CHAPTER XXXI
THE SHIP
She had been built on the Chu Kiang in the great Junk building yardsthat lie just below Canton and her bones had been put together by yellowmen. Built to a European design China had come out in her lines just asthe curve of the Tartar tent tops still lingers in the roof of thepagoda.
She might have been a hundred and fifty tons, not more, maybe less, andthe junk pattern had been eliminated and European sticks and decentcanvas substituted for lateen sails by the direction of the man whoordered her and who was a smuggler.
She had been built for swiftness as well as cargo and, her buildershaving been junk builders since the time of Tiberius, she was a failure,sailing like a dough dish; and the yard that built her, having seen herfloat off, went on building junks.
Then she passed from hand to hand, and dirty hands they were, from theChu Kiang to the Hoang Ho, and through the Korea Channel into the Japansea, trading sometimes, smuggling sometimes, and once, as far as theKuriles, sealing in forbidden waters. She was caught by the Russiansand her crew clubbed to death or sent to the quicksilver mines and thenshe came back to China, somehow, by way of Vladivostok and was sold andsold again till she fell into the hands of one, Chang, a sea scraper towhom everything came in handy from beche de mer to barratry and murder.
Chang was modern in some of his ideas, he carried a Swenfoyn-harpoon gunand, having luck down by the Sundas, he collected half a cargo of oilwhich he sold at Perth; from Perth he had dough-dished along down toKerguelen after the "big seals." He had struck this bay by chance and hehad struck oil, for all to westward of it lay a stretch of unwashedrock, as good a sea elephant ground as that on the long beach.
The girl standing beside Raft viewed the scene below her with a catch atthe heart. The carcases, the little blood-stained busy men, the try-potslike witches' cauldrons and that strange-looking ship which even to hereyes seemed not as other ships were, all these had a tinge of nightmare.Amongst the men she noted one, big almost as Raft. He seemed theirleader.
"Chinks," said Raft, "Chinee--they've got their pigtails rolled up,well, they're better than nothing."
He picked up the bundle that he had laid down and led the way to theslope that gave on the beach.
As they came on to the upper part of the beach the "Chinks" noticedthem, paused for a second in their labours and then, finding that itwas only a solitary man and woman, went on with their work as though theintruders had been a couple of penguins.
"Cool lot," said Raft.
The girl paused. The sight of the carcases and the blood at closequarters, the absolute indifference of the blubber strippers at thesight of an obvious pair of castaways, the whole scene and circumstanceturned her soul and chilled her heart.
"I don't like this," said she. "Those men make me afraid, they don'tseem human--they are _horrible_."
"Wait you here," said Raft.
He advanced alone across the black shingle and she stood watching himand listening to the stones crunching beneath his feet.
His advance did not disturb the workers.
They seemed working against time. Without any manner of doubt they wereanxious to be done with the business and be out of that bay before thenext blow came, for the place was fully exposed to the west-nor'west anda storm out of there might easily break their ship from its moorings andsend her broadside on to the shingle.
Undersized, agile, with weary-old faces that seemed covered with drawnparchment, they seemed less like men than automata; all save the leader,a gigantic, imperious-looking Mongolian with a thin cat-like moustache,a man of the true river pirate type with a dash of the Mandarin. Thisman held in his hand a long thong of leather. Captain or leader, orwhatever he might be, he was most evidently the serang of that labourparty.
On the shingle where the ripples washed in lay a boat, half-beached.
The big man was Chang, and as Raft approached harpoon in hand, she sawChang draw himself up to his full height and stand waiting. Then sheheard Raft's voice and saw him pointing at her and inland and then atthe ship.
Chang stood dumb. Then all at once he exploded, shouting andgesticulating. She could not make out what he said, but she knew. He wasordering them off. He seemed to be ordering them off the earth as wellas the beach. And Raft stood there patient and dumb like a chiddenchild.
Then she saw Raft nod his head and turn away.
He came back crunching up the shingle. "Sit down," said he.
She sat down and he took his seat beside her. He had dropped the bundlejust there, and as he sat for a moment before speaking he noticed thatthe fish line securing the mouth of the sack was loose, he carefullyretied it.
