The Sand Pebbles (71 page)

His eyes were like gun muzzles and his lips were two white lines. Franks pulled Holman outside. Franks seemed more hurt than angry.

“You knew the ship was hanging by a thread. We thought you was one guy we could count on,” he told Holman. “Jake, why the
hell
did you have to go do that?”

“I don’t know. I can’t explain,” Holman said miserably.

Franks looked at Holman, shaking his head. His manner was changing. He drew away slightly.

“Well, you’re a GCM prisoner now. I suppose you’re willing to be prisoner-at-large?”

“Yeah. Where the hell would I run to now?”

Franks had the special manner that sailors always put on when they were around a general court-martial prisoner. It was something like being in the presence of the dead.

All next day the ship had the same tense feeling as during the opium crisis in Hankow. Lt. Collins and Bordelles were ashore again. Farren and Ellis and Vincent took a ship’s boat downriver to take soundings across the shoal stretch north of the city. The river was still damping and nibbling slowly higher on the sand flats. The hate parade that morning stopped for a full hour opposite the
San Pablo
. They had a dozen signs about the murderers Knox and Holman. They had a Chinese coffin and a band of mourners shrieking and flinging around in white robes. They made quite a show of it.

The men all kept apart from Holman. Not even Duckbutt Randall would talk to him. But they watched him obliquely and talked about him and sometimes meant him to overhear. What seemed to throw them was the pig. He heard many bitter remarks about somebody being sorry for a pig.

“A pig, God damn it! But who the hell’s sorry for us?”

After dinner Welbeck came aboard with more disturbing news. The Hunan Commissioner of Foreign Affairs had declared the treaties null and void in Hunan Province. The worker-peasants were saying no gunboat could leave Changsha until the murderers were given up. It set off a storm of talk. The Sand Pebbles glared and gestured and grimaced through their beards.

“They can’t do that, on the treaty. We got to agree.”

“So do they got to agree. What do we do if they don’t?”

“Get the hell down to Shanghai, that’s what!”

“Yeah, Shanghai! Let ’em have this stinking place!”

“But they won’t let us go.”

“How can they stop us? We’ll just go.”

“How about them ten-inchers at Chenglin?”

“Jesus, yes! They’d stop a cruiser!”

They talked about the rumored ten-inch guns at Chenglin and still
older rumors about an electric minefield at that place. They recalled the old story of how the gearwheel had turned Wu’s gunboats back at Chenglin by floating massed fire rafts at them. By the time Farren came back with his boat party, they had themselves convinced that no gunboat could get past Chenglin without gearwheel permission.

“Another foot and we can get across the shoals,” Farren said cheerfully. “The blokes can get across now. Crosley, Bordelles wants you on the bridge. He wants to signal that to the
Woodcock.”

“The blokes won’t get past Chenglin,” Crosley said.

“That’s crap about guns at Chenglin,” Farren said.

“No, it ain’t either crap!”

They all jumped on Farren. He had not had the buildup.

“Well, maybe there’s something to it,” he said at last, unhappily. “I thought I was bringing good news.”

Holman stayed clear of them as much as he could. At supper he ate the lumpy corned beef with his eyes on his plate. The thing began coming to a head. The remarks became more pointed and direct.

“I hear Ho-mang’s a short timer.”

“He’s got his seabag packed.”

“He wants to stay here. He’s a Chink lover, anyway.”

“Pig lover!”

“He’s gonna be guest of honor at a neck-chopping party.”

Holman raised his head and looked directly at each one in turn. None of them except Harris could quite look back at him. Holman stood up to leave.

“Hold on, Ho-mang,” Harris said. “Was you ever right close up to a head chopping?”

“I don’t go for that stuff, Harris.”

Harris grinned. “The knife goes
cr-r-runch!”
He rabbit chopped his own neck. “The blood spouts in two streams.” He moved his forefingers in twin parabolas past his bearded chin. “The head hollers, but it can’t make noise come out.”

For ten seconds Harris screamed silently at Holman. His mouth gaped and his eyes squinted. His gray hairs bristled. He was a mask of all the hellful hatred and cruelty in the world since time began.

