The Sand Pebbles (75 page)

They had the armor flaps down and the windows open. Cool lake air and the croaking of frogs blew through the compartment. It smelled clean and fresh when they turned in at taps.

The strange peacefulness on the ship, the renewed friendliness, Holman thought, were because they believed they were going to fight and probably all be killed. Their belief was so strong that it was hard for him not to share it. He was still hoping that there would be no fight and it would work out somehow that he could break free of the ship and stay at China Light. By the time he went to sleep, it was a pretty slim hope.
However it goes, I hope I at least see her one more time
, he thought. He went to sleep on that.

They reached the timber raft about noon, and just in time. They were burning bunker sweepings so fine that half of it went sparking up the stack with the draft. They moored port side to the raft and it rounded away from the bulwark like a low brown hill. Bordelles, with Yen-ta to interpret, went to the cluster of matsheds on top of the raft to bargain. If the raftmen refused to sell, the sailors would just take the wood.

The raftmen were willing to sell wood. They pulled out the slender pine logs very deftly. The raft was bound with bamboo cables. They were made of long, flexible strips of bamboo braided and then the braids braided to make cables of any size wanted. The raftmen slacked the cables and pulled out logs and slid them down to the fantail of the ship.

On the fantail the Sand Pebbles sawed them into four-foot billets. They split the big ones into quarters with mauls and wedges. Other men carried the billets forward to the bunkers. Holman swung a maul. The men worked quietly and steadily. The maul rang on wedges and the saws rasped and snored through wood. The fresh, resinous smell of sawdust was all about the fantail.

Three raft children, a boy and two girls, watched the Sand Pebbles
from far back on the raft. The sailors worked stripped to the waist and sawdust powdered their hair and arms and chests, sweating under the warm sun. Sawdust was heaped on deck and slippery under their feet. In hesitant fascination the children came down log by log for a closer look at the hairy, tattooed men.

Harris dropped his saw. His gray-thatched chest was heaving. “Hard work!” he said, panting. He kicked his foot in the sawdust. “This smells good,” he said. “Like way back home in them hills.”

He picked up a double handful of the sawdust and sniffed it. He saw the children watching him, wide-eyed. He grinned and held the sawdust out to them. They shrank back and huddled together, ready to flee.

“Makee chow chow!” Harris told them. He pretended to eat the sawdust, gobbling into his hands. He raised his head and smacked his lips.
“Ding hao!”
he said.

They stared doubtfully. Harris puffed his cheeks with air and chewed and raised his hands to his ears. He let sawdust trickle down his arms, seeming to come from his ears. The children stared and moved right down to the rail. They knew Harris was making a show for them.

“Oh boy! Oh boy!” Harris said. “Number one chow chow!”

He took out his false teeth and held them with thumb and knuckles and made them chomp. The children were absolutely fascinated. Harris squatted and let the teeth chomp through a pile of sawdust. The teeth clicked and snapped at it. The children climbed down on the fantail to see better.
“Ding hao!”
Harris said, grinning cavernously at the children. The teeth sidled over and bit Harris on the ankle. The children shrieked.

“Hey! Stop that!” Harris told the teeth.
“Bu hao!”

The teeth laughed at Harris. The children giggled. They wanted to see the teeth chomp sawdust. Whenever the teeth would try to sneak up on Harris’ ankle, the children would shriek a warning. They wanted to touch the teeth. The teeth made little snaps at them and they pulled their hands away with cries of fearful delight. Harris looked over his shoulder at the other sailors, who were still working.

“Any of you guys got a piece of that Christmas candy left?” he asked.

No one had. Harris shook a finger at the teeth and told them to behave themselves. They bowed meekly and indicated that they would. He left the teeth in the sawdust and went forward.

“Who’s got any of that Christmas pogeybait left in his locker?” Harris was yelling, somewhere forward. “Where’s Duckbutt?”

The children squatted and pushed the teeth around gingerly. They were a bit afraid of the teeth. They kept looking forward. It was no fun without Harris.

Harris came back with a saucer of something. It was a paste of sugar and condensed milk and a pinch of cocoa. Harris squatted and made signs that the teeth were not to know. He and the children heaped sawdust on the teeth. Then Harris dipped his finger in the paste and licked it off.

