“Well, Atticaris and his buddies seem to fancy their greenbacks flowing from two directions.” Hobson knew he was taking a chance offering his opinions, but he was somewhat flattered by the attention, and at the same time uncomfortable enough to reach unconsciously for his pipe. “They know that they best keep up the conflict. If any one side wins too fast, Mr. Atticaris and his gang lose a market, I expect.”
“Well, Hobson, I know one thing. I don’t want any of Africans’ expensive ordnance going to the Philippines and I think Jade Rooster might have been carrying a shipment of something dangerous to our interests,” said Draper.
“Well, my chief concern is that none of Atticaris’ hardware gets to the Philippines. I wonder if this whole Jade Rooster incident is a matter of Philippine guns being diverted by Korean rebels.” Draper’s uniform was even more rumpled than usual. Hobson could see that the flag lieutenant had difficulty looking Draper in the eye and wanted to give him a wide berth in case whatever the naval militia officer had was catching.
“Two other matters. Are you familiar with the Sisters Rowbotham?”
Hobson drew a blank.
“Two Mucha-esque ladies who hang around the Grand Hotel.”
Now Hobson remembered the long dresses and swirling strawberry-blonde hair, two sisters who flowed rather than walked across a man’s line of vision.
“One of them carries a knife and knows how to use it. She dispatched some blackguard of a drunken German steamship officer the other night as he tried to storm into her hotel room. Seems she and Atticaris were acquainted. It wouldn’t surprise me if she made the acquaintance of Hoy t at some point…no intentional pun there.”
No one laughed. Draper wondered if he should warn the British attaché to whisk them out of the country before Koizumi got his claws into them. He would have to give it some thought since the British and the Japanese were allies.
“There’s a final matter. I also wonder why if Sabatelli didn’t know what Atticaris was up to, why he’s gone to so much trouble to determine what’s happened to the barque.” Draper speculated. “If we are right, it seems Atticaris’ portion of the cargo was worth the most.”
Warships were the greatest mobile concentration of applied technological skill and lethal force in the world and those who sailed them knew it.
Cruisers were the largest American warships in the Pacific and America’s single greatest concentration of destructive might in that ocean. Baltimore had fought alongside Dewey at Manila Bay and its crew could not help basking in the glory of her great name and awesome power in the conduct of their daily lives. Cruisermen were the top warrior caste in the Asiatic Fleet. Only men’s men could harness and direct the very might of the god of War. Only men’s men could control the power that flowed through her mighty machinery and flamed through her thunderous guns. They were men’s men, the select, near divine heroes who functioned on a plane rightfully above that of mere mortals. Who dare judge them or hold them responsible for their actions, especially ashore away from the terrible burden of their awesome power? Looking into the mirror, some cruisermen half expected to see sunlight radiating from their eyes, clouds swirling about them, and lightning bolts shooting from their extended fingers.
It was to be expected that the crew of Pluto found the crew of Baltimore insufferably condescending in their dealings with their smudgy brothers from the naval underworld.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Pluto was ordered to Subic Bay. There several ships coordinated a minstrel show at the Navy Theater in Olongapo. Often only one ship put on a show, but in this case the performers came from different ships. The idea was inspired, for as luck would have it, the ships in port boasted an unusually good selection of amateur entertainers.
Jackson, for one, of Pluto was well known and his name was used as the top draw. He would perform near the end. Several groups sang spirituals or did barbershop quartets. A smattering of comic routines in the “Mr. Bones” vein followed them. At the conclusion of one of these, Tiger chased the Oyster Pirate into the aisles with a butcher’s cleaver in a time-honored burlesque that they improved with a run of headless sailor jokes. A slapstick send up of the naval hospital at Yokohama was well received. Three performers did impressions including a brave coalpasser from Pluto who did fairly respectful impressions of Mr. Wheelwright and Mr. Crottle. Crottle never smiled. Not to be outdone, a boatswain from one of the harbor tugs did an impression of Theodore Roosevelt and the Admiral. A yeoman visiting from a submarine in Cavite recited poetry by Sir Walter Scott, and a corpsman did “The Village Smithy.” Baltimore had a jug band with a few ukuleles that played several contemporary selections which were generally held to be of high order. A painter from Baltimore, who was also part of the jug band, broke away and pulled out an English 48-button concertina. He danced an awkward hornpipe and did a medley including the ever popular “A Life on the Ocean Wave.”
