw down his crowbar.

  “That does it!” he said. “We’re stuck here, now.”

  He looked at Welbeck and Bordelles. They nodded slowly. The Sand Pebbles looked at each other. They were feeling that they had been saved by the bell.

  “Mr. Bordelles, get shores under that forward angle,” Lt. Collins said quietly. “Franks, run supporting lines from the masts. Lynch, take out those broken steam lines and blank the flange connections.”

  He had them all busy. It began to seem not so bad. Red Dog, as the lightest man, scaled the stack to fasten lines for Franks. He barked and yelped when he burnt himself. They could not straighten the stack, but they began to believe that they could hold what they had. When it was done, a weird, webbed rig of shores and supporting lines, they all stood back and looked at it with something like pride. It was almost sunset.

  “Prepare to weigh anchor, Mr. Bordelles,” Lt. Collins said coldly. “I want to get out of sight up the river, before I anchor for the night.”

  Bordelles barked orders. The men scattered to their stations with alacrity. They got underway handily. Behind them Hankow faded from sight down the broad river, in the black smoke rolling aft from San Pablo’s dogleg stack.

  34

  The afternoon of the next day Lynch came out of the fireroom shaking his head. “I’ll take the throttle the rest of the day,” he told Holman. “Give ’em a hand out there. They’re bad off.”

  Holman went out to the fireroom. Wilsey and Perna were stoking. Ellis and Haythorn were passing coal. They were all stripped to the waist and black with coal dust except where sweat made white streaks down their hides. Using his whole body, Wilsey aimed a shovelful of coal into a red-mouthed furnace. The shovel struck the side of the door and spilled and dropped. Wilsey looked down at it.

  “Bloody hell,” he said, almost in a whisper. “Jake, we got to change shifts again, I just can’t close my damned hands.”

  He looked at his trembling, half-closed hands. They were swathed with wiping rags. There were no gloves aboard and the men’s hands were badly blistered. Holman knew what Wilsey was feeling. Your fingers felt thick and lifeless and you had no strength left at all below your elbows. That was where the strength ran out first.

  “I’ll fire ’em awhile,” Holman said. “Go up and rest.”

  “Thanks, Jake. I’m whipped and I know it.”

  Wilsey’s three fires were in bad shape. The coal was too thick near the front and holes were burnt through in back. All the draft was going through back there and the coal in front was only smoking and coking. Working fast, Holman broke out clinkers with a slice bar, spread the coal evenly with a hoe and then began building up the fires. His hands were already calloused and his muscles hard from working. He e
njoyed it all the more because there was need for the work he did.

  Coaling had to be done with shoulders, arms and a particular snap of the wrist, to spread a shovelful evenly wherever you wanted it. When a man’s wrists gave out and he began flexing his knees and throwing the coal with his whole body, the fire would hole and hump on him. He would have to start spreading with the hoe, working twice as hard to burn the same amount of coal, and it was a vicious circle. All the men were soft as putty and they were all in the vicious circle.

  Holman built the fires up smooth and level and red and thick, to where they could burn half an hour without more coaling. Perna was having a hard time on his side. All his cocky, sparrowy air was gone. His mouth hung slack, with coal dust dried on his teeth, and he drooped like a soft candle.

  “Let’s swap boilers, Perna,” Holman said.

  Perna nodded gratefully, too weary to speak. Holman cleaned and built up the fires in Perna’s boiler. He used almost all the reserve coal on the floorplates. Haythorn and Ellis were both big men, but they were bringing the coal buckets only half filled. They carried a bucket with both hands, bumping it along with their knees, and they looked ready to drop.

  “Each of you guys take a boiler. Let Perna show you how to stoke,” Holman said. “I’ll bring the coal out.”

  The coolie coal passers had carried two full buckets at once on a short, stiff shoulder yoke. Holman did the same. He was enjoying using his strength to the utmost. After a few trips he learned the knack of maneuvering the buckets in the dark, narrow, dusty wing bunkers. He built up heaps of coal on the floorplates. The other men were recovering. Ellis had gone up for a pitcher of coffee.

  “Jake, stop for a cup of joe,” Haythorn said. “You bastard, you ain’t human!”

  Holman stopped and drank coffee with them in the steamy, smoky, sulfurous smell of the place. He rested and felt strength flow quickly back. Then he shouldered the yoked buckets again. “Way hay! Hai lai!” he said, pretending to be a coolie. He got a weak grin from them.

  After supper, when they were anchored, he took a shower. Despite rag padding, the yoke had worn the skin off his neck and shoulder. He winced as the hot water hit the raw place. At the trough, Stawski was soaking his hands in a bucket of warm water. He had come out of the fireroom and dropped into an exhausted sleep. The serum from his blisters had dried and stuck the matted rags to his hands and he was trying to soak the rags off.