“Ding hao!”
he said, licking and smacking his lips.

He offered the saucer. The little boy tried it first, very solemnly. Then all four were dipping their fingers and licking them off.

“What you got there, Harris? Some one-finger poi?” Tullio asked.

“Shut up, Tullio,” Holman said.

Harris and the children worked on the confection until the saucer was clean. Then Harris eased his hand under the pile of sawdust and the teeth burst free again. They went sniffing and casting about, while the children held their breaths, until they found the saucer. They snapped and clashed at the empty saucer and chattered with rage because they had missed out. When Harris laughed and taunted them, they leaped viciously at his ankle. They would not let go until he wrestled them into a handkerchief and stuffed them struggling into his pocket.

The children shrieked delighted applause. Harris stood up with both hands on the small of his back, working out a crick. Then he lifted each child gently in turn across the bulwark to the raft. They moved off a little way and sat down in a row on a log. They still stared at Harris. He turned back to his shipmates and picked up his saw and flexed it in both hands.

“I’m an old man. I need to rest,” he told them. “Besides, I was bringing us luck. Kids can give you luck.”

The ship stayed moored to the raft all night. They had a very good supper. Welbeck had bought fresh vegetables and pork and shrimp from the raft people. The raft cook had come aboard to prepare it. As at Christmas, Bordelles and the chiefs came down to eat with the crew.

Lt. Collins ate alone in his cabin. He was still being very cold and remote. The Sand Pebbles knew he had not forgiven them.

They had almost forgotten how wonderfully good Chinese food could be. They made a lingering feast of it. No one spoke of what would happen the next day except that Bordelles, at Bronson’s table, mentioned that the raft headman had agreed to mail any letters left with him when the raft reached Hankow. Lynch sat at Holman’s table. He was shaved and cleaned up. He had sense in his eyes and he could talk and eat all right, but he did not know anyone by name. He made up names for them all. Wilsey was
Moonhead
. Farren was
Redbeard
. Harris was
Jackfrost
. Holman was
Flangeface
. Lynch made the only reference to the next day at Holman’s table.

“We’re going to fight tomorrow,” he said. “We’re going to make ’em give us back our real names.”

After the meal a few men went to the ship’s office to write letters. Franks talked privately to Holman.

“I hate to leave Lynch locked up alone during the fight,” he said. “He thinks now he’s going to be in the engine room. You suppose it might be all right?”

“Sure,” Holman said. “Let him come down.”

San Pablo
got underway at dawn, in misty rain. The eastern sky gleamed rose and pearl. The air was fragrant with woodsmoke. The raft people came out of their huts to see
San Pablo
pull away.

Lt. Collins stayed on the bridge. He spoke to no one and they all kept clear of him. They were all in clean whites and they spoke to each other in low voices.

The rain became mist and the climbing sun burned the mist away. Beyond Ta An the lake broadened out. Green islands and mountains blue to the south rose softly into a picture without a frame.
San Pablo
steamed along smoothly and quietly under a plume of blue woodsmoke.

Westward a far green line grew into a reed marsh wilderness screaming with birds. The mist dried away. The sun rode high and hot in a blue sky.
San Pablo
entered the main channel of the Chien River.

There was almost no traffic on the river. Lt. Collins knew they must have had the telegraphic warning at Paoshan, before now. He did not know how far up the river the boom lay. When the marsh began
giving way to green-diked rice fields with buffaloes and blue-clad farmers busy in them, he had the crew piped to dinner. He did not eat anything himself.

After dinner Lynch came down to the engine room. He walked around and looked at the machinery with sense in his eyes. The things he said made sense. He was all right with the machinery.

“Want the throttle for a while?” Holman asked him.

“I’d like to take the throttle,” Lynch said.

“Harris is your oiler,” Holman said.

He watched Lynch handle the throttle and tend water. Lynch was doing just fine at it. When Holman was sure it would be all right, he went out to the fireroom to lend a hand there.

