Jade Rooster

by R. L. Crossland

  It was a challenge to explain the concept of “earmuffs.”

  “ Has the Oriental Investment Company established itself someplace around here? He may be picking up Mexican silver, it may come from them.” Hobson said.

  “They are in Mokp’o, I think. I would have heard about him if he was around Chindo. This man has caused a great deal of pain, a great deal of sadness, has he not?” The mudang said slowly.

  “For money alone?”

  “Perhaps, it is not important that Mr. Kim receive this message.”

  Hobson did not know how to answer that.

  “There are several men with him and they have weapons of the kind that an army would use.”

  “He has dishonored the totems. The kibun, the harmony has been broken.”

  He thought about the particular Korean verb she had used. It more properly translated as “desecrated” than “dishonored.”

  On his return Hobson found that all had gone well, except that Gunnarson had followed orders with too singular a level of dedication.

  Bossed around by a half officer from an auxiliary, tired of a grinding schedule of cramped, cold, wet, dives into a wooden coffin, and tended by one of those officer kiss-up rates that should have been stitched on the left sleeve, Gunnarson kicked out the jams and inhaled makkolli, matching cups, patron by patron. He had done so, so thoroughly, that sometime after midnight he felt the urge to execute a near-perfect swan dive off the seawall in front of the skivvy house. The dive was into waters that were not quite deep enough and he did something to his collarbone. After that, he might be able to do some salvage diving, but he could not use tools.

  It was drizzling and Crottle towered above everyone in his oilskins and a foul mood. “Gunnarson we got anyone else aboard who can dive that diving dress now that you have crippled yourself up? You know the Navy owns that body and you have damaged it, neglee-gent-ly. I got a mind to put you on report.”

  The rest of the crew avoided all eye contact.

  Before the question was out, Hobson knew the answer. He was next in seniority.

  “Hey, sir, this Hobson’s a real bright fellow. Speaks languages, wins races, fights fancy imported style. Picked up how to be the diver’s tender job real quick. I can teach him. Hell, I’ll teach him everything I know, an’ just the way I learned it,” he said ominously.

  “Teach him everything you know. That’ll take half a day.”

  Hobson, under other circumstances, might have seen humor in that exchange. Hobson’s life was now in Gunnarson’s hands and worth not an Indian head nickel. It was, in fact, worth a negative three hundred dollars to Gunnarson.

  They slapped on the weighted suit and boots and belt and Gunnarson ran through several weeks’ training in a few minutes. He told about the airhose and the spitcock to keep the faceplate from fogging and the stage and about not hold your breath ascending. Crottle asked him questions until Crottle was satisfied. Hobson could have asked questions until doomsday and not been satisfied. It did not matter. He was doomed.

  “Now remember on the telephone for you it’s ‘Surface, on the bottom…’ and then make your report. I don’t want us getting confused with maybe someone else’s down there on this wonder.” Gunnarson waved at the telephone with his good arm and seemed grimly happy.

  “Let’s get the dynamite gun and the other Gatling guns.” Impatience showed in Crottle’s voice. He wiped his walrus’ moustache with his sleeve.

  As soon as the faceplate was below water, Hobson held his breath. It was instinctive. Despite a helmet full of air, something said save that last breath as you left the surface.

  His life was in the hands of two men. One whom he had bested and who owed him money, and the other a thoroughly hard case capable of anything. The currents made him bob and wobble in the diving suit. His stomach seemed to float and wobble like a jellyfish along with it.

  The light penetrated the water for a few feet and then the water became dark, darker than night, blacker than coal.

  He could feel the sides of Jade Rooster. Gunnarson was right, her sides seemed to hum. He turned on the underwater lantern. His mind started playing tricks with him. He wasn’t clambering about a barque; he was aboard a schooner, his parents’ old schooner. No, that could not be. He found the forward hatch and descended its akimbo ladder holding tightly onto reality.

