The Sand Pebbles (48 page)

“Well, thanks, Po-han,” he said. “You’re a real shipmate.”

“Laodah
have got Kuomintang papah,” Po-han said. “I think go Hankow no tlobbah.”

“We’re going to Hankow too, Po-han,” Holman said.

“I just wish I’d had a chance to say good-bye to her,” Burgoyne said.

“She’ll be all right. She’ll be waiting for us in Hankow, Frenchy,” Holman said.

He was thinking that Po-han had not had a chance to say good-bye to his family, either. That was how it was with sailors.

In places the lake bottom lay almost bare, green-slimed mud and coarse grass sallowing.
San Pablo
followed the drowned channel and her bow wave crumbled mud from the banks. Fish teemed in the shrinking patches of water. Chinese in hundreds of sampans competed with millions of white birds at harvesting the trapped fish. The breeze brought human yells and bird screams and a smell of greenish rot.

Lt. Collins spent his days on the bridge. He was depressed. Under the new ruling
San Pablo
had no right in that end of the lake any more. He was to get the missionaries out quietly, avoiding incidents at all costs. He thought of how
San Pablo
had first opened up the lake with a famous cruise to Paoshan. China was still a shadowy Empire in those old days and they had protested it was a breach of the treaties because Paoshan was not a treaty port. Fighting Bob Evans was C-in-C Asiatic. He had said his interpretation was that the gunboats could go anywhere in China they could find water to float their keels. He had made it stick and the right automatically extended to the other treaty powers; it had been a factor in opening up Central China. It was
San Pablo’s
modest mark on history and
now history was erasing it. This would be
San Pablo’s
last cruise to Paoshan.

In the Ta An narrows they passed a stranded timber raft. The people would have to live in the matshed village on top of it until the spring flood floated them again. Not far beyond the raft they were fired upon from ambush. They got up the hinged armor flaps and ran out of range. Most of the bullets hit the stack. It was probably all of the ship that could be seen from the ambush. The tall stack was covered already with patches over bullet holes. It was weakened by rust inside that fretted all the way through in places, and it was just one more sign that
San Pablo
had almost lived out her days.

The sailors on the bridge took the ambush well. Plan Red was sustaining them. But one of the passengers, Wilbur Venn, was on the bridge, and he would not let it go.

“Great stuff, hey, Bill? Something to write home about!”

Lt. Collins smiled sourly. He did not like to be called “Bill” on his own bridge.

“I’ll fight too, if you have to fight,” Venn said. “So will Pollard. We know your orders and all that but, I mean, if it’s forced on you, just give us guns.”

Lt. Collins nodded. He hated warlike civilians almost as much as he hated belligerently peaceful missionaries. Fighting was for professionals. Venn would not stop talking.

“It’s just not natural, Chinamen shooting and white men running,” Venn said. “It’s against nature. Next thing you know, this guy Tunney’s going to beat Dempsey.” He waited for a response. “Bill, I’ll bet you ten and the drinks Tunney wins,” he said. “We’ll settle at the club in Hankow.”

“No.” Lt. Collins turned his back. He despised Venn.

“Hey, Wilbur, I’ll bet you ten on that,” Crosley said.

“You figure Dempsey’ll take him, do you?”

“Nobody living can beat Jack Dempsey,” Crosley said scornfully. “He’ll beat the meat off the bones of that damned gyrene.”

Venn went over to talk boxing with the sailors. Lt. Collins went back to his thoughts. They were not any more pleasant.

In the delta the rice tops had a silver-frosty bloom. The patchwork fields rippled in the breeze like greensilver pools. Blue hills to the south grew more clear, with red-orange patches of autumn leaves and the dark green of camphor, the lighter green of tea groves and bamboos, red earth and whitish rock. Beyond the delta the banks rose high on either side and many white sandbars humped above the clear water. The sandy foreshore at Paoshan lay white and bare. The bund and the city wall were almost deserted. Only a squad of Pan’s gray soldiers were on the pontoon and the Japanese flag was gone from the pontoon office.

“I see the missionaries inside, through that window there,” Bordelles said as they were tying up. “Under guard, I suppose.”

Lt. Collins went down to the quarterdeck to receive them. Packing cases cluttered the area and he saw with annoyance that an oil leak from one of them was staining the white teak. The box was labeled
GRAHAM EXPORTS
. The missionaries came out of the shack. The three men had no coats and they had blood on their shirts. Their faces were cut and swollen. The two women were not marked. They came aboard first. The younger one with the two children was hysterical. Loose hair straggled down her contorted face.

