Instantly the remaining Chinese became tense, and Captain Hoxworth sensed this, for he whipped around, grabbed a belaying pin and took three determined steps toward the men climbing up the gangplank. Cursing them in a language they could not understand, he grabbed the arm of the next Punti, swung him about, and launched him toward the ladder. When the Chinese had sense enough to climb down, the big American roared, “There’s gonna be no trouble aboard this ship!” And he brandished his belaying pin as the future plantation hands disappeared into the dark hold.
As they went below, the Chinese caught a last glimpse of their homeland, and unconsolable sorrows assaulted them, for it was a miserable thing when a man left China, and some sensed that never again would they see this great land; no matter how harshly China had treated them it was still the Middle Kingdom, the heavenly land suspended between mere earth and the residence of the gods: the sweeping plains, the rice fields in the spring, the glorious mountains, and the wild, cruel rivers. It was a land men could love, and for each who now deserted it, there came a memory of the village where his ancestral pavilion waited his return.
Just before it was Nyuk Tsin’s turn to enter the hold, a thoughtful Punti climbed back out to advise Captain Hoxworth that the first man who had been thrown into the ship had broken his ankle, but when the good Samaritan reached the deck Hoxworth became furious and clouted the man with his belaying pin, knocking him back into the hold, where his friends caught him. “Don’t any of you goddamned Chinee pirates come up onto my deck!” the captain bellowed.
Nyuk Tsin was the last person down the ladder, and as she prepared to descend, she saw Dr. Whipple smiling at her while Captain Hoxworth monitored her with his belaying pin. Beyond them she caught a last glimpse of China, and when she thought of the brutal way in which this land had murdered her parents, and of the near starvation in which she had lived, and of the archaic terror she had known with her kidnapers, she was glad to see the end of China. Since she was only a woman, her name appeared in no ancestral hall and there were no ties binding her to the mountains other than the memory of the animal-like loads her uncle had piled upon her, so as she saw her homeland for the last time she whispered to herself, “Farewell, cursed land. I shall never see you again.”
Then she saw at the bottom of the ladder the young gambler, Mun Ki, the only person in many years who had been kind to her, and gladly she climbed down to be with him, and she was gratified when he extended his hand to help her; but she did not know that he was doing so to prevent her from breaking a leg, for an accident like that would seriously diminish her value when it came time to sell her in Honolulu.
As she reached bottom, the ladder was hauled out and heavy boards were dropped across the opening. When it became apparent that the hold was to be completely closed, the Chinese began a loud wail of protest, and Captain Hoxworth shouted, “Get the muskets!” When they were produced he ordered three sailors to kneel along the edge of the hold, and then he shouted, “Fire!” Shots whistled past the pigtails and crashed into the bulkheads. The terrified Chinese fell to the floor and the last boards of the covering were hammered into place. Now only a faltering light filtered in through a narrow grating, and there was no air, but a sail was rigged on deck so that when the ship was in motion, a breeze would be trapped and funneled below. There was no regular supply of water, only one foul bucket for slops, and such bedding as each man had brought of his own, nor were there any blankets for those who tried to sleep. It was in these quarters that Nyuk Tsin started housekeeping with her gambler, Mun Ki, and his two hundred and ninety-nine companions.
One thing was settled quickly. The Punti took their position forward and the Hakka aft, for naturally neither group wished to contaminate itself with the other, and for Nyuk Tsin there was a moment of hesitation when she felt that perhaps she ought to settle down with her own people, but they showed that they wanted nothing to do with a Hakka girl who had married a Punti; and at the same time the Punti made no effort to welcome her, so she took her position in a corner of the Punti terrain, and there she was left alone with her husband. The Punti did, however, bring to her their fellow with the broken ankle and they suggested in signs that she repair the damage. She studied the man’s leg and concluded that the break was not complicated, so she made a splint of chopsticks and lashed it in place with ends of cloth. Then she borrowed bedding from others and made a rude mattress on which the man rested. If there had been water, she would have washed his face, too.