"You saw how that chap carried on," said he, "I had to put a stopper onmyself. He's the chap; them little yellow bellies don't count. He's thechap, and I've got to get him aside from the others." He spoke rapidlyand she saw that his eyes were injected with blood.
A new fear seized upon her, a fear akin to the dread she had felt thatdark night in the cave when she had caught the sound of La Touchedragging himself close to her, the dread of imminently impending action.
"Let us go away," said she, "another ship may come; anything is betterthan having a fight with those men."
"Have you got that knife safe?" asked Raft. She still wore thefisherman's knife round her waist. She put her hand on it.
"Yes, the knife is safe."
"If that chap downs me for good," said Raft, "stick that knife throughyourself. If he doesn't you take my orders and take them sharp."
He had risen to his feet and without a word more he came down theshingle again towards the workers, walking in a leisurely way andtrailing the harpoon along.
He approached Chang who turned on him again with the anger of a busy manimportuned by a beggar. The most heart-sickening thing to the girl wasthe way in which, after the first driving off of Raft, the greatChinaman and his crew had gone on with their work as though they werealone on the beach. Pity and humanity seemed as remote from that crowdas from the carcases they were handling. Active hostility would havebeen less horrible, somehow, than this absolute indifference to thecondition of others.
Chang did not wait for Raft to speak, this time; he began the speaking,or, rather, the shouting, advancing on the other who began to retreat.Chang, as if wishing to have done with this matter for good, followedhim up and at every step the devil in him seemed to rise higher whilsthis voice filled the beach.
What a voice that was! Half-singing, half-booming, the"whant-whong-goom-along" of the running coolie chanting as he runsseemed mixed with it, till, his anger breaking bounds, he let fly withthe strap in his hand, catching the other across the shoulder of the armthat held the harpoon.
Then Raft killed him.
The girl who saw the killing was less appalled for the moment by thedeed than the doer of it. The blow of the harpoon that sent Chang'sbrains flying like the contents of a smashed custard apple was like aflash of lightning, it was the thunder that terrified.
Roaring like a sea bull he sprang from the body of Chang towards thecrowd who faced him for a moment with their flensing knives like a herdof jackals. The girl, who had sprung to her feet, plucked the knife fromher belt and came running, terror gone and a wind seeming to carry herover the shingle; zoned in steel blue light she saw the harpoon flyingfrom right to left destroying everything in its way, knives flying intothe air as if tossed by jugglers, a yellow greasy back into which shestruck with her knife, a yellow Chinese face falling backwards with eyeswide on her, as if the Chinese soul of the creature she had stabbed tothe heart were trying to cling to her.
Then she was sitting on the shingle very ill and Raft was coming back toher, running.
The fight was over and the beasts had flown, left and right, she couldsee them crawling like ants away up on the higher ground. They haddropped their knives and the knives were lying here and there on theshingle where also lay four dead bodies including the body of Chang.
Ten minutes ago there h
ad been fifteen live Chinamen on that beach.
Raft was bleeding from a cut on the arm, his face was gashed above thebeard, a knife had ripped his coat and the back of his left hand shewedanother wound.
He was laughing and carrying on like a man in drink and now that herstomach was relieved an extraordinary light-headedness seized her. LikeRaft, she seemed drunk.
She had been snatched for a moment into a world where to kill was theonly alternative to death or worse than death. For a moment she hadlived in the Stone Age, she had fought like a savage animal and with thefury of the female, more terrific than the rage of the male. She hadbeen pushed to the edge of things, and it was she who had turned thefight. The man she had killed was in the act of knifing Raft in theback.
"The boat!" cried Raft.
She struggled to her feet, steadied herself, and came to the boat. Theypushed it out till it was nearly water borne; she scrambled in, hefollowed, and pushed off. Out in the bay the high black cliffs roseabove them as if pushed by a scene shifter, the light-headed laughingraving feeling left her, and as they came alongside of the barque tostarboard and tied up to the channel plates she was clear headed andcalm and able to get on board by the channel without assistance.
On the deck she tottered and fell in the dead swoon of exhaustion.
It is a long journey to the Stone Age and back and the man or woman whomakes it is never quite, quite the same again.