The Sand Pebbles (39 page)

Holman found it pleasant up there talking to Farren and watching the passing show. When the helmsman spun the wheel, he liked hearing the familiar rattle of the steering engine down below and watching the ship’s bow swing over at the same time. You missed that last part, when you were on the floorplates. When they made a speed change, he liked to hear the familiar shovel scrapes or slam of ashpan doors, as the case might be, and at the same time see the smoke thin or boil freshly and note the change in wake and bow wave. It was only from the bridge, he was learning, that he could catch the feeling of the ship as a whole.

Holman was on the bridge one afternoon when they were on their way to Paoshan to see about unrest reported there. They were skirting Ta Island. It was all ponds and bayous and tall, hummocky stands of reeds. They could see bamboo and white mud walls and a few real trees far inland. An angry mosquito buzz crossed the bridge and aft another bullet
spanged
on metal. Far back in reeds to port, a faint
pop pop
sounded.

“Toofay
salute.” Farren grinned. “They hit the stack again.”

It was a legend that the stack was all they ever did hit. It was covered with small sheetmetal patches. The Chinese did not believe the legend. They all ran into the chartroom. Vincent took the wheel. Bordelles slowed to one-third speed. Farren passed the word.

“Take cover! Clear port side!” He jerked the canvas housing from the port machine gun and peered over it at the reeds. “One more shot, you
toofays
. Please shoot, you nice little
toofays,”
he said. “Let me spot you.”

Holman could not see the answering
pop
, but Farren opened fire. It was very loud, and the gun shook his shoulders like silent laughter. The air was suddenly sharp with powder fumes, and bright, empty cartridges tinkled on the white deck. Farren turned and grinned through his red beard.

“That ought to hold ’em, Mr. Bordelles.”

Bordelles rang standard speed and pulled the overhead whistle cord. The whistle blasted hoarsely. Crosley, beside the flag locker, shook hands with himself in the air.

“Another redskin bit the dust!” he said, and a bullet rang the whistle like a bell and glanced off shrieking. Crosley’s eyes popped. “Them dirty sons of bitches!” he said indignantly, glancing around for agreement.

Bordelles, scowling, slowed again. “Get up on the crosstrees and spot!” he snapped at Crosley and, to Farren, “Put a couple of pans into ’em this time!”

Crosley scrambled up the ladder. More men came on the bridge. They were grinning and eager and walking springily on their toes.

“Hey! Hey! I see ’em!” Crosley yelled from above. “Fire a burst, Farren!” Farren did so. “Left about fifty! Down fifty!” Crosley guided him in. “Now you’re on! Right on, boy! Mow ’em down!”

Farren stood spring-legged and hunched and his body moved in a slow, stationary dance. He was lashing the target area in a figure-eight pattern. Holman could not see much. The tall reeds swayed and broke under the storm of bullets. The area took on a dark, mottled look against the lighter green. Oil smoked off the machine gun. It was too far away to see much.

“All right. Cease firing,” Bordelles said at last.

They waited a few minutes to be sure the
toofay
had enough. One of the Fangs came out of the chartroom and began gathering up the cartridge cases. They would go for squeeze. Another bullet whined over and the Fang scuttled back into the chartroom.

“Hey! They aimed that one at
me!”
Crosley shouted.

Lt. Collins came into the bridge through his private door and all the men snapped to attention. He was cool and crisp and half smiling.

“Can you see figures? Are they in uniform?” he called up to Crosley.

“All I been seeing is reeds waving, sir,” Crosley said. “There’s a shack in there, too. I can see the roof tiles.”

“Call the men to general quarters, Mr. Bordelles,” Lt. Collins said.

