The Mark of the Golden Dragon (13 page)

The Wave from Hell roars ever onward, sucking up whatever is in its path—boats ... animals ... people—sucking into its belly whatever it does not grind to bits against the pitiless ground.

"Higher! Higher!" shouts Sidrah, and we crawl further into the ever thinner branches.

"But it is just a wave," I call out. "Surely it must crash and then wash away!"

"No, Jah-kee! Look beyond the crest!" she cries, pointing with her free hand.

There is the wave itself, yes, but behind it there is no trough like a regular wave's—like those I have dealt with all my adult life ... No, no simple little trough there. No, the entire Bay of Bengal rides high behind it!

Horrified, I climb higher as the water comes relentlessly on.

Now it is at the edge of what was the beach, and from my perch, I am amazed to see that there, midway up the wall of water, rides the poor, doomed
Eastern Star,
its two terrified occupants still in it. And now it thunders below us, sweeping all before it.

The Devil Wave hits the helpless land and its defenseless people and their flimsy homes. It smashes into the side of the temple, surging angrily all about. The temple holds, but my
Star
hits the side of the building and shatters into a hundred yellow shards and I see no more of it.

The tree trembles, but it has seen this before, and it holds.

"Higher! There is another wave!" implores Sidrah.

I look out and see that, incredibly, there is yet another wave coming at us. This one sits
on top
of the first one!
Lord!

We scramble higher into the top of the tree as the second wave surges by us, wetting our feet but doing us no other harm. The water swirls below for an astonishingly long time, and then slowly recedes.

It seems that angry Neptune is done with us ... for now.

Disasters bring out the best in people...

We climb down and find the surviving villagers already at work trying to help the victims less lucky than they. There is much wailing and crying, but there are shouts of joy as well. Sidrah is able to hand the child she saved back to the girl's weeping mother. We join a gang digging out a man trapped by wreckage and a boy pinned by a log, and look to help others as best we can.

And disasters bring out the worst in people...
as well as the worst people themselves...

In the midst of yet another rescue attempt, Sidrah suddenly straightens up and looks toward the shore. She looks grim.

"What is it? Another wave?"

"No. Bad men come. Look."

I follow her gaze and see that two big launches have pulled up on the beach and rough men are pouring out of them. Beyond them, out at sea, sits a ship, and from its masthead it flies the black colors.

Pirates!

"Out at sea they feel the sea surge below them and know that big wave will come up and strike shore. They come in to reap evil profits from unhappiness of others," explains Sidrah, the anger plain in her usually impassive face.

The seagoing marauders swarm up the beach and rage through the stricken town, and the people of the village are helpless before them. Those the pirates cannot use are struck down without mercy, and the ones they can use—those to be held hostage for ransom or to be sold as slaves—are shoved into their boats and taken back to the big ship. It is as easy as plucking apples from a tree for the heartless bastards to capture the stunned victims of the tsunami. A gang of them rampages through the temple, stealing all they can lay their hands on. The monks cry out in protest, but it does them no good, for the pirates club them down, laughing at their anguish.

"Run, Sidrah!" I shout, and run we do, but as we dash past the temple, we see with dismay that there is a high cliff to the rear of the temple, so we cannot run there. We are caught between that stone wall and the devils from the sea.
Damn! We are trapped!
They are on us in a moment.

A particularly large and smelly rogue grabs me and twists my arm behind my back. From her cries, I suspect Sidrah has been similarly assaulted.

"Let go of me, goddamn it!" I yell, twisting in his grip.

My shiv, please, my shiv! Oh, where are you now when I need you?

"You'll pay for this, you dogs!" I threaten, but I fear in vain, for no, it does not serve. Rough hands are put on us and we are taken, the pirates plainly delighted to have snatched two girls as well dressed as we are and surely worth something in the way of very sweet ransoms.

We stand on the deck of the pirate ship, which has made sail, and we are headed south and are now out of sight of the plundered town. Most of the captives have been shoved below into what smells like the hold of a slaver, but Sidrah and I remain on deck, being examined by the grinning rogue of a captain. He is dressed in black pantaloons with a wide leather belt. His thick chest is covered with curly black hairs and crossed with two heavy straps. Above us flutters his flag, which I can now see has two crossed scimitars on a field of black, with a silver five-pointed star between the blades. Sidrah has her chin in the air, her haughtiest look on her face, and is speaking to the captain. I do not know the language, but I know what she is saying.

I am Sidrat'ul Muntaha, Daughter of the House of Chen. You would do well to treat us kindly, if you mean to keep your head.

The beast nods, happy at the news, and he replies.

That is very good, Little Chicken. Charlie-san shall pay dearly to get you back. But what is this strange creature?
He hooks his thumb at me.

Being so addressed, I put on the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls Look—chin up, eyes hooded, lips together, teeth apart, and gaze upon the captain as if I were looking at a toad, to which he most certainly seems to be related. I decide to speak up for myself.

"Listen, you misbegotten son of a slime worm. I am Lieutenant Jacky Faber, Royal British Navy, also known as the dread Ju kau-jing yi, beloved by Cheng Shih, Admiral of the China Sea! I sail under her protection! Look upon this, lowly eater of cockroaches, and despair!"

I whip my pigtail from off my neck and show him my Golden Dragon tattoo, my Safe Passage in these perilous waters, as it were.
So, there, pig...

He laughs and brings the back of his hand across my face. I cry out and take a step back. He brings his own grisly face up to mine and exposes his yellow teeth and spits out some surly words.

