Jade Rooster

by R. L. Crossland

  “Yes, yes, and who was she?”

  “A meiko, an apprentice geisha.”

  “A prostitute?”

  “Not really—American misconception—but not a fancy Victorian lady either. She’s an entertainer in a profession where getting romantically involved has become sort of a tradition. She’s just a youngster. Some of the best-known geishas arc old enough to be your mother. She’s similar to our stage actresses who are always scandalously in love with someone or other. Like Lily Langtry.”

  Hobson continued, “She’s from an okiya in Tokio. An okiya is a sort of geisha stable. She leads a very stylized life with its glory and comforts, but not anything you’d wish on someone you liked. “

  “So what were you saying to her?”

  “Flirting, word games. I told her it seemed terrible for such a bright flower as she to be consumed by a huffing dark beast of a locomotive.”

  “Her response?”

  “She said, ‘Bright flowers had been submitting to beasts from the beginning of time. The future of mankind demanded it.’”

  “Yet, you never looked at her and she never looked at you.”

  “It would have been unseemly. I am a foreign barbarian, and a low caste swabbie to boot.”

  The train meandered through the rice paddies pursued by a sinuous dragon of smoke. Sabatelli noted it was narrower and smaller than American trains. Everything here was on 7/8’s scale. The train puffed and rumbled over stone bridges, and passed the Buddhist temples until the skyline suddenly changed. It was Yokohama, what Sabatelli often thought of as Japan in Western Dress. Hobson pulled out his corncob, and somewhere behind them his smoke and the trains intertwined.

  To Hobson, the ryokan was a luxury. Hobson hadn’t had a room of his own in five years and a room in a little Japanese inn, a ryokan, just inside Yokohama’s newly enlarged borders was something approaching paradise. On Pluto he slung his hammock with dozens of others every night and took it down every morning. Absent was the orchestra of snores, coughs, moans, sighs, and wheezes. No one muttered or cried out in the night. In good weather on warm evenings, he might put a caulking mat down and sleep on deck. His futon was sort of like a caulking mat, but the quilt was far nicer, and the tatami mats had more give to them than haze gray steel. On Pluto, he washed out of a bucket. Here in the ryokan, he could walk to the end of the hall and reserve the ofuro, the hot bath, for a half-hour and use more water than he was allowed in a fortnight on Pluto. The ofuro was like a giant’s oak bucket, a hogshead with no tumblehome that was about a yard in diameter. He had taken rooms ashore before, but they had always been shared with shipmates, bargirls…

  Sabatelli had given him a set of the photographs. He studied them and tried to read character into their frozen startled expressions without success. He wondered if he should have said something about the flat bamboo baskets. No, he wasn’t sure, and would not say anything until he had figured where all this was leading. That double interwoven blue reed along the edge seemed so familiar…Yet five years of naval service had taught him circumspection. Until he had some sense of why the men were killed, he would hold back. “Don’t win one tiny candyass battle, and lose the whole goddam war,” Phipps was always saying. Phipps, a first class petty officer on Pluto, was the source of countless, colorful maxims and descriptions. Gems like, “Seniority among ensigns is like virtue among hookers…ain’t none. Cold as a brass brassiere…Walking around like he had a busted rudder, totally useless…” Sometimes they contradicted each other, often they were funny, and occasionally they were useful. Phipps looked like five miles of bad road and was as ugly as a tarbucket—to apply his own expressions, but he was always thinking and trying to discern useful patterns in the naval experience.

  Sabatelli would be impressed if he suggested where the baskets had come from, but who would gain and who would suffer? What if he was wrong? It would be better to be sure.

  The fourth head looked Korean. That bothered Hobson, too. Trouble was you could never be one hundred percent sure. There were Japanese who could only be Japanese and there were Koreans who could only be Korean. Then there was an overlap of about 25% who could be either. The Koreans had overrun Japan several centuries back and some had settled. Now that Japan had Korea under its thumb, the situation was going to get even more confusing. The Koreans were being forced to learn Japanese and some were taking Japanese names to get along and before long no one would know who was who. Maybe he was just losing his touch.

