The Sand Pebbles (55 page)

“Automatic riflemen, fall out. Come with me across the street,” he said. “Holman, take the rest of the squad in and break ’em.”

“Form single rank,” Holman told the remaining five men. “Ready bayonets. You know how to do it.”

He took the place nearest the wall. He had not done this before, but he knew how to do it from the lectures and drills at the YMCA. You walked steadily at them with your bayonets aligned at throat level and you fixed your eyes on the place where the bayonet would go in, if they did not give way. You walked right for that exact spot. It was supposed to break their nerve.

“Forward …
march!”
Holman said shakily.

He stepped out with them. The coolies faced around, yelling and shaking fists. Some of them tore open their jackets and stuck out their skinny chests. The sailors walked steadily. Over the tip of his bayonet Holman could see the brown, curving ribs and he saw the spittle fly as the coolies screamed. They were not giving way. Holman did not like it at all. The line of sailors slowed.

“Step
out
, sailors!” Riley roared from across the street.

It galvanized them. They lunged. The coolies flinched and broke back. Instantly with deep shouts the Sikhs charged through, kicking and clubbing. The mob had changed to single coolies darting every which way like frantic rats. It was just as they said in the lectures at the YMCA.

Holman went in the door, past Chinese streaming out. Behind a wooden railing Graham was standing knee deep in torn paper. Blood ran down his long face and dripped on his gray suit. Desks and
filing cabinets lay on their sides, with drawers pulled out. Holman went behind the railing.

“They hurt you, Mr. Graham?” he asked.

“I don’t feel anything.”

Graham dabbed his fingers in the blood on his face and looked at them. He sat down shakily on the one desk still upright.

“It’s only a small cut,” Holman said, looking at it.

“I know you. You’re Jake Holman,” Graham said.

He was still groggy. He was leaning down and trying to pull a desk drawer open. Holman opened it. Graham took out a bottle of White Horse. Riley and several sailors came in.

“How’d this riot get started?” Riley asked.

“I had to fire them all weeks ago. They’ve been making the usual fantastic demands for severance pay.” Graham was saying it to Holman. “Well, Jake!” he said. “You boys came just in time. You look like God’s own angels to me. Have a drink!”

He was coming out of his shock. He held out the bottle.

“Sorry. Can’t drink on duty,” Holman said. “Thanks, anyway.”

“I’ll set up drinks in the Green Front. By God, I
appreciate
you boys!”

“The Green Front’s closed,” Riley said. “Nobby Clarke’s gone to Shanghai, the lucky bastard.”

“Well, I’ll think of something, Jake,” Graham said.

Sirens sounded outside. Some British police came in. Riley made his report to the inspector. Their job was finished.

“Fall in outside, sailors,” Riley ordered. He was angry because he felt bypassed. When they fell in outside, he scowled at Holman. “You know everybody in this rat’s ass town, don’t you?” he asked sourly. “You river rats, huh? I’m a Fleet sailor, myself.”

It was cold and raining and the river was gray as steel. Lt. Collins was returning in his gig from an unhappy talk with the Flag people. The day before Pappy Tung, Ping-wen and Oh Joy had started ashore in a hired sampan. A gearwheel police launch had swooped in and taken them only a hundred feet from the ship. It had gotten
away with them upriver to the native city before a ship’s boat filled with cursing Sand Pebbles could rescue them.

“And a very good thing for you your men did not catch them,” the Flag Lieutenant had said. “This river is like the high seas. We use it. But we don’t own it.”

Things seemed closing in. Lop Eye Shing had hinted sullenly that with enough money he could buy the men free. But there were no official funds for that. Shing had gone ashore and had not come back. The gig circled to make the gangway.
San Pablo
looked dingy. It would get worse, with Pappy Tung no longer on the job.

“They’re Chinese. You know the orders, Bill,” the Chief of Staff had said. “Any official interest we might show would probably only make it worse for them.”

“San Pablo
… boarding!” Haythorn cried, on the quarterdeck.

On the boat deck rain thrummed the awning. Burgoyne was waiting outside the cabin door. He squared up and saluted.

“Do you wish to speak to me, Burgoyne?” Lt. Collins asked.

“Yes, sir. If you’ve got time, sir.”

“Come inside.”

