The Sand Pebbles (3 page)

“Are we really in a river?” she asked him.

“Yeah. It’s a river,” he said.

The starboard shore was a green horizon. The port shore was out of sight across choppy brown water. You couldn’t see it as a river. You could just know it was there.

“It’s so huge,” she said. She was blonde, fresh and clean-looking in a sleeveless brown dress, but not very pretty. “I’ve just come to China,” she said. “There’s so much. So different.” She looked down at the Chinese passengers crowding the main deck and back out across the water. “It’s just so enormous,” she repeated.

“I guess it gets smaller as you go up,” he said. “I guess if you went far enough, you could straddle it and scoop it all up in a bucket.”

That was a secret thought he always had about rivers. He had never told it to anyone before. She thought about it.

“I’m from Minnesota. I’ve seen where the Mississippi starts,” she said. “It just rises up out of the land all around. You couldn’t scoop it up in a bucket.”

They talked for half an hour. She found out he was a navy sailor and a passenger like herself. She did not know it hurt a missionary girl’s reputation to be friendly with a sailor. She told him her brother Charley had been a reserve lieutenant on the
Delaware
during the war. Holman didn’t tell her he hated battleships and had very little use for lieutenants. Her name was Miss Eckert and she called him Mr. Holman. It was a strange, pleasant little talk.

“I’ve so much to learn,” she said. “It’s so confusing, so far.”

It was indeed. Holman was confused also with the talk he heard at meals in the saloon. Things were set up in China so that sailors were never around nice people, and he had not heard such talk before. The other passengers were three businessmen and two buck missionaries and they wrangled about China. Holman knew his place and kept it and said nothing. Riots were going on in Shanghai because some students had been shot, and a naval landing force was ashore to back up
the police. They wrangled about that.

“Chinese think we’re demoralized!” the bulky old Englishman, Mr. Outscout, said. “Think so myself, by George! Gone soft, rotten, since the war!”

He had stiff gray hair that he tossed for emphasis. His main target was the oldest missionary, Miss Eckert’s new boss, a tall, bearded man named Craddock. Craddock would stick out his beard for emphasis. He and Outscout were a good match.

“No, sir!” Craddock said once. “I say you shall not extend your unequal treaties yet further over this unhappy nation!”

“Our
unequal treaties!
Ours
, I say!”

Outscout banged the table. The crystal chandelier tinkled. The businessmen ganged up on Craddock. They asked him if he owned title to his mission lands, what taxes and import duties he paid, how often he interfered in Chinese courts on behalf of converts and how often he had fled to a gunboat.

“Twice, to my shame,” he said, glaring at them. “I will not flee again.”

The saloon was paneled in dark wood and had a brown rug. White-coated Chinese stewards served neatly and silently. There were silver and white linen and wine glasses and they all had very good eating manners. Miss Eckert often asked questions. Both sides were trying to win her over. Her questions helped Holman to understand.

He learned that the missionaries wanted a lot more than just pulling the gunboats out of China. They wanted to turn customs and salt tax and postal system control back to the Chinese. They wanted all the palefaces to be under Chinese law and need Chinese permission to be in the country. It was complicated and it was all mixed up in Holman’s mind with Miss Eckert asking questions.

Sailors did not know about any treaties. They thought navy ships operated in Chinese waters the same way they did on the high seas. The sailors knew the missionaries despised them and wanted to run them out of China. They knew that, all right. But they thought it was only because sailors were so sinful. You would never hear a good word for missionaries from any China sailor. The businessmen said
it would be time enough to think about giving China equal treaties when China was able to form a stable and civilized government. It was Craddock’s turn to thump the table.

“Your unequal treaties create a situation that compels their use! You know they are cancerously self-extending!” he said fiercely. “You know, and well you know, that China will remain helpless to put her house in order unless you first put away your enslaving treaties!”

“Our
enslaving treaties! You’ll
not
come that on me, sir!”

Outscout looked ready to reach across and throttle Craddock. Miss Eckert slipped away, looking distressed.