  His first tour of duty had taught him that the Navy went out of its way to make things direct and clear. That he had concluded within the first month of his first cruise. It had to do with the Navy’s mission as the last option of what Mr. Wheelwright called “diplomacy.” It was the Navy’s job to apply destructive force with heavy floating equipment. The best way to bring diverse men together and moving in one direction as to keep things simple, straightforward, and clear. In no other way that he could think of could a large group of men remain focused in one direction and be capable of responding quickly in war.

  On the other hand, the Orient, it seemed, made things indirect and unclear—even when those things did not have to be—and somehow the element of time carried less importance here than elsewhere. It had to do with the Orient’s overriding theme of harmony. A little confusion and a little indirectness allowed the wiggle room to avoid disharmony. Confrontation and accusations of error or wrongdoing, were disharmonious, and very un-Oriental.

  Cultures in conflict, so far, seemed to be the strand interwoven through his personal lifeline. For some reason or other, he understood the points of conflict between East and West better than most. If a Third Class Quartermaster buried deep in the bilges of the naval organization could be useful—useful at all—it was probably where he could be most useful.

  The Imperial Japanese Navy brought the survivors to the Naval Hospital at Yokohama. Sabatelli made sure to be there as soon as they walked down the brow of the Japanese torpedo boat destroyer onto Shinko Pier. Hobson studied the torpedo boat destroyer with keen professional interest.

  The survivors were sunburned and many were hatless, coatless, and some shoeless, confirming that they had left Jade Rooster in a great hurry. Across the fantail was an overturned whaleboat much like the one in Sabatelli’s photograph. Several U. S. Navy hospital corpsmen and a naval doctor were there to meet them with motorcars rigged to take a reclining passenger behind the driver. They were calling these vehicles “ambulances.”

  Sabatelli and Hobson hailed a ginricksha and wended their way through a maze of brick warehouses. Waiting in the hospital, Sabatelli and Hobson decided on the three or four survivors they would interview first after talking to the senior doctor. The first mate, MacLeod, was on the second floor and Reeves, the supercargo, was waiting to be examined down the hall. Among the passengers, Mr. Atticaris was nowhere to be seen, and the Korean couple, the Kims had already left.

  The naval hospital was a study in white. Everything had been cleaned and inspected and then cleaned and inspected again. Its designers had studied the modern treatises on sanitation and determined that if cleanliness were next to godliness, then polished brass and simplicity must be, too. Nine out of every ten deaths in the last war had been attributed to disease. The Navy, a combative organization, sought to engage all enemies.

  MacLeod stayed aloof. This was a naval hospital and he did not hold the same authority here, nor command the same degree of respect, that he might expect on a merchant deck. Then too, he’d lost his ship. Merchant officers’ careers were built on reputations for competence and luck. Luck meant a lot in the Trans-Pacific trade. In this instance, his luck had run out.

  Several inches over six feet, he was massive and tanned with red mutton-chop whiskers. Each hand was the size of tinned ham. His nose was flat with an undecided curve. There was a belligerent air to the way he carried himself. There was little doubt he had risen to first mate with a bu
llying style of leadership. Hobson had heard the stories of merchant bucko mates, hard captains, and hell ships. The Navy had its own variations on these themes.

  “Captain,” Sabatelli whipped a small flask from his vest pocket. MacLeod probably did have a master’s certificate, many mates did. “Would a bluenose, deep water sailor join us for a little conversation and…”

  MacLeod gave a smirking grin and wiped his upper lip with a clenched fist. Sabatelli knew his trade.

  Hobson looked around the room. The Navy had recently gone dry under a Quaker Secretary of the Navy and Hobson hoped this little excursion wouldn’t turn into anything embarrassingly naval.

  MacLeod eyes flashed. He was in the professional habit of controlling situations. “And who might you be?”

  “Eduardo Sabatelli, Shipping Agent representing Lighthouse Insurance. Petty Officer Hobson here is helping me.”

  “What’s the Navy’s interest here?” He said with a dark look.

