CHAPTER x.x.xI

THE SHIP

She had been built on the Chu Kiang in the great Junk building yards that lie just below Canton and her bones had been put together by yellow men. Built to a European design China had come out in her lines just as the curve of the Tartar tent tops still lingers in the roof of the paG.o.da.

She might have been a hundred and fifty tons, not more, maybe less, and the junk pattern had been eliminated and European sticks and decent canvas subst.i.tuted for lateen sails by the direction of the man who ordered her and who was a smuggler.

She had been built for swiftness as well as cargo and, her builders having been junk builders since the time of Tiberius, she was a failure, sailing like a dough dish; and the yard that built her, having seen her float off, went on building junks.

Then she pa.s.sed from hand to hand, and dirty hands they were, from the Chu Kiang to the Hoang Ho, and through the Korea Channel into the j.a.pan sea, trading sometimes, smuggling sometimes, and once, as far as the Kuriles, sealing in forbidden waters. She was caught by the Russians and her crew clubbed to death or sent to the quicksilver mines and then she came back to China, somehow, by way of Vladivostok and was sold and sold again till she fell into the hands of one, Chang, a sea sc.r.a.per to whom everything came in handy from beche de mer to barratry and murder.

Chang was modern in some of his ideas, he carried a Swenfoyn-harpoon gun and, having luck down by the Sundas, he collected half a cargo of oil which he sold at Perth; from Perth he had dough-dished along down to Kerguelen after the "big seals." He had struck this bay by chance and he had struck oil, for all to westward of it lay a stretch of unwashed rock, as good a sea elephant ground as that on the long beach.

The girl standing beside Raft viewed the scene below her with a catch at the heart. The carcases, the little blood-stained busy men, the try-pots like witches' cauldrons and that strange-looking ship which even to her eyes seemed not as other ships were, all these had a tinge of nightmare.

Amongst the men she noted one, big almost as Raft. He seemed their leader.

"c.h.i.n.ks," said Raft, "Chinee--they've got their pigtails rolled up, well, they're better than nothing."

He picked up the bundle that he had laid down and led the way to the slope that gave on the beach.

As they came on to the upper part of the beach the "c.h.i.n.ks" noticed them, paused for a second in their labours and then, finding that it was only a solitary man and woman, went on with their work as though the intruders had been a couple of penguins.

"Cool lot," said Raft.

The girl paused. The sight of the carcases and the blood at close quarters, the absolute indifference of the blubber strippers at the sight of an obvious pair of castaways, the whole scene and circ.u.mstance turned her soul and chilled her heart.

"I don't like this," said she. "Those men make me afraid, they don't seem human--they are _horrible_."

"Wait you here," said Raft.

He advanced alone across the black shingle and she stood watching him and listening to the stones crunching beneath his feet.

His advance did not disturb the workers.

They seemed working against time. Without any manner of doubt they were anxious to be done with the business and be out of that bay before the next blow came, for the place was fully exposed to the west-nor'west and a storm out of there might easily break their ship from its moorings and send her broadside on to the shingle.

Undersized, agile, with weary-old faces that seemed covered with drawn parchment, they seemed less like men than automata; all save the leader, a gigantic, imperious-looking Mongolian with a thin cat-like moustache, a man of the true river pirate type with a dash of the Mandarin. This man held in his hand a long thong of leather. Captain or leader, or whatever he might be, he was most evidently the serang of that labour party.

On the shingle where the ripples washed in lay a boat, half-beached.

The big man was Chang, and as Raft approached harpoon in hand, she saw Chang draw himself up to his full height and stand waiting. Then she heard Raft's voice and saw him pointing at her and inland and then at the ship.

Chang stood dumb. Then all at once he exploded, shouting and gesticulating. She could not make out what he said, but she knew. He was ordering them off. He seemed to be ordering them off the earth as well as the beach. And Raft stood there patient and dumb like a chidden child.

Then she saw Raft nod his head and turn away.

He came back crunching up the shingle. "Sit down," said he.

She sat down and he took his seat beside her. He had dropped the bundle just there, and as he sat for a moment before speaking he noticed that the fish line securing the mouth of the sack was loose, he carefully retied it.

