Captain Penn entered the cabin with a distraught expression, and asked if there was anything he could do. Little Macy spoke first. With tears in her eyes, she begged her dear captain to help her little brother get well. Witnessing Lady Yee’s distress, the captain reached out to take Macy into his arms, where he distracted her with calming reassurance that all would be well and a gentle reminder that she must remain strong and think good thoughts to help her brother. Then, speaking to Dr. Chun, he asked what help he needed. Dr. Chun asked if there happened to be any quinine in the ship’s medical locker, and Captain Penn said he believed it was listed on the inventory sheet. The captain called for the cabin boy, gave him a key, and told him to fetch the medical chest from the stores locker in his cabin. When it arrived, the captain handed it over to Dr. Chun, and told him to make use of anything he liked. He then belatedly thanked the doctor for being so attentive to his crewmen. Dr. Chun nodded politely and said that in one respect fortune smiled, as the hoped-for remedy would be the same for one and all. This would save time and effort, though the patients would still need constant care. He suggested that the same arrangements be made to bring the stricken crewmen up into the saloon, and temporary berths be prepared for them there. He confessed that it would be easier for him to look after all his patients if they were in one place. The close proximity of the galley also made the saloon more convenient than the crew’s quarters forward. Captain Penn agreed and said he would see to it at once. Then he handed Macy back to her mother and went off to give his orders. In later consultation with Dr. Chun, who showed signs of deep concern for his patients’ recovery while they remained aboard ship, Captain Penn determined to make for Hawaii with all possible speed. He had plenty of coal and no qualms about using every rock of it if necessary. And if that ran out, he had no problem with burning anything else at hand, including the cargo if need be.
Dr. Chun’s patients had become almost comatose, but between the doctor, his bride, Lady Yee’s maid and nurse, Ah Chu, the cabin boy, and Lady Yee herself, everyone received relatively constant attention and care. The sanitary aspect of their ministrations was an arduous and continuous process, and to aid in this, Captain Penn had makeshift laundry barrels secured to the deck rails. He then had the chief engineer rig a steam hose on deck to supply them with hot water at will. Soiled clothing and linens were washed daily and dried in the cleansing sun. Since two of their number were among the afflicted, the crewmen were asked to volunteer to help with this distasteful chore. Every man aboard, including the black gang and the cook, placed their names on the duty sheet, and the deck officers took on nursing duties when off watch.
Dr. Chun saw to it that all his patients were cooled and bathed with compresses when feverish, and swaddled in blankets when chilled. This rotation of symptoms was more or less continuous, and they racked the patients’ tortured bodies with constant pain in every joint and muscle. It was a small mercy, therefore, that they were almost beyond caring. The doctor spent many hours compounding medication from the medical supplies available. Though limited for his purposes, he found adequate supplies of quinine and aspirin salts, as well as tinctures of laudanum to help deaden the pain. Unfortunately, he dared not administer that kind of drug to a child, and instead relied on a traditional Korean herbal solution concocted from tiny dried mushrooms, and it seemed to alleviate Silver’s suffering by degrees.
Little Macy was beside herself with tears of anxiety and fear. She begged to be allowed to help care for her little brother. Rather than thwart her need to help, Lady Yee set Macy to reading stories to Silver, and told her that despite the fact that he appeared not to hear her, he actually heard everything very well. Macy spent hours reading her storybooks, or just making up stories as she went along.
Captain Hammond’s suffering almost broke his wife’s heart, and she rarely left his side except to see to her son’s needs. Dr. Chun was of the opinion that his elevated distress might be occasioned by a prior infection of a similar kind, perhaps years before. Lady Yee shook her head and stated that she had never seen the captain ill a day since they were married. She confessed that, like everyone else living aboard a ship at sea, he had suffered occasional bouts of indigestion, but nothing more serious. Dr. Chun then suggested that he might have contracted the illness as a child. But he said with some confidence that, with proper attention, the captain’s natural strength of body and stalwart constitution would help him pull through the worst of the disease.