That was a slow-clanging gong and a ragged bugle call. Holman had to go below and take the throttle. Lynch came down. He only came to the engine room when drills required him to. They spent an hour working on the
toofay
. The ship had a different, lively, springy feel to Holman and his ears brought him the picture of what they were doing up there. The machine guns mowed several acres of reeds and Haythorn probed with the three-pounder for the hidden hut. It barked sharply, much like Red Dog. Sweat beaded Lynch’s puffy face and he kept slapping his pistol. There were a lot of bells and maneuvers with the engine, to hold station in the sluggish current. When they finally secured and whistled and steamed on, a scattering of shots still came from the reeds to send them on their way. Lynch was disgusted.

“It ain’t like the old days. We been getting soft since the war,” he grumbled to Burgoyne. “I tell you, it’s damned bad luck not to have the last shot!”

The water was very low in the Chien. After they left the delta, Lt. Collins had to climb with his binoculars to the flying bridge to see well across the banks. He saw women out sweeping the rice fields with twig brooms. They made reddish dust swirls in the light breeze. Reddish streaks showed through the whitewash on the mud-walled farmsteads. They were drying and crumbling under the clear, bright sky. The bamboo groves around the farmsteads drooped sadly. Along the banks groups of ragged farmers in conical bamboo hats climbed endlessly on the treadmills that drove their groaning pumps. All that morning the sound of the pumps had followed
San Pablo
like a reproach. Or menace. The farmers leaned on the bar and climbed with thin brown shanks and they did not turn, as they usually did, to watch
San Pablo
steam by them. The river swirled clear above white sand in the shrunken channel. It should have been muddy brown and running from bank to bank.

Lt. Collins climbed down, stopped for a word with Bordelles, and went back into his cabin. He had not seen anyone fishing all morning. He did not like the seeming of things. Paoshan was the furthest reach of his responsibility in Hunan, and he was never sure of it.

He came out when they tied up to the Japanese pontoon in Paoshan, right after the noon meal. A plank led from the flat steel pontoon to a sandy foreshore that stretched a hundred feet to the stone river embankment. Water should have been lapping the stone. Chinese were massed all along the bank and more were up on the gray, crenelated city wall and a crowd hum filled the air. People were all over the river sands. One group of warlord soldiers was tending a fire and another group of priests and soldiers was slaughtering animals at the water’s edge. They had a bull, a sheep and a pig. The pig squealed and resisted and made a nasty business of it.

“All lines doubled up, sir,” Bordelles reported. “I think I’ll go aft and watch the show, if it’s all right.”

“I’ll go with you.”

The chiefs and a few others were by the sickbay. They cleared a space along the rail for the two officers. Most of the crew was on the fantail watching. The priests were clipping and shaving the animals. A stocky Chinese in a gray gown waded out and began to declaim above the river with flinging, emotional gestures.

“Sir! That’s General Pan!” Bordelles whispered.

It was indeed the Paoshan warlord. If that fierce, jolly, hardheaded man would put off his uniform and behave like this, things had to be very wrong. The sailors on the fantail had begun laughing. Word came up that General Pan was confessing his sins to the river god. Oh Joy was translating for the sailors, and they were laughing. Lt. Collins sent Franks down to stop it and to quiet them.

“Tell them it’s religious. They have to respect it,” he said.

General Pan was a kind of an officer and a kind of a friend, and Lt. Collins did not want to know about his sins. They were best left in Chinese. When Pan went back into the city, Lt. Collins would call on him at the
yamen
with all due ceremony and then he would learn what the trouble was. By then the chartered sedan chairs would be rigged. Abruptly, he turned and went forward. Bordelles followed.

“The Chinese are a very ingenious people,” Bordelles said.

It was one of the ensign’s favorite joking remarks, and sometimes it irritated Lt. Collins. It irked him now. It did not seem in good taste. It did not seem at all a time for joking.

He rode through noisy, smelly streets in the sedan chair, from the
yamen
to the mission compound, still shaken by what General Pan had told him. He kept his curtains down and peered through the cracks. He did not like the crowd faces. A sedan chair with curtains up passed him and the passenger was a squealing pig dressed in silken robes. Waves of jeering laughter followed the pig. He had to wait at the main street until a procession passed. They were men and women with headdresses of woven willow branches and they carried smoking joss sticks. They had straw pads strapped to their knees and every third step they would go down and beat their foreheads on the filthy stones. They all had blood on their strained and staring faces.

