Chapter 10

There was the big, black Jamaica cook ... as black as if he was polished ebony ... a fine, big, polite chap, whom everyone liked. He had a white wife in Southampton (the sailors who had seen her said she was pretty ... that the cook was true to her ... that she came down to the boat the minute the _South Sea King_ reached an English port, they loved each other so deeply!) ...

Then there was the giant of an Irishman ... who, working side by side with me in the hold, shovelling out cattle-ordure there with me, informed me that I looked as if I had consumption ... that I would not be able to stand the terrific heat for many days without keeling over ... but, his prediction came true of himself, not of me.

One morning, not many days out, the little West Indian watchman, bringing down the before-daylight coffee and ships-biscuits and rousing the men, as was his duty,--found the big fellow, with whom he used to crack cheery jokes, apparently sound asleep. The watchman shook him by the foot to rouse him ... found his big friend stiff and cold.

The watchman let out a scream of horror that woke us right and proper, for _that_ day....

The next day was Sunday. It was a still, religious afternoon.

We men ranged in two rows aft. The body had been sewn up in coarse canvas, the Union Jack draped over it.

The captain, dapper in his gold-braided uniform, stood over the body as it lay on the plank from which it was to descend into the sea. In a high, clear voice he read that beautiful burial-service for the dead ... an upward tilt of the board in the hands of two brown-armed seamen, the body flashed over the side, to swing feet-down, laden with shot, for interminable days and nights, in the vast tides of the Pacific.

No one reached quickly enough. The Union Jack went off with the body, like a floral decoration flung after....

* * * * *

We drank the coffee brought to us before dawn, in grouchy, sleepy, monosyllabic silence. Immediately after, the cattle were to water and feed ... and a hungry lot they were ... but despite their appetites, with each day, because of the excessive heat of the tropics, and the confined existence that was theirs--such an abrupt transition from the open range--they waxed thinner and thinner, acquired more of large-eyed mournfulness and an aspect of almost human suffering in their piteous, pleading faces....

* * * * *

If the big chap who succumbed to heart failure that night had lived a few days longer, he would have wondered still more at me or anyone else surviving a day's work in the hold.

For the thermometer ran up incredibly ... hotter and hotter it grew ... and down there in the hold we had to shovel out the excrement every morning after breakfast. It was too infernal for even the prudish Anglo-Saxon souls of us to wear clothes beyond a breechclout, and shoes, to protect our feet from the harder hoof.

Our eyes stung and watered from the reek of the ammonia in the cattle-urine. What with the crowding, the bad air (despite the canvas ventilators let down) and the sudden change from green pasturage to dry, baled food, most of the beasts contracted "the skitters." This mess was what we had to shovel out through the portholes ... an offensive-smelling, greenish, fluidic material, that spilled, the half of it, always, from the carefully-held scoop of the shovel.

Cursing, with the bitter sweat streaming off our bodies and into our eyes, and with an oblique eye to guard from heat-maddened, frantic steer-kicks,--each day, for several hours, we suffered through this hell ... to emerge panting, like runners after a long race; befouled ... to throw ourselves down on the upper deck, under the blue, wind-free sky and feel as if we had come into paradise....

* * * * *

"I wish I had never come back to this hell-ship, at Brisbane!"

"I wish I had never come aboard at all at Sydney!"

* * * * *

At such times, and at other odd ends of leisure, I brought my Westcott and Hort's Greek New Testament from my bunk, and with the nasty smell of sheep close-by, but unheeded through custom--I studied with greater pleasure than I ever did before or since.

* * * * *

As I said before, it was not long before these poor steers were broken-spirited things.

But there was one among them whose spirit kept its flag in the air, "The Black Devil," as the cook had named him fondly ... a steer, all glossy-black, excepting for a white spot in the center of his forehead. He behaved, from the first, more like a turbulent little bull than a gelding. The cook fed him with tid-bits from the galley.

He had evidently been someone's pet before he had been sold for live meat, to be shipped to China.

