The Sand Pebbles (27 page)

He went over to the engine and put a wrench on one of the big coupling nuts and slugged at it one-handed. The sledge just bounced off. He braced the wrench with his knee and slugged awkwardly with both hands. The wrench slipped off and skinned his knee and fell into the crankpit with a mocking clatter. He went back and sat on the workbench.

He sat there for an hour. He was whipped. He would have to put the engine back together, all hopes gone to hell, all yesterday’s good work useless, and all next summer it would be roundy-go-thump again. He sat staring bitterly at his two empty hands.

“Jehk.”

Holman looked up. Po-han had a shy, boyish look on his face. His head was up and his eyes were steady.

“Inside litee bit hot now,” he said, putting his hand on his heart. “I can do, Jehk. I no give goddamn, Lop Eye Shing makee me tlobbah.”

Holman jumped grinning off the workbench. He could feel the fires blazing up in him again.

“You, me, Po-han! We’ll whip ’em all!” he said. “If we have to, we’ll make Lop Eye Shing so much trouble he’ll turn sky-blue pink!”

Po-han grinned, but not very strongly. He was still afraid.

The engine fought back. The coupling nuts would not come loose. There were thirty of them, ten to a flange, each nut four inches
across, and they were welded in their threads by the rust of fifty years. Po-han held the wrench steady and Holman swung the twenty-pound sledge until his wrists felt wooden and his fingers trembled and he could hardly close his hands. In two hours, they got one nut off.

“Po-han, we got to get smart about this,” Holman said.

With ball peen hammers they beat the paint off all the nuts, hoping by the repeated small shocks to loosen the rust-bind in the threads. They dripped kerosene on the exposed bolt threads, hoping it would seep inside the nuts to loosen and lubricate. Then Holman sledged again.

There was an art to sledging. Amateurs used a full-arm swing, and it was mostly noise and show. The best way was to move the sledge only about a foot, arms rigid and your right hand only a few inches from the hammer head, and you swung your whole body from the ankles. You made your whole body into a battering ram with the sledge as striking point, and you poured the fused momentum of bone, muscle and steel into what you hit. If what you hit did not yield, all the energy reflected back into you, and it jarred you to your heels.

The nuts would not yield. They tried each nut in turn, jacking the shaft to get at the lower ones, and stopped to ball peen again and drip more kerosene, and sledged over the nuts a second time. Holman sledged with an increasingly desperate, blasting anger, and with each blow he could feel in his right hand the back jar of unavailing force re-enter him. Steel on steel struck sparks and added a sulfurous flavor to the steamy, damp kerosene smell. Both men dripped sweat. By suppertime they had loosened one more nut.

“Ain’t much, for a day’s work,” Holman said wearily.

Po-han grinned. He was happy about that second nut. He thought they had all winter. He did not know about the time pinch.

After supper Holman went to the sick bay and got small bottles of oil of peppermint and oil of wintergreen. He had heard that they were more penetrating than kerosene. He tried to explain to Po-han, as they dripped the smelly stuff on the bolt threads. Po-han thought about it and became very excited. With some difficulty, he told Holman
his idea: castor oil, then, should be best of all. Holman laughed and explained again about viscosity and why castor oil would not work on rusted steel threads. It cheered him.

The cheer did not last. By midnight the engine room smelled like a candy store and Holman’s arms were numb and aching to the shoulders and they had not loosened one extra nut. Haythorn came in on the gratings and yelled down.

“Hellfire, Jake, you gonna keep up that pounding all night? There’s guys up here want to sleep.”

“I’m just now knocking off,” Holman said.

Po-han was concerned about Holman. “Tomollah plenty can do,” he said. He patted Holman’s shoulder. “I burn joss stick, Jehk.”

“You do that, Po-han,” Holman said. He was ready to try anything.

In the morning Holman’s right hand was sore and badly swollen. He could not close it. He had to hold the wrench and let Po-han sledge. He coached Po-han on form, and Po-han learned it rapidly, but he was just not heavy enough. There was a saying: the smaller the man, the bigger the hammer. But the navy did not have sledges bigger than twenty-pounders. Holman made Po-han cushion his hand well with a rag, to soften the back jar, as he should have done himself the day before. They went over all the nuts again and did not loosen a single one of them. Holman sighed. “What the hell we going to do, Po-han?”

“Hammah!” Po-han said. “Hammah hammah hammah!” He grinned at Holman.

