Assignats

When Ivan with the long surname walked down the beach at Novgorod he found three men. These men were sitting on their haunches staring out over the Japan Sea. Ivan spoke to them in English.

“I have a ship,” he said.

The first man glanced at the second; the second stared at the third. They rose from their haunches and wrapped their rags around gaunt limbs.

“A ship in this accursed port?” asked one.

“A bloody lie!” exclaimed a second castaway.

“Ah hae me doots,” rasped a third derelict.

“It is a fact, gentlemen,” said Ivan with the long surname. “The ship is loading between here and Vladivostok. She wants but a master, a mate and an engineer.”

The three men grew sad. They had been broken on the rack of peace. They had come ashore at Novgorod in a leaking sampan. The government of Japan was at that moment interested in their whereabouts.

“Our papers were lost in a great storm at sea,” said the leader of the trio, whom men called “Micky” McMasters. “You mind the vast simoom?”

Ivan, the Russian, spread out his hands. His great spade-shaped beard fluttered in the warm Japanese breeze. He thumped a be-medaled chest.

“Come with me!” he said. “Papers or no papers—it is you three who shall take the Shongpong out across the sea.”

“He talks like a poet writes,” whispered “Red” Landyard, a Yankee mate, to Mike Monkey, the Scotch engineer.

“Ah hae noo doot he’s read a wee bit. How otherwise would he know we were on the beach at Novgorod? There is a price on our heads.”

Micky McMasters edged the big Russian away from his whispering companions.

“This ship,” asked the little skipper, “this boat you ’ave loading between ’ere and Vladivostok—what flag does she fly?”

“Her home flag is Chinese. Her crew are loyal Russians. Her cargo, now going aboard, is caravan tea. This tea must be taken to America where Victoria on the Island of Vancouver is. Do you know the route?”

Micky felt his heart thump like a mallet inside a cask. He had sweated and toiled and starved on the mud flats of Novgorod. He sensed the coming of a bitter Winter. And here was a hard-eyed Russian offering him and his mates a ship for the Pacific broadside, where white men walked and roses bloomed and shirts could be worn.

“I’ve steamed and sailed, man and boy,” he explained, “going on thirty years. I’m ’Umber born—at Great Grimsby on the North Sea. My mate, the tall man with the red face, is an American out of New Bedford. My first engineer came from Tyneside—where they build good ships. We take no back-slack from nobody. Show me your ship, says I, and I’ll work ’er across the Japan Sea and east by the line to Victoria.”

“That is settled,” said Ivan Alexandrovski. “You may come with me.”

Micky McMasters gathered the tattered collar of his dungaree coat around his unshaven neck.

“One more question before it becomes a contract,” he said suspiciously. “Are you loyal Russian or are you Bolshevik?”

Ivan with the long surname smiled blandly. He stroked his straggling beard. He stared down at the little castaway.

“Loyal Russian,” he said. “I have a home in Vladivostok—where Allied troops are guarding.”

Micky turned, jerked his head toward his mates who stood shivering in their rags, and shouted:

“The contract’s signed! A fair thing for all of us. We work the Shongpong across the western Pacific.”

“Ye arranged about terms?” asked Mike Monkey, siding up to the skipper and glancing at the Russian.

“Terms?”

“Bonuses and wages?”

“We’ll leave that to our noble friend.”

Mike gulped and spat to the mud flat.

“Last time Ah left that,” he said, “Ah had nothing coming to me when Ah went ashore.”

The Russian drew himself erect.

“The scale of wages,” he declared, “shall be, for you three officers, one thousand rubles a week—paid at Victoria.”

“How much is a ruble?” asked Mike.

“Two shillin’,” hissed the cockney skipper.

“Twa shillin’? That make a hundred pun a week! Ah hae noo doot it’ll be well earned before the end of the passage.”

“Where’s the ship?” asked Red Landyard. “Show me the Shongpong!”

The Russian led the way up the beach. Two hours stiff walking brought the castaways to a cove in which lay a rusty tramp flying the Chinese flag and swarming with coolies—like ants on a cockroach.

Mike Monkey stared at the boxes which the coolies were carrying aboard the ship.

“Tay!” he spat. “Aya, it may be tay and it may be something else. Them ain’t Chinese marks on the sides.”

“Russian!” explained Ivan. “Come with me aboard my ship. You can see the boxes are marked with Russian letters.”

Micky McMasters jabbed the engineer in the ribs as they trailed up a shaky gangplank and sprang from the Shongpong’s unpolished rail at the waist.

“Be careful!” he warned. “Don’t ask no bloomin’ questions. Wait till we cross the Sea o’ Japan!”

