After the meal a few men went to the ship’s office to write letters. Franks talked privately to Holman.
“I hate to leave Lynch locked up alone during the fight,” he said. “He thinks now he’s going to be in the engine room. You suppose it might be all right?”
“Sure,” Holman said. “Let him come down.”
46
San Pablo got underway at dawn, in misty rain. The eastern sky gleamed rose and pearl. The air was fragrant with woodsmoke. The raft people came out of their huts to see San Pablo pull away.
Lt. Collins stayed on the bridge. He spoke to no one and they all kept clear of him. They were all in clean whites and they spoke to each other in low voices.
The rain became mist and the climbing sun burned the mist away. Beyond Ta An the lake broadened out. Green islands and mountains blue to the south rose softly into a picture without a frame. San Pablo steamed along smoothly and quietly under a plume of blue woodsmoke.
Westward a far green line grew into a reed marsh wilderness screaming with birds. The mist dried away. The sun rode high and hot in a blue sky. San Pablo entered the main channel of the Chien River.
There was almost no traffic on the river. Lt. Collins knew they must have had the telegraphic warning at Paoshan, before now. He did not know how far up the river the boom lay. When the marsh began giving way to green-diked rice fields with buffaloes and blue-clad farmers busy in them, he had the crew piped to dinner. He did not eat anything himself.
After dinner Lynch came down to the engine room. He walked around and looked at the machinery with sense in his eyes. The things he said made sense. He was all right with the machinery.
“Want the throttle for a while?” Holman asked him.
“I’d like to take the throttle,” Lynch said.
“Harris is your oiler,” Holman said.
He watched Lynch handle the throttle and tend water. Lynch was doing just fine at it. When Holman was sure it would be all right, he went out to the fireroom to lend a hand there.
It was after four o’clock when they sighted the boom. Lt. Collins saw it midway down a long westward reach and it looked like a string of beads across a brown neck. He rang half speed, just matching the current, and San Pablo hung there while he studied the boom through the long glass. Bordelles was getting up the armor flaps and posting the men at their revised battle stations. There were twenty-odd junks spaced about a hundred feet apart and the line was bowed downriver by the current. Men moved tinily on their decks. Steel glinted. He could not see well, into the sun.
“Battle stations manned and ready, sir,” Bordelles said quietly.
“Very well. Hoist the battle flag.”
The junks rode stern on, with thick festoons of bamboo cable linking their bows. The center junk was the largest. A gearwheel flag drooped and flapped at its masthead. It was the command junk. It was the precious pendant of that necklace on the brown neck, and he was going to rip it off.
“Standard speed,” he ordered. “Steer for the center junk.”
San Pablo moved. A momentary light breeze ruffled the brown water and flashed a thousand sun glints. Crosley was hoisting the big battle flag in jerks up the mainmast. The breeze caught and streamed it. It was very beautiful.
“Prepare to concentrate fire on the center junk, Mr. Bordelles.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
Krebs and Stawski had one boiler, Wilsey and Perna the other. The red, roaring furnaces were devouring wood. It made a light, fluffy ash. They had to keep hauling ashes and sogging them with a hose. Ash slushed and charcoal crunched beneath their unceasing feet. Melted pine pitch smeared their bare arms and torsos. Patches of white ash sticking to it made them look like lepers.
Holman carried wood for them from the bunkers. He built the wood head high all along the forward bulkhead. Distant thuds sounded, and the pop of distant rifles. Then their own guns cut loose in a rattling roar.
“I better get back out with Lynch,” Holman told Krebs.
Lynch, at the throttle, was doing all right. The engine rolled massively, silently and powerfully.
San Pablo closed range steadily. The two center armor flaps were still down, for better seeing. Lt. Collins took station there alone. On either side of him three men stood to their machine guns, mounted in armored embrasures. Below in the bow Haythorn and Shanahan sheltered behind the small shield of the three-pounder. All the faces were tense and eager.
They would have to wait. The Chinese would have to fire first. Then, with the source of fire plainly visible, San Pablo would be authorized to return a fitting answer.