“Your kind came in with the treaties, forcibly as opium!” Outscout said. “Suspend them and we all go! Chaff in a typhoon!” He flailed his arm. “Your kind, too. Chinese hate and despise you, sir! Dare you know that?”

“I dare love them in return!” The beard stuck out like a rammer bow. “I dare trust God rather than guns! Dare you, sir? Dare you?”

“I dare no less than yourself. You know well enough you’re not permitted to renounce your personal treaty rights.” Outscout’s voice turned scornful. “Cheap talk, sir, when you know you’ll not have to make it good.”

Respectable people really had control, Holman thought. Sailors could not get half that angry and nasty with each other without having to stand up and fist it out.

Near Chinkiang the river narrowed and low green hills humped along the south bank. A pagoda stood on a wooded point. The
Paul Jones
passed them making thirty knots, with signals fluttering, deck guns manned and boats swung out. She hailed, saying there was rioting in Chinkiang. The steamer people made a great fuss slamming and locking the steel gratings that shut the Chinese deck passengers away from topside. All male passengers were called to the pilot house. Holman went. The two missionaries were not there. Outscout seemed to have charge. He was digging in an arms chest.

“Ingram! Where d’ye keep your ammo?” he barked. The captain said someone was bringing it. Outscout thrust a rifle at Holman. “Pop down and do sentry-go on the cabin deck, lad,” he ordered. “Keep the deck passengers in hand.” Holman hefted the empty rifle doubtfully.
“Just show yourself through the bars forward and aft,” Outscout said. “The sight of your uniform and rifle is all they’ll want to keep them in order.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Holman said.

The deck passengers did not look at Holman and his uniform and his empty rifle. They crowded the port rail to look at black smoke rising above trees as the steamer rounded the point. Holman felt very foolish. He did not even know how to work his empty British rifle. What am I doing here? he thought. Only three Chinese children stared solemnly up at him through the bars. They knew something was wrong. The littlest one was about to cry. Holman grinned and pointed his finger down at them.

“Bang, bang. You’re dead,” he told them.

They considered that seriously. Then the two older ones smiled. The smallest one laughed and pointed his finger at Holman and said, “Cah cah cah!” Holman felt better about things. He grinned more widely. Then he felt eyes on the back of his neck. Someone behind him was watching. He stiffened and turned, cheeks burning.

It was Miss Eckert. She was smiling, understanding and sharing the little play instead of mocking it. Holman really saw her then, for the first time, and after that he could always really see her. She had a fresh, soft, sweet look to her face, and a curving build. Her straw-colored hair was bobbed and shingled. Her forehead was smooth and wide and her clear blue eyes looked right at everybody. Her rather wide mouth always showed her feelings, drooping in sympathy when someone was hurt. Now she was smiling very tenderly. He tried to smile back at her.

They could not say much. Craddock came and insisted that she take shelter. But for the rest of the trip to Hankow it was different between them. She was more than just a pleasing appearance. She was always real and there. It was clear that Craddock did not like her to be with Holman and also clear that she was ignoring Craddock’s advice. Holman knew Craddock was right, for the long run. He knew it was a good thing that he would never see Miss Eckert again, after they reached Hankow.

Holman began to think Craddock also had the right of it in the
running argument at meals. At dinner on the last day he spoke up for the first time, in support of something Craddock said. It was embarrassing. There was a pause. Even Craddock did not look pleased. Then Mr. Johnson, the gaunt American with glasses, said something vague. The talk went on. Johnson began telling Miss Eckert about the gunboats.

“Until we get our new gunboats built, you will have to depend largely on Mr. Outscout’s flag for your protection,” he told Miss Eckert. “American gunboats in Central China now are a painful local joke.”

He talked about the old Spanish relics, how they broke down and lacked power to get up the rapids.

“The most ludicrous one of all is named the
San Pablo,”
he said. “Mercifully, the admiral keeps it hidden away down in Hunan.”

Miss Eckert knew he was needling Holman. She joined Holman on deck after dinner. It was dark already. They would reach Hankow in a few hours.