Mike gulped. He eyed the decrepit back-stays and standing rigging of the tramp. He ranged a fluttering glance along the dirty planks of the freighter. He shifted his tongue in his mouth as he stared at the drunken-looking funnel, which bore evidences of poorly patched shot holes.

“A rum hooker,” he told Red Landyard. “She’s had her name painted out about five times. She’s no more’n eight hundred tons, if she’s that. She’s a broodin’ menace ov some kind. Ah wash my hands of this voyage.”

“You’re ’ands need washin’!” snapped Micky McMasters. “Drop below and look over the engines. See hif there’s any coal or supplies aboard. Report to me on the bridge.”

“D’ye call that a bridge?” Mike pointed forward of the tipsy funnel, which was painted light blue.

“Hit’s a better bridge than the mud flats of Novgorod!” Micky said. “Get below and report. I’m skipper ’ere!”

Mike’s report, delivered between champs upon a chew of Chinese tobacco borrowed from a coolie, was tense and bitter.

“Ye hae no conception of the state of things below,” he told Micky McMasters. “There’s only one double-door boiler. It was made in Canton—China. The engines are cross-compound of the vintage of Isaac Watt and Robert Fulton. The coal is Japanese—twa bunkers of it. The stokehold leaks and the shaft-alley is full of bilge muck. Ah saw the stuffin’-boxes jettin’ water myself. The last engineer of this packet wrote wot he thought of it on the ditty-box door. He said enough. His name was MacFarland.”

“What’s that got to do with hus?”

Mike walked from starboard to port of the tramp. He stared down at the line of coolies who were staggering aboard under the last of the boxes. He watched the yellow hands of the gang in the forehold reach for the cargo. He came back to Micky McMasters.

“Wot’s it got to do with us?” he repeated. “It’s got a lot. Ah doot if we make Japan—let alone Victoria.”

“We’ll try,” said Micky sadly. “The Russian says we can clear at nightfall. ’E and ’is crew are coming aboard then. I tested the steering-gear. It works. Who got steam up?”

“Three coolies who are sittin’ in the engine-room waiting to go ashore. Ah borrowed some cut-plug from them—enough to last the voyage—if it lasts. They can’t talk anything but pidgin English. Their clothes are not worth taking—or I’d of taken them.”

Micky McMasters rubbed a bristly chin reflectively. He stared at Mike Monkey’s faded outfit. He swung his gaze to where Red Landyard stood on the forecastle deck, directing a gang of coolies who were clearing away wreckage which had fallen about the capstan.

“This Russian,” he said with an anxious glance at the dark outlines of the shore, “this man who hired us at a thousand rubles a week is some kind of a big labor captain or prince. The coolies salute him. The two Tatars standing guard at that shed ashore bowed when he spoke to them. There’s a whackin’ mystery ’ere!”

“Ah thought ye would get yer foot in it when ah saw ye chinnin’ with that Russian on the mud flat. He is a smuggler!”

“No! ’E don’t look like one.”

“Looks is only skin deep. He ought to be skinned—with his thousand rubles a week.”

“’E ’as nobody to navigate the ship, and the tea ’as got to be taken hover the western Pacific.”

“Tay? Ye are daft? D’ye call that tay?”

Mike Monkey pointed a scornful finger at the boxes piled around the fore-hatch. He spat to the bridge-deck.

“That ain’t tay! That’s opium or hashish or fireworks of some sort. Ah never saw tay boxes with Russian letters on them.”

“There is good tea grown in some parts of Russia.”

“It’s grown! Aye, it’s grown! Wot’s to prove this cargo growed there. It may have been brought to this cove in a sampan—it may have been brought in a Chinese junk—it may have——”

“’Vast with your ‘may-have’s!’ Get below to the boiler! ’Ere comes a caravan or a funeral. They’re Russians of the province of the Don. See their beards and their robes. There’s the big fellow who hired us. ’E’s a bloomin’ juke, that’s wot ’e is! Kow-tow when ’e comes aboard.”

“Ye told me to go below.”

“’urry hup! Never mind the kowtowin’. You walk straight and take my orders until we get on the ’igh seas.”

The first engineer fluttered a pair of pale lashes in the general direction of the squad of Russians who were winding around the shore shed. He climbed down the rusty bridge-ladder and glided for the engine-room companion. He went through the single grating and thrust his hands into the broken pockets of his dungaree trousers as he eyed the three coolies sitting on the crank-shaft of the cross-compound engine.