On the other hand, the doctor confided to Lady Yee that he was very worried about her son. His supply of reserve strength was limited due to his youth, and in the case of malaria, endurance was a critical factor. The heart could only take so much stress before it gave out from exhaustion. He encouraged Lady Yee to try to get her son to drink small amounts of strong beef broth at room temperature, and to administer it as often as possible to help keep up his strength, and he gave Lady Yee a vial of herbal medication and told her to drink it and lie down before she fell ill from exhaustion herself. He would see to her husband personally. Captain Penn had offered Lady Yee his cabin, and so she retired there with Macy, drank the draft, curled up on the bunk, and slept for sixteen hours. Awake or asleep, Macy never left her mother’s embrace in all that time.
Eight days after the onset of the illness aboard, Captain Penn sighted the harbor of Honolulu to the northeast. He anchored in the offing with six other ships, but rather than just await the arrival of the quarantine boat, the captain sent up distress flags indicating a medical emergency and requesting the services of a doctor. Then he fired the ship’s signal gun twice to draw attention to his flags. Twenty minutes later the harbor captain’s launch arrived with the appropriate officers and a quarantine doctor aboard. Once the patients were examined to be sure they suffered from nothing contagious, they would be allowed to transfer to the port hospital for further care. Dr. Chun was most helpful in convincing the authorities that his patients were suffering from malaria, and even showed them his medical logs and what remedies he had already applied. The port doctor concurred with all his findings, and within five hours all four patients were comfortably bedded down in clean sheets in a modern hospital ashore. Captain Penn arranged rooms for Lady Yee, Macy, and the maid at a nearby hotel. It too was very modern, and thankfully very clean. Ah Chu and the nurse were left aboard ship to look after things and straighten up the disorder. Dr. Chun and his wife stayed aboard as well, but they paid regular visits to the hospital and walked about the town for exercise, and to satisfy curiosity.
Captain Penn knew that, according to custom and commerce, his proper course of action now would be to restock his coal bunkers, take on water and food, and sail for San Francisco with his cargo, but he decided to ignore that for a while. Nothing on the cargo manifest was necessarily perishable, and as long as the crew could draw some shore leave to maintain morale, Captain Penn felt content to stay. He wanted his crewmen back, but he wanted his friends back more.
Lady Yee stayed with her husband and son as much as possible, but she could be found at night sitting by her son’s bedside, holding his hand and whispering to him. In fact, she was doing just that the very night little Nathanial Silver Hammond died peacefully in his sleep. His heart had simply failed.
Having grown up in China, and in Canton particularly, Lady Yee was intimately familiar with infant mortality and the premature death of children from disease. In most instances the poor suffered the worst of it, and if cholera or typhoid was at the root, the numbers of dead children could be absolutely staggering. But even armed with this knowledge, Lady Yee was not prepared to acknowledge that her son was like other children. He was the son of Lady Yee, and no power on earth had the right to deprive her of his life. She cursed the gods, she cursed the plague-infested island, she cursed the sea, and she cursed herself for going back to China at all. Then she broke down completely and collapsed in tears by the side of her son’s bed. The presiding doctor gave her a strong sedative and placed her in his care for her own good. A
gain Lady Yee slept for many hours, but when she awoke she seemed quite composed and lucid. She called for the doctor and made him promise not to mention the death of her son to her husband. She feared the news would only distress his mind further, and thereby weaken his condition. The doctor agreed that this was probably a very good idea, and promised to say nothing. She also insisted that the time wasn’t right for Macy to know the truth either. Her invention was necessary, but rested on a jewel of truth. She told Macy that her brother was very ill, but he was now under the care of the most important doctor in the world. She said he would be away for quite some time, but all would be well in the end. Macy seemed to take this in stride, but it hardly dampened her curiosity about details, and Lady Yee was hard-pressed to invent plausible particulars.