“We’ve been robbed and beaten and insulted!” she shrieked accusingly at Lt. Collins. “My babies have had nothing to eat since yesterday!” They were not exactly babies. The girl was almost old enough to interest the sailors, who watched curiously from aft. “It’s all your fault, up there at Wanhsien!” the woman cried. “Innocent babies have to pay!”

“It was the British at Wanhsien, ma’am,” Lt. Collins said. “We have the honor to be Americans.”

“You’re all the same wicked men of force and violence!”

Lt. Collins beckoned Jennings over. “Take them topside, do what you can for them,” he ordered. They would berth in the sickbay. He turned to the three men. “This isn’t all of you,” he said. “Where is Mr. Craddock?”

“They remain under the sheltering hand of our Lord,” one of the
men said. “We who fled have already been punished for our little faith.”

Lt. Collins felt dismay. “How many stayed?” he asked crisply.

“Four. The Craddocks, Miss Eckert and Mr. Gillespie.”

“Did they send their waivers with you?”

“They sent no waivers. They trust a stouter shield and a more dreadful sword than yours, Captain.”

A sailor snickered. Lt. Collins frowned.

“Go with the others. I have no more time for you,” he told the men. “Farren, take them to the CPO quarters.”

Farren grinned his sympathy. “Up the ladder, you guys!” he told the missionaries, shooing with his hands.

Pan’s soldiers were still on the pontoon and their officer was talking in Chinese to Shing. Shing turned, balancing on his cane, and said the officer had an urgent message from General Pan.

“Genlah Pan speak ship go othah side chop chop,” Shing interpreted. “He speak you, no sailah man, come shohside.”

Lt. Collins asked questions. It turned out Kuomintang agitators were in town inflaming the people over Wanhsien. The ship was strictly boycotted. It was clear enough that Pan was preparing to submit to the gearwheel and he did not want to be compromised by a courtesy visit from his old friend Lt. Collins.

“Tell him I understand,” Lt. Collins said.

He went up to his cabin. He had a decision to make. If they had only sent their waivers, he could leave them at China Light with a clear conscience. He thought he had never loathed missionaries more than at this moment. They all wanted to play Christ and suffer for the sins of other men—
wicked men of force and violence
—but what they suffered was only the consequences of their own vanity. Stupidity. Cunning and bad faith. Not sending those waivers was no oversight. He slapped his table and thought about it. Then he rang for Yen-ta.

“Ask Mr. Bordelles to come here.”

“Tom, you’ll have to take the motor pan to China Light,” he told Bordelles. “Get those people or get their signed waivers. Take four men, armed of course.”

“I’ll just hustle ’em all down to the boat,” Bordelles said cheerfully. “I’d like that.”

“No. They’re still citizens of a free country,” Lt. Collins said. “But try to persuade them. And don’t lose any time.”

Bordelles went out. It was late afternoon. It would be almost morning before he could return, at the best. At the worst … Lt. Collins drummed with his fingers. Someone knocked at his door.

“Come in,” he said.

It was Chief Welbeck, looking harried. “Sir, they’re all griping,” he said. “That woman’s on my neck for milk and eggs for her babies. Jennings put her on me, damn him!”

“She’s hysterical. Give her canned milk.”

“She knows they got fresh milk in town, at that Christian dairy,” Welbeck said. “Nobody can shut her up. God and President Coolidge, not to speak of Comyang, are going to hear about it, if she don’t get milk.”

Lt. Collins smiled. “You’ll just have to grin and bear her, Chief. Don’t try to shift her to my neck. Tell her we’re boycotted, and that’s that.”

“Lop Eye Shing wants to send that bilge coolie over to get milk,” Welbeck said. “You know, sir, the one that got eggs for us last summer. He was raised here and he’s got relations in the city.”

“Why tell me?”

“I thought I better, sir. I don’t know what the score is.”

His impulse was to forbid it. Damn the yapping woman! But it would be ignoble, their kind of mean and narrow action, if he had no better reason. If the coolie wanted to go ashore, he had every right to. It was really Shing’s responsibility.

“I suppose the man wants to go?” he said.

“He’s scared but willing,” Welbeck said. “He acts kind of proud to be singled out for it.”

“He wants to visit his relatives and pick up the milk while he’s at it?”

“Something like that, I guess, sir.”

“Well, he’s Shing’s man. If it’s all right with Shing, it’s all right with me.”

