Jade Rooster

by R. L. Crossland

There was a tug from the surface, “okay?”

  He responded with a tug, “okay.”

  The hose and lifeline could get around the ladder. He could not. He would have to double the hose and get to the surface some other way. They would not be able to haul him to the surface by his lifeline.

  Where was the dynamite gun?

  His breathing seemed labored. Was the airhose beginning to freeze shut?

  He shuffled aft toward the captain’s cabin. Captains, mates, and other ship’s officers were traditionally berthed in the after section of the ship.

  The after end of a sailing ship normally contained three things, the rudder and wheel, small-arms armory, and the ship’s leadership. The combination was no accident; it was the time-honored combination for preventing or fighting mutinies. Often, the lines that controlled the wheel ran right through the captain’s cabin. It allowed him to keep track of the ship’s movement, but it also allowed the captain and a small band of loyal crewmen to control the heading of the ship.

  Hobson held his electric lantern up and labored around a second ladder. The limited radius of its light shed a pasty white light. Gunnarson had torn the door off its hinges. Hobson swept the lantern across the cabin and saw nothing but furniture and what used to be charts and plotting equipment. He crouched to enter.

  The Gatling guns had been concealed in opposite staterooms. Captain Brewer was sensitive to the distribution of his weighty cargo about the barque. The weapons were concealed relatively high and aft to keep them away from the crew. The crew slept forward and would be continually in and out of holds. Two Gatling guns could counterbalance each other. As far as he knew, he was looking for a single pneumatic dynamite gun.

  It was hard to think and it was becoming hard to breathe.

  Navy diving dress was massive and awkward. Hobson guessed that Gunnarson had not lingered. This cabin had a particularly cramped feel. The gun racks were intact. It would be difficult for free divers such as hae nyo to recover weapons in here. It was not that deep, but there was a deck, a hatch and a ladder between the cabin and the surface. And it was dark. Hae nyo did not carry lights. One benefit of tethered diving was the ability to move sideways, as well as up and down, and with an airhose you could always find your way back. The rack held a few Winchester repeating rifles, some Remington fowling pieces, and assorted Colt revolvers. The barque’s wheel was nearly directly above him. Where were the lines that ran back to the rudder?

  There were no rudder lines. Hobson walked backward out of the captain’s cabin and stood up.

  Brewer had constructed an overhead void in his cabin. He dropped the ceiling or overhead and in doing so had concealed the rudder cables. The void also concealed the pneumatic dynamite gun that was mounted overhead above the keel. It was right where the whipstaff would have been on a ship in Columbus’ time. Positioned as it was, it had the least effect on changing the barque’s metacenter. It was not the perfect solution, but a good solution under the circumstances, and away from prying eyes.

  As he studied the cabin a hand in white reached around him and touched his elbow.

  Hobson yelled and cursed and then yelled and cursed again.

  Precious air, he was wasting precious air and he was having increasing difficulty breathing. His breathing was rapid and shallow and his nerves were raw. Diving was strain enough, but now he was not sure how he was going to get to the surface and now someone was down there with him.

  He turned slowly to look into the sightless eyes of a hae nyo in her white garb. So one had found her way down the dark hatchway in the warmer months and lost her way to the surface. Brave woman, the stakes were high. Had she lost someone to summary execution? Was that what made the risk worthwhile? A life for guns?

  She had been tangled above Gunnarson and him during their searches, all along, but the shifting of the wreck had finally freed her.

  He climbed the ladder. It required great effort to just think. He signaled for slack. Once on the deck of Jade Rooster, he looked up. It was murky and he thought he could make out the shadow of the tug just a fathom or two above him. He coiled three fathoms of hose and lifeline at his feet. He tried to jump, and then to swim, but only tumbled back to the slanting deck of Jade Rooster.

  Then he thought to open the control valve. The pressure built in his helmet until his eardrums seemed to be driven into his skull, his suit inflated, and his arms were forced out so he looked like up puffed-up gingerbread man. He began to rise and his ascent accelerated as he approached the surface.

