The Sand Pebbles (21 page)

“I’ve tried, sir. If it made that kind of sense, I’d have it doped out by now. But it don’t.”

“Hmmm. It doesn’t, eh?” Lt. Collins thought a moment. “All right, what’s the derivative of
pv
with respect to
t?”

Holman shook his head dumbly. His face was wooden.

“It’s part of understanding machinery, but you’d have to have a couple of years of college math and physics before I could begin to explain it to you. Does it make sense to you now?”

Holman scowled. “If I knew it, what could I do down below that I can’t do now?”

“You could design new machinery.”

“If I could’ve gone to school, I’d know that! I’d know ten times more’n that by now, and things nobody ever knew before!”

Obviously, it was a sore spot. Lt. Collins held up his hand.

“All right, Holman! All I’m trying to say is that somewhere along the line every man must accept his limitations. I am no exception, and neither are you.”

“I’m sorry,” Holman said. “Sure, I’m stopped on machinery, and I know where. But on this other stuff, I’m stopped before I even start.” His face was suddenly clear and open. “If it makes sense, can you give me just a start on it?”

“Think of it this way.” Lt. Collins steepled his fingers. “The crew of a ship must be designed, just like the machinery which powers
the ship. Captains before me designed
San Pablo
for the very special job we have. But the human spirit will not hold a permanent shape, like steel or brass. Our design is process, dynamic, like a pattern of juggling eggs.” He made juggling motions. Fascinated interest marked Holman’s face. “We have to refit ourselves into the design every day.” Lt. Collins went on. “That is the purpose of our military ceremony and all that we do in
San Pablo
. Does it make a glimmer of sense to you now?”

“I can’t see how it works. Can you show me just a little bit how it works?” Holman was leaning forward in a strained anguish of curiosity.

“You saw it work here in Paoshan, two days ago. But I’ll give you a textbook example. Last year at Wanhsien, in the gorges, junkmen rioted and killed an American. H.M.S.
Cockchafer
was in port. Her captain ordered the warlord to behead two junkmen on the bund and to walk himself in the American’s funeral procession, in full uniform and on foot while the white people rode in chairs. The warlord obeyed. It was a terrible loss of face, and he took it out on the junkmen later, but there will not be any more trouble in Wanhsien.”

“I heard about that, down in Manila,” Holman said. “I wondered if the two they beheaded were the ones that did the actual killing.”

“Who could know? Presumably they were part of the mob.”

“They’d know. But that’s off the track.” Holman was searching for words. “I don’t see any connection between that and … and salutes and colors and stuff. The quarterdeck stuff.”

Lt. Collins clasped his hands. “Consider this. The warlord had ten thousand soldiers ashore, to
Cockchafer’s
fifty men. He had field artillery to outgun her twenty to one. He would never have surrendered face to another Chinese, with odds like that in his favor.”

“He was scared of what would come after. All England. The Royal Navy. Marines.”

“No. No.” Lt. Collins shook his head. “Wanhsien is above the rapids. He knew all the treaty powers together couldn’t get enough force up there to match him. But he obeyed.”

“He was bluffed? You mean—”

“Not
bluffed!” Lt. Collins slapped the table. “That warlord obeyed a certain
moral
authority that is really in the British flag, do you see? The kind of virtue we maintain in our flags by our military ceremony, by the way we live our lives.” He paused, gazing keenly at Holman. The man was chewing his lip and straining to comprehend. His spread, blunt fingers clawed gently, unconsciously, at the green baize. Black grease outlined the fingernails. “Moral authority,” Lt. Collins repeated. “Like the power of a man’s eye over a dog’s eye.”

The hands made fists. “The warlord wasn’t a dog. He should’ve told them Limeys to go to hell!” Holman said.

Lt. Collins stifled a surge of anger. You fool, to try explaining, he told himself. It was the man’s eagerness to know, and his own urge to communicate this thing he felt, that had betrayed him.

“I guess the warlord had military fear,” Holman said heavily.

That was an enlisted man’s phrase. It meant moral authority which the man obeyed unwillingly, sweating and tongue-tied and radiating unconscious hostility in the presence of officers. You could not help despising such a man, because he was despising himself. But when the man accepted moral authority, he found his pride and self-respect, and relations were easy and pleasant. It was easy and pleasant with all of the Sand Pebbles except Holman. Enlisted men did not have a phrase for the good feeling, but you might almost call it military love.