The Chinese began firing at about fifteen hundred yards. It was rifle fire, pale winks along the line of junks, quick splashes in brown water. Then buzzing whines. Spangs and thuds and screeches of hits. Bullets came into the bridge. Lt. Collins held his binoculars to his eyes with a steady hand and kept his face expressionless. Red-shot smoke blossomed on the center junk. A cannonball skipped angling across San Pablo’s bow. After it came a thud!
“Two-thirds speed,” Lt. Collins said quietly to Franks. Then, his voice a sudden whiplash, “Commence firing! Commence firing!”
The six machine guns blurted a racketing roar. The three-pounder barked sharply. Smoke rose and splinters flew from the center junk. Sampans shuttled like waterbugs between the junks and out from the south bank, where there seemed to be a militia camp. He sniffed the sharp powder smoke with hungry nostrils. Spent cartridges tinkled brightly on deck like a thousand fairy bells. The bow gun fired in steady rhythm: breech slam … bark! … shell clatter on deck. Thud … thud … thud, the Chinese guns responded. It was a joyous litany.
San Pablo closed range slowly. The guns never stopped. The pale winks merged to a steady flickering. Bullets flogged San Pablo. Bullets screamed into the bridge, but they would not hit him. Black smoke blossomed redly from junk to junk and thunderclouded above them. Cannonballs ripped the air like silk and furrowed the brown water. One struck the bow and shook the ship. Slam … bark! … clatter, the bow gun went. Thud! … thud! … thud! the old brass cannons responded. A cannonball caromed off the side amidships. Metal shrieked. San Pablo shuddered. Steam hissed. He jumped to look out aft. Steam was billowing from the engine-room skylight.
The lights were out. Hot steam was choking. Holman followed a hunch through wet, roaring darkness. He skirted invisibly flying machinery and his hand went surely in the darkness to the root steam valve for the fire and bilge pump. He closed it and the roaring stopped. He ran to the generator. It had tripped from shock. He reset it and jumped it up to speed. Harris was there.
“I’ll get it back on the line,” Harris said.
The guns still clamored, shaking the ship. The engine rolled on powerfully. A great new bulge in the side had sprung a steam flange and blown the gasket. Holman ran for wrenches. The lights came up. Harris joined him and began hacking out a new gasket. The bolts were stretched and the threads jammed. Holman twisted them in two by main strength. Franks’ great voice came down the skylight.
“Fire! Main deck aft! Fire! Main deck aft!”
They raced the job, careless of their hands. The firing stopped. Bells jangled. Lynch slowed the engine. Feet thudded on the boat deck. Bordelles ran in on the gratings.
“Below there!” he shouted. “For God’s sake give us more pressure on the fire main!”
“Aye aye! Any minute!” Holman shouted back.
They used two spare bolts and two C-clamps and wrapped Harris’ shirt around the flange to hold the hiss and drip. Holman started the pump clanking and built the fire main pressure as high as he could. Krebs had come out to see what was wrong. Slow speed meant a breather for them in the fireroom. Harris stared at his trembling, blistered hands. He was an old man for a job like that.
“I’d give my God damned soul for a cup of coffee!” Harris said.
“Hand it over,” Krebs said. “Stawski’s right this minute brewing a bucketful. I come out to tell you.”
A stin
kpot had shattered on the port side of the crew’s compartment. The sticky black stuff splashed all along the deck and side and bit fire into the wood. When they got pressure on the fire main, the water only spread the flames. Lt. Collins sent all the men down to fight the fire. Only Bronson was left, at the wheel. San Pablo was drifting back with the current, nearly out of range already.
The junks stopped firing. Lt. Collins studied them through the long glass. The command junk was splintered and smoking but obstinately afloat. You could not sink a junk with gunfire. On the junks Chinese were dancing all over the topsides. They thought they had won. A few wore yellowish uniforms, but most of them were plain coolies. They were all dancing in joy at their great victory.
Lt. Collins smiled coldly. One of the sacred sayings came into his mind: No captain can do very wrong if he lay his ship alongside that of his enemy. He kept repeating it in his mind. Vincent came into the bridge, panting and blackened and hatless. He saluted anyway.
“Mr. Bordelles sends respects and the fire is under control, sir.”