“On deck!” he roared at the chinamen. “Ye all get on deck, and don’t show yer miserable faces here again. Ye’re discharged! Ye built my fires in Oriental fashion—upside down with all the Japanese coal on the grates. Ye left me nothing but clinkers and salt water in the boiler and leaking gaskets and——”

The last yellow man stared down through the grating on his way to the deck and departure.

“Plenty much you learn by and by,” he said softly—too softly. “Plenty much——”

Mike picked up a rusty spanner. He had drawn this back when there sounded the raucous clang of an ancient gong in the engine-room. Micky McMasters, wasting no time, had rung for quarter-speed forward before the Russian crew were well aboard.

Two men came down the engine-room ladder in awkward fashion. They blinked at Mike. They stared at the engine as if it were an idol in a temple. They stroked their whiskers.

“Are ye coal-passers?” asked Mike.

“Passengers.”

“Wot?”

“We are passengers.”

“Ah asked ye if ye are coal-passers?”

Mike Monkey pointed toward the low door through the bulkhead which separated the engine-room from the stoke hold.

“Get forrard!” he rasped. “D’ye know the skipper rang for a turn on the engines? D’ye know there’s only thirty pounds ov steam?”

The Russians moved toward the stokehold door. Mike picked up his spanner and followed them. He spent the next lurid hour breaking in two green firemen whose manners were sullen and morose.

It was after sundown when the Shongpong clamped from her anchorage in the cove and started eastward over the polished waters of the Japan Sea.

A tan-colored moon hung in the sky. A soft breeze swung out from Manchuria. The powdered stars spangled the velvet dome of heaven.

Red Landyard, Micky Masters and Mike Monkey came together on the decrepit bridge of the freighter like three men making a common report.

Ivan with the long surname and most of his following were in the lighted cabin where rose the quarter-deck of the freighter. A lone lookout stood on the forecastle head. He was smoking a long-stemmed pipe. The ashes from the bowl of this pipe made tinder of his whiskers. Now and then he pressed out the sparks and swore in Russian.

A second and sinister figure squatted on the fore-hatch. He had a rifle across his knees. The end of this rifle was tipped with a polished bayonet.

“Standin’ guard,” said Micky McMasters. “The grand juke put ’im there to watch the tea.”

“Tay!” said Mike Monkey. “Ye still insist it is tay?”

Micky squared his jaw. “I know nothing,” he said, “save that we are ’oldin’ a course for ’Akodate and the Inland Sea, which we should reach this time day after tomorrow—if the steam don’t die out altogether.”

Red Landyard stared at the Russian on the fore-hatch. He eyed the bright point of the steel bayonet.

“They’re quiet now,” he drawled, “but we’re hardly out of sight of land. I expect I’ll have to chain a man or two before long. The forecastle is a volcano. Hear them talking? They’re arguing some point in Russian.”

Micky swung and eyed the break of the quarter-deck, which showed four lighted port-holes within the smudge of smoke that draped from the tipsy funnel.

“They’re doing the same aft,” he said. “Ivan, the grand juke, is leadin’ in the prayin’ or whatever it is. I never saw such a crew for talking. I don’t know who are passengers and who are workin’ the ship. I wish I’d studied Russian.”

“Wot good would that do?” asked Mike Monkey. “They wouldn’t reveal their secret plans to us. Wot did they bring the rifle aboard for? Wot’s to prove we ain’t shipmates with a howlin’ bunch of anarchists? They’re quiet now. Them twa in the stokehold only look at me and chew on their beards when Ah give orders. They’re waitin’ for somethin’!”

Micky strode across the bridge. He gazed sadly at the ripples that curved from the Shongpong’s straight bow. He estimated the speed of the ship to be not more than seven knots an hour. There was no bridge-rail log.

He came back to Mike Monkey and Red Landyard.

“Briefly stated,” ye said, “we’re in the ’ands of Providence. Anything is likely to ’appen with all that talking fore and aft. The course the grand juke gave me is to the Pacific—by the nearest strait. I’m ’olding that course. That’s all I know. I ’ave a wife and children at ’ome. I was thinkin’ of them when I took the contract to work this ship to Victoria.”

Mike studied the little skipper’s dungaree jacket and unshaven face.

“How many Russians are there aboard?” he asked.

“Sixty or seventy.”

“Then Ah resign if it comes to blows. Ah am weak from starving on the beach of Novgorod. All Ah have been able to find to eat on this hooker is caviar and salt fish. Ah would as soon eat clinkers.”

A door slid open aft. A rolling voice struck forward. Ivan appeared, followed by two Russians. They were wrapped to the beards in great coats trimmed with fur. They climbed the bridge-ladder and stared at the binnacle.

“East she is,” said Micky. “East, a quarter point north.”