Captain Hammond and the two other crewmen were declared ambulatory in about seven days, but none would say they were fully recovered. Captain Hammond was still very weak, and sometimes complained of sharp intermittent pains in his chest and legs. However, he did begin to eat a better diet, and after a while it seemed he was always hungry, which was taken as a good sign.
Captain Penn visited often, always bringing gifts of fruit or cold marinated lobster tails, which he knew his friends very much enjoyed. He privately conferred with Lady Yee about the arrangements to take her son’s body back to California, but she confessed that until she informed her poor husband and daughter of the tragic passing of little Silver, she was at a loss to know just what to do. Captain Penn promised to look after any arrangements she chose to make, but he kindly advised her to inform her husband of the truth. He was not a man to appreciate evasion, no matter how well meant, and it was best he not hear of the sad tidings from some other source. Lady Yee agreed.
The news of his son’s death left Captain Hammond speechless, heartsick, and stunned. He just sat quietly in his bed weeping and shaking his head for hours. He refused to eat or speak to anyone for three days, and slept only when exhaustion set in. His doctor administered a sedative, and when Captain Hammond awoke twelve hours later he had composed himself considerably.
Lady Yee harbored private fears of culpability, and though hardly pragmatic on the subject, she convinced her husband that the will of heaven rules the destiny of all mankind, and to kindly remember that he still had a beautiful, intelligent daughter who desperately required her father’s love, strength, and compassion if she were to survive this tragedy spiritually intact. This last revelation seemed to gradually draw the poison from the captain’s grief, and he once again became himself. He soon came to remember his place in the chain of dependencies, and even chose to take on the soul-rending brief of telling Macy what had happened to her little brother.
But then something quite remarkable happened. While Lady Yee and her husband sat together on the hospital’s veranda pondering the very question of this painful revelation, Li-Lee brought Macy to the hospital for a visit. The maid had sent ahead an urgent note for Lady Yee saying that she thought it very important that she speak with her daughter. Li-Lee wrote that Macy had been deeply troubled by a very powerful dream the previous night, and though she wouldn’t talk about it, she seemed deeply disturbed, and begged to see her father and mother at once.
Macy’s parents were not quite prepared for what they saw when their daughter rushed into their arms. She was not crying, but she looked as though she had suffered a severe bout of weeping. And there was also something very different about her deportment. She looked older, which was a shock, and she no longer moved with the animated rapidity of a child. Her gestures seemed more deliberate and gentle. Without preamble of any kind, Macy grasped her parents’ hands and said she was sorry for it, but she had sad news to impart. Macy wiped away the edge of a tear, and said that little Silver would not be going back to California with them. Her parents looked shocked and understandably perplexed. However, without a pause to register their response, Macy calmly announced that last night her grandfather had come to her to introduce an imperial envoy of the Celestial Emperor. This messenger, she said, was made of many colored lights, was magnificent to look at, and was very gentle. The envoy informed her that Silver had been called to the heavenly court of the Celestial Emperor to fulfill his duties in the Jade Palace. Macy suddenly looked very sad, but she steadied herself and continued. She said Silver had been chosen because he was bright, innocent, kind, and brave. Macy looked up at her parents and said she knew this would make them very sad and unhappy, but they were not to worry, as the celestial messenger had told her that Silver was now among the immortals.
Lady Yee was more surprised by the expression on her husband’s face than she was by Macy’s pronouncement. His whole physiognomy seemed to melt with grief. He suddenly clutched his daughter to his breast and began to weep. He tried to speak, but could find no words at first. Macy begged him not to cry, but her father seemed not to hear her. In a few moments his despair found voice through his tears and bemoaned the passing of his beautiful son. As though speaking to the universe, he vowed to have his vengeance to assuage his broken heart. When Macy pressed her point and insisted that Silver hadn’t gone anywhere, and that he was among the immortals, her father’s distress almost fired his temper, and he insisted that no dream could change the fact that his son was dead. Macy pulled back and looked to her mother for support. Lady Yee, setting aside her own tears, nodded in agreement. Then she reached over and drew up her husband’s face so that he could see her expression clearly. She was calm but very serious. She looked deep into her husband’s eyes.