"You saw how that chap carried on," said he, "I had to put a stopper on myself. He's the chap; them little yellow bellies don't count. He's the chap, and I've got to get him aside from the others." He spoke rapidly and she saw that his eyes were injected with blood.

A new fear seized upon her, a fear akin to the dread she had felt that dark night in the cave when she had caught the sound of La Touche dragging himself close to her, the dread of imminently impending action.

"Let us go away," said she, "another ship may come; anything is better than having a fight with those men."

"Have you got that knife safe?" asked Raft. She still wore the fisherman's knife round her waist. She put her hand on it.

"Yes, the knife is safe."

"If that chap downs me for good," said Raft, "stick that knife through yourself. If he doesn't you take my orders and take them sharp."

He had risen to his feet and without a word more he came down the shingle again towards the workers, walking in a leisurely way and trailing the harpoon along.

He approached Chang who turned on him again with the anger of a busy man importuned by a beggar. The most heart-sickening thing to the girl was the way in which, after the first driving off of Raft, the great Chinaman and his crew had gone on with their work as though they were alone on the beach. Pity and humanity seemed as remote from that crowd as from the carcases they were handling. Active hostility would have been less horrible, somehow, than this absolute indifference to the condition of others.

Chang did not wait for Raft to speak, this time; he began the speaking, or, rather, the shouting, advancing on the other who began to retreat.

Chang, as if wishing to have done with this matter for good, followed him up and at every step the devil in him seemed to rise higher whilst his voice filled the beach.

What a voice that was! Half-singing, half-booming, the "whant-whong-goom-along" of the running coolie chanting as he runs seemed mixed with it, till, his anger breaking bounds, he let fly with the strap in his hand, catching the other across the shoulder of the arm that held the harpoon.

Then Raft killed him.

The girl who saw the killing was less appalled for the moment by the deed than the doer of it. The blow of the harpoon that sent Chang's brains flying like the contents of a smashed custard apple was like a flash of lightning, it was the thunder that terrified.

Roaring like a sea bull he sprang from the body of Chang towards the crowd who faced him for a moment with their flensing knives like a herd of jackals. The girl, who had sprung to her feet, plucked the knife from her belt and came running, terror gone and a wind seeming to carry her over the shingle; zoned in steel blue light she saw the harpoon flying from right to left destroying everything in its way, knives flying into the air as if tossed by jugglers, a yellow greasy back into which she struck with her knife, a yellow Chinese face falling backwards with eyes wide on her, as if the Chinese soul of the creature she had stabbed to the heart were trying to cling to her.

Then she was sitting on the shingle very ill and Raft was coming back to her, running.

The fight was over and the beasts had flown, left and right, she could see them crawling like ants away up on the higher ground. They had dropped their knives and the knives were lying here and there on the shingle where also lay four dead bodies including the body of Chang.

Ten minutes ago there had been fifteen live Chinamen on that beach.

Raft was bleeding from a cut on the arm, his face was gashed above the beard, a knife had ripped his coat and the back of his left hand shewed another wound.

He was laughing and carrying on like a man in drink and now that her stomach was relieved an extraordinary light-headedness seized her. Like Raft, she seemed drunk.

She had been s.n.a.t.c.hed for a moment into a world where to kill was the only alternative to death or worse than death. For a moment she had lived in the Stone Age, she had fought like a savage animal and with the fury of the female, more terrific than the rage of the male. She had been pushed to the edge of things, and it was she who had turned the fight. The man she had killed was in the act of knifing Raft in the back.

"The boat!" cried Raft.

She struggled to her feet, steadied herself, and came to the boat. They pushed it out till it was nearly water borne; she scrambled in, he followed, and pushed off. Out in the bay the high black cliffs rose above them as if pushed by a scene shifter, the light-headed laughing raving feeling left her, and as they came alongside of the barque to starboard and tied up to the channel plates she was clear headed and calm and able to get on board by the channel without a.s.sistance.

On the deck she tottered and fell in the dead swoon of exhaustion.

It is a long journey to the Stone Age and back and the man or woman who makes it is never quite, quite the same again.