"Be careful, Jah-kee!" hisses Sidrah, who had translated my bootless threat. "The arrogant fool says that he has no love for the whore Cheng Shih and he does not fear her! Especially since you, the bearer of her hated mark, will not survive this voyage if you do not curb your tongue!"

The greasy cur of a captain issues orders and I am grabbed by two burly sailors and stood up on the rail. Teetering there and looking down, I see the water swirling darkly by the ship's hull. Looking across, I see that the land is about a quarter mile off to the west.

"He says he will throw you in to drown, Jah-kee," says Sidrah, sounding very worried. "Please be careful what you say."

I look at the water. I look at the land. I look at the captain snarling next to me, and strangely I think of Jemimah Moses and one of the animal tales she used to tell me and the kids back on the
Nancy B.
as we plowed through the Caribbean last year. It had to do with Brother Rabbit and a horrid briar patch into which Brother Fox and Brother Bear were threatening to toss him.

I turn to this sleazy captain and work up a gob of spit and aim it at his eye.

"Do what you will!" I shout. "You sorry sack of monkey shit."

"
Arrhhhhgash!
" he roars, and I am thrown off the side, and as the water comes up to meet me, I hum...

Born and bred in a briar patch...

Great, just great...

Here I am, sitting on yet another desolate beach, my prospects dim. The ocean lies in front of me, with the thick jungle behind, teeming with tigers, no doubt.
Well, girl, be glad you're still alive, and you'd best get on with it.
With a heavy sigh and a mighty groan, I get to my feet and stretch. I figure my best option is to walk north, to return to the devastated village to see if I can arrange some sort of passage back to Rangoon and Charlie's place.

After that unwashed cur of a captain had me tossed into the drink, I had stayed below long enough to see the hull of the pirate slip out of sight. After allowing sufficient time to lapse so that all aboard would think me drowned, I kicked to the surface and started pulling for the shore...
Please, Father Neptune, please hold back your toothy sharks, because I think you have handled me roughly enough this day.

I settled into the rhythm of the strokes and soon set up a good pace, the slippery silk of my sarong not slowing me down at all as I slid through the water, my mind churning. I knew Sidrah would be ransomed, she being the daughter of the House of Chen, after all. I certainly wasn't doing her any good back on that ship, but if I can at least get back to Charlie and tell him what happened to her, he might be able to take action. As for the other poor people on that pirate ship, it was certainly the slave pens for them, as no one would ransom poor fisher folk. Aye, Sidrah would certainly be ransomed, and the others enslaved, but another thing I knew for certain: After that bastard saw the dragon mark on my neck, there was no way I was gonna leave that ship alive. I probably would have spent some interesting time below-decks with the captain and his crew before having my neck wrung and my body tossed overboard.

For me, it was the devil or the deep blue sea, and I chose the sea.

As I trudge along, keeping close to the shoreline should a hungry tiger appear with dinner on his mind, I pull the ruins of my beautiful silk sarong away from my skin, the better to dry it out. Of course, the fine pink silk is a mess, all flimsy and smeared, but I gotta wear somethin'. Oh, well, the sun feels good on my muscles after that long swim, and for that I am grateful.
Walk on, girl...

I do keep walking, but I am getting hungry and thirsty and I do not have my shiv with which to dig clams or poke the eyes out of coconuts. There is a lot of ropey seaweed lying about on the beach and there are rocks around which the stuff is clustered, so I mess about in it, trying to find some luckless beast to devour, but find nothing. I do notice that the channel right here gets rather narrow and fishing craft out on the water have to come close in here. There is one rock in particular that sits a good distance out.
Would have to watch out for that one, should I be sailing,
says the mariner in me.

Well, you ain't sailing, you're walkin', so get back to it.

Within a few minutes I round a point on the shoreline and see that the channel has opened out into a wide expanse of water and there is a good deal of shipping upon it.
Well, forget about it, ain't none of it gonna do you any good. Keep walking ... If night catches you out here, you might spend the night in a tiger's tummy, so move it and—

Good Lord!
There's a ship out there pretty close to the shore and she's flying American colors! If I can flag her down, she might help me!

I immediately run into the water and begin waving my arms about my head, shouting, "Help me! I'm an American, too!"

But I know it ain't gonna do any good because they are too far out to hear. And if any sailor aboard would train his spyglass on me, he would see what looked to him to be a demented, heathen Chinese person going mad on the shore. Certainly nothing to tell the captain about, certainly nothing to impede them from wherever they were going.

Oh, oh, oh! What to do?

Ha! I'll try semaphore!
I arrange my arms and make the signals.

H ... E ... L ... P ... M ... E...

No good. Not a sail is slacked, and though I see the flash of sun off a long glass lens, their course is not changed. Stupid American sailors don't know Royal Navy signals.
No, no, they're not stupid.
You
are! Think! It's going to get away! Think!

In despair I see the ship approach the point I just passed. Soon it will be around it and gone.

Damn!
And it is a schooner, too, and it looks like a New Englander, which might know of the
Nancy B. Damn ... How do you get a bloody ship to stop, for chrissakes? How...?

It hits me. I know how ... and others of my ilk know how ... We've always known how.

The
Lorelei ... Yes!

I turn and pound back up the beach from whence I had just come, then round the point, the ship now being, for the moment, out of sight. Whipping off my top, I pick up a curved piece of gray driftwood and begin wading out to that rock I spotted before, the one close by the channel ... or close enough, I hope.

Reaching the rock, I climb up on it, grabbing a good bunch of seaweed as I go. I plunk my tail down upon the top of it, wrap my sarong tightly around my legs, put my matching top about my feet in such a way as to suggest a fin, arrange the seaweed on my head such that it covers my baldness and trails down over my breast.