Read Online God of Luck by Ruthann Lum McCunn - Free Book Online Page B

come back with me. She’s expecting Ah Lung to land in Canton any day.”

I WAS CONFUSED by the frequent ringing of bells on the devil-ship until Ah Ming—who’d lived in America— explained they were for marking time: “We divide our days into twelve hours, but foreigners on land divide theirs into two cycles of twelve, at sea into six cycles, each beginning with one bell and ending with eight. So every half-hour, the helmsman is responsible for striking a small bell behind him. Then a sailor strikes a larger bell. But it’s the watch who calls out the number of chimes and ‘All’s well.’”
    Every morning, at four bells during the second cycle, the sailors on the devil-ship started scrubbing the decks. Soon water would drip down on us through the seams in the planking. Since the hull leaked as well, we were never dry. Neither were our berths. Yet we were forced to remain in them except when compelled by necessity to use the wastebuckets located at the stern of the between-decks.
    With only eight buckets for close to eight hundred men, many of whom were suffering motion sickness, the wait was always long, the crush in the walkways terrible, and those unable to hold in their vomit or piss or shit would aim for the nearest spittoon. Not surprisingly, spittoons and buckets overflowed long before their removal, spilled as they were carried out.
    Ah Jook, a ship’s carpenter in Hong Kong before his capture, claimed the large pipes near the buckets were to draw off foul air. To me, though, these pipes seemed as ineffectual as the three heavily grated hatches which let in little light, less air, not the faintest whiff of a breeze.
    When in our berths, I could barely make out Ah Jook’s thick neck and bunlike cheeks, the giant mole—black and hairy—between Ah Ming’s eyebrows, the oversized teeth crowded behind his thin, colorless lips. I could only tolerate the stink by breathing through my mouth, counting each ding of the bells until the four in the third and fifth cycles signaled our morning and afternoon meals.
    It was not the food I wanted. Because of the stink, the ship’s roll that endlessly pushed my soles flat against the lip of wood at my feet then shoved my head against the hull, the state of my stomach ricocheted from queasiness to outright rebellion. But one of every ten captives had to fetch the food from above for the other nine, and I’d seized this job of “steward” so I could stretch my limbs and breathe fresh air twice a day.
    Anticipating four bells, I’d hoist my legs over the platform’s lip at the first ding. Although I tried to be careful, my queue—long enough for me to sit on—would usually uncoil from around the crown of my head, become entangled in the awkward convolutions of my limbs. I’d arouse grumbles, curses from Ah Ming and Ah Jook and those in the crowded walkway whose ears, chins, chests, bums, or knees I poked and kicked.
    Long before I landed, I’d feel my feet and calves prickle. Still I’d have to stamp the sodden straw in the walkway to bring my legs fully to life, and since there was no way to hurry through the men choking the narrow passage, I’d always find stewards ahead of me at the ladder.
    From painful experience, I knew the grating in the hatch was blistering hot, and when my turn came to mount the ladder, I’d blink my eyes to adjust them to the dazzling light above, pause on the last tread to make sure of my balance, my ability to safely negotiate the opening. Finally, I’d step past the pair of armed devils guarding the hatch and eagerly gulp untainted air to cleanse my mouth, my throat, then breathe deeply through my nose.
    The cookhouse—midway between the hatch and the foremast—was no more than ten or twelve paces away. Even so, stick-wielding corporals hemmed us in on both sides. When Ah Choy, a steward from my home district, asked me to take part in a mutiny by smuggling a knife from the cookhouse into the between-decks, however, my heart did