“By God, that’s the spirit!” Holman said.

They started over the nuts again. Lt. Collins came down and stood on the bottom step of the ladder and looked around. His face did not like what he saw. Holman stood up respectfully.

“Just what is it you plan to do?” Lt. Collins asked.

Holman explained again. With the engine stripped and the floorplates up alongside it, they could see the slight bulge in the bottom plating. A wetness of water in the bilge, with kerosene iridescent on
top of it, made a dry black island of the bulge. There was no denying it.

“I hadn’t realized it would take all this.” Lt. Collins motioned in distaste at the piled engine parts. “Don’t let any silly professional pride lead you to taking any risks, Holman. Give up the job, if it seems too much for you.”

“We’ll do it, sir. We’re going right along with it,” Holman said.

Through the gratings he watched Lt. Collins go out of sight. He knows about Shing’s boycott, Holman thought. You can’t keep nothing from scuttlebutt on this ship. Why in hell didn’t he order me to stop? Holman would have been almost glad to have been ordered to stop, just then. But he would not stop of his own accord.

“Well, let’s get at it,” he told Po-han.

They dripped more kerosene and candy oil and sledged all around and no nuts would budge. Po-han streamed sweat, and his breath whistled. Holman felt grim. He wired a rag to a steel rod and soaked it in gasoline and lit it. Then he held it to one of the nuts, hoping the heat would expand the nut and break the rust bind, but the flame was not concentrated enough. Flaming gasoline dripped and set fire to the kerosene in the crankpit and they had a bad few minutes putting it out with gunny sacks. That put an end to that scheme. Don’t take any risks, Lt. Collins had said.

They went over the nuts again. None yielded. Holman tried to put on a good face at dinner.

“You better have Doc look at that hand,” Burgoyne told him.

“It’s all right. I’m not using it.”

“Want I should come down and help this afternoon, Jake?”

“No thanks, Frenchy,” Holman said. “Extra hands ain’t what I need just now. But you ain’t got a blowtorch in your locker, have you?”

“’Fraid not.” Burgoyne laughed. “Well, I’ll go ashore then.”

That afternoon Po-han seemed willing to go on hammering forever. It was no good. Holman decided to chisel off the nuts, although he did not have enough hex stock to make all new ones. And if the coupling bolts would not come out, as they probably would not, he
would by God drill them out. They could send to Hankow for stock to make new ones. He would settle just for having the foundation aligned by the time Lynch got back.

Po-han whaled happily away at a cold chisel. Holman knew it was foolish, but he got another chisel and worked himself. His hand hurt and he could just barely manage a ball peen hammer with it. It went painfully slowly. After supper they each had one nut split along the flat, spread and backed off. Holman’s hand throbbed and hurt all the way to the shoulder, and he could not do another one. It was no good. Po-han might get another one by midnight—

“Hello, Jake!”

It was Banger Knox, red-faced and grinning at them, dressed in a pale blue one-piece boiler suit.

“Fair got it all in pieces, haven’t you?” he said, looking around. “Frenchy told me about your trouble, at the Red Candle.”

Holman saw the blowtorch he was holding. “God bless you, Banger!” he said. “Why didn’t I think to check with your ship?”

Expanded by the pale blue concentrated flame, the nuts came loose. Not easily, screeching and groaning in ancient, rusty protest, but off they came. Holman plied the torch, Po-han held the wrench, and Banger was an absolute artist with the sledge. The engine room filled with the smell of gasoline, scorched paint and hot metal and it rang with exultant British, Chinese and American yells as each nut yielded. Duckbutt Randall came in on the gratings.

“Hey, you guys,” he called. “What’s coming off down there?”

“Nuts!” Holman whooped in sheer delight.

“Nuts to you, too,” Duckbutt Randall said indignantly. “I think you’re all nutty as a fruitcake!” He went back to the quarterdeck.

Shortly after midnight, the nuts were all off. Banger was dirty and sweat-soaked. Holman made coffee and they all drank it and felt good together.

“You saved my life,” Holman told Banger. “I was about whipped.”

“No whip!” Po-han was indignant.

“Hammah hammah hammah.” Holman laughed at him.

“Hammah hammah hammah!” Po-han grinned proudly.

Holman showed Banger what he planned to do. The British sailor saw it instantly. He whistled.

