The Sand Pebbles (40 page)

“I’ll try,” Reynolds said.

“Good! And thank you for it!”

Lt. Collins finished his tea and stood up. The other men rose.

“What about our native Christians?” Baker pressed.

“Most of them can take shelter with relatives in the country,” Reynolds said. “This is China, Mr. Baker. We’ll build up again.”

“They can bring death on their relatives in the country!” Baker would not smooth it under. “You and General Pan simply have to do
something
, Lt. Collins!” he almost shouted.

“I’m not God. I can’t make it rain,” Lt. Collins told him evenly. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

On the way back he heard the drums and gongs all around him in the city. People still crowded the bund. Over their heads he could see the ship, solid and gunned and comforting. His chair tilted down the inset stone steps to the sands, the bearers yelling for gangway and jostling the water coolies trying to come up with their yoked wooden buckets slopping. He got out of the chair on the pontoon, beside the small office-waiting room with the Japanese flag atop it. The sailors
were all along the rail aft, watching another ceremony. Even Randall, on the quarterdeck watch, was too busy staring at it to know that his commanding officer had returned.

Chinese with wild, angry faces were holding over the fire a bamboo platform with a wooden god image on it. The god’s paint was blistering and the crowd shrieked and howled. They moved the god off the fire and seized buckets of water from the water coolies and doused him. Their yelling and drumming and gonging rose in crescendo. They flung the empty buckets away and the water coolies went humbly to refill them. The sailors were all pointing and laughing. Lt. Collins caught Randall’s eye.

“San Pablo …
boarding!” Randall cried in confusion.

He ran to the gangway to salute. Lt. Collins brushed angrily by him and went to his cabin and sent for Bordelles.

“Muster the men aft. I want to talk to them,” he said.

He had a few minutes to plan what he would say. The men probably had a garbled story by now, but they had no sense of the gravity of the situation. In a way, that was good. He did not want to shake their superb confidence.

Facing them on the fantail, he told them what he thought they should know. “The people know they are all going to die and it affects their minds,” he said. “The least we can do is to respect their ceremonies and humor them in anything they think might help. General Pan has ordered that no animals be killed for food, no fish caught and no eggs broken, until it rains. We can only get vegetables from the beach.” He paused. They were taking it well. “I expect you all to keep a decent silence about the decks during their ceremonies,” he went on. “I want the deck watches doubly alert. We must be prepared for unexpected outbursts.”

They nodded gravely, glancing at the mob along the bund. They were good, steady men. Lt. Collins dismissed them and went to the bridge and called a repel boarders drill. He thought it might have a good moral effect on both sides. It went very nicely, as
San Pablo
sprang to arms. The bugle sang high and clear, running feet thudded, guns swiveled, cutlasses flashed on the main deck, and steam roared
and billowed amidships. One by one in hearty voices the shouted reports came in. Bordelles made the rounds and returned smiling.

“Perfect, sir. They’re really on their toes.”

“Very well. Secure from all drills.”

In his cabin, with coffee, they talked it over. Bordelles did not think the China Light people would come in to safety. Craddock would just say, as he was so fond of saying, that he dared to trust God rather than guns, implying that whoever did not was both cowardly and heathen.

“I’m glad it’s Mr. Reynolds going out there and not me,” Bordelles said.

“Well, I hope they come in.”

“So do I, sir, but they won’t.” Bordelles shook his head. “Maybe it’ll rain. I hope it rains.”

“Double up all sentries tonight, Tom. Give them a pep talk.”

Lt. Collins took a turn around the boat deck before he went to bed. There were still a few people on the bund, with bobbing paper lanterns, and drums were going in the city. The fire on the sands burned redly, soldiers crouched beside it. He could just make out the sacrificial animals in the glow of the ship’s stern light. They lay side by side on a low platform, their legs folded neatly beneath them, and willow branches had been stuck into the sand all around them. They were clean-shaven, except for their heads. The water chuckled along in front of them and they looked cool and pale and peaceful there together.

He could not go to sleep. The mock fire danced shadows on his window. Drums and the far, ceaseless groaning of the treadmill pumps assailed his ears. He pondered what General Pan had tried so hard to say in his inadequate English.