Now there was a motion of the ship, a swaying in the offshore breezes and finally the slow, steady roll of the ocean itself. Before long the hold was a confused agony of seasickness, with men vomiting everywhere and then rolling indifferently in it. Nyuk Tsin became so nauseated that she hoped the ship would sink, and in this stench the first awful night passed.
At dawn a sailor opened the grating to pass down some buckets of water, shouting to his mates, “You want to smell the other side of hell?”
His friends came over and took a whiff. “How do they stand it?” they asked.
The first explained, “They’re Chinee. They like it that way,” and he jammed the grating back, forgetting to reset the deck sail so that fresh air could funnel in. The day grew increasingly hot and there was insufficient water to wash away the appalling smell, so that most of the three hundred got sicker than before. They sweated, retched, went to the toilet, filled the foul bucket and then used the floor. The heat grew unbearable and the man with the broken ankle started to rave about going home.
In the afternoon a little more water was passed down and the sailor shouted, “For Christ’s sake, now smell it!” And his mates agreed that with a hold full of Chinee you could do nothing. This time, however, someone remembered to tip the sail into the breeze, and by evening the hold was beginning to settle into the routine that would be followed for the next forty-six days. At eight in the morning and at four in the afternoon kettles of rice were lowered into the hold, along with stray ends of salt beef. There was no point in trying to serve vegetables or fish. Water was never plentiful, but a system was devised whereby at signals the slop bucket would be hauled up on a rope and emptied. The deck sail was tended so that a minimum breeze was funneled in, but never enough to permit a man a full breath of clean, cold air. The awful smell never abated, a mixture of urine, sweat, bowel movements and seasickness, but it was surprising that even those with especially sensitive stomachs did in time grow accustomed to it, for the odor seemed to represent them, forming a vital part of their foul, cramped quarters.
Providentially Mun Ki had brought with him some playing cards, and when his seasickness abated he set up a gambling corner where each day, as long as sunlight filtered through the grating, he tried to win back the money he had paid his Punti friends. He was adept with cards and won small amounts from most of his adversaries, announcing often, as he patted the back of his pigtail: “I’m a very lucky fellow. I understand the run of cards.” When an opponent lost his stake, the nimble-witted gambler suggested: “I’ll lend you some so the game can continue,” and strict accounts were kept of who owed whom and how much. Significantly, no Punti ever promised: “Mun Ki, when we get to the Fragrant Tree Country I will pay you what I owe you.” Instead, they assured him: “When I earn some money, I will send it to Uncle Chun Fat in the Low Village.” For that was home. That was where accounts were kept, the permanent address of a man, the known anchor.
One evening when the faltering light no longer permitted gambling, Mun Ki looked at the girl he was convoying to the brothel keeper in Honolulu and reflected: “Perfect Jade! Not exactly perfect with those ugly feet.” In comparison he recalled his soft young wife from the Kung village, well brought up and with small feet, and he would recall the enchanting manner in which a girl with bound feet walked, not like a man at all, but swaying in the ambient light like a flower, her hips moving in a special way calculated to drive a man crazy with desire. Thinking of the subtle poetry with which his young wife moved, he next recalle
d his memorable days of playing with that delectable girl, and he reconstructed the things they had done together in the silken bed. He became tumescent, and before night fell with its utter darkness, he studied Nyuk Tsin and thought: “But she can be fun, in her own way, too.” He drew her to him and tried to slip his hands under her clothes, but the Punti were so crowded in the filthy hold that instinctively she drew away, for many were watching her. “They are looking,” she whispered.
This irritated Mun Ki, so impulsively he stood and announced: “I am a married man and it is outrageous that I cannot sleep with my wife. I am going to build a corner.” He unrolled all of his bedding, and with the point of a knife began tearing slivers of wood from the bulkhead until he got two stout ones started upon which he could hang his partitions, and before night fell completely, he had cut off a private corner, and when he brought Nyuk Tsin inside he told her that now she could undress, and when they lay locked together on the rough boards of the floor he told her, “Except for your disgraceful feet, you are almost as good as my Kung wife.”