  He found himself bobbing on the surface looking at the sky. Out of a side faceplate he could see a boat being lowered from the tug.

  “No ice, you worthless fid, you just pinched off your hose again,” Gunnarson pronounced. “We had to pull the whole hose back through the other way. Wasn’t that hard with you not attached.”

  Hobson rubbed the tattoos on his ankles and was curiously glad to see Gunnarson.

  “You know these people, Hobson.” Crottle scowled and pointed to the mainland. “No one’s spoken for the Winchesters. Mr. Draper knows about the dynamite gun and the Gatlings. Sabatelli’s got his cargo list and they aren’t on it, not that the dynamite gun and Gatlings were. The cargo’s still there as far as we know. Not deep enough to crush the barrels.”

  “Yes.”

  “These people, they produce somethin’ valuable, something that turns into cash quick? What’s that blue-green pottery stuff?” Crottle pounded the rail with his massive hand.

  “Celadon?”

  “Yeah that’s it. They can pack it on a boat so it won’t break?” Crottle looked at the greenish Gatling guns that they would soon stow below decks.

  “They’ve been doing that for years.” Hobson wondered where all this was going.

  “Well, don’t people in this part of the world give small gifts when people leave?” And don’t people who leave sometimes give small gifts? Well, as I see it Hobson. You and me and the Gunboat we are going to steam out of here with the dynamite gun and the Gatlings just like we’re supposed to. The Moros aren’t going to get their hands on these. And Sabatelli he’s going to come along in the spring and salvage Jade Rooster proper.

  “And we can leave those Winchesters and they’ll be like underwater corroding batteries. Maybe when Sabatelli gets here they’ll be useless lumps of brass and steel—you know that electrolo-whatsis—and then again…”

  Had Crottle forgotten that Atticaris waterproof packaged his products?

  “Maybe some of them nice diving ladies will find them, especially if we buoy them and we put them where they ain’t too deep or too hard to get at.”

  Hobson thought of the drowned hae nyo.

  “I don’t want it to be said we gave anything to anybody directly that we shouldn’t have.

  “If they do, some bad people will die, and maybe some good people will die. As I figure it, it’s just none of my business. Y’know, Hobson. There’s no telling in this world just how things is gonna turn out.”

  Hobson agreed.

  They waited a few days for the steam yacht to return, but it never did.

  In a coastal village east of Mokp’o and Chindo, Rev. Hezikiah Kaulbach rose early on Sunday morning for two reasons, to build a fire in the church’s potbelly stove and to review his sermon and scriptural readings in his mind. At five, it was still extremely cold, very dark, and the winds off the West Sea whistled through the Spartan hall. He looked out the window past the police box at the Chinaman’s Restaurant. The restaurant was long closed, but the lanterns in the back were on and fluttering. They were always on. The string of curtained stalls in the back made the Chinaman’s a house of ill fame. Kaulbach did not like it. The establishment was too close for his liking. Hezikiah Kaulbach was no stranger to men’s petty vices and he knew his parish. Dissolution and debauchery were not unknown to him; he had served in waterfront missions before com
ing to Korea. The Chinaman owned the restaurant, but a local Korean owned the “house.” Confucian values were hard on women, especially surplus daughters, and the Asian attitude toward sexual relations was different. Sometimes the money the girls earned went toward their dowries and sometimes it did not. He was not sure how he felt about it all, but he was uncomfortable for the most part. The church windows were locked tight, but he thought he could hear yelling. Not angry or desperate yelling, just the rowdiness of liquor very late on a Saturday night. There had been a loud American sailor in a few nights earlier and it had been like this, too.

  A large blue yacht lay anchored a little way out. Kaulbach had only seen a few yachts in his life and never in Korea. It was like no boat he’d ever seen in Korea. It must account for the boisterousness at the Chinaman’s.

  Jin walked away from the Chinaman’s. Her work was done and she was headed home for a visit. As she walked up the snow-covered dirt road, she noticed no one was in the police box and no fire was issuing from its stovepipe. But at five o’clock on a Sunday morning it did not seem so unusual as it might have in broad daylight. Someone was asleep on watch or the wood had run out or the police were short-handed.