  “Not that much really. Some of the sundries in your hold were naval supplies, and you will notice looking around you that this is a naval hospital and it is always good to have a guide,” Sabatelli said with dazzling brightness. “If it was anything important, they’d have sent an officer, wouldn’t they have?”

  “Harrumph, well just so long as everyone knows who the real sailors are. Not spilling soot all over and loitering about in their white teakettles for years on end off a single coast.”

  Hobson eyed the overhead.

  “What happened?” Sabatelli said offering MacLeod another tug on the flask. No one seemed to notice.

  “Pirates, Chinese pirates. We anchored and put in for water off the coast. They came aboard at night, overpowered the watch, seized the ship, and set us adrift in boats. Killed some of my crew. Some of my passengers, too.”

  “How many passengers were you carrying?”

  “Not many, eight. Four from ’Frisco, took on the other four in Hawaii. Can’t see how they’d be important to you. The cargo and the ship, they’re lost. That’s what ye’ll have ta pay off. No insurance on passengers.”

  “How many boats did you put over?”

  “Three, I think. We were all set adrift at once. There were four on the barque. Never understood why the owners had her carry so many. The crew fights harder to keep a ship afloat if there ain’t enough boats. Don’t know where the rest of the crew has got to. I expect that’s where the first and second mate are. Saw the third mate run through clean, by the after companionway.”

  Hobson started to take his pipe out of his sock. “What did the pirates look like?”

  “Ugly yellow bastards. Swords a-waving, dirty, speaking heathen gibberish and smelling heavy of…fish, yeah of fish. Two boat loads, maybe twenty of them.”

  “Guns?”

  MacLeod turned pale. “Excuse me?”

  Hobson began again, “Did they have guns.”

  “Yes, oh yes. Big percussion lock things, rifles or shotguns they were. One had a revolver, a big hogleg, looked like a naval revolver. Muzzles waving all over in a heavy sea.”

  “Can you identify the heads in this picture?”

  MacLeod shook his head, sucked at his teeth, and released a deep rumbling unpleasant laugh, “Ah-ha, the little yellow men have a sense of humor. Served up in baskets like fruit or dead fish. Yeah, there’s Captain Brewer, a hard’un from Boston. First time I ever saw him silent and with his mouth closed. There’s the second mate from Frisco, a fellow named Carson. He owed me money. Well, that’s money I’ll never see. The fellow with the big waxed mustache is a passenger named Hoyt who was traveling with Mr. Atticaris, always working a percentage on somethin’. That Asian was another passenger, a Korean I think. Could have been Japanese or Chinese. Can’t remember his name.”

  Hobson took some tobacco out, thought a minute and put the pouch back in his sock. “How were your boarders dressed?”

  “They wore pyjamis, with big straw hats.”

  “What did the straw hats look like? Were there any women?”

  MacLeod paused and his eyes really flared. “Hell, I don’t remember. A straw hat is a straw hat as far as I am concerned. And naw, no women, though in those outfits might be hard to tell. Now I’ve told you, Jade Rooster’s been pirated in the Yellow Sea off the Chinese Coast and I’ll sign an affi-davey to it. Anyway that’s ’bout all I know, the captain and me weren’t so close. He didn’t take my counsel much. Kept his accounts to hisself. To my lights, that’s all you need for your underwriters and insurance matters. I made my report in writing to the Japanese Navy. Go bother them.”

  “Oh yes, you are quite right, captain. We were just trying to picture the incident in our minds. In your hurried departure, were you able to take the log?”

  Hobson smiled faintly on hearing Sabatelli address MacLeod as “captain” a second time.

  “No time looking down some heathen’s blunderbuss.”

  “How did you happen to be in the Yellow Sea when your first port call was Yokohama.”

  MacLeod looked impatient and thumped the flask down with finality. “Typhoon blew us off course. Excuse me, I have to get in touch with the owners.”

  A corpsman came into the room and asked for Sabatelli. Hobson wondered if it had to do with the liquor.

  Sabatelli left the room. MacLeod and Hobson were alone.

  “What business you pretty boys in your white suits got with all this? Hain’t you got some parade to go to rather than interviewin’ honest seamen.”

  Hobson looked at MacLeod and seemed to think about it.