“That’s what it’s like to die, Ho-mang,” he said.

Holman leaned across and slapped the gray-bristled chops once and backhand.

“Don’t get your gun quite yet, you son of a bitch,” he said. “I ain’t dead yet.”

Harris bared the teeth in his slash mouth. The compartment hushed.

“If I fight you, Ho-mang, I won’t come alone,” Harris said.

Chairs scraped. All the men were quiet and tense. Holman backed up against his locker.

“Bring all your friends and relations,” he told Harris. “Here. Now. And come to kill. Because I’ll kill you.”

He wanted them to come. He felt in himself the true and crazy strength to break their bones and snap their necks like cornstalks. He wanted to do that.

“Come on!” he said. “Come on, Harris!”

Harris looked around. Nobody was getting up. But every eye was on Jake Holman and not one was friendly.

“I’ll get you, Ho-mang,” Harris said. “You got to sleep.”

Holman waited a moment longer. Then he rolled up his mattress and bedding and carried it outside. He took it to the engineers’ storeroom, above the gratings on the starboard side, and laid it out on deck. He closed the steel door and worked out a way to wedge it closed from inside. He lay down, very weary. The fire was going out of him. But for a little while in there, he was thinking, he had felt very real indeed.

Holman did not eat at the mess table again. He ate out of a pie plate in the galley, helping himself from the pan on the range while Duckbutt Randall pretended not to see him. He sat in the storeroom most of the day. He felt better there, cased in steel.

He was sitting there in late afternoon when Lt. Collins was called to the
Duarte
. He was still there when the startling news came by blinker from the
Duarte
. Through his porthole Holman heard them talking about it on the quarterdeck. Gearwheel troops had taken Nanking and they were looting and raping and killing the treaty people. British and American warships had been shelling the city since three o’clock. The lid was off at last.

Several … hundred … white … civilian … men … and women … still … trapped … in … city
, they relayed the message about the decks as fast as Crosley received it on the flying bridge.
Until … further … notice … consider … Plan … Red … now … in … effect…
.

Plan Red! Plan Red!

To Holman’s ear, their voices put small joy into the words. Some of the men tried to get angry.

“Looted our consulate! Ripped down our flag!”

“We can get the Fleet at the bastards, in Nanking!”

“How about the Japs? Why ain’t they in it?”

“Yeah! Their consul got
killed!”

“The Japs are still trying to outchrist us Christians,” Harris said.

“Well, how about us now? We’re like rats in a trap.”

“Here comes the gig. The skipper’ll have all the dope.”

“San Pablo …
boarding!” Franks shouted.

“All hands aft,” Lt. Collins’ crisp voice said a few moments later. “I have important news to announce.”

Franks passed the word. Holman decided to go back there and hear it. The men did not form ranks. They stood in a mob and Lt. Collins stood on the grating and talked to them. He was clean and crisp in whites. His thin face was joyful with excitement.

“I can’t promise you men it’s really Plan Red yet,” he said. “That has to come from Washington. But I can tell you our marines are going ashore at last in Shanghai. Our three extra cruisers are starting a speed run out from Pearl. It looks like a fight, men!”

He was trying to lift them with his voice and manner. They shuffled their feet and Holman could feel them wanting to respond. Lt. Collins told them what he knew about Nanking.

The U.S. destroyers
Noa
and
Preston
and the British cruiser
Emerald
had done the shelling.
Noa
had the honor of firing the first shot. The U.S. consul and the naval landing force and a few civilian refugees were safely out of the city. They had swarmed down over the city wall. Both the British and Japanese consuls were thought killed. Most of the Americans still in the city were missionaries. The Japanese warships at Nanking could not get permission to shoot, but the Japanese sailors had massed on deck and cheered the British and Americans. Lt. Collins’ voice crackled as he told them about it.

“Now for what it means to us in
San Pablo,”
he said.

The few local civilians were sheltering in the large gunboats. The ships would not start anything in Changsha. The plan was to wait quietly until there was water enough for the large gunboats. They would go out as a flotilla with the first few feet of the flood, day or
night. The most they had to fear from the local militia was small-arms fire. If the worker-peasants wanted to start something, the gunboats would oblige them. They would wreck the city.