It was warm and dry inside. Burgoyne stood uneasily, twisting his white hat. He wanted permission to put in his papers to retire on sixteen years. It came as a shock.

“That’s not much of a pension, Burgoyne,” Lt. Collins said. “I’ve always taken you to be a thirty-year man.”

“Always figured I was, sir. But now I got a wife and I got to find something ashore.”

She was not his wife, but it would only hurt his feelings to keep telling him that. There was no use asking how things were. From the man’s gaunt, desperate look, they were obviously much worse. Lt. Collins knew that Burgoyne was jumping ship. Sooner or later, it was bound to come to his attention officially.

“I haven’t had much luck finding her a passage to Shanghai,” he said. He checked his wry smile. The story was going around the clubs that young Bill Collins was infatuated with a cabaret girl and was concocting a wild story to get her down to Shanghai. “Have you
thought about her taking a junk passage down?” he asked Burgoyne.

Burgoyne’s head snapped up. “I won’t never let her ride a junk again!” he said fiercely.

“Has she tried the mission refugee shelters?”

“Yes, sir. They’re all full up.”

They were having to turn away thousands of heartbreaking cases, Lt. Collins knew. They would not consider a sailor’s shack girl a deserving moral case, he also knew. It would be a very sticky, distasteful business, pleading her case to them. Because she did not really have a case.

“I’ll talk to some of them myself,” he said. “But I want to remind you again, Burgoyne, of the oath we have both sworn. We are in a new kind of war here, a war in every sense but shooting. It may demand new kinds of sacrifices, our deepest feelings, perhaps even personal honor.”

He paused. A red glow was coming into the man’s somber eyes. He knew where that talk was leading and he would not go there.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “About putting in my papers, sir. Is it all right?”

“Have Shanahan make them out. I’ll approve and forward them,” Lt. Collins said. “They’ll have to go all the way to BuNav. It will take several months.”

He dismissed Burgoyne. That was what it could do to a man, he thought. One of the finest, the kind of man who was meant to serve out thirty years and cry on the quarterdeck when his shipmates mustered to row him ashore for the last time. That was what it could do. And it was infectious. He had temporized too long. With a strong feeling of revulsion, he decided that he would have Burgoyne transferred to Shanghai with the next convoy.

Shirley had a plan. Walter Gillespie had accepted it, with misgivings. It remained to broach it to Mr. Craddock. They sat in the Craddocks’ small room, three of them around the table. Mrs. Craddock sat back and did not join in the talk. She had no substance. It was as if her powerful old husband lived with the vitality of both their lives.

“We must all buy Chinese clothing to wear on the trip,” Craddock said. “Good-quality, padded things. It will be like the old days.” He brushed a hand over his hair. “I wore a queue in the old days.”

“I think we face a different kind of hostility now,” Gillespie said. “It’s the young people, the students. They wear foreign clothes themselves.”

“It’s what we do, not how we look,” Shirley said.

The junk was chartered. They were going back to China Light against consular advice and without notifying the consulate. Nightly at the hostel a mixed group had been praying that England and America would give up the unequal treaties as an act of faith in China. Mr. Craddock became wrathfully impatient with his government. He meant his return to be his personal act of faith.

“We have to show ourselves useful to their plans,” Gillespie said.

Gillespie was going to take a teaching post. Mr. Craddock did not like it that Cho-jen was setting conditions on their return, nor that Cho-jen wrote to Shirley instead of to himself. She knew Mr. Craddock thought he would resume administrative control. He did not yet understand that it was a revolution.

“We must exert moral control and guidance,” he said. “We must keep them in the faith.”

“Yes, sir. By our example,” Gillespie agreed. “But the coercive power is in their hands now. Unless we seem useful to them on their terms, they will just send us away again.”

Craddock nodded agreement. Shirley took her chance.

“What if we could take someone with us to be mission engineer? To make the sugar mill work and set up the electric light plant?”

“He would be a godsend,” Craddock said simply. “But I could never find such a man.”

“I think I have. Let me tell you about him, Mr. Craddock.”

She told him about Holman’s gift for friendship with Chinese, a teacher’s gift. She told about his devotion to machinery. She dwelt on his aversion for the military aspect of his life, and how he had cut all ties with home and cast his lines in China. Craddock looked very sternly at her.