When we took him on board by the horns he showed no fear as he rode in the air. And, once on his feet again, and loose on deck, he showed us hell's own fight--out of sheer indignation--back there in Brisbane. He flashed after us, with the rapid motions of a bullfight in the movies. Most of us climbed every available thing to get out of his reach. He smashed here and there through wooden supports as if they were of cardboard.

The agile little ex-jockey kept running in front of him, hitting him on the nose and nimbly escaping--in spite of his wing-like, wasted arm, quicker than his pursuer ... that smashed through, while he ducked and turned....

"I'll be God-damned," yelled the captain from the safe vantage of the bridge, "fetch me my pistol," to the cabin boy, "I'll have to shoot the beast!"

All this while the big black Jamaica cook had been calmly looking on, leaning fearlessly out over the half-door of the galley ... while the infuriated animal rushed back and forth.

The cook said nothing. He disappeared, and reappeared with a bunch of carrots which he held out toward "The Black Devil."...

In immediate transformation, the little beast stopped, forgot his anger, stretched forth his moist, black nuzzle, sniffing ... and walked up to the cook, accepting the carrots. The cook began to stroke the animal's nose....

"_You_ little black devil," he said, in a soft voice, "you're all right ... they don't understand you ... but we're going to be pals--us two--aren't we?"

Then he came out at the door to where the steer stood, took "The Black Devil," as we henceforth called him, gently by the under-jaw,--and led him into a standing-place right across from the galley.

* * * * *

As we struck further north under vast nights of stars, and days of furnace-hot sunshine, the heat, confinement, and dry, baled food told hideously on the animals ... the sheep seemed to endure better, partly because they were not halted stationary in one spot and could move about a little on the top deck.... But they suffered hardships that came of changing weather.

* * * * *

Especially the cattle in the lower hold suffered, grew weak and emaciated.... We were ever on the watch to keep them from going down ... there was danger of their sprawling over each other and breaking legs in the scramble. So when one tried to lie down, his tail was twisted till the suffering made him rise to his feet ... sometimes a steer would be too weak to regain his feet ... in such a case, in a vain effort to make the beast rise, I have seen the Irish foreman twist the tail nearly off, while the animal at first bellowed, then moaned weakly, with anguish ... a final boot at the victim in angry frustration....

Last, a milky glaze would settle over the beast's eyes ... and we would drag him out and up by donkey-engine, swing him over and out, and drop him, to float, a bobbing tan object, down our receding ocean-path.

* * * * *

The coast of Borneo hovered, far and blue, in the offing, when we struck our first, and last, typhoon. The mate avowed it was merely the tail-end of a typhoon; if that was the tail-end, it is good that the body of it did not strike down on us.

The surface of the ocean was kicked up into high, ridge-running masses. The tops of the waves were caught in the wind and whipped into a wide, level froth as if a giant egg-beater were at work ... then water, water, water came sweeping and mounting and climbing aboard, hill after bursting hill.

The deck was swept as by a mountain-torrent ... boards whirled about with an uncanny motion in them. They came forward toward you with a bound, menacing shin and midriff,--then on the motion of the ship, they paused, and washed in the opposite direction.

Here and there a steer broke loose, which had to be caught and tethered again. But in general the animals were too much frightened to do anything but stand trembling and moaning ... when they were not floundering about....

Down below was a suffocating inferno. For the hatches that were ordinarily kept open for more air, had to be battened down till the waves subsided.

* * * * *

At the very height of the storm, we heard a screaming of the most abject fear.

The jockey had passed, in forgetful excitement, too close to his enemy, The Black Devil--who had not forgotten, and gave him a horn in the side, under the withered arm.

Several sailors carried the bleeding man aft to the captain ... who dressed his wound with fair skill. The jockey was not so badly injured, all things considered. The thrust had slanted and made only a flesh wound ... which enabled the fellow to loaf on a sort of sick-leave, during the rest of the trip.

* * * * *

The storm over, frantically we tore off the hatches again ... to find only ten steers dead below. The rest were gasping piteously for air. It was a day's work, heaving the dead stock overboard ... including the two more which died of the after-effects....

