AFTER FOURTH BROTHER-IN-LAW’S arrival in Canton, Moongirl, through the husband of a patron, secured the help of a mandarin in finding mine.
This mandarin—forbidding and stiff as his black lacquered hat and high-collared, brocaded robe—had lost his only son to pig-traders, and he’d since executed all kidnappers caught within his jurisdiction no matter how heavily their families or associates weighted pleas for mercy with silver ingots, how much the wretches themselves soaked the earth with their tears. He also committed his personal wealth as well as the resources of his office to looking for stolen men.
Promising to scour the vicinity and outlying areas for Ah Lung, the mandarin counseled Moongirl and Fourth Brother-in-law to extend their search beyond his authority to Macao, the loading point for devil-ships. He provided them with letters of introduction to appropriate officials; passage on a speedy fire-driven boat; even the protection of a barrel-chested lieutenant armed with a sharp-edged broadsword.
The captains and crews of riverboats were sometimes overcome by man-stealers posing as passengers or in attacks launched from vessels alongside. So braves armed with muskets patrolled the deck of the fire-driven boat, and the lieutenant’s sword-hand never shifted from his weapon’s hilt.
His other hand waving off fiery-hot cinders and throat-searing billows of smoke, the lieutenant grimly jutted out his chin, directing Moongirl’s and Fourth Brother-in-law’s attention to the rotting hulks, secluded bays, and grassy islands that were once the refuge of opium smugglers, now pig-traders; the stone forts—embowered by shady banyans, flowering acacias, and dense bamboo groves—from which soldiers hunted them down.
The lieutenant hawked his disgust, spit over the railing. “Evil-doers are like autumn leaves. No sooner are some swept away, then more take their place.”
To Moongirl, the river—muddy with silt—smelled as much of earth as water, and as the fire-boat chugged past junks and sampans, the deck pulsed beneath her feet like a live animal, reminding her of the buffalo she and Ah Lung had ridden as children, the games of hide-and-go-seek they’d played.
Suddenly he felt very close, and she wondered out loud whether Ah Lung might be hidden beneath an awning or in the hold of a nearby boat.
The lieutenant dismissed the possibility. “More likely your brother’s already in a pigpen or devil-ship.”
“What are his chances of escape?”
“From a pigpen? Next to none. Not in one piece anyway. Same for a devil-ship so long as it’s at anchor in the harbor. There are too many guards. But captives on most ships organize rebellions soon after they’re at sea, and although few of these mutinies succeed, some of the rebels do escape.”
Making a fist, the lieutenant rapped his barrel-chest, then his forehead.
“What’s required is courage and good planning.”
EVEN AS THE fire-driven boat was tying up at the quay, Moongirl was leaning over the railing, hiring a skiff. Then, while Fourth Brother-in-law and the lieutenant hurried off to deliver the mandarin’s letters to officials and urge thorough searches of pigpens, lists of men already boarded, Moongirl leaped onto the skiff and directed the boatman to nose out devil-ships in the crowded harbor.
She knew from the lieutenant that devil-ships could be identified by their smell. But so terrible was their stink that were it not for the drone of talk from the holds, Moongirl would have thought the ships filled with captured beasts.
Yet Moongirl refused the boatman’s offer of a cloth to cover her nose and mouth as he circled the devil-ships. There was such a din from bird cries, men bawling and swearing, that she was afraid her voice, if the least bit muffled, would fail to penetrate the thick planks of the ships’ hulls.
Nor did Moongirl shout, “Ah Lung,” the way men and women on other skiffs were calling the names of brothers, husbands, sons, and fathers. She chanted the lament, “Savages have taken you prisoner,” in hopes that Ah Lung, should he hear her, would heed its warning.
She never expected to see him. And since she was partially blinded by a fierce glare, Moongirl couldn’t be sure the man mounting a narrow gangplank stretched between junk and devil-ship actually was Ah Lung. With soldiers on both sides of the gangplank aiming their muskets at him though, Moongirl realized that whether she startled the man and he fell or he responded to her by deliberately jumping, he’d be shot. So she did not cry, “Ah Lung,” even then. Instead she promised the boatman, “Double pay for doubling your pace,” and raced to shore for an official.