Ivan swept the sea with a long glance. He nodded and pointed over the freighter’s stumpy jib-boom.

“Japan lays there?” he questioned Micky.

“Yes. Habout four ’undred miles.”

“Have you sighted any ships?”

“None, yet.”

“If you do call me on deck. Answer no signals. Keep the Chinese flag flying.”

“The Union Jack would look better!”

Ivan stroked his beard.

“You take my orders,” he said icily. “Avoid any suggestions. Keep away from smoke, sails and particularly gunboats of foreign powers. I’ll double the thousand rubles which I have agreed to give you three officers. I’ll increase it to two thousand rubles a week.”

Mike gulped and drew his scrawny neck deep into his collar. He waited until Ivan and the Russians had descended the bridge-ladder and walked slowly aft to where the light streamed from the open cabin door.

“Ye heard that!” grated the engineer with scorn. “Ah thought it was possible to get a thousand rubles a week. Ah expect nothing now. It’s too good to be true. Ah minds the likes o’ that Russian! It was in Guatemala where I was paid three thousand pesos a month. The pesos were worth sixpence on the pound.”

Micky McMasters shook his head.

“Anyway,” he said, “we’re on the first leg ’ome to blighty. We’re gettin’ a free passage. That’s something!”

Mike Monkey went below to the clanking engines. Red Landyard stared forward and aft. He entered the chart-house and turned in across the single seaweed mattress it contained.

Micky stood the watch until midnight. He woke the Yankee mate, gave the course and dropped down into the engine-room. He sat with Mike until two bells. The Scotch-Irish engineer was bitter against the Russians. He rose now and then and peered through the stokehold door, where a lurid light glowed.

“Twa stokers,” he said, “and no fire to speak of.”

Micky glanced around in caution as the engineer came back for the third time.

“Investigate the forehold,” he whispered. “Find out what is in those tea boxes. Don’t let anybody see you doing it. There’s a plot of some kind aboard this ship.”

“They’ve talked enough for a revolution.”

The little skipper paused on the first round of the engine-room grating.

“Get forrard when you can,” he whispered. “Open one of those boxes.”

Mike gulped and nodded. He drowsed out the morning hours and climbed to the deck at the first crack of dawn. He waited all the day for a chance to creep through the stokehold without being detected by the two Russian stokers. A second night came and after night the twinkling lights of the Inland Sea. No chance afforded itself in the passage between the Japanese Islands.

It was morning of the third day when Ivan with the long surname dashed thoughts of a discovery in the forehold by summoning all hands to the waist of the Shongpong.

A wild seascape greeted Mike’s eyes as he hurried up the engine-room ladder and braced his spindle legs athwart the planks.

The dusky outlines of the Japanese Coast were fast fading in the west. The wind swung out of a biting north. The sea had been stirred by the tail of a storm. The dingy freighter, with her tipsy funnel and standing rigging, rolled and tossed. She threatened to have the two masts out of her at any moment.

Micky McMasters stood the bridge with Red Landyard. Ivan and all of the Russians, including the crowd from the forecastle, were gathered beneath the shelter of the quarter-deck’s lift. They glanced at Mike Monkey and started chattering in Russian. His eyes lifted over their heads. He gulped and moved his Adam’s apple up and down his scrawny throat. He spat to the deck.

The Chinese flag which had been flying from the jack staff had been replaced by a red oblong. It showed baleful in the rays of the sun.

Mike turned his chin. He looked at Micky. The little skipper’s jaw was square set. His shoulders were thrown back. There was a fighting fire in his eyes.

“Wot happened?” asked Mike shrilly.

“Our friends are in charge of the ship,” said Micky over the bridge-rail. “Come up ’ere! They’re going to take a vote for captain, mate and engineer. They say all things in their government should be settled by a vote. They’re going to elect a citizen captain.”

“Wot is their government?”

Micky gripped the rail.

“Bolshevik!” he snapped.

Mike steadied himself on the wet planks. He spat to the deck for a second time. His glance ranged from the little skipper to Ivan’s broad face.

“Ah thought so!” he rasped. “We’re deluded men!”

Ivan strode from the press of Russians beneath the break of the quarter-deck. He mounted the main-hatch. His voice rose and fell with the whine of the north wind. He spoke in gusty torrents. He pointed to the red flag aft. He turned and leveled an accusing finger at the bridge where Red Landyard and Micky stood with folded arms.

Mike squinted at the half-circle of Russians. They were being worked up to a storm by their leader. A fur cap was passed. Into this was dropped slips of paper upon which were scrawled names. A rifle’s bayonet lifted above the heads of the Bolsheviki. A club swung.