  About a quarter of a mile up the road, she noticed an approaching band of men in military police uniforms walking briskly. This she took as an apparent answer. The police box was unmanned because the police were out on some pressing assignment. A dozen men marched by her without saying a word. This she found unusual since her profession was well known in a small fishing village like this one, and her profession was always a source of catcalls. The catcalls were more earthy than malicious. She did not recognize any of the policemen and there were others who must have been soldiers. She realized that this was more policeman and soldiers than she had ever seen in one place. She thought they looked more Korean than Japanese, but it was difficult to tell. There were Koreans among the police.

  She stopped and watched them as they strutted away at a brisk march. They were armed with rifles, not just pistols. They carried their rifles in front of them, not slung over their shoulders. Two broke off and pushed off in a rowboat toward a strange foreign-looking blue boat. The other ten went past the police box.

  It was at that point that Jin decided to scream.

  A woman’s scream is one of the universal alarms. Rarely, will a woman be punished for the act of screaming in the heat of a show of arms. It is a sort of universal rule. If grim deeds are to be done, they will be done regardless of the screaming and those taking part have already steeled themselves to their task and against this form of annoyance. It is without apparent consequence. If one woman screams, others will too, intuitively, and so the alarm is raised. It is a noise that is not heard on one side and heard with great meaning by the other side.

  Several men—Korean men—at the Chinaman’s reached for their trousers. Seeing a group of Japanese police and soldiers could only mean one of a few things and none of them good. They pulled aside the curtains, grabbed their footgear and bolted.

  There were others, tired, sleepy, and boozy who felt no concern and remained where they lay under a quilt, perhaps with long black silky hair on one shoulder. One or two reached for their pistols because they were the bodyguards. Acting as one and on signal, all the girls rose from their mats and went into the restaurant and crouched low behind the stove.

  Rev. Kaulbach had forgotten all about his sermon and scriptural readings. A group of Japanese had swept into the village and that meant labor battalion conscription or summary executions. There would be no service today and he would be lucky if his parish survived. The bottom dropped out of his stomach. He had a strong affection for his adopted people. He did not want to look, but he found he had to.

  Instead of fanning out and conducting a sweep of the village, the ten men went straight for the Chinaman’s and took up stations. He heard loud reports. Shots. A very large man with a beard and a sailor’s coat staggered out of the house wounded. He exchanged several shots with the men in uniform and collapsed in the snow.

  Then the uniformed men were herding a group of Westerners out of the establishment. Some of the Westerners were only half dressed and some were fully dressed. Three of the uniformed men put a bag over the head of one of the Westerners, a big man in a sealskin coat with his weight in his head and shoulders. Behind the bag dangled a straw hat on a lanyard.

  Kaulbach did not know what to make of it all.

  Jin froze. She was afraid they would come back the way they had come. She moved toward courtyard wall and held herself against it, willing herself into invisibility, hoping the darkness would conceal her, hoping the dawn would not come early.

  Incredibly, the dawn flared up just as she was hoping it would not. Then she realized that dawn was coming from the wrong direction. Out there something in the water was burning and shooting off fireworks as if it was the lunar New Year. It was the strange blue boat and the policemen were rowing back from it with several large satchels.

  Rev. Kaulbach saw the boat begin to burn just as the rowboat and the Japanese soldiers left it.

  The man with the straw boater was buttstroked with a rifle and his knees buckled. He was then bound. One of the men with him attempted to run and was shot.

  It became increasingly confusing after that. Bodies were dragged from the road or the Chinaman’s and dumped into the sea. The soldiers and policemen left with only the one man. They did not conscript anyone. They did not execute a single Korean.

  Kaulbach wondered if what he had seen might qualify as a miracle in some circles.