When we went to look the sheep over, we found that over a third of them had been washed overboard. The rest were huddled, in frightened, bleating heaps, wondering perhaps what kind of an insane world it was that they had been harried into.

* * * * *

The story of this cattleboat unfolds freshly before me again, out of the records of memory ... the pitiful suffering of the cattle ... the lives and daily doings of the rowdy, likeable men, who were really still undeveloped children, and would so go down to the grave ... with their boasting and continual vanity of small and trivial things of life.

* * * * *

All the time I was keeping a diary of my adventures ... in a large, brown copybook, with flexible covers. I carried it, tightened away, usually, in the lining of my coat, but occasionally I left it under the mattress of my bunk.

Nippers observed me writing in it one day.

That night it was gone. I surmised who had taken it.

Seeking Nippers, I came upon him haltingly reading my diary aloud to an amused circle of cattlemen, in his quarters aft.

"Give me that book back!" I demanded.

He ignored me.

"Give him a rap in the kisser, Skinny!"

I drew back, aiming a blow at Nippers. He flung the book down and was on me like the tornado we had just run through ... he was a natural-born fighter ... in a twinkling I was on the floor, with a black eye, a bleeding mouth.

I flung myself to my feet, full of fury ... then something went in my brain like the click of a camera-shutter ... I had an hallucination of Uncle Landon, coming at me with a club....

I plumped into a corner, crouching. "Don't hit me any more ... please don't, Uncle Lan!"

"He's gone crazy!"

"Naw, he's only a bloody, bleedin' coward," returned another voice, in surprise and disgust.

Someone spat on me. I was let up at last.... I staggered forward to my bunk. My book had been handed back to me. It's a wonder I didn't throw myself into the sea, in disgust over the queer fit that had come over me. I lay half the night, puzzling ... was I a coward?

Not unless an unparalleled change had occurred in me. I had fought with other children, when a boy ... had whipped two lads at once, when working in the Composite factory, that time they spit into my book.

* * * * *

One day a fishing-junk hove into sight, just as if it had sailed out of a Maxfield Parrish illustration,--swinging there in the mouth of a blood-red sunset ... then, like magic, appeared another and another and another....

"Fishing-junks," ejaculated the mate, "--pretty far out, too, but a Chink'll risk his life for a few bleedin' cash ... and yet he won't fight at all ... an' if you do him an injury he's like as not likely to up an' commit suicide at your door, to get even!"

"That's a bally orful way to get even with a henemy!" exclaimed a stoker, who sat on the edge of the forward hatch.

"I should say so, too!"

Then, far and faint, were heard a crew of Chinese sailors, on the nearest junk, singing a curious, falsetto chantey as they hauled on a bamboo-braced sail....

"A feller wot never travelled wouldn't bloody well believe they was such queer people in the world," further observed the philosophic coal-heaver.

* * * * *

Next morning the coast of China lay right against us, on the starboard side ... we ran into the thick of a fleet of sampans, boats fashioned flat like overgrown rowboats, propelled each by a huge sculling oar, from the stern ... they were fishers who manned them ... two or three to a boat ... huge, bronze-bodied, fine-muscled, breech-clouted men ... as they sculled swiftly to give us sea-room each one looked fit to be a sculptor's model.

Their bodies shone in the sun like bronze. Several, fearing we might run them down, as we clove straight through their midst, raised their arms with a shout full of pleading and fright.

"What's the matter? are they trying to murder some of these poor chaps?" I asked.

"No ... we're just having a little fun ... what's the life of a Chink matter?"

* * * * *

"I say, if the Chinks up where the Boxers are fighting are big and strong as them duffers, here's one that don't want no shore-leave!" commented someone, as we stood ranged by the side.

"I always thought Chinamen was runts."

"Oh, it's only city Chinks--mostly from Canton, that come to civilized countries to run laundries ... but these are the real Chinamen."

* * * * *

After the cattle had been unladen, the crew were to be taken down to Shanghai and dumped ashore ... as it was an English Treaty port, that would be, technically, living up to the ship's articles, which guaranteed that the cattlemen aboard would be given passage back to English ground....