They were all going to die and they knew it. There was a heavenly order that sent rain and an earthly order that died if it did not get rain, and the two were tied together. The people pleaded and they died patiently and when they had had enough of that, they struck. They mocked heaven and scorched their wooden idols. Wild, angry
destruction of all earthly authority symbols to wound their heavenly counterparts. General Pan was such a symbol. So were all the missionaries, with their treaty privileges. So, pre-eminently, was
San Pablo
. It was a tortured, irrational Chinese version of the rational doctrine that all authority was coupled with a commensurate responsibility.

They could not come to grips with the Christian God. There was just no way of getting at Him. He did not have to give a damn about Chinese or anybody else, unless He pleased to. He could only be supplicated, never coerced. Or
could
He?
Did
this holy man Wing know what he was doing?

A sleep-edge vision shaped itself: the great, collective beast refusing death, rising to rend with powers and methods unthinkable—Lt. Collins was jolted fully awake. He turned on his light and smoked a cigarette.

It was blank nonsense. Nonsense, but their acts based on it would be real. Stick to that level. He had to get the Americans out safely. That was all his responsibility. He would get the China Light bunch aboard somehow, if he had to go out there and plead with each one individually. He would hate that, but he would do it. Their lives were his responsibility.

Firmly he lay down and turned off the light. Firmly he stopped his thoughts and listened to nothing but the tread of the deck sentry. Quite soon he drifted off and slept soundly.

He slept late. Crackling rifle fire brought him out on deck in his pajamas. A file of warlord soldiers on the city wall was firing into the sky to stir up the Rain Dragon. They were doing that every morning, General Pan had said, to comfort the people. Franks and Bordelles came up, worried, and Lt. Collins explained about the Rain Dragon. He sent Franks down to reassure the men on the main deck.

“Pan hinted that I should fire my guns every morning too,” he told Bordelles. “I think Pan half believes that stuff. He’s nervous.”

Bordelles chuckled. Down on the main deck the sailors were laughing.

Lt. Collins ate breakfast alone in his cabin. Yen-ta brought him scrambled eggs and a glass of milk. Mr. Reynolds was trying to break down the Chinese prejudice against milk and he was very proud of his little dairy run by native Christians. He always sent out a quart of milk every morning that the ship was in Paoshan. Lt. Collins pointed at the milk.

“Take away!” he told Yen-ta. “Throw away!”

He did not like milk. It was from the glands of female animals. The Chinese were right about milk. It was unmanly stuff. He did not want the eggs, either. If the crew was going to have to do without eggs, he did not want any being saved back for the chiefs and officers.

“Can catch plenty egg,” Yen-ta assured him. “Evahbody catch plenty egg.”

It was a nervous day. Muster and drills ran off snappily, with a bit too much vigor. Chinese still moved restlessly on the bund and down on the sands. Only the everlasting water coolies were behaving normally. A few high white cumulus clouds drifted across, trailing cool shadows, but they were not going to rain down any rain. They had slowly shifting, fantastic shapes. Perhaps that’s where the Chinese get their notion of a Rain Dragon, Lt. Collins thought.

He spoke to Welbeck about the crew’s mess.
San Pablo
did not have refrigeration and they had to buy fresh stores as they used them. Welbeck said Big Chew could make out very well with vegetables and dry stores for a few days. One of the engine room coolies had relatives in Paoshan and he was smuggling eggs out to the ship. The hens were not obeying the warlord’s order, Welbeck said, chuckling. The coolie was the same one who had made all the trouble in Changsha; he was coming in handy now. Shortly afterward Lt. Collins saw the coolie, Po-han, come aboard with a heavy basket. On impulse, he stopped and commended him. The coolie grinned proudly, showing two gold teeth, and Lt. Collins felt good about it. He did not remember ever having commended one of the Chinese boatmen before, but that fellow had real ship’s spirit.

In the afternoon he sent Bordelles ashore to see if Reynolds had come back from China Light, and what the word was. If it was bad,
he would have to go to China Light himself next day, the last day of grace before the burning. Bordelles had not been long away when the mob thickened on the bund. Shots and a confused crowd clamor came from the city. It could be trouble. General Pan had said he had no reliable troops left. Lt. Collins thought about sending Franks and his section of the landing force to the mission but, given the mood the people were in, that might precipitate a lot of needless killing. He cursed missionaries under his breath and tried to look calm when Franks came up, also worried about the tumult in the city.

“It’s probably just another rain magic ceremony,” Lt. Collins said. “Let’s go out and have a look.”