  Something floated very closely by his faceplate as he turned on his lantern. He reached for it and it flittered away. Some sort of marine life. Everything seemed alien and slow moving. It was eerily quiet and all he could hear was the steady thump of the manual air pump, which he could have mistaken for his own heartbeat. He climbed down the after ladder. For a moment he thought he saw some white fabric in the top corner of his far right faceplate. A shroud? Then it was gone. Visibility was only a few feet. Objects came and disappeared from view rapidly. His mind was playing tricks.

  He found Atticaris’ stateroom. It was right across from Hoyt’s, just like the sketch. There was a leather satchel and a double-breasted jacket on the deck. A shaving cup and an inkwell lay broken against the bulkhead among of flurry of celluloid collars, and an elaborate gimbaled lamp lay in pieces next to it. It was a tight squeeze in diving dress and then Hobson found it hard to breathe.

  And then Hobson found himself on the deck of the tug.

  “You pinched off the airhose, you worthless fid,” Gunnarson looked disappointed, deeply disappointed. “Mr. Crottle figured something was wrong and we pulled you up. Me, I wouldn’t have bothered. You sleeve, am I the only guy who can do anything right around here?”

  “Okay, now take these. Were going to cut into this Mr. Sabatelli’s precious barque and get the hell outta here. Them girls over t’house not withstanding.”

  Was Gunnarson disappointed dint he was alive or that Crottle was untying the Gordian knot?

  Hobson took the tools and the crew improvised a stage upon which they lowered him along side Jade Rooster’s hull. The stage allowed him to stand outside the hull. It could not be used to lower him to the wreck or raise him from the bottom.

  The next morning, Hobson pried away a plank and then sawed a large opening directly into the stateroom. The swells had risen to a point where, at several points, Hobson became seasick underwater. They would soon have to suspend diving operations.

  They brought up the field gun and the remaining Gatling guns by noon. There were far more than they had expected. By then, Crottle had timed the maximum swing to the west and set out the second anchor for a storm they now knew was coming from the South.

  “Pneumatic gun, we still haven’t recovered the pneumatic gun.” Crottle growled. “Got most of the pieces, but not the limber or barrel itself.”

  Hobson knew that to Crottle Hobson’s personal welfare played a very small part in all this.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The barometer began to drop faster than irreplaceable fittings into the bilge. It was too late in the season for a full-blown typhoon, but the tug was in no condition to weather any storm.

  Crottle was at a disadvantage. He had been seafaring for several decades, but the majority of those decades had been spent below. He had learned the general concept of cyclonic winds from chalkings on the back of a coal shovel, but could not read the skies.

  He held a council of war with Gunnarson and Hobson. Gunnarson was surprisingly helpful and Hobson had local knowledge. Between the three of them they developed a plan.

  In most cases, getting sea room would have been the preferred strategy. That, however, required that the screws be capable of turning continuously to maintain headway. The badly patched boiler made that a doubtful option. They decided to keep up steam, but just enough to operate the steam windlass.

  Hobson watched the seas and the skies. The building swells had been a bad first indication. The clouds arrived thin, then began building in height. It continued to drizzle and
the winds had picked up.

  “It will all depend on whether we can guess the wind direction.” Hobson said flatly to Crottle. The storm would hit like a runaway pinwheel. It would come from the south, but the winds themselves would box the compass. The right side of the storm approached with the speed of the storm plus the speed of its accompanying winds. Hobson did not want to be in the upper right quadrant of a rapidly approaching storm.

  They anchored away from Jade Rooster, which might shift in the storm. Any idea of the tug attempting to muscle it out with four anchors was discarded; it was better to flow with the forces of nature than to buck them outright. They dropped the hook on the eastern side of the lagoon, which appeared to have good holding ground, and paid out anchor cable. They needed scope. The weight and elasticity of the anchor-rode evened out the ride. The winds would shift, if they shifted too fast or came from the wrong direction, the tug on its long anchor-rode would swing right into one of the surrounding rock islands and break up. No one had any illusions about surviving breaking up on the rocks in these icy seas. They would have to be alert to changes in the storm and address emergencies as they occurred.