BACK AGAIN ON the devil-ship’s gangplank, I was walking towards Moongirl and freedom when I misstepped, fell. At the rush of air, my arms flew up, my jacket ballooned out, floated over my mouth and nose.
Reminding myself that I was holding my breath, I did nothing foolish. Not even when the force with which I hit water stung my feet, ripped loose my pants.
Once submerged, my pants torqued around my legs; the jacket’s grip on my head tightened. In a flash, I was shackled and shrouded, and I clawed and kicked in a panic.
For what seemed forever, the water churned as wildly as myself. Then Bo See’s arms were encircling me and all turned calm.
Little by little, though, disparate sensations pricked this calm:
The distant chimes of a bell.
Curses, mutterings, harsh heaving.
More chimes, closer and clearer; a shout.
Fetid heat, flesh—not Bo See’s—sticking to mine.
The slap of bare feet, clank of buckets and pump.
My mouth filling with water, the taste of salt.
A wracking wet cough that brought back full awareness— and with it, the bitter knowledge that Moongirl had not returned and I was yet a captive on the devil-ship, squeezed between Ah Jook on my left, Ah Ming on my right.
THE OFFICIAL FOUND my husband’s name in a list of eight-hundred captives on board a devil-ship headed for Peru, a country even further away than Gold Mountain on the other side of the world. So the man Moongirl saw on the gangplank probably had been Ah Lung. And although the devil-ship had sailed before he could be rescued, Fourth Brother-in-law reminded the family, “There’s still a chance Ah Lung will return home through a mutiny. A good chance. That’s why Moongirl didn’t come back with me. She’s expecting Ah Lung to land in Canton any day.”
I WAS CONFUSED by the frequent ringing of bells on the devil-ship until Ah Ming—who’d lived in America— explained they were for marking time: “We divide our days into twelve hours, but foreigners on land divide theirs into two cycles of twelve, at sea into six cycles, each beginning with one bell and ending with eight. So every half-hour, the helmsman is responsible for striking a small bell behind him. Then a sailor strikes a larger bell. But it’s the watch who calls out the number of chimes and ‘All’s well.’”
Every morning, at four bells during the second cycle, the sailors on the devil-ship started scrubbing the decks. Soon water would drip down on us through the seams in the planking. Since the hull leaked as well, we were never dry. Neither were our berths. Yet we were forced to remain in them except when compelled by necessity to use the wastebuckets located at the stern of the between-decks.
With only eight buckets for close to eight hundred men, many of whom were suffering motion sickness, the wait was always long, the crush in the walkways terrible, and those unable to hold in their vomit or piss or shit would aim for the nearest spittoon. Not surprisingly, spittoons and buckets overflowed long before their removal, spilled as they were carried out.
Ah Jook, a ship’s carpenter in Hong Kong before his capture, claimed the large pipes near the buckets were to draw off foul air. To me, though, these pipes seemed as ineffectual as the three heavily grated hatches which let in little light, less air, not the faintest whiff of a breeze.
When in our berths, I could barely make out Ah Jook’s thick neck and bunlike cheeks, the giant mole—black and hairy—between Ah Ming’s eyebrows, the oversized teeth crowded behind his thin, colorless lips. I could only tolerate the stink by breath
ing through my mouth, counting each ding of the bells until the four in the third and fifth cycles signaled our morning and afternoon meals.
It was not the food I wanted. Because of the stink, the ship’s roll that endlessly pushed my soles flat against the lip of wood at my feet then shoved my head against the hull, the state of my stomach ricocheted from queasiness to outright rebellion. But one of every ten captives had to fetch the food from above for the other nine, and I’d seized this job of “steward” so I could stretch my limbs and breathe fresh air twice a day.