“Yes, sir,” Welbeck said. “I’ll tell him go ahead.”

After a moment Lt. Collins went out on deck. He was uneasy. Pan’s soldiers were gone. Shing was aft, at the boat-deck rail. Lt. Collins joined him. Shing verified that the man really wanted to go. Together they watched him cross the sands, shoulders square, swinging a basket. He was dressed like any other coolie, in an open jacket and the droop-seated black trousers. He got up on the bund and into the tunnel-like city gate with no trouble.

“I don’t like it,” Holman said. “Things ain’t right here.”

“He was proud to go,” Burgoyne said. “Po-han likes to help.”

They were sitting on the workbench. Holman rattled the vise handle.

“I wish I’d been there. I’d’ve stopped it,” he said.

“What’s that noise?” Burgoyne said.

It was a crowd yelling. Lt. Collins went into the bridge. “Call Franks!” he snapped at Crosley. People were boiling out the city gate and running from either side along the bund.
The boat party
, Lt. Collins thought.
Nine people
. “Repel boarders! On the double!” he snapped at Franks.

“Hell!” Holman slid off the workbench.

“Repel
boarders!
Repel
boarders!
Jump
, you bastards!”

Holman ran topside. Lynch was jerking open the arms locker. A black tongue of people was thrusting out the arched gateway. All along the bund they were streaming in to a center. The center was somebody running.

Po-han!

He had lost his jacket and he ran swinging something white and they poured down the stone steps after him like a stream of cannibal ants. Their shrill, high, screaming “Sa-a-ah! Sa-a-ah!” was like a fiery wind. Feet pounded the boat deck. Someone thrust a riot gun into Holman’s hands. “Over their heads if they touch the pontoon! Shoot to kill if they cross it!” Franks roared. “Wait the word! Wait the word!”

Sand slowed Po-han. He labored leaping. A stick thrown like a spear struck his legs. He fell and the mob flowed over him.

“Hold
fire!
Hold
fire!”

The mob swirled and milled. They had the coolie on his feet, jerking and slapping him. Many were gray soldiers. Strangely, Shing came on the bridge. He was a godsend. Lt. Collins thrust the hailing trumpet at him.

“Offer ransom!” he said. “Speak I pay money. One hundred dollar.”

Shing shouted in Chinese.
Purely Chinese affair. Orders. Neutral. The boat party. Wanhsien. Women aboard
. Lt. Collins thought in flashing atoms. Soldiers with long poles, bark still on them, pushed through the mob.
Ransom the only way. No official funds
. They were daring the ship to shoot, Shing said.
Wanhsien!
The soldiers lashed their poles into a tripod and hoisted the coolie with a rope to his hands bound behind him.
Out of my own pocket, then
.

“Tell them two hundred!” he snapped at Shing.

Po-han dangled, pitching forward. Holman could see the strain in his ridged belly muscles, arms and shoulders. He was looking at the ship. Someone on the bridge was yelling in Chinese. Three soldiers grasped Po-han around the waist and legs and surged their weight on him. He dropped abruptly as his shoulder joints burst, and he screamed.

Someone on the bridge screamed, “You dirty sons of bitches!” Another cracked voice, Lt. Collins:
“Back
, Haythorn! Back from that gun. God damn your soul
don’t fire!”
Franks roared a caution aft. Holman’s ear buzzed. His guts were frozen. He was paralyzed.

“Five
hundred!
Tell
them, Shing!”

The coolie hung nearly straight, twirling slightly. A red-sashed soldier climbed on a boulder and beat at his mouth with a knife handle, then dug with the point.
Gold teeth
. Lt. Collins signed Crosley to take Haythorn’s machine gun.
Wanhsien. Boat party. Orders. Crosley’s steady
. The coolie was bending his head back and back but he could not get away from the knife.

“Oh jesus oh jesus oh jesus,” Burgoyne was saying.

“Steady!” Lynch said. “Keep station, Jake!”

“Go to hell.”

He ran up the ladder and forward and into the bridge. Bronson stopped him.

“Get out of here, Holman! Back to the waist party!”

“Go to hell. We got to shoot. Do something.”

“He ain’t American. We got our orders.” “He’s a shipmate.”

Their faces were chalk white on the bridge. Lop Eye Shing was hailing with the trumpet. Po-han screamed again and again. The red-sashed soldier was pulling off a thick strip of skin and muscle slanting down Po-han’s left ribs. He was tugging and cutting. Po-han’s face was one bloody scream.