It was raining outside the theater. This time of year, it rained daily. The roof of the theater was tin and the rain had a soothing, sizzling effect.
A sailor attached to the naval station did a selection of fiddle pieces, which he sang with a pronounced country twang. He encouraged the audience to join in the chorus of “Comin’ Round the Mountain” as he improvised mildly off-color lyrics, which brought scowls from the officers with wives. Hobson was surprised to see Crottle smile.
The ship’s crews seated themselves by ship. Baltimore was the largest ship in port and its crew occupied the greatest number of seats. Like most cruisers and battleships, Baltimore had a marine detachment. Also occupying a large number of seats was the Station’s marine detachment. Baltimore’s marine detachment was of two minds, and uneasy in the presence of this other marine detachment. Although they were crew of Baltimore, as marines they were the organization that enforced order on sailors. By tradition, marines in addition to sniping from on high, provided colorguards, and reinforced landing parties. They also constituted the thin blue and red line which defined the demarcation between labor and management aboard ship.
Up until the concertina selection, Baltimore’s superiority had gone unchallenged. The most popular performances had come from Baltimore. Most of the performers from the other ships were in blackface, but Pluto’s performers were not. Petty Officer Jackson now caught the spotlight. Jackson was as near a professional as they would see that night. He was a buck dancer and buck dancers did very athletic performances involving jumps, slips, and the intricate tapping of shoe heels and toes with special shoes. His father had been a professional dancer and his father before him. Dancing had taken them out of the cotton fields and guaranteed their survival during the Reconstruction. No one could simply decide to become a buck dancer. A buck dancer had to be coached and had to practice buck dancing for several years. First Class Yeoman Jackson had met the requirements.
And with little more than a drum and a trombone as accompaniment, it showed. The Oyster Pirate played fairly basic trombone with a battered, borrowed instrument. Hobson, who was part of the assigned shore patrol, could not figure out how Jackson could practice or where, but he held no doubt that it was a practiced performance. The crowd sprang to their feet and demanded an encore. Most of the Baltimore crewmen however sat sullenly in their seats.
Shore patrol duty was rotated among the ship’s rated personnel and considered “leadership” training. Members of the shore patrol had to know regulations and had to act to enforce regulations. For the most part, it was not bad duty; members of the shore patrol went where the excitement was and to many places for free. Problems for the most part were unambiguous and consisted of keeping the vertical drunks in line and getting the horizontal drunks back to their ships.
Jackson wiped his brow and did another performance. He gestured for the audience to keep the beat by clapping—alternating strong and weak claps. Then he began to syncopate against that underlying beat. Many of the sailors, those who had grown up outside the b
ig cities, had never heard syncopation and realized it was something unusual, but could not put their finger on what gave the performance its catchy, almost hypnotic quality. The Oyster Pirate launched into his single ragtime tune and a couple sailors began dancing in front of their chairs.
Though the majority of the audience approved, a significant majority of the audience from Baltimore did not. It was unfitting for an auxiliary to steal a minstrel show. The battleships put on the best shows, then the cruisers, then whatever was left. Here, a “what’s left” was upstaging a cruiser.
For a moment, Hobson thought he saw the burly Gunner’s Mate, Gunnarson, moving restlessly in the midst of the Baltimore seats. He made note to keep an eye out for the cruiserweight boxer.