At the mission he drank tea in a dowdy American parlor and talked to Reynolds, the senior missionary. He was a stooped, worn man with sparse hair and rimless glasses and a gentle manner. He was very reasonable, for a missionary. He was not one of the anti-gunboat fanatics, like old Craddock at China Light. The two younger men present let Reynolds do the talking.

“Thank God our womenfolk are at Kuling for the summer,” he said.

“How about the women at China Light?”

“Some are still there, I’m afraid.”

Lt. Collins frowned. It was always simpler if there were no women and children.

“Mr. Craddock feels safe that far from the city,” Reynolds said.

“What’s your estimate, Mr. Reynolds?”

“I … don’t quite know, sir. This is very unusual.”

“General Pan says the countryside will rise
en masse.”
Pan had been deeply disturbed. He had tried hard to make Lt. Collins understand that this was something radically out of the ordinary. “What do you know about this man Wing?” Lt. Collins asked.

One of the younger men jumped up, flushing. “He’s a servant of Satan!” the man said harshly. “He thinks he can coerce the Almighty! He means to blackmail very God Himself!”

“Please, Mr. Baker,” Reynolds said. “Wing is a native holy man,” he told Lt. Collins. “He’s behind the trouble, all right.”

They had had a series of bad years in the district and a small
famine last year, Reynolds explained. They were weakened. If it did not rain soon they would have a big famine this year and they would all die. So they had begun to make heaven lose face, to force rain. They believed in a vague, impersonal heavenly power that could be symbolized in many ways and influenced, even coerced, by the way they treated the symbols. They had begun to outrage decorum and to beat and revile their wooden idols. That much was old custom in China.

“Then Wing began preaching that the Christian God was the one inhibiting the Rain Dragon,” Reynolds said sadly. “The people began demanding that we humiliate and coerce our God.”

Lt. Collins raised his eyebrows. Of course the notion was preposterous, Reynolds went on, but it was hard to make that clear to ignorant Chinese. What they had done was to begin holding every day at noon a mass public prayer for rain, on a bell signal from the mission, as a token of good faith and concern. But Wing had begun a fast, pointedly and publicly aimed at the Christian God. Local geomancers had concurred in a prediction that if it did not rain by a certain day it would not rain all summer. Then Wing had announced that if it did not rain on that day he would burn himself alive on the river sands and the Christian God would have no face left at all.

“The day is Friday,” Reynolds said. “Today is Tuesday.”

“General Pan expects them to go berserk and kill all the Christians in the district,” Lt. Collins said. “What do you think?”

“You must not let Wing burn himself!” Baker exclaimed. “It’s repugnant to all civilized opinion!”

“That part is a purely Chinese affair. I have no authority, under the treaties, to interfere.”

“You could order General Pan!”

Lt. Collins checked his anger. It was the anti-gunboat missionaries’ habit of siding with Chinese complaints of arbitrary high-handedness which had so gravely undermined the structure of gunboat authority in China since the war. But these men were not anti-gunboat.

“General Pan expects his own soldiers to join the mob, Mr. Baker,”
he said. “He fears for his own life and I have offered him refuge in
San Pablo
Friday.”

“We must simply pray for rain and trust God’s mercy,” Reynolds said.

“I can take you and the China Light people to Hankow. You can collect an indemnity later, for property damage.”

“What about our native Christians? What about their property?” Baker wanted to know. He was a chunky blond young man.

“I am only responsible for American lives and property,” Lt. Collins said. He was deciding that he did not like Baker. “I’ll take as many as I have room for.” He turned to Reynolds. “I want to ask a favor, Mr. Reynolds. Will you go to China Light and persuade them to come in and take refuge on the ship before Friday?” Reynolds looked dubious. Lt. Collins smiled grimly. “I know,” he said. “But you will be more likely to persuade them than I would be. At least the women and children.”