  “Well, swabbie? Probably not my business, but shouldn’t you be polishing brass someplace or waving flags at something?”

  Hobson leaned forward and spoke softly, “Your bein’ a United States citizen, I have to be polite, don’t’ I? Well, don’t try your bucko ways on me. These ships you sail, they mount any ordnance? They mount guns, say, for killing people?”

  Hobson was methodically unbuttoning his cuffs. He opened them and folded them back neatly to reveal the dragons.

  “See these here white suits. Well, they just make us look just so sanitary and civilized, that’s the devilment of them because it tain’t necessarily true. We have to keep them clean, which makes a strong contrast with what we have to deal with sometimes. You’d be surprised the bilge slime we have to deal with sometimes. I have a lot of friends that wear these suits and I like those friends pretty well. Hadn’t given it much thought, but this organ grinder’s monkey suit is…well, it’s hunky-dory with me and I’m not sure I take well to words making mock of my friends or my togs.”

  He placed his cover squarely on the table.

  “Now, your merchant ships, they’re just built to sail. Our ships they’re made to sail, and fight. In fact every little cog in the big Navy machine’s made to fight…down to the lowest sailor in a pretty organ grinder’s monkey’s suit. And we cogs we hang together pretty well. We can sink vessels like yours, in a large-caliber way, and heck; we little cogs n our nice white togs can sink individual fellows like you, in a small-caliber way, to my way of thinking.”

  Hobson’s eyes narrowed.

  “In fact, I can reduce this to a very private engagement right here and now if you’d like, Mr. U. S. Citizen, Mr. Honest Seaman. It’s all the same to me. I get this suit a little scrappy an’ they’ll issue me another. Now tell the truth. Am I reading you right, do you have a problem with the United States tarnal Navy?”

  MacLeod put his hands up as if to gesture, “misunderstanding” and became very quiet.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  By the time Sabatelli had returned, the heat had left the room.

  Sabatelli returned and informed Hobson that not all of the passengers were still in the hospital. Sabatelli sensed something amiss as he edged in his last question, “And the last you saw, Jade Rooster was anchored?”

  “
Yes, anchored in heavy weather.”

  “Why anchored?”

  “Well, the fog and the skipper was having problems taking sights.”

  Hobson coughed politely, “Did you have guns?”

  MacLeod looked at Hobson with disdain. It was a practiced look. “The guns were locked up. And I, gents, is underway.”

  With that he rose and stalked out of the room like a brief dark storm.

  Hobson twirled his tobacco-less corncob with his fingers thoughtfully. “MacLeod makes out that Brewer was a hard captain, but wasn’t carrying a gun and his mates were also unarmed. Seems peculiar to me. The hard officers on the hellships normally make all crewmen break off the tips of their sea knives and they always appear on deck with a revolver. Didn’t think hard captains were in the habit of carrying passengers, either. With them. Their word is law and their whims are as good as performed.’ All schedules met and crews are occasionally paid what is coming to them—if the crews live that long. Passengers are unwelcome. They talk and might be linked to management or busybodies and they aren’t under discipline.”

  Sabatelli nodded in agreement. “Perhaps Brewer’s a reformed hard captain, or perhaps the owners made him take the passengers.”

  Hobson wondered if the word “reformed” had any true place in the English language, as he knew it.

  Sabatelli and Hobson found Reeves in an examining room lying on his back and looking at the ceiling. He was in his shirtsleeves, barefoot and hugging a battered carpetbag between his knees. When they entered, he muttered something unintelligible, then shifted from lying on a gurney to sitting upright in a nearby chair. He was a thin, awkward man with a bad haircut and bad teeth. Tight with a dollar, Hobson thought, the perfect supercargo.

  “Mr. Reeves, I represent your underwriters. My name is Sabatelli. Petty Officer Hobson here is assisting me since a portion of Jade Rooster’s cargo was naval stores.”

  “Hobson? Not the naval Hobson.” Reeves seemed more at ease, delving in details.

  Hobson looked embarrassed, “’Fraid not, never served on the Merrimac, or in the Caribbean. He’s out now, a congressman I think.”