At that point the monsoon broke and the rain began coming down in wind-driven sheets. It prompted one of those quiet moments during any performance, during which one of the Baltimores was heard to say in a loud voice, “…black as a skillet…” No one could say what the context of the statement was, but it was widely taken as an insult. Pluto’s crew of about three dozen arose en masse. Hobson and the other members of Pluto’s shore patrol jumped into the aisles and put themselves in buffer positions. Baltimore’s shore patrol did the same.
The officers and chiefs who had brought their wives began edging them toward the exits.
Jackson stiffened for just a moment. Then his routine seemed to extend and build in intensity and bravado. His performance assumed a power, a style, and anger. It had become “make-see pidgin.” He ended with an aerial and a split and then raised his hand in a well-known gesture of defiance. The gesture was made in the direction of the Baltimores.
Had the chairs been permanent and bolted to the floor, it would have been different.
A chair was thrown, the rain intensified, and then the wave broke with force. Several chairs flew.
Suddenly it was shoulder to shoulder and there was outraged yelling that was hard to follow. Hobson could see Gunnarson with several of his shipmates. They were inching toward Pluto’s seats. Hobson turned to face his shipmates, but had his truncheon up and stood so he could turn quickly.
Olongapo’s marine detachment started plowing a path through the hall, back to front. Several assumed positions around the Admiral’s party. No one could figure out how, but they too had truncheons. Baltimore’s marine detachment wavered. There must have been grudges aboard Baltimore because several Baltimore bluejackets saw their opportunity and started windmilling into the leathernecks in their own ship’s detachment. The crews of two destroyers turned and faced the cruiser sailors. If you were going to fight, you might as well take on an adversary that would add to your legend. Gunnarson and his following suddenly realized they were now dangerously distant from their engaged shipmates.
Gunnarson was angry and frustrated. He wanted to say something that would remind the collier sailors of their insignificance in the martial universe.
He thought and thought and as he did so, he found himself being swept backwards by the crowd.
“Screw Pluto, screw you slipknots. You’re a bunch of third rate minstrels who can’t even put on blackface right. We took this show. You no account sleeves aren’t gonna win no pulling boat race either. In a pig’s eye.”
“Who says, no neck?” A voice from Pluto’s seats cried out. Followed by, “Yeah, who says, put money on it.”
Gunnarson was trapped. It was bad enough that he was being swept along in a way that might be viewed as a retreat, but now he was going to have to take a financial risk. The only thing he could think of doing was yelling a figure that no one would match. He could have kept quiet but that was not Gunnarson’s way. He could not see anyone he recognized so he might still get away with a bluff and a quick pull out.
“Yeah, in a pig’s eye. Three hundred says you slipknots are gonna lose and lose bad.”
A general intake of breath ensued. Though most of the hall was in an uproar, it was quiet in that small section. First the basic challenge itself was enough to give pause. Three hundred dollars was just about a year’s pay. Second, no one seemed to know the no-necked gunner’s mate’s name or reputation. How seriously should they take the bet?
Hobson turned to face him. Gunnarson had had his attention on the crew. The shore patrol had been invisible to him.
“I’ll take your money. Three hundred, cash, Gunnarson. Yeah, you, Gunnarson, I know your name. Three hundred in greenbacks. My name is Hobson, if you forgot. Quartermaster Third. Am I right? That’s Gunnarson of Baltimore.”
Gunnarson nodded slowly with a look that was later described as “downright unchristian.”
You got that much Hobson?” One of Pluto’s coalpassers asked. “With what you other fellas throw in. Maybe. Anyway we’re going to win.”
“Others pitch in? Hobson, you’re screwed.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
At a different latitude, a few degrees of longitude away, the weather had assumed a dark and ominous aspect. There were those who attributed the same strengths and frailties of human character to the most subtle appearances of the sky. “Dark and forbidding” or “light and airy” for instance and certain color combinations and effects of light and dark surely conveyed a sense of mood. On this occasion, it was the very darkest part of the night in terms of cloud formations, celestial illumination, and of what was in store for several men on a distant Korean mountain.