Abruptly, he looked directly into Holman’s gray eyes. Holman dropped his eyes, and the square face went impassive. The sullen aura spread across the table.

If they did not break his gutter spirit in the big ships, we can’t break it in
San Pablo
, Lt. Collins thought. Shing was right. Well, wrap it up now. Break off this misguided effort.

“Holman, no man alive understands the mechanics of how we put moral authority into our flags,” he said slowly. “Mechanics is not the word for it. No word has been coined for it. I can perhaps follow a causal chain more deeply into that mystery than you can, but I reach my own limits.” He was trying to keep the distaste he felt out of his voice, and to keep the corners of his mouth up. “I accept my limitations, as you must, as all men must. In the end, I have to take it
monkey-see monkey-do. But a nicer word for it is faith. You will be a much happier person when you learn to have faith.”

“I want to know,” Holman said. “I can’t stand feeling like a monkey.”

Lt. Collins stood up, feeling his face flush. Holman scrambled clumsily to his feet. Lt. Collins made his voice officially impersonal.

“I am not in the habit of justifying myself to enlisted men, Holman. You may know this much: the
esprit
of the marines is partly due to the fact that they can all be fighting men, because the navy handles their logistics. In
San Pablo
, the Chinese boatmen handle our logistics, and I insist that we must all be fighting men. That is all the reason you have any need or right to know.” He was lashing the man with his flat, impersonal voice.
“San Pablo
is not a Fleet ship. As long as we move and smoke boils out our stack, we will make the impression I wish on the Hunanese. Engineering is going to remain coolie work in
San Pablo
. It is going to remain work done by second-rate, inferior men of whom no courage or honor is expected. You may do such work for as long as it takes you to train your man to replace Chien, but you must not glorify what you do, and when you have it done I will transfer you back to the Fleet.”

“Aye aye, sir!” the man said thickly, flashing teeth.

He put on his white hat and saluted, clumsy as a bear, and almost bolted out the door. Lt. Collins relaxed his fists. He had not realized they were closed. He rang for Yen-ta and ordered coffee.

He poured another cup. They all lived it without having to think about it, he thought. Even Tom Bordelles, who would go far with the blind, straight, wordless drive he had. There was no one to talk with about these thoughts. Except, incredibly, the man Holman, who wanted to know. Lt. Collins wryed his mouth. Holman’s analytical tools were a sledge hammer and a cold chisel. He could only destroy the thing he wanted to take apart. But even the finest tools, the most subtle mind, would destroy it. The act of observing altered unpredictably the thing observed. It was wrong to try to look.

That was the flaw in Holman. Only I must look out the eyes, Lt. Collins thought. And I look at it and it squiggles away. From me alone it squiggles away.

You had to take the world as you found it. When
San Pablo
first came to Hunan, China was still an empire. What hurt one part hurt all. The memory of the Boxer Suppression was painfully fresh. They had good physical reasons, when they saw the flag on the Hunan rivers, to tremble and obey. Now China was a crazy-quilt turbulence of big and little warlords, but they still obeyed. It was old custom. They obeyed the moral authority of the treaty power flags.

Coldly, alone at his table, he faced it. As a fighting machine,
San Pablo
was a joke. In a genuine battle he could not whip even General Pan’s ragtain army, let alone forty million Hunanese. He was a man with a kitchen chair in a cage full of tigers.

But in another part of his mind he knew that Chinese could not fight a genuine battle. Bordelles and the Sand Pebbles had a blind faith in that. It was justified. Chinese made pariahs of their armed men. No people who believed so could win any battles, except among themselves. Once we commission the new flotilla building in Shanghai, he thought, we can bring a thousand men to Paoshan. We can bring enough gunpower to pulverize the city. I have to hold the fort until then.

Faith made
San Pablo
invincible in Hunan. Faith kept the tigers believing that they were house cats. Nothing must shake that faith.

But someone had to look out the eyes.

He turned abruptly and pulled open a drawer of his desk and took out a pair of Chinese baby shoes. He set them on the green baize. They were blue, with crude U.S. flags embroidered in white and red on each toe. They spoke something wordless of what that symbol could mean in the Chinese mind.