“I think he’s in or moving into a crisis in his life, Mr. Craddock,” she finished. “He doesn’t know it yet. But coming to China Light would give him the aim and purpose he needs so badly.”

Mr. Craddock pondered. “Would he be morally suitable?”

“Yes. He’s a good man.”

“Could he get a discharge?”

“Probably not. I think he would just come.”

“Have you spoken to him about it?”

“No. I’ve discussed it with Walter. We wanted to ask you, first.”

Craddock looked at Gillespie. “The man would be deserting,” he said. “That is a very grave thing.”

“I’ve told Shirley we must not try to persuade or entice him,” Gillespie said. “Just tell him of the opportunity.”

“We are going back against the expressed will of our government,” Shirley said. “How would he be different?”

“He has sworn an oath on the name of God.”

“To serve his country. By your own reasoning, wouldn’t he be serving his country more truly at China Light than aboard his gunboat? Wouldn’t his personal act of faith be even more significant than ours? Or at least seem so, to the Chinese?”

“Let me think,” Craddock said.

He bowed his lionlike head in his hands. It was his mode of brief, silent prayer. After several minutes he looked up.

“We have prayed and God has given us His answer in our hearts,” he said slowly. “If the man could do that, be answered so … does the man pray? Is he even a Christian?”

“I think he would just wish he knew what to do and after a while something would seem right to him,” Shirley said.

“Does not God speak in all deeply sought moral decisions, whether or not called on by name?” Gillespie asked.

Craddock was not sure. They talked about it. Shirley could see that the old man was terribly divided in his own mind. His own dreams for China Light were involved.

“Mr. Holman could train Chinese on the machinery,” she said. “It could be the start of a vocational program.”

“I will pray tonight and think about it again in the morning,” Mr. Craddock said at last. “We have a week yet.”

“Whatever seems right to you, Mr. Craddock,” she assented.

She meant it, she realized suddenly. She did not need Craddock’s consent. Cho-jen was anxious to have an engineer at China Light. But it was indeed a grave matter. For the first time since she had known him, she felt gratefully dependent on Mr. Craddock’s moral judgment. She would be ruled by it.

Red Dog gave Holman a letter. It was the first he had ever gotten on the
San Pablo
. Before he could wonder about it, Farren called him to the quarterdeck, and he stuffed it into his pocket. Bronson and Wilsey were with Farren. They were a delegation.

“You’re the only one Frenchy will listen to,” Farren said. “You got to talk him into unshacking.”

“He’s killing himself. His head’s a skull,” Wilsey said. “It hurts me to look at him.”

It had to stop, they had decided. Burgoyne had pushed his luck far past the danger point. He would get them all in trouble. They seemed to hate Maily, for what she was doing to Burgoyne.
That damned pig
, Bronson called her. When a guy went crazy, there came a time when you had to take hold of him, for his sake and your own.

“Harris and Doc want to go right to the skipper about it, officially,” Farren said. “You tell Frenchy it’s his last chance, Jake!” He thumped the log desk.

Holman knew Burgoyne was sleeping on the workbench. He went below and woke him. He did not know how to start.

“How’s it going now with you and Maily?” he began.

“Mighty bad. We got to find another place, come the end of the month.”

The native city had been organized into block societies, he said. He and Maily could not belong. They were being squeezed out of their block and they could not squeeze into any other block. Tung Li was helpless.

“You got to move her into the concessions, no matter what it costs,” Holman said. “I’ll talk to Lynch.”

“Lynch is selling out in the next day or two. Even if I could find a place and afford it, the patrol would get me there.”

“Well …” Holman told him what Farren had said. “I don’t know what to say, Frenchy. Seems like it’s just got to end.”

“It’s got to end,” Burgoyne agreed.

“Then let her go, if it has to be.”

Burgoyne’s face set hard as iron. “That’s what she keeps telling me. She wants to take it all on herself.” He slid off the workbench, fists clenched. “Jake, I’m honest to tell you. I never go home that I ain’t afraid she won’t be there. Or else she will be, with her throat cut.”

“Christ
, Frenchy!” Holman gritted his teeth. “But how would it help her any, you getting a court-martial, maybe going to prison in Cavite?”