Anticipating four bells, I’d hoist my legs over the platform’s lip at the first ding. Although I tried to be careful, my queue—long enough for me to sit on—would usually uncoil from around the crown of my head, become entangled in the awkward convolutions of my limbs. I’d arouse grumbles, curses from Ah Ming and Ah Jook and those in the crowded walkway whose ears, chins, chests, bums, or knees I poked and kicked.
Long before I landed, I’d feel my feet and calves prickle. Still I’d have to stamp the sodden straw in the walkway to bring my legs fully to life, and since there was no way to hurry through the men choking the narrow passage, I’d always find stewards ahead of me at the ladder.
From painful experience, I knew the grating in the hatch was blistering hot, and when my turn came to mount the ladder, I’d blink my eyes to adjust them to the dazzling light above, pause on the last tread to make sure of my balance, my ability to safely negotiate the opening. Finally, I’d step past the pair of armed devils guarding the hatch and eagerly gulp untainted air to cleanse my mouth, my throat, then breathe deeply through my nose.
The cookhouse—midway between the hatch and the foremast—was no more than ten or twelve paces away. Even so, stick-wielding corporals hemmed us in on both sides. When Ah Choy, a steward from my home district, asked me to take part in a mutiny by smuggling a knife from the cookhouse into the between-decks, however, my heart did not quail for fear of the corporals’ sticks or the devils’ muskets, bayonets, swords, and shackles, but their lash.
RULES FOR THE between-decks were posted under all three hatches, and topping the list of “crimes punishable with the lash” was gambling. Yet the man-stealers had knowingly decoyed gamblers, and the thieves in the pigpen had encouraged purchases of dice, paper cards, bamboo dominoes, and checkers to wile away the time at sea in play. Is it any wonder our quarters were as infested with gamblers as bugs? Some were even gaming with the pests.
Old Eight in the berth directly opposite mine would flip two cockroaches onto their backs, pin them into the wood, side by side, and then drop a little piece of straw on top of each. The roaches—instinctively, I suppose— would grasp and pass the straw from one pair of their legs to the other, over and over, and Old Eight would take wagers on which would be the first to collapse in exhaustion.
Also gambling with cockroaches were Toothless and Big Belly. Except they tickled their roaches with straw, irritating them the way boys and gamblers back home did crickets, until the creatures fought.
The cockroaches kept fighting after they were injured. They’d struggle to keep moving the straw back and forth long after their legs’ initial frantic churning slowed to a drag. Did they somehow realize that once they gave up, they’d be squashed dead and replaced?
To make room for their roaches, Old Eight, Toothless, and Big Belly had to dangle their feet over the edges of their berths. Gamblers using dominoes or checkers, which required more space, had to sit with their knees drawn up to their chins, their backs hunched, their heads bowed.
Since the height of the between-decks from floor to ceiling was barely five-and-a-half feet and our berths were double-tiered, we were compelled to eat our meals like this. A bowl of rice, though, was finished in a matter of moments while a game could stretch from the chiming of one bell to another—and another.
I’d pass gamblers thus huddled whenever I was in the walkway, and while waiting to use a wastebucket, I was sometimes invited to join in. Even if I’d had money, I’d have refused. But I gave the players my full attention. As children, Moongirl, our friends, and I had often played the game in which a fist represents a stone, an outstretched hand water, and curved fingers a bowl. I’d had fun whether my bowl managed to capture someone else’s water or their water swept away my stone instead of my stone breaking another player’s bowl. So I’d never tried to anticipate my opponents’ strategies or made any of my own. I’d never trained myself to make accurate judgments, decisions, and changes in haste the way Moongirl had urged me to, the way she did. Realizing that this failing was, at least in part, why I’d been bested repeatedly by my captors, I was attempting to change by studying them, my fellow captives, especially the gamblers and corporals.
The corporals, I noted, received a hefty percentage of the money passing through the gamblers’ hands. Similarly, the corporals accepted bribes to overlook theft and fighting, which were also punishable with the lash.
When Ah Bun—three berths down from me—broke the rule which prohibited smoking in the between-decks though, the corporals jeered at him for offering them cash to spare him.
“Wah, you really are bun, stupid.”
“Straw burns, you idiot. Wood, too.”