But I was all excitement over the prospect of making my way ashore to where the Allied troops were fighting....

* * * * *

Dawn ... we were anchored in Taku Bay among the warships of the Allied nations ... grey warships gleaming in the sun like silver ... the sound of bugles ... flags of all nations ... of as many colours as the coat of Joseph.

"Well, here we are at last!"

* * * * *

Next day the work of unloading the cattle began ... hoisted again by the horns from our boat of heavy draught to the hold of a coasting steamer, that had English captain and mates, and a Chinese crew.

Some of the steers were so weak that they died on deck ... as they were dying, butchers cut their throats so their beef could be called fresh.

The only one who desired to go ashore there, I made my way, when it was dark and the last load of steers was being transferred to shore, down below to the hold of the coaster. I stood in a corner, behind an iron ladder, so that the cattle couldn't crush me during the night ... for the Chinese had turned them loose, there, in a mass.

* * * * *

I stumbled ashore at Tongku, a station up a way on the banks of the Pei Ho river.

My first night ashore in China was a far cry from the China of my dreams ... the Cathay of Marco Polo, with its towers of porcelain.... I crept, to escape a cold drizzle, under the huge tarpaulin which covered a great stack of tinned goods--army supplies. A soldier on guard over the stack, an American soldier, spotted me.

"Come, my lad," lifting up the tarpaulin, "what are you doing there?"

"--Trying to keep from the wet!"

"--run off from one of the transports?"

"Yes," was as good an answer as any.

"You're pretty cold ... your teeth are chattering. Here, take a swig o' this."

And the sentinel reached me a flask of whiskey from which I drew a nip. Unaccustomed as I was to drink, it nearly strangled me. It went all the way down like fire. Then it spread with a pleasant warmth all through my body....

"Stay here to-night ... rather uncomfortable bed, but at least it's dry. No one 'ull bother you ... in the morning Captain ----, who is in charge of the commissariat here, might give you a job."

* * * * *

That next morning Captain ---- gave me a job as mate, eighty dollars Mex. and a place to sleep, along with others, in a Compound, and find my food at my own expense....

Mate, on a supply-launch that went in and out to and from the transports, that were continually anchoring in the bay. Our job was to keep the officers' mess in supplies....

"And, if you stick to your job six months," I was informed, "you'll be entitled to free transportation back to San Francisco."

My captain was a neat, young Englishman, with the merest hint of a moustache of fair gold.

Our crew--two Chinamen who jested about us between themselves in a continuous splutter of Chinese. We could tell, by their grimaces and gestures ... we rather liked their harmless, human impudence ... as long as they did the work, while we lazed about, talking ... while up and down the yellow sweep of the Pei-ho the little boat tramped.

* * * * *

"It's too bad you didn't arrive on the present scene a few weeks, sooner," said my young captain ... "it was quite exciting here, at that time. I used to have to take the boathook and push off the Chinese corpses that caught on the prow of the boat as they floated down, thick ... they seemed to catch hold of the prow as if still alive. It was uncanny!"

* * * * *

We slept, rolled up in our blankets, on the floor of a Chinese compound ... adventurers bound up and down the river, to and from Tien-Tsin and Woo-shi-Woo and Pekin ... a sort of caravanserai....

* * * * *

Though it was the fall of the year and the nights were cold enough to make two blankets feel good, yet some days the sun blazed down intolerably on our boat, on the river....

When we grew thirsty the captain and myself resorted to our jug of distilled water. I had been warned against drinking the yellow, pea-soup-like water of the Pei-ho....

But one afternoon I found our water had run out.

So I took the gourd used by the Chinese crew, and dipped up, as they did, the river water.

The captain clutched me by the wrist.

"Don't drink that water! If you'd seen what I have, floating in it, you'd be afraid!"

"What won't hurt a Chinaman, won't hurt me," I boasted....

The result of my folly was a mild case of dysentery....

