Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [220]
“The next day he put her back in the bullock-cart and sold her to another peasant for a profit. This one was younger, but no less ugly, no less cruel. He, too, had meant to have her for a single night and then sell her, but he enjoyed his new ‘child bride,’ he liked her glossy black hair and her budding breasts, and he liked the way she screamed whenever he took her. He was on his way to Shanghai, taking a ship from there to America and the Gold Mountain. He decided his new little ‘child bride’ should go with him. When he tired of her he could sell her. There were few Chinese women in America and she would command a good price. He shaved the front of her head like a boy’s and braided her hair into a queue. He dressed her in a coolie’s smock and trousers and told her if she ever spoke a word to anyone he would kill her. And then he took her with him onto the ship.
“The voyage took four months and was very hard. Mayling sat silently at her captor’s side, afraid to speak. She was the only female on board and she knew what would happen if the men found out about her, or if the peasant decided to sell her to them. She longed to drown herself in the merciful sea, but he never let her out of his sight until the captain ordered her to be his cabin boy and then she had to endure his drunkenness and abuse.
“When the typhoon struck she prayed the ship would be wrecked, but fate was not that kind. And when the storm came up off the coast of Mendocino she leapt into the sea with the others, thinking that finally she would be reprieved and allowed to die. But as she sank beneath the icy waves, deep inside her was the ancient instinct for survival. She kicked frantically to the surface just as the god of providence sent a piece of driftwood floating past her. She clung desperately to it, gasping for air, staring around her at the heads bobbing in the water. Suddenly the peasant was beside her. He grabbed at the driftwood, kicking her away, cursing her. ‘You are worthless,’ he screamed, prying her desperate fingers from the wood. ‘You are only a girl. Your life means nothing.’
“She heard the roar of a great wave as it surged toward them, then she was engulfed in dark, icy water, her lungs were filled, they were bursting, she was choking, she was dying. There was a great pain all over her body as she was flung onto the shore and the wave receded, leaving her on a scrap of shingle at the foot of a cliff. She heard a cry and looked behind her. The peasant was striding from the waves. In the glow from the phosphorescence she could see his face, livid with rage—and behind him the sea surging outward as though drawn back from the shore by some giant force.
“Mayling scrambled to her feet and began to run, clambering up the side of the steep cliff, clinging to the rocks and little ledges. Her feet slipped on the loose stones and her hands were bleeding. She heard him behind her and looked down. He was running across the strip of shingle and she sobbed with fear, she knew soon he would catch her and he would kill her. She wished she had drowned with the others rather than be killed brutally by him. The sea roared ominously and the peasant turned and looked behind him, puzzled. The ocean had receded a long way, leaving a strip of shingle fifty yards wide, but now it gathered itself together into a single towering wave and roared toward the shore, higher and higher, faster and faster. It hurled itself onto the rocks, engulfing the peasant.
“Mayling clung to her ledge on the cliff side, staring down as the wave receded again, but there was no one. The peasant had gone along with all the others. Only she had survived.
“Too frightened to move she waited for the ocean to come and claim her, too, but it was suddenly calm, as glassy as a summer lake under the moon.
“Mayling clambered up the cliff. She rested that night and then began to walk. She lived on fruits and berries and what she could steal and kill with her own hands. The nights were cold and when