On that mountain, several prisoners were shackled with their wrists bound behind them to waist-high posts. There were sacks over their heads. Several had endured torture to the extent they could barely stand and could never return to normal life.
It was very quiet. The few Japanese noncommissioned officers stood stock-still and seemed to almost hold their breaths. They were in a field on a mountain crest overlooking a valley. The spot had a pleasant yin and yang aspect.
A sword was drawn from a scabbard and, from the sound, the prisoners sensed instantly what was in store.
“Mansei!” they began to yell in unison over and over again with the hope someone would hear them.
The Japanese officer in jodhpurs and puttees made a couple practice swings with his sword. He would have liked people to think the sword had been in his family for centuries, but like most Japanese officers he was from non-Samurai stock hoping to rise in status.
He folded his uniform blouse and placed it on a stone monument. Someone long ago had noted the pleasant yin and yang to the clearing and used it as the family plot. Korea had few formal cemeteries in the western sense, and there were only those family plots situated in places with the proper mystical balance.
“Mansei!”
He was very accomplished in the use of the sword. He had not been born to it, but had studied its use rigorously. He had studied Kendo at the university—he was one of those rare, university trained Army officers—and accepted the fact that the day of the sword as a primary weapon had passed. His university degree explained why he had been assigned to intelligence, and eventually the Kempeitai, the Imperial Japanese Intelligence Service. The Meiji emperor had eliminated the status of samurai and it was now illegal in Japan for anyone, except a military officer, to wear a sword. This sword gave him a tradition and validity
“Mansei!”
He was good at languages and spoke English and, more importantly these days, Korean. Korean had been easier to learn than English; its grammar was similar to Japanese.
One sweep of the sword and he beheaded one of the prisoners. It was so swift and clean that the prisoner was stopped in mid-syllable. The sword was extremely sharp and the head had been severed cleanly and dropped not far from the slumped body at the post.
“Mansei!”
The waist-high posts had been arranged in a circle, sort of a low-lying Stonehenge. He criss-crossed the interior of the circle, back and forth, as if he was doing the kata, the sequence of practice movements, of a swordsma
n engaging several assailants.
Beheading was the historic privilege of an opposing samurai captured in battle. Indeed, it was an honor for those taken in battle. On the other hand, it was once the privilege of a samurai to behead anyone for “unseemly behavior.” Was this war or peace? Were the Koreans opposing warriors or just unruly serfs? Hopefully he viewed the recent events as war and though the Kempeitai officer was not so sure this rabble deserved the honor, he sought an opportunity to test his sword and his warrior’s heart.
“Mansei,” the group chant was getting weaker as one by one the voices were stopped.
“Man…”
The last voice was stilled.
Major Koizumi of the Kempeitai wiped his sword with a clean cloth and gestured for the noncommissioned officers to deposit the bodies in a mass grave. He was pleased to begin his second tour here in Korea, for Korea offered many opportunities.
Mansei, he recalled, was a Korean battlecry of defiance Literally, it meant “ten thousand years,” that Korea would outlast its enemies and oppressors by ten thousand years.
The crew of Jade Rooster started to show up in Chefoo and other Chinese treaty ports in ones and twos. They all attested to the fact that Jade Rooster had been seized in the islands off Mokp’o. Sabatelli found his desk snowed under with the telegrams of beached seamen. The Royster Line’s agent in Shanghai related a sad tale of stranded seamen drifting onto his doorstep and seeking backpay and return passage. The Korean fishermen who put them ashore on the Chinese mainland to the north always disappeared.
A clerk with a visor brought in a sheaf of bills of lading in a heavy binder and plunked in it down on his oak rolltop desk, the emblem of his exalted station. It was littered with tide and current books, coastal pilots, blotters, stamps, and back issues of the Police Gazette. On the walls were yellowed etchings of ancient square-riggers running before the wind with their pennants flowing in the wrong direction.
Jade Rooster Page 9