Fortunately, it was that, and Lt. Collins felt Franks’ unspoken admiration. It was the Rain Dragon himself, greenly winding out of the city and many-legging it along the bund while a shouting, gonging troupe ran with him shooting firecrackers. He was made of green cloth that came to the waists of the twenty-odd men who were his legs. His big spherical head, with green whiskers and bulging eyes, bobbed and turned. He came curving and humping down to the sands, driven by his attendants. They were trying to make him cross the fire, and he did not want to. He tossed his head angrily and dodged and doubled and they headed him back with gongs and firecrackers. Everyone along the bund screamed when he crossed the fire. Each pair of legs jumped high and landed running with short steps and it was like a hump traveling along his back. Then he stood trembling and wrinkled and telescoped into himself with his goggle-eyed head on the sand, and all the spirit and life were gone out of him. The attendants began splashing him with buckets of water. It revived him. Slowly his head came up and he stretched out again sleekly green and dripping and he went cavorting back up to the bund while the crowd cheered.

“Well, sir, I hope that gives him the idea about a little rain,” Franks said.

“I hope so too, Chief. It would make things a lot simpler.”

Bordelles did not come back until almost sunset. He had had to wait for Reynolds. The news was not good. The China Light people
refused to evacuate, but Mr. Craddock would come in in the morning.

“You’re in for a rough time, sir,” Bordelles said, trying not to grin. “Mr. Reynolds says old Craddock’s mad as a split snake because we even came here. He’s going to order us back to Hankow.”

Lt. Collins smiled grimly. It was still a joke to the rest of them.

He talked to Mr. Craddock alone in his cabin. The old man was angry in black, his gray-streaked beard like a club, his eyes and manner more bold and fierce than ever before. Lt. Collins had decided that a soft-spoken disdain would be the best counter.

“I came here under orders and I will have to stay through the crisis,” he said. “I can’t leave while American lives are in danger.”

“It is you who make our danger, sir!” Craddock launched into the anti-gunboat credo. The unequal treaties and the gunboats in Chinese inland waters made a mockery of the Christian spirit. They sparked and fueled the native anti-Christian feeling. Lt. Collins listened patiently, toying with his tea bowl. “The Chinese do not distinguish between your people and mine, sir!” Craddock rumbled across the green baize. “They think we are all Christians.”

“Well, aren’t we?”

“Ask yourself, sir. All the Christians in this district have been praying publicly for rain every day at noon. Have you and your men?”

“No. We have no chaplain.”

Craddock looked his contempt for that excuse. Lt. Collins was thinking. The praying was in part, as General Pan would say, a show to comfort the people. No doubt
San Pablo
was spoiling the moral effect. And there was just a chance—

“In times of great stress the Chinese attack their authority symbols,” Craddock said. “Your ship, sir, is a very hated authority symbol and we are all perforce associated with it in the Chinese mind. The best thing you can do for us is to sail away from here at once.”

“I will have my men pray on deck this noon,” Lt. Collins said. “Would you be willing to lead them in prayer, Mr. Craddock?”

“I would be glad to.” His manner gentled notably.

“In order to associate the ship more clearly with the local Christian effort, do you suppose I might give the prayer signal with the ship’s whistle?” Lt. Collins pursued his thought.

Craddock considered. “Yes. Yes, a good idea,” he decided. “I have time still to go ashore and arrange it with Mr. Reynolds and his people.”

“What do you think about tomorrow, the crisis? Would it help if all the Christians in Paoshan were here aboard, at the crisis scene, so to speak, to pray together?”

“It might indeed. Yes, I think it would.” Mr. Craddock stood up. His manner was wholly changed and mollified. “I’ll arrange that too,” he said. “I’d better get ashore now, Lt. Collins.”

Lt. Collins saw him off the quarterdeck. So far so good, he thought. When he had them all safe behind the guns, his duty would be done. The next step, and not an easy one, was to get the crew ready for prayers. They were probably more profane and irreverent than even the usual run of peacetime professionals, and they had the China sailor’s traditional dislike of missionaries as well. He had them called aft for another talk and he phrased it carefully. He had to leave them room to take the prayer as a joke, if they liked, and yet not seem facetious himself. Predictably, several of the sea lawyers objected. They knew that they could not, under navy regulations, be forced to pray. Holman, surprisingly, was not one of them. Holman had been doing very well lately.