“Very well. Go back down.” Lt. Collins turned to Bronson. “I’m going down there too. Hold the ship in mid-channel.” It was the first word he had spoken to Bronson all day.
“Aye aye, sir!” Bronson said eagerly.
The fire was not yet out. Lt. Collins stood by the galley and watched them fight it with hoses and axes. They chopped burning wood away and pitched it over the side. The whole portside aft was gone, above the steel hull. The boat deck sagged there, burnt through in places. Franks and Farren were shoring it.
Jennings came up to report formally that he had moved the sickbay to the old Chinese quarters in the steel hull. The only battle casualty so far was Tullio, with a bullet in his leg he had not known about. Some men were burnt and some choked with fumes. None were disabled. Jennings was very precise and formal with his report.
“Very well,” Lt. Collins said. “Carry on, Jennings.”
It took a long time to put the fire all the way out. The crew’s compartment was gutted. The low sun turned the long reach of river a dull red. Bordelles came over, black and weary and grinning. The men crowded behind him. They were expecting praise. Lt. Collins was not yet ready to praise them.
“Can we serve out food, sir, some rest and water, before we try again?” Bordelles asked.
“There’s not enough daylight left. Serve out cutlasses and pistols,” Lt. Collins said. “I’m going to grapple and board.”
They all knew the plan, but he reviewed it rapidly. They would keep two machine guns and the bow gun manned, to hold down fire from the flanking junks. They would keep a minimum crew in the engine spaces. Everyone else would board. As he talked, he could see the men nerving themselves to the prospect. They stood proudly. They would not falter. He was proud of them, but he would not let his manner show it.
“I want Harris and Holman from the engineers,” Lt. Collins said. “Have them standing by here in the passageway.”
“Aye aye, sir!” Bordelles said.
Holman waited with his axe in the midship passageway. The boarding party would come down the port ladder and he would tail on. He would board the junk and cut the bamboo cable.
Harris was there too, with a pistol and cutlass. The smell of burning was all around. The two men did not speak. Both were pink from a light steam burn and Harris had bandaged hands. He kept hefting and balancing his cutlass and sighting along it.
Holman kept drying his palms on his hips so that he would have a good grip on the axe when the time came.
The sun was low behind the boom. The junks darted long shadows. San Pablo closed the range fast this time. San Pablo was plunging in fast for the kill. On either side of Lt. Collins his machine guns hammered with berserk fury. From the enemy line of battle the pale winks and the black, rose-shot bloomings grew and grew in crackling thunder. They made the air sing around San Pablo. They made the air alive with hurtling death.
Slam; bark; clatter! Thud; thud; thud! Faster and faster past endurance the rhythmic litany built onward and upward. Lt. Collins thrilled with a mounting exaltation. The men at the guns felt it. They showed it in eyes ablaze and lips writhed back, shoulders shaking and hips weaving as they drove their bucking guns. The coolies up ahead felt it, leaping and waving steel and voicing a thin, high devil screech through their billowing powder smoke. The mast with the gearwheel flag toppled. The Sand Pebbles set up a wolfish cheering.
Lt. Collins was a spring wound tight to snapping. It was new and terrible in pure intensity. It was uncontainable in flesh. San Pablo was very near.
“Half speed! Cease firing! Cease firing!” Lt. Collins shouted. “Boarding party, take arms!”
They scrambled for them. Lt. Collins threw off cap and tunic.
“Take her now!” he told the smudged and grimy Bordelles. “Lay her alongside!”
He flourished his gleaming cutlass and glanced down at his white undershirt and trousers. He was the only clean white one left aboard. The men formed up behind him. Bells jangled and the engine beat changed. The ruined junk stern, all smoke and yellow splinters, slid by close aboard. Lt. Collins made his voice ring like bell metal.
“Awa-a-a-a-ay … the boarding party!”
He led them all in a roaring rush, forward and up and over the wooden bulwark to the junk’s foredeck. He slashed and fired and darted through and leaped to the deckhouse. He raced along the top of it to meet them bursting out of the ruined poop, a hedge of steel and screaming faces. Cutlass high, he leaped down to the short after deck and turned his ankle on a dead man’s arm. He went to his knees. The gleaming halberd blade slashed down at him and he slugged a bullet to the bare belly and someone from behind thrust in to take the blow. They all went down in a heap and feet trampled them. A storm of shots and clashing steel and screaming human voices raged over their heads.