Thereafter, whenever the gambling declined in interest and the long dreary days ended in shadows, Mun Ki would announce: “Well, I am building our corner again!” And the other men, Punti and Hakka alike, honored his arrangement and during the daylight hours treated Nyuk Tsin with increased respect. On the bulkhead Mun Ki hung his good-luck sign: “May This Bed Yield a Hundred Sons.” And although he was unaware of the fact, the sign was effective, and in due course Nyuk Tsin would bear him a son.
AT THE BEGINNING of the second week it became obvious that the broken ankle of the Punti man was not going to heal, for some of the splintered bones had caused wounds that were now well festered, and a dangerous blue line had begun to form along the man’s leg. Therefore, one morning when the grating was opened to haul up the slop bucket, one of the Punti men swung himself aloft with the intention of asking the sailors for help, but when they saw his ominous yellow face and the long pigtail appearing on deck, they panicked and began to shout, “Mutiny! Mutiny!”
The first mate came rushing forward, grabbing a pin as he ran, and Captain Hoxworth left the bridge, leaping swiftly down the ladders onto the deck. By this time one of the sailors had swung a powerful fist at the startled Punti, knocking him toward the first mate, who brought his pin down across the man’s skull with full force. This knocked the Chinese unconscious and into the path of the onrushing captain, who, when he saw the fallen mutineer, began to kick him in the face, driving his heavy leather shoes into the inert man’s cheekbones until there was a sickly collapse of the man’s facial structure.
When the terror ended, the captain shouted to his sailors, “You, there! Throw this damned pirate back in the hold.” Two sailors grabbed the inert Punti and tossed him headfirst down the opening.
“Goddamnit!” Hoxworth shouted in frustration. “We should never have sailed without someone who can speak Chinee.” He stormed for a moment, then commanded: “Mister Aspinwall, fetch the guns.” When they were produced, Hoxworth directed his men to fire into the bulkheads over the cowering Chinese.
“Don’t ever try to mutiny my ship!” Hoxworth stormed, cursing the coolies and stalking back to his bridge.
He was met there by an ashen-faced Dr. Whipple, who demanded bitterly, “Was such brutality necessary, Captain Hoxworth?”
The tall seafarer, fleshy and prosperous, stared ahead over the prow of his ship and said, “John, you’d better keep out of this.”
“I can’t be partner to such brutality,” the gray-haired doctor said firmly.
“You afraid of blood?” Hoxworth asked. “Or afraid of losing your investment?”
Dr. Whipple refused to acknowledge this insulting query, and continued as if he had not heard it: “As a Christian I cannot tolerate your behavior toward men I conscripted in good faith.”
The older man continued conning his ship and said calmly, “Dr. Whipple, how many vessels do you think were mutinied last year by Chinee pirates who smuggled themselves aboard?”
“I don’t know,” Whipple replied.
“Eleven,” Captain Hoxworth said evenly. “That is, eleven that we know about. We haven’t the remotest knowledge of what’s lurking in that hold. Pirates … cutthroats … mutineers. You guess. All I’m saying is, that a Hoxworth & Hale ship is never going to be mutinied by any Chinee. That’s why I personally supervised this little adventure.”
“But to kick an unconscious man!”
“Dr. Whipple, I respect your principles. I like the way you carry out your business. But in my business, the minute a captain is either afraid or unwilling to kick his enemy to a pulp, he’s on the verge of losing his ship. I have nineteen ships now, and I don’t propose to lose a damned one of them to a bunch of murderous Chinamen.”
Dr. Whipple studied these remarks in silence, then moved to the doorway leading from the bridge. In resolute, unhurried words he said, “Captain, although I respect your fears, I must dissociate myself from your actions. They were brutal and indefensible.”