In Hunan many Chinese displayed imperfect U.S. flags to protect their property from warlords and bandits. In the strange Chinese mind they were protection against more than just human predators. They drew good luck, and the smile of heaven. They warded off
Chinese devils. A missionary had given Lt. Collins the baby shoes, as a heathen curiosity. One of his woman converts had made them for her child, substituting the foreign symbol for the traditional tiger head. The missionary had called it superstition and taken them from her. But he displayed that same flag prominently above all his mission property.

The ignorant mother was wiser than the missionary, Lt. Collins thought. And the speechless child was wisest of them all. Only the simplest minds could touch the highest truths. You look at it and it squiggles away. You cannot know it, you can only feel it. As mother and child felt it … nothing special … just a feeling that everything is all right. All … all … all … all right …

Footsteps on deck stopped before his door. Hastily, Lt. Collins put the shoes back into his desk. But the footsteps went on, into the bridge.

Holman almost ran down to the engine room. It was his sanctuary. Courage and honor be damned, he thought. Whichever way you turned it, the military crap was still being a monkey-on-a-stick. He looked at the engine and it soothed him. You know how to deal with the monkeys, don’t you, Engine, he thought. Well, he was going to lose the best ship for living aboard that he had ever had. The faster he trained Po-han, the faster he would be putting the skids under himself. Well, he would teach Po-han all he knew, everything, and when they shanghaied Jake Holman he would leave behind him a man just like himself. They would not get rid of Jake Holman as easily as they figured.

He spotted Po-han among the coolies and called him over to the workbench. Po-han said he had been ashore. He had uncles and many cousins in Paoshan. Holman told him about the new repair gang. Po-han was doubtful until he understood that Holman would work with them, and then his whole face beamed delight. They decided on Pai, Chiu-pa and Lung for the rest of the gang. Holman felt the tension of the interview with Lt. Collins leaving him. No more topside watches, he thought happily. No more drills. He felt good and easy with Po-han, better than with anybody else aboard. For a while
at least, it was going to be all right. He squeezed Po-han’s shoulder and shook him gently.

“Maskee? Can do, Po-han?”

“You, me, can do, Jehk,” Po-han grinned back.

It was very good to be with the machinery again. It was like coming home from the wars. Holman’s hands became hard and grimed and his dungarees oil-stained and his steaming shoes oil-soaked and molded very comfortably to his feet. He got along well with his repair gang and began learning a kind of pidgin Chinese in order to talk and joke with them. They kidded each other just like sailors, but you had to understand how a turtle was a particularly bastardly kind of bastard in order to appreciate their insults. They all had their individual laughs and grins and gestures and so much play and expression in their faces that Holman wondered why he had ever thought that Chinese faces were blank. He would not let them call him
Mastah
or
Sheensheng
, so they called him
Ho-mang
and Po-han called him
Jehk
. None of them would make their jokes at Holman, and he often wished they would.

Ping-wen took over smoothly, for cleaning and boiler work. He and Holman were respectful to each other, and the cleaning coolies still had blank faces. The ship was underway most of the days and the repair work had to be done in the evenings. Wilsey and Burgoyne often came down to drink coffee and watch the work. Burgoyne was
proud of Po-han, who was still oiler on the steaming watch. Perna and Stawski would come down to drink coffee, but they did not have any interest in the repair work.

The topside sailors did not like it, for Holman to be off drills and deck watches. They did not say much, but Bronson and Crosley began calling him Ho-mang, and they meant it as a dig. Holman just grinned at them. Ho-mang was as good a name as any other.

He was not really training anyone, except Po-han. Pai and Chiu-pa and Lung were old hands, and every operation on the pumps was something they had done before and they were satisfied with their understanding of it. They were careful, steady workers and they had a grave respect for their tools and the machinery, such as few sailors had, and Holman respected them for it. It did not matter that they thought of pump parts in terms of kidneys and livers and such. When they spotted and scraped in a steam pilot valve, the pump stopped stalling; it was all right if Chiu-pa thought he had smoothed the wrinkles in the pump’s worried brain. But Po-han could see beyond it to a steam-bound auxiliary piston, which he acted out by hissing and pressing his palms together, and he knew a pump stalled because it couldn’t help it and not because it was too worried to keep its mind on the job. If spotting did not cure it, he could go on to renew the rings or rebush the gear. Whenever Po-han learned something new he was so delighted that it made Holman glad too.