“In a few minutes I will call all hands to battle stations,” Lt. Collins said. “Let’s show them over on the bund that
San Pablo
is
ready as ever!”

He smashed fist in palm and smiled a fierce, urging confidence at them. Holman felt the thrill run through their sluggishness. Lt. Collins went forward, followed by Bordelles and Welbeck. Franks stopped to squeeze Holman’s arm and draw him aside.

“We’re gonna fight ’em, Jake!” he whispered, grinning. “You’re off the hook, boy! Now it won’t matter if you really did kill a dozen of the slopeheaded bastards!”

A few minutes later Franks was calling all hands to battle stations, with the old, familiar power in his voice. No feet pounded. They shuffled. In the engine room Holman was alone at the throttle. The others went with Harris out to the fireroom. The drill was secured after half an hour, because the men had not had supper yet.

Holman did not eat supper. He used the time to take a shower with the scrap of salt-water soap he had left, while they were eating. He wanted to avoid them. But when he went back to his locker, Bronson, Harris and Restorff confronted him.

“We want to talk to you, Holman,” Bronson said.

They were the leaders of the three gangs the crew had split into. The men at the mess tables were all listening.

“What do you want?” Holman asked Bronson.

“We want you to volunteer to go ashore and stand trial for what you did,” Bronson said. “So the ship can get out past Chenglin.”

“No,” Holman said. “Why should I?”

Bronson had not shaved his fat cheeks for several days, but Holman could see the white dimples form at his mouth corners.

“It’s only fair. You got us into this jam and only you can get us out,” Bronson said. “You been our Jonah from the day you come aboard. Now’s the time you can make up for it.”

He was trying to hold his temper. He was trying to be dignified and
important. There had always been something very paperish about Bronson.

“I never liked you, Bronson, and I don’t now,” Holman said evenly. “I don’t want to get you out of a jam.” Since they were all listening, he decided to be reasonable. “The skipper wouldn’t let me,” he said. “He already told me I’m a symbol of the United States in this business.”

“Well, you could offer to go,” Bronson said. “Or you could just go.”

Harris and Restorff nodded. Harris was not talking, because they hoped to persuade him, Holman thought. He had far more respect for Harris than for Bronson, if they only knew it.

“No smoke, sailors,” he said. “I won’t go.”

“Now listen, Jake—” Restorff began. Perna broke in. “Why the hell won’t you go, Ho-mang?” he shouted. He jumped up, shaking his fist. “It ain’t
fair
, we all got to get killed, because you felt sorry for a pig!”

The word ignited them.
A pig! A damned pig!
they all said. They were all getting to their feet at the mess tables.
A pig, for the love cf bleeding Jesus! We got to die for a pig!
Harris pushed Bronson aside and thrust his face at Holman.

Oink!
he said, grimacing horribly.

Oink!
they all took it up.

It became one of those things that swept them away. They could not stop. They began drawing it out.
Aw-ee-ee-eenk!
they were screaming at Holman. Their whiskered lips skinned back to show their teeth. Their noses wrinkled and the cords in their scaly necks stood out.
Aw-ee-ee-eenk!

Holman stood there a moment loathing them. He wished he could tell them he had more respect for that black pig than for the whole damned lot of them. But they were making too much noise and he knew they would not stop it until he went away. He went out and around and into the storeroom. He wedged the door and lay down weary and disgusted on his bedding. A few minutes later they stopped the racket.

Some while later he heard footsteps and low voices outside. He sat up in the darkness and found the steel crowbar he kept handy. He heard the hasp clank on the outer side, and the click of a padlock. They were only locking him in. He thought about it a while and then shrugged. He lay down again and went to sleep.

It was not Bordelles’ knock on his door, so Lt. Collins did not answer it. There were several of them out there. They knocked again and Bordelles heard it and came around through the bridge.

“What do you men want?” he asked sharply. “Come into the bridge!”

Lt. Collins could still hear them, through his door to the bridge. They had a written petition they wanted to present to him. Bordelles read it and told them they could not.

“I can keep this off the record, if you men will drop it right now,” he told them. “If you gave this to the captain, it would be open mutiny.”