“China Light is hidden away down in Hunan, too,” she said. That was the name of her mission, where she was going to teach English. She was trying to make up for what Johnson had said. “It doesn’t matter what the ships are like,” she went on. “They’re all manned by brave American boys. That’s what really counts.”

Somehow it angered Holman more than anything Johnson had said. She was just too dumb about some things.

“China sailors ain’t exactly clean-cut American boys,” he told her. “The clean-cut boys don’t stay in China.”

He tried to explain. Sailors came to China on a thirty-month tour of duty. If they liked it, if they fitted the pattern of things, they could extend and stay on and in time retire and die of old age in China, if they wanted to. If not, they went back to the States. She saw where he was going with it and tried to change the subject. It hurt her to hear him downgrade himself, even in that roundabout way. But he had to do it. For her sake. She had to learn about the pattern of things and how it did a missionary girl no good at all to be associated with a China sailor.

Holman shifted comfortably in his new bunk and sighed. He was almost asleep.

So a few hours ago he had hurried ashore from the commercial steamer with his seabag on his shoulder and without saying any goodbyes. He would never see her again. And if by some wild chance he did, she would have had time to learn the rules. It would be almost the same as not seeing her.

He woke to reveille on a bugle. They were all putting on the white shorts, so he put on undress whites. The head and washroom opened off the rear of the bunkroom and also out onto the fantail. They were clean, airy places with plenty of room and of course no fresh-water rationing. When Holman came back a Chinese messcook was putting gray enamel pitchers of hot coffee on the mess tables and another Chinese was making up Holman’s bunk. He poured himself a cup of coffee at the mess table nearest his bunk.

“You’ll sit here, across from me, old Pitocki’s place,” a red-bearded man said. A white lanyard came from under his beard to a bosun’s pipe in his shirt pocket.

“Thanks,” Holman said.

He sat down. In a chair. A solid wooden chair. The table was solid wood, with a bare, scrubbed top. Only three men to a side. Another table like it stood on the starboard side and there was a larger table aft, where the bunks were two high. The after table was for nonrated men, Holman thought, and even they had chairs. He saw the boatswain’s mate watching him and grinned.

“I’m just taking it all in,” he said. “It’s all right.”

“She’s a home, all right.”

That was the best thing a man could say for a ship, and it was not said of many. The worst thing you could say was “She’s a madhouse.” Holman was not ready to say anything yet. He felt the chair with his body. It was solid, separate, a chair. A regulation navy mess had rickety ten-man folding tables and narrow folding benches that sagged so that all the rumps kept sliding together and often the benches collapsed. Holman’s place was at the head of this table and he could lean back and touch his bunk and locker and just outside the door and around the corner was the engine-room hatch. He knew he was going to like being all gathered together like that. On the other ships he had always been scattered around. The compartment was clean and attractive with white enamel paint and green curtains and varnished wood and bright brass fittings. The deck was polished red linoleum. Forward of the mess tables the sides slanted in to leave a trapezoidal open space set off by two white stanchions. The open space held a wooden barber chair and some gear lockers. It was a fine place.

The other men on his mess, his new messmates, came up and poured coffee and sat down. One was Burgoyne.

“Morning, Jake,” he said. “What you think of the old
Sand Pebble
by now?”

“I’m still taking it in,” Holman said. “They made up my bunk for me. Do they always do that?”

“Every blessed morning.” Burgoyne grinned.

“They pick up your dirty clothes and wash and iron ’em and stow ’em clean back in your locker,” the red-bearded one said. The others called him Farren.

“They mend your clothes,” the round-faced machinist’s mate said. “When something wears out, they survey it and make you a new one. You always got a locker full of clean, new clothes.” His name was Wilsey.

They all began telling Holman things. Just about everything a sailor had to do for himself on other ships was done for him on this one. They all watched Holman, wanting to see surprise and pleasure in
his face, the same delight they had felt when they first came aboard this ship. Holman felt it, but he would not show it. He did not like being pushed to feel, or pretend to feel, anything, and he thought there must be a hidden catch in all of this.

“It’s a pretty good deal,” he said. “How in hell do you pay for all that service?”