“What good is your cash if we burn to death?”
“Have mercy,” Ah Bun pleaded. “I didn’t think.”
“You got that right!”
“Now you won’t forget.”
Nor would any of us who witnessed Ah Bun’s suffering after the corporals returned him to his berth. And where Ah Bun had suffered the twelve strokes prescribed for smokers, gamblers, fighters, and thieves, the punishment for mutiny was forty-eight lashes, after which the mutineer would be chained to the ringbolts of the stern deck until released by the captain.
From the glimpses I’d caught of him, the captain seemed almost mousy he was so small and gray. But no mouse would have charge of a devil-ship let alone permit the use of a whip that had nine separate cords, each weighted with jagged slatherings of tar.
Ah Bun, in a voice faint from screaming, told us the sensation of those nine sharply-edged cords simultaneously flaying open his flesh was like that of molten lead. “By the second stroke, I was praying I’d die. After the fourth, I passed out. The devils revived me before going on. Not just that once. Every time.”
RUMOR HAD IT that the captain, furious because the doctor’s dismissals would short him six captives, had abducted Small Eyes. Then, when the swineherd had rushed to defend Small Eyes, the captain had accused them both of fraud. In the ruckus that had followed, the swineherd and Small Eyes had somehow managed to leap overboard, and the crew from the junk had saved them. Otherwise, the two would have been whipped and chained alongside the pointy-eared resister I’d seen shackled to the stern deck when I’d first boarded.
Whether this resister was still in irons, I was uncertain. He had not been brought below. Neither had he been seen in the sickroom located directly behind the main mast. Sleepy checked whenever he went for what Twitchy, translating for the doctor, called “a dose of medicinal opium.” I’d also try to look while fetching our meals from the cookhouse. But all I could see of the sickroom was the area outside where Sleepy and others with the opium habit stretched out to take their dose, and my view of the stern deck was blocked by the sails billowing from the main mast, the buffalo tethered beneath the ship’s longboat, which was piled high with caged hens and pigs.
There was little meat in our rice. Yet every day there were sounds of slaughter, and I’d seen the knives and cleavers necessary for butchering in the cookhouse. Was it really possible that, as instructed by Ah Choy, I need only scratch my left ear while waiting for tomorrow’s morning meal, and a cook would hide one in my basket?
That the cooks—Pockface, Shorty, and Ah Kow—were willing to participate in a mutiny, perhaps even lead it, rang true. Pockface, a butcher in Canton, had been kidnapped on his way to visit his parents in their home village; Shorty and Ah Kow, cooks at a large restaurant in the c
ity, had been decoyed by an acquaintance who’d told them there were openings with better wages in a Macao gambling house, and the three ranted about their captivity. So did Ah Choy.
But the cooks’ helpers, Big Buffalo and Little Buffalo, wore greasy smiles. Before voluntarily signing contracts for labor overseas, both men had been unemployed porters who ate only when they were lucky enough to find a grave with offerings of food they could steal. Now their mouths were never empty. Indeed, it was their con- tinuous grazing in the cookhouse that had earned them their nicknames.
I was certain they wouldn’t mutiny, and there were bound to be others, especially among the corporals, opium eaters, and gamblers—those who found the risk of injury and death worse than a future in captivity without family. In the shipyard where Ah Jook had labored though, much of the work had been the conversion of foreign vessels for the more profitable trade in men, and he said the number of crew on a devil-ship this size was about fifty. Say just half the captives mutineed, we’d still outnumber the devils eight to one. Moreover, there were former soldiers among us.
True, Red and the sailors had confiscated anything they found that could be turned into a weapon. Despite the thoroughness of their searches, however, they’d failed to discover some items. How else would Old Eight have pins to hold his cockroaches in place? Pins that could be made into weapons. And although every sailor seemed to have a knife hanging from a strap about his waist, the knives in the cookhouse—many times larger and made for cutting flesh—were sure to be more effective in battle. Even against muskets. At least the way the devils had used their muskets when captives had rushed the hatches shortly after sailing.
God of Luck Page 6