It was after four o’clock when they sighted the boom. Lt. Collins saw it midway down a long westward reach and it looked like a string of beads across a brown neck. He rang half speed, just matching the current, and
San Pablo
hung there while he studied the boom through the long glass. Bordelles was getting up the armor flaps and posting the men at their revised battle stations. There were twenty-odd junks spaced about a hundred feet apart and the line was bowed downriver by the current. Men moved tinily on their decks. Steel glinted. He could not see well, into the sun.

“Battle stations manned and ready, sir,” Bordelles said quietly.

“Very well. Hoist the battle flag.”

The junks rode stern on, with thick festoons of bamboo cable linking their bows. The center junk was the largest. A gearwheel flag drooped and flapped at its masthead. It was the command junk. It was the precious pendant of that necklace on the brown neck, and he was going to rip it off.

“Standard speed,” he ordered. “Steer for the center junk.”

San Pablo
moved. A momentary light breeze ruffled the brown water and flashed a thousand sun glints. Crosley was hoisting the big battle flag in jerks up the mainmast. The breeze caught and streamed it. It was very beautiful.

“Prepare to concentrate fire on the center junk, Mr. Bordelles.”

“Aye aye, sir!”

Krebs and Stawski had one boiler, Wilsey and Perna the other. The red, roaring furnaces were devouring wood. It made a light, fluffy ash. They had to keep hauling ashes and sogging them with a hose. Ash slushed and charcoal crunched beneath their unceasing feet. Melted pine pitch smeared their bare arms and torsos. Patches of white ash sticking to it made them look like lepers.

Holman carried wood for them from the bunkers. He built the wood head high all along the forward bulkhead. Distant thuds sounded, and the pop of distant rifles. Then their own guns cut loose in a rattling roar.

“I better get back out with Lynch,” Holman told Krebs.

Lynch, at the throttle, was doing all right. The engine rolled massively, silently and powerfully.

San Pablo
closed range steadily. The two center armor flaps were still down, for better seeing. Lt. Collins took station there alone. On either side of him three men stood to their machine guns, mounted in armored embrasures. Below in the bow Haythorn and Shanahan sheltered behind the small shield of the three-pounder. All the faces were tense and eager.

They would have to wait. The Chinese would have to fire first. Then, with the source of fire plainly visible,
San Pablo
would be authorized to return a fitting answer.

The Chinese began firing at about fifteen hundred yards. It was rifle fire, pale winks along the line of junks, quick splashes in brown water. Then buzzing whines. Spangs and thuds and screeches of hits. Bullets came into the bridge. Lt. Collins held his binoculars to his eyes with a steady hand and kept his face expressionless. Red-shot smoke blossomed on the center junk. A cannonball skipped angling across
San Pablo’s
bow. After it came a
thud!

“Two-thirds speed,” Lt. Collins said quietly to Franks. Then, his voice a sudden whiplash,
“Commence
firing!
Commence
firing!”

The six machine guns blurted a racketing roar. The three-pounder barked sharply. Smoke rose and splinters flew from the center junk. Sampans shuttled like waterbugs between the junks and out from the south bank, where there seemed to be a militia camp. He sniffed the sharp powder smoke with hungry nostrils. Spent cartridges tinkled brightly on deck like a thousand fairy bells. The bow gun fired in steady rhythm: breech slam …
bark! …
shell clatter on deck.
Thud … thud … thud
, the Chinese guns responded. It was a joyous litany.

San Pablo
closed range slowly. The guns never stopped. The pale winks merged to a steady flickering. Bullets flogged
San Pablo
. Bullets screamed into the bridge, but they would not hit him. Black smoke blossomed redly from junk to junk and thunderclouded above them. Cannonballs ripped the air like silk and furrowed the brown water. One struck the bow and shook the ship.
Slam … bark! … clatter
, the bow gun went.
Thud! … thud! … thud!
the old brass cannons responded. A cannonball caromed off the side amidships. Metal shrieked.
San Pablo
shuddered. Steam hissed. He jumped to look out aft. Steam was billowing from the engine-room skylight.

The lights were out. Hot steam was choking. Holman followed a hunch through wet, roaring darkness. He skirted invisibly flying machinery and his hand went surely in the darkness to the root steam valve for the fire and bilge pump. He closed it and the roaring stopped. He ran to the generator. It had tripped from shock. He reset it and jumped it up to speed. Harris was there.