  Jin was shaking; it was not the cold, but seeing the uniformed men walking rapidly toward her. They were not marching any more, but were half dragging the man with the straw hat up the road. Jin realized she could see some form of equipment further up the road. The Japanese would have come in a gasoline or steam-driven truck. This looked more like a handcart. There was something wrong here.

  As they filled back, she looked at their uniforms. There was something odd about their uniforms. They did not fit well. The boat began to blaze like a bonfire. As she looked more carefully at them in the flickering light, she noticed they had several had neatly darned holes in their coats, primarily in the chest area. Some coats had small dark stains.

  Two soldiers ran to join the men in the rowboat and picked up the satchels, which had to be heavy by the way the soldiers carried them. They laughed and as they passed the Christian church, one of the men threw something over the gate and yelled something inaudible.

  As the men in uniform walked past one of them, a student recently returned from Hawaii, called out in his best English. “Hey, sugar, better skidoo.”

  After sun up, Rev. Kaulbach walked out to the gate. There he found several silver coins in the snow, Mexican coins. He could figure no rational reason for their presence, but he could use the silver. There were several parish families now who would not need to struggle through the winter.

  Once back in Japan, Hobson went to look for the ropewalk man, Talmadge. Talmadge, like Hobson, straddled two cultures, and he too had lived among men of action. Hobson liked him.

  The son was there. He had an Excelsior motorcycle half-apart leaning against the ropewalk building. The son was storming around in the house and this time Hobson could hear the wife chastising the son, saying he “had no shame” in tearful Japanese.

  Talmadge seemed intent on worming, parceling, and serving some standing rigging. He was only worming so far and did not seem in any rush to move along to the other processes, though Hobson could smell hot tar. Hobson wondered if someone else should be handling that task.

  Hobson told him the story.

  The ropewalk man turned the subject to comets, Aurora Australialis, the passage of Venus, and seemed to forget the whole Jade Rooster matter. He mused on how Teddy Roosevelt might be remembered by history. “The Japanese don’t know what a moose is. Don’t like TR muc
h either.”

  Talmadge examined the line he was using for worming.

  “Sabatclli’s been persistent, I observe. Commendably so, commendably so. You sure he wasn’t in with that Atticaris fellow.”

  “Not as far as I can tell.”

  “Not in with Koizumi, maybe? Seems too dangerous a game for him to play, though. Not like Sabatelli to play a dangerous game, just one close to his chest.”

  Hobson thought a moment. “Can’t quite see how.”

  “I hear Sabatelli got in trouble in Hawaii, woman trouble. That’s why he’s out here.”

  “I heard that too.”

  “Not the same level of trouble. Nope. No severed heads. No, if anything gets severed it’s a might lower.” Talmadge looked toward the house. “Sabatclli’s got motivation. Wonder if he got into something in Hawaii?”

  Hobson decided to ask his other question. “Sir, you know where I can buy a used sewing machine?”

  “You going in for sailmaking? A heavy duty one?”

  “No, a small one for sailor togs. One that can be stowed shipboard.”

  He had talked Draper into paying for it. The ship carrying the crate with the Oyster Pirate’s Chinese notions had been lost at sea. It had never made it to San Francisco. There was talk of Algerines, Philippine pirates.

  “I just might.”

  Talmadge walked over and looked into a pot of steaming tar.

  “This son of mine, you think they’d take him in the Navy? He’s big and speaks two languages.

  “Otherwise I’m going to have to have him Shanghai-ed. Of course to some t’other destination. As a destination,Shanghai’s too darn close.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Sabatelli urged the master of the British tug on. Several master divers lounged against the lee rail. He had had a devil of a time rounding up divers. It seemed every diver in Asia was off on a project.

  The tug had to get on station over Jade Rooster before anything could go wrong. Navy divers had been on the wreck a few weeks back and who knew what havoc they had played. Draper had cabled him the latitude and longitude of the location and lines of position that Hobson had held back on him. Deuce, the underwriters had not abandoned the cargo, how could the Navy do that to him? Did the Navy have the right to search the sunken vessel for arms? It would take a barge full of lawyers to sort things out if they damaged any of the cargo in doing so.