Hawaii - James Michener [275]
This problem settled, quick-thinking Mun Ki now faced one far more serious, for Dr. Whipple was calling, through his interpreter, for the married couple to join him, but when Mun Ki and Nyuk Tsin started to do so, they had to pass through the Punti contingent, and these men were even more outraged at Mun Ki than the Hakka had been. They, too, had been well drilled in the evil that had befallen the Punti man who had dared to marry a Hakka girl back in 1693, and they drew away from Mun Ki as if he were unclean, but as he passed each group he muttered to those from whom he had borrowed: "Last night. Big winnings. Lots of money for you." And this softened their anger.
When he reached Dr. Whipple, the American said, "We will have to ask the captain of the ship if he will accept another passenger. And if he says yes, you will have to pay passage money for your wife."
He therefore sent a sailor in search of the captain, and in a moment a towering American loomed among the Chinese, a man in his seventies, with stout muscles and a sea cap jammed on the back of his head. He had fierce, dynamic eyes and looked at the men about to board his ship as if he hated each one of them with deep, personal anger. Brushing them away as he strode through their groups, he came up to Whipple and asked, "What is it, John?"
"Captain Hoxworth," the trim, gray-haired scientist began, "I find one man wants to bring his wife along."
"You willing to pay five dollars' passage money?" Hoxworth asked.
"Yes. I'll get it from the man."
"Then it's simple," the captain growled. "She can come."
Dr. Whipple conveyed the news to Mun Ki, who grinned happily, explaining to the interpreter, "A man would not like to leave his wife in Macao." Dr. Whipple was impressed by this sentiment and asked Captain Hoxworth, "Where will the couple sleep?"
In the hold!” Hoxworth snapped with some surprise that the question should have been asked. "Where the hell do you suppose they would sleep?"
"I thought," Whipple began, "that with her the only woman, and three hundred men . . ."
"In the hold!" Hoxworth shouted. Then, addressing the Chinese, who could not possibly understand him, he roared, "Because when this ship sails I don't want to see one goddamned Chinee anywhere but locked up in the hold. I'm warning you."
"Rafer," Dr. Whipple began again. "In the case of this couple, couldn't they stay with ..." -
Captain Hoxworth turned quickly, pointed his long forefinger at his missionary friend, and snapped: "They'll stay in the hold. How do I know this rascal isn't a pirate? How do you know he's married? There'll be no pigtailed Chinee anywhere on this ship except locked below."
Reluctantly Dr. Whipple explained to Mun Ki that if he insisted upon bringing his wife along, she would have to share the hold along with two hundred and ninety-nine other men, but to his confusion Mun Ki evidenced no surprise and Captain Hoxworth observed: "It's nothing to them. They live like animals."
The moment had now arrived when the Chinese were to board the Carthaginian as it lay alongside the Macao quay, and Portuguese officers, in brilliant uniforms, took their places at the gangplank, checking off numbers rather than the names. The Cantonese interpreter said farewell, and the three hundred Chinese men and their one woman were left alone in two hostile groups, Hakka and Punti, with no one who could converse with the Americans who ran the ship and with only one man, Mun Ki, who could make himself understood to both contingents. However, their thoughts were diverted from their plight by the natural excitement involved in climbing aboard the schooner from whose mast flew the blue H & H flag. When the first Chinese stood at the top of the gangplank and saw before him the great open ocean, he hesitated in natural apprehension, which was increased when a sailor grabbed his pitiful store of belongings to stow