  The tug rode at anchor like a hobbyhorse. Crottle had the crew wear lifejackets, rig lifelines, and lash everything down. They had a second anchor and drogue ready if the boat began to drag. Many of the crew were making offerings to Neptune at the lee rail and looking about the color of the cresting seas. The coalpassers below were taking a beating and struggling hard not to tip into the boiler fire.

  Hobson’s assigned responsibility was to determine the height of the storm, when it reached its maximum intensity. At the vortex, the winds would reach maximum velocity, but they would also change direction rapidly. They began to drag anchor and that demanded his attention.

  “We have to swing and drop the second anchor,” Hobson bellowed over the winds. The tug was clanking and chiming like a tinker’s wagon.

  Crottle nodded with grim resolution. He feared no man, but acts of God were another matter.

  A heavy green wave swept the length of the tug and the boat shook it off like a dog. Going forward to free the anchor would take steady footing, nerve, and timing. Crottle and Gunnarson, with the use of only one arm, both started working forward while Hobson struggled with the wheel. At anchor, without headway, controlling the rudder was like wrestling with an unhinged barn door in a windstorm.

  The islands served as protection, breaking the waves and deflecting the winds, but also as toothy sites for destruction.

  Hobson swung the wheel over so that the tug could set two anchors and be at the bottom of a “V” with its top opening into the wind. He realized that the swing, if uncontrolled, would bring them dangerously close to a noticeably rockbound island. Crottle shoved the second anchor out just as a second big green wave hit. The line paid out uncontrolled. Gunnarson and Crottle both tried to get it secured around a bitt, but by then they had swung back directly to leeward of the original anchor. They could not muscle it in, and took wraps around the steam windlass instead.

  Crottle and Gunnarson staggered to the wheelhouse and collapsed in a heap. Two Baltimore seamen operated the windlass and the tug inched between the two anchors.

  In the end, the tug dragged both anchors and had its pilothouse windows smashed in. Yet, in its patched teakettle fashion, the tired old boat survived. By mid-day on the next day, the sky had begun to clear.

  For once, Crottle did not conduct drills.

  After supper, Hobson took the watch from Gunnarson who went ashore with half the crew. He handed over the cutlass, revolver, and binoculars. The binoculars, in particular, would prove worthless on this near-moonless evening. It was port and starboard for night watches. This evening he had the duty and Crottle was aboard. There was one seaman and one fireman and just a sliver of a crescent moon. Characteristically, Gunnarson regarded him with a look of barely controlled malevolence. In Gunnarson’s eyes, Hobson brought with him one Jonah-like incident after another.

  The seas had begun to subside and, with the two Gatling guns remounted after the typhoon, Hobson felt secure. The rock formations and numerous islands circled the boat protectively and it was quiet again. He searched the water for boats and there were no boats. Every hour he walked the perimeter of the tug and searched for boats. There were no boats. A few hours after midnight, he began to hear noises and sensed that all was not right, but he could not identify the origin. Then he leaned over the side and saw several baskets bumping against the hull. He was sick of baskets. These baskets were tarred on the outside as waterproofing. Hobson hurriedly looked for the seaman on watch and tripped over his body.

  This was it, they had been boarded and he was alone.

  He did not see or hear movement, he simply felt it. When the blow came, Hobson raised his cutlass to parry just as Crottle had drilled into him twice a week for months. He felt the blow jar his wrist and then looked up to see the top half of his cutlass blade cut clean off. The steel in a Samurai sword was so vastly superior to the standard U.S. Navy cutlass. The arch of the stroke had just passed his head, but there would be a return stroke. He leveled the Navy Colt and fired.

  There were half a dozen of them. They had swum out through the frigid waters pushing their weapons in front of them in floating baskets. They had watched for days and figured any direct assault against the Gatling guns would have been suicidal. Matsuda led with the samurai sword, which had just rendered Hobson’s cutlass useless. They were all wet and dressed in black, wearing heavy black sweaters, and moving almost soundlessly in tabi socks.