The doctor considered this statement a morally crushing one and left the bridge, but big Captain Hoxworth bounded after him, caught him by the arm, swung him around, and growled, “Once a missionary, always a missionary. Doctor, you don’t know a goddamned thing about running a ship, and you ought to keep your nose out of it. This is not work for a missionary. It’s work for a man.” Shoving Whipple away in contempt, he stalked back to the bridge, from which he ran his ship and from which, figuratively, he ran his entire line of prosperous vessels.
John Whipple did not allow his anger at such treatment to obscure his judgment. In years of trading around the Pacific he had often met obstinate men and the cruel situations which they produce, and he had learned that in such confrontations his only chance of winning lay in doing exactly what in conscience ought to be done. It was by reliance upon this conviction that he had quietly made his way in such disparate jungles as Valparaiso, Batavia, Singapore and Honolulu. Now he went calmly to his cabin, next door to the one where the captain had kept the two young Chinese girls during the Hong Kong layover, and took up his doctor’s kit. Checking it as he had learned to do more than forty years before, he carried it sedately to the locked grating and said to the sailor on guard, “Open it and let me in.”
“The captain would …”
“Open it,” Whipple commanded. “There’s a man dying down there.” And he took a belaying pin and started knocking away the wedges that held the grating in place. When it had swung free, he saw that no ladder could be fitted into it, so he held his bag between his knees, grabbed the edge of the opening, and swung himself down into the stinking hold. “What a horrible smell!” he mumbled through clenched teeth as he joined the three hundred and one Chinese.
Compared to the brightness of the day on deck, all was gloom and shadowy darkness in the hold, and as his eyes slowly became accustomed to the tenebrous hell, and his nose to its rankness, he saw that two men lay stretched out in the middle near where he had landed, while the others stood huddled in two clearly separated groups. He thought: “They will be the Punti and the Hakka.” And he could not be certain when they might leap at him, as in justice they were entitled to do. But each of three hundred had seen him before, in the villages, and therefore he seemed like an old friend, which he now proceeded to prove he was.
Ignoring both the uncertainty and the danger of his position, he knelt beside the man whose face had been kicked in, checked the extent of damage, and spread beside him objects that the Chinese could see were medicines. Carefully, by keeping one thumb pressed inside the unconscious man’s mouth, first at one place and then at another, he began to mold the bones back into line, thinking: “It’s merciful that he is still insensible.” He next medicated the open wounds where the heavy boot had cut the skin and saw with some pleasure that the man’s eyes were not badly damaged. Looking up at the circle of inquisitive faces, he communicated his real joy at this discovery, and the Chinese understood.
At this point, Nyuk Tsin came to him and directed his attention to the man with the broken ankle, and he studied with admiration the splint made of chopsticks. Again he demonstrated his approval, and again everyone understood, so that Nyuk Tsin gained even greater acceptance than she had before enjoyed. But it was also apparent to Dr. Whipple that the injured Chinese could well lose his leg unless quick remedies were effected, so he shouted through the grating, “Send me down some hot water, right away.” But when the sailor opened the grating, everyone below could hear the captain’s great voice shouting, “Who in the hell ordered you to touch that grating?” And the sailor replied, “Dr. Whipple is down there tending the sick Chinese.” There was a moment of ominous silence, the sound of heavy feet striding across the foredeck, and an echoing slap across someone’s face, followed by a deluge of scalding water down the grating.
“There’s his hot water, by God! And I’ll teach you to open a grating!” There were ugly sounds, such as the Chinese had heard before, but this time, looking at Whipple amongst them, they could be sure that it was an American who was receiving a beating.
Then, in the mournful semi-darkness, a face that could not be clearly discerned pressed close to the grating and bellowed, “John Whipple, are you down there with those goddamned Chinee pirates?”
“I am giving them medical care,” Whipple said.
“Well, if you love the Chinee so much, you can stay down there!” and he ordered the new sailors who assumed the grating-watch: “If he makes a single move to get out, bash him in the face with a board.”