In a few days I was so weak that I went around as if I had no bones left in my body. And I wanted to leave the country. And I repaired to Captain ---- who had given me the job, and asked him for my pay and my discharge. He lit into me, disgusted, upbraiding me for a worthless tramp....

"I might have known that you were of that ilk, from the first, just by looking at you!"

He handed me the eighty dollars in Mexican silver, that was coming to me.... I repaid the captain the forty I had borrowed, for food.

"Sick! yes, sick of laziness!"

Captain ---- was partly right. I had an uncontrollable distaste for the monotony of daily work, repeated in the same environment, surrounded by the same scenery ... but I was also quite weak and sick, and I am persuaded, that, if I had stayed on there, I might have died.

* * * * *

I sat on one of the wharves and played host to a crowd of romantic thoughts that moved in their pageant through my brain ... now I would go on to Pekin and see the great Forbidden City. Now I would dress in Chinese clothes and beg my way through the very heart of the Chinese Empire ... and write a book, subsequently, about my experiences and adventures ... and perhaps win a medal of some famous society for it ... and I had a dream of marrying some quaintly beautiful mandarin's daughter, of becoming a famous, revered Chinese scholar, bringing together with my influence the East and the West....

I reached so far, in the dream, as to buy several novels of the Chinese, printed in their characters, of an itinerant vendor....

The everyday world swung into my ken again.

Three junks, laden with American marines, dropping down the river from Pekin, cut across my abstracted gaze ... the boys were singing.

They marched off on the dock on which I sat. They were stationed right where they deployed from the junks. Men were put in guard over them.

At Tien Tsin they had behaved rather badly, I was told by one of them,--had gone on a Samshu jag ... a Chinese drink, worse than the worst American "rot-gut." ...

"Wisht I c'd git off the dock an' rustle up another drink somewheres."

"They wouldn't let us off this dock fer love nor money," spoke up a lithe, blue-shaven marine to me--the company's barber, I afterward learned him to be....

"Yah, we got ter stay here all afternoon, an' me t'roat's es dry es san'paper."

"Where are they taking you to, from here?"

"Manila!... the _Indiana's_ waitin' out in th' bay fer us."

"--Wish I could get off with you!" I remarked.

"Wot's the matter? On th' bum here?"

"Yes."

Immediately the barber and two others, his pals, became intensely, suspiciously so, interested in my desire to sail with them....

"--Tell you wot," and the company barber reached into his pocket with a surreptitious glance about, "if you'll take these bills an' sneak past to that coaster lyin' along the next dock, the Chinese steward 'ull sell you three bottles o' whiskey fer these," and he handed me a bunch of bills ... "an' w'en you come back with th' booze, we'll see to it that you get took out to the transport with us, all right ... won't we, boys?"

"--betcher boots we will."

* * * * *

"God, but this is like heaven to me," exclaimed the barber, as he tilted up his bottle, while the two others stood about him, to keep him from being seen. The three of them drank their bottles of whiskey as if it was water.

"That saved me life...."

"An' mine, too. You go to Manila wit' us, all right,--kid!"

* * * * *

Toward dusk came the sharp command for the men to march aboard the coaster that had drawn up for them. The boys kept their word. They loaded me down with their accoutrements to carry. I marched up the gangway with them, and we were off to the _Indiana_.

I was the first, almost, to scamper aboard the waiting transport in the gathering dusk ... and, to make sure of staying aboard, I hurried down one ladder after the other, till I reached the heavy darkness of the lowermost hold. Having nothing to do but sleep, I stumbled over some oblong boxes, climbed onto one, and composed myself for the night, using a coil of rope for a pillow.

I woke to find a grey patch of day streaming down the ladder-way. My eyes soon adjusted themselves to the obscurity.

And then it was that I gave a great, scared leap. And with difficulty I held myself back from crying out.

Those curious oblong boxes among which I had passed the night--they were hermetically sealed coffins, and there were dead soldiers in them. Ridges of terror crept along my flesh. Stifling a panic in me, I forced myself to go slow as I climbed the iron rungs to the hold above ... where living soldiers lay sleeping in long rows....