He struggled to rise and could not. Warm blood pumped rhythmically into his face and blinded his eys. He struggled and blinked his eyes and saw through rosy mist the bristling white hair on the almost-severed head. He knew in a final, flooding weakness that his savior was Harris.
Steel rang. Shots blasted. Men screamed. Feet thumped and scrambled. Holman, running to the great cable across the junk bow, slipped in blood.
Grunting with full arm swings, he hacked the cable. It was a great, beautiful, complexly interwoven pale-green-and-yellow snake thick as his own body. Bullets keened over. The axe turned and glanced off the resilient bamboo. Arf! Arf! somewhere the Red Dog went and bark … bark … the bow gun went and the muzzle blast came in hot pats to Holman’s sweaty face. He swung the axe harder, in a driven fury of haste.
Strand by chip by chunk it broke apart, under the splintering axe. Aft on the junk coolies leaped overboard. Men carried one, helped other white-clad, red-splashed shipmates back aboard San Pablo. The cable raveled and creaked and stretched. The axe never stopped. Men crossed with metal cans, and kerosene splashed the junk’s splintered wood. Flame in a crackling roar warmed Holman’s back. He drove the axe with savage desperation. The cable remnant parted with a squeal and a pop and the flaming junk lurched free.
Instantly, the current had it. Holman climbed to the bulwark and made a great leap across to the bow of San Pablo. He landed sprawling on knees and elbows, knowing he had skinned them badly, and he saw stupidly that he still had the axe. He stayed down, for the shelter of the steel bulwark.
On the bridge they were cheering and clasping hands above their heads. The firing had stopped. Holman’s ears rang with silence.
“Yump, Yake, yump!” Farren shouted down to him. “If you can’t make it in one yump, yump twice!”
Grinning self-consciously, Holman stood up. The brown current was sweeping the sundered halves of the boom apart each way like gates opening. Fire doors clanged below. The engine throb gained power. With sparks from her dogleg stack fountaining triumphantly into the twilight, San Pablo steamed through.
47
The three men ate cold corned
beef and hardtack by the light of a candle stuck in an ashtray. San Pablo was anchored in midstream below Paoshan, with all topside lights out because of snipers on the south bank. Bordelles was pleading that he might lead the rescue party to China Light. Lynch seconded him. Lt. Collins prepared to say concisely one more time what he had already told them in detail.
“That rescue is our primary mission and so I must lead it myself,” he said. “San Pablo and every man of us in her are secondary to that.” He spoke with sharp finality. “They will try to repair the boom. You haven’t the strength to break it a second time,” he told Bordelles. “If I am not back by full daylight, you must consider the primary mission has failed and sail without me. That is all and that is an order.”
He stood up. The others rose also. Candlelight showed feeling struggling in their faces. Lynch was about to say something sentimental.
“As you were. Finish your meal,” Lt. Collins said, to forestall that. “I expect it will be dark enough to leave in a few more minutes. I don’t want you to come out.”
He stopped outside by the boat deck rail. An occasional bullet was still striking the ship or whining over. He would have to wait until his eyes adjusted before he could judge whether it was dark enough for a small boat to risk those snipers. He heard Lynch speak inside.
“I’m scared he don’t figure to come back, Mr. Bordelles.”
Lt. Collins moved aft along the rail. He did not want to hear. Below him on the quarterdeck Farren was assembling the boat party. The motor sampan was already waiting at the gangway. Lt. Collins stood there in darkness and thought about the day with mixed feelings.
San Pablo was purged of guilt and shame. The men were sound and whole again. Not counting engineers, hardly a man but bore his wound. Shanahan and Ellis lay gravely hurt. Franks and three others were immobilized. Harris lay dead at the side of the quarterdeck. He was covered with the day’s battle flag. Tomorrow out in the lake they would bury Harris with full honors. Perhaps Shanahan too, by then.
The Sand Pebbles Page 59