“It is true,” she said. “What Macy has told you is the truth. It has the blessings of innocence and insight. She sees more clearly than we do, and to be angered by the truth won’t change that.”
Captain Hammond wiped away his tears and looked down at his beautiful daughter. “To be sure,” he said, “I know she’s right, just as you say, my dear. I apologize for doubting you, Macy.”
Macy smiled and reached into her pocket and withdrew something, which she handed to her father. It was a small seashell of a type he had never seen before. “That’s Silver’s favorite thing in the whole world,” Macy said. “Grandfather gave it to him, and told him it was for creating magic that would make people happy. Silver wants you to have it now, so you can make people happy too.” Then she moved back into her father’s embrace and said, “Would you like me to read to you, Father? I brought you our favorite book, The Tales of Sun Wukong and His Journey to the West.”
“Yes indeed, my darling Macy. I would like that very much.”
The captain decided to take his son’s body back to Monterey, and informed Captain Penn of his decision and his wish to keep the matter confidential. And though he by no means hardened his heart to his own grief, or that of his family, Captain Hammond assumed his wife’s aura of dignified emotional restraint. And though he accepted all condolences politely, he never voluntarily spoke of his son’s death again; like his wife, cold thorns of guilt haunted the captain like a red tide, and this sealed his lips and guarded his innermost thoughts from any and all inquiries.
The voyage back to California was a sad affair. Quite unexpectedly, Macy became somewhat morose, quiet, and unresponsive to almost everyone. Even Lady Yee found herself cut off from her daughter’s inner thoughts, and Macy went from being a child of voluminous expression to one of guarded sentiments. The only people who seemed to be able to make the child laugh were Li-Lee, Ah Chu, and Captain Penn, and she stayed in their company as much as possible.
The Hammonds eventually returned to Monterey, but it was weeks before anyone but Dr. Neruda and his family knew of it. Dr. Chun and his wife were installed in the smaller of the two staff houses, and it was with great relief that Lady Yee discovered that the two doctors got on marvelously. They shared many of the same theories on medical practice, and both had grounding in traditional Asian pharmacopeia. Mrs. Neruda and her daughter warmly welcomed Mrs. Chun into the fold and did all in their power to make her comfortable. They tried to help explain all
the mysterious incongruities of life in California. The women found it easier to work together than the men. A universally shared female history of cooperative efforts toward rational goals, and similar backgrounds in education and aspirations, bonded the three women from the beginning and made them a formidable alliance.
Soon after they arrived home, Captain Hammond and Lady Yee quietly buried the small coffin of their son by the west-facing wall of the fruit orchard. At Lady Yee’s instruction, the gardeners had prepared a special grotto surrounded by fragrant roses transplanted from other parts of the garden, and a young flowering cherry tree was set nearby to someday give shade. Macy was not told any of this, however, as Lady Yee had determined that her daughter’s memory of the events encompassing her brother’s passing should remain foremost in her mind. The dream was true and must remain so. Thus, on the day of interment, Macy was sent off with Li-Lee and Ah Chu to enjoy a picnic at the beach, so that besides the captain and Lady Yee, only a Taoist priest was present to perform a modest ceremony. As she so aptly described it to her husband, they were in fact interring only a shell. “The creature that once lived within, though departed from us now, lives on in our recollections, and beyond that, as our Macy so adamantly affirms, now dwells among the immortals in the celestial halls of the Jade Palace, where he is also well-known and much loved. I hope the same thing can be said of the two of us one day.”
Despite all attempts to maintain strict privacy, word did get out, and many private gifts and sentiments of condolence came in from the Chinese community. Aside from that, few people in Monterey were ever aware that anything sad had happened, and the Hammonds preferred to keep it that way.
The Silver Lotus Page 30