“You’ve a bloody bold notion there, chum,” he said admiringly. “I don’t see why you can’t bring it off, though. D’ye mind if I stop by now and then to watch the work?”

“God, no!” Holman said. “Come any time. Jesus, Banger, I wish I could give you the ship.”

“I would like a go at this job. I would indeed,” Banger said. “Fair down to first principles here, you know.”

“I know,” Holman said.

The hand throbbed and kept him awake. He went to the sick bay after breakfast. Jennings had him soak it in hot water and then bandaged it and put it in a sling.

“Be sure to keep it elevated,” he said. “Don’t try to use it.”

“I’ll be careful, Doc,” Holman said.

“I mean it! You could lose that hand, if you get a bone infection!”

“Sure, Doc.”

Holman hurried below. He was very impatient with his hand. Po-han was waiting. The next step was to drive out the coupling bolts. Po-han tried several, sledging as hard as he could, and they would not start. The bolt metal just splayed out. They had to stop and make a socketed brass drift to protect the bolt ends. Po-han was too slow on the lathe, so Holman took his hand out of the sling to make the drift. He tried to use only the tips of his fingers. Then he held the drift while Po-han slugged at it. No bolts would start. They were body-bound, a tight, driving fit when they were installed fifty years ago, and even a little rust could bind them absolutely. It was going to be a worse ordeal than the nuts had been.

“We can’t bull ’em out. Let’s get scientific,” he said.

He tried the blowtorch. As he had feared, the big coupling flanges soaked off the heat so fast that it did not help. They dripped oil of wintergreen, but it could not possibly seep through eight horizontal inches, and all it did was smell the place up. Then they slugged over
all the bolts and not a one would start. Holman shook his head. His hand hurt and he felt dizzy. He had a feeling of the great, dumb, massive invincibility of the steel and the soft, weak, hurtingness of flesh. He wished incongruously that he had some candy to eat, the thick, pink, disc-shaped candies kids got back in Wellco, Nevada.

“Hammah hammah hammah!” Po-han said.

“Hammah hammah hammah!”

They went round again. Po-han sledged beautifully, but he was just not heavy enough. Holman thought that if his hand was all right he would sledge those bolts with such wild fury that they would all pop out. No bolts started.

He went up to dinner. They all knew he was in trouble and none of them were sorry for him. Bronson kidded him about the hammering.

“You sound like the village blacksmith down there, Ho-mang,” he said. “You going to keep it up all night again?”

“The muscles of his scrawny arms are strong as rubber bands,” Crosley said.

After dinner, Holman gave up on the sledging. He had Po-han saw one bolt off flush with the flange and they rigged a drilling post and he had Po-han start drilling the bolt out. Holman began sawing off another bolt. He favored his hand all he could. Po-han seemed tireless. He turned the drill with the ratchet lever and fed it heavily with his left hand and the chips came out smoking.

“Drill drill drill!” Holman said, grinning at him.

“Dlill Dlill Dlill!”

Burgoyne came down quietly in dungarees. “What can I do, Jake?” he asked.

“Spell Po-han on that ratchet handle, if you want to,” Holman said. “But you ain’t got no call to do engine work, Frenchy. You got the boilers.”

“You let me study out what my calls are.” Burgoyne grinned his slow, easy grin and knuckled his mustache. “I ride on this ship, don’t I?”

“Well … I’ll be much obliged, Frenchy.”

Holman felt weak and foolish inside. He bent to his hacksawing, to hide his feeling. They all worked steadily. After supper Banger came aboard again. He had another drilling post with him.

“I thought you’d never start them with the sledge,” he said.

By midnight they had three drilled out. Each bolt meant hand drilling a two-inch hole through eight inches of steel. It was mankilling. The others were dirty and tired and cheerful. They didn’t know about the time pinch.

“Good show, mates,” Banger said. “Leg over leg, the dog got to Dover, as you might say.”

“Dlill dlill dlill!” Po-han said.

They all laughed with him.

“Jake, you got to take better care of that hand,” Burgoyne said. “You take my patrol tomorrow and let me work down here.”

Holman tried to argue.

“Lie up a day. Don’t be a bloody fool,” Banger said.

“All right,” Holman said.

The hand would not let him go to sleep easily. He lay in his bunk and thought about them. They were all good guys. They were all very good guys.

Jennings was angry about the hand. “It’s worse. It’s dangerous,” he said. “You could lose it, you know.”