  “Dotteppara ni kaza ana wo akeru kara oboete oke!” Hobson yelled in anger without thinking, in Japanese. The threat, spoken in Japanese, stunned Matsuda for the merest fraction of a second or perhaps it was simply the cold. Matsuda had a very rigid picture of the world and the enemy did not speak Japanese.

  Matsuda’s face showed surprise and resignation as the revolver went off. Hobson fired three more times. Matsuda hissed, “Banzai” and sagged to the deck. Koizumi came up right behind him. He, too, was holding a samurai sword, expertly, very expertly. Hobson desperately needed to buy distance and time to reload.

  Crottle fired a Krag-Jorgensen and Koizumi looked disappointed. Hobson noticed that, for once, Koizumi was not wearing his glasses on the tip of his nose. He was not wearing them at all. The other four had revolvers that were no match in the long run against a Krag—once the element of surprise had been lost. Hobson managed to unlatch the jams on one Gatling and then proceeded to grind up the remainder of the boarding party and large portions of the deck and the rail. The young fireman who was below decks, came up clutching a Krag and thoroughly shaken.

  Hobson shook his head. It had taken some doing to swim out to the tug in these waters this time of year. Matsuda was a spiritual son of the Emperor and no amount of beisu-boru or judo soft-soaping was going to deter him from his duty. His duty was to expand the greater Japan prosperity sphere. He did not care for Koizumi, but Koizumi had not dictated that Korea would be Japan’s, someone else had done that. The Emperor or someone the Emperor trusted had made that determination and that was good enough for Matsuda. It had not occurred to Hobson that Matsuda was Kempeitai, too, but how many military policemen spoke English, however halting, and French, too?

  Hobson looked around him. Crottle and the young fireman still clutched their rifles with a wide-eyed quality. “Wide-eyed” was a phrase that normally denoted wonder, but this was different. He had heard about this strange look to the eyes from the battle veterans. It showed briefly in those moments of intense fear when all senses called for a forced draft to the boilers. Wide-eyed was the acute awareness of a kill-or-be-killed situation.

  Several Nambu revolvers, Japanese guns modeled after the American Colt, littered the deck. The revolver, like the steamship, was one of the great American inventions. For all his Asian wrestling experience, Hobson knew he could never have taken Matsu
da. For him, his Navy Colt had been, to recall the classic Colt advertising phrase, “the great equalizer.” And that was how Jackson had described the Gatling guns, as “equalizers, jumbo style.” It was ironic that Atticaris sold equality in the form of a handful of steel, and Atticaris was an evil man. The world was a confusing place, a confusing place indeed.

  They washed down the decks at sunrise and what did not dry, froze. The holes and splinters from the Gatling gun were the hardest to conceal.

  “What’ll we do with the bodies?” the young fireman asked. Crottle had Hobson go ashore and talk to the mudang. The bodies were not going to wash ashore and draw attention.

  Two crewmen manned the air pumps and Hobson submerged again.

  Gunnarson had searched the entire ship. The Gatling guns had been divided between Atticaris’ staterooms, but the pneumatic dynamite gun and its limber were still missing.

  Hobson hit the spitcock with his cheek and cleared the condensation on his faceplate. He tried to recall the relationships. Four heads in four baskets. Royster Lines pressuring its skippers to turn profits, big profits.

  “Surface, on the bottom, the barque’s really vibrating. The current must be up. I’m going forward into the hold and then work my way aft again.”

  There was no answer. The telephone had failed again. He signaled “okay” with a tug on the lifeline. There was a responding tug.

  He shuffled through the hole at Atticaris’ stateroom and then forward to the hold. He saw nothing new.

  He shuffled back and was knocked off his feet. The barque had shifted. He regained his feet and decided to test the tension to his hose and lifeline. There was something wrong. There was resistance.

  He attempted to retrace his steps and came upon a ladder blocking his way. Ships were built to be tossed about. A ship’s ladder should not have come loose. He examined the ladder. A pin and plate that anchored one side had rusted through and the ladder had torn away from its footing.