Hawaii - James Michener [277]
One thing was settled quickly. The Punti took their position forward and the Hakka aft, for naturally neither group wished to contaminate itself with the other, and for Nyuk Tsin there was a moment of hesitation when she felt that perhaps she ought to settle down with her own people, but they showed that they wanted nothing to do with a Hakka girl who had married a Punti; and at the same time the Punti made no effort to welcome her, so she took her position in a corner of the Punti terrain, and there she was left alone with her husband. The Punti did, however, bring to her their fellow with the broken ankle and they suggested in signs that she repair the damage. She studied the man's leg and concluded that the break was not complicated, so she made a splint of chopsticks and lashed it in place with ends of cloth. Then she borrowed bedding from others and made a rude mattress on which the man rested. If there had been water, she would have washed his face, too.
Now there was a motion of the ship, a swaying in the offshore breezes and finally the slow, steady roll of the ocean itself. Before long the hold was a confused agony of seasickness, with men vomiting everywhere and then rolling indifferently in it. Nyuk Tsin became so nauseated that she hoped the ship would sink, and in this stench the first awful night passed.
At dawn a sailor opened the grating to pass down some buckets of water, shouting to his mates, "You want to smell the other side of hell?"
His friends came over and took a whiff. "How do they stand it?" they asked.
The first explained, "They're Chinee. They like it that way," and he jammed the grating back, forgetting to reset the deck sail so that fresh air could funnel in. The day grew increasingly hot and there was insufficient water to wash away the appalling smell, so that most of the three hundred got sicker than before. They sweated, retched, went to the toilet, filled the foul bucket and then used the floor. The heat grew unbearable and the man with the broken ankle started to rave about going home.
In the afternoon a little more water was passed down and the sailor shouted, "For Christ's sake, now smell it!" And his mates agreed that with a hold full of Chinee you could do nothing. This time, however, someone remembered to tip the sail into the breeze, and by evening the hold was beginning to settle into the routine that would be followed for the next forty-six days. At eight in the morning and at four in the afternoon kettles of rice were lowered into the hold, along with stray ends of salt beef. There was no point in trying to serve vegetables or fish. Water was never plentiful, but a system was devised whereby at signals the slop bucket would be hauled up on a rope and emptied. The deck sail was tended so that a minimum breeze was funneled in, but never enough to permit a man a full breath of clean, cold air. The awful smell never abated, a mixture of urine, sweat, bowel movements and seasickness, but it was surprising that even those with especially sensitive stomachs did in time grow accustomed to it, for the odor seemed to represent them, forming a vital part of their foul, cramped quarters.
Providentially Mun Ki had brought with him some playing cards, and when his seasickness abated he set up a gambling corner where each day, as long as sunlight filtered through the grating, he tried to win back the money he had paid his Punti friends. He was adept with cards and won small amounts from most of his adversaries, announcing often, as he patted the back of his pigtail: "I'm a very lucky fellow. I understand the run of cards." When an opponent lost his stake, the nimble-witted gambler suggested: "I'll lend you some so the game can continue," and strict accounts were kept of who owed whom and