Down among men

by Will Levington Comfort

The Chinese did steal his food that first night, but fed him occasionally from their own stock. Finding him white, they fouled him, but kept him warm.... The Tungsheng ran into Chifu harbor to avoid a storm, and a full day was lost. John Morning had no philosophy then—a hell-minded male full of sickness—not good to view, even through the bars of a cage. But at best to sit five hours, where he sat more than five days and nights, would condemn the mind of any white man or woman to chaos, or else restore it to the fine sanity of Brotherhood.

And then the day when the breeze turned warm and the Islands were green!... Coolies were men that hour, men with eyes that melted to ineffable softness. It was like Jesus coming toward them on the sea—the green hills of Japan. Their hearts broke with emotion; they wept and loved one another—this mass all molten and integrated into one. It was like the Savior coming to meet them through the warm bright air. He would make them clean; their eyes would follow Him always....

Morning was not the only one who had to be carried ashore at Shimoneseki, after the quarantine officer had finished with the herd. His passport saved him. “I had to come. It was the first ship out of Tongu. Deck passage was the only way they would take me,” was the simple story. He was fevered, but strangely subdued that day. Himmelhock was at the door of the pilot-house, when Morning looked up from the shore a last time, and his native sailors, bare to the thigh, were sluicing the decks.

The bath was heaven. He was able to walk afterward. The officials burned his clothing, but made it possible for him to buy a few light things. The wound in his leg was healing; the bruises fading away. The wound in his side did not heal; it was angry as a feline mouth.

He had bandages, but no stockings; clean canvas clothing, but no underwear.... He found that he had to wait before answering when anyone spoke; and then he was not quite sure if he had answered, and would try again—until they stopped him. Somewhere long ago there was a parrot whose eyes were rimmed—with red-brown, and of stony opaqueness. He couldn’t recall where the parrot was, but it had something to do with him when he was little, almost beyond memory. His eyes now felt just as the parrot’s had looked.

It was a night run back to Nagasaki by rail—his thought was of ships, ships, ships. He could stand off from the world and see the ships—all the lines of tossing, steaming ships. Then he would go down to the deck of one—and below and aft where Asiatics were crowded together. To the darkest and thickest place among them he would go, and there lie and rest until the finger in his brain roused him. Then he would find that the train had stopped. It was the halt that awakened him.

There were two ships, all but ready to clear for the States, lying in the harbor of Nagasaki that morning. The first was the liner Coptic, but she had to go north first, a day at Kobe, and two days at Yokohama, before taking the long southeastern slide to Honolulu. She was faster than the American transport, Sickles (with a light load of sick and insane from the Islands), but the latter was clearing for Honolulu at sundown and would reach San Francisco at least one day earlier than the liner. Moreover, the Coptic would have recent mails; the Sickles would beat the mails.

Money was waiting for him at Tokyo, less than an hour’s journey from Yokohama; he would have good care and a comfortable passage home on the old liner, but his brain burned at the thought. Four days north—not homeward.... The Sickles was clipper-built—she was white and clean-lined, lying out in the harbor, in the midst of black collier babies. She was off for Home to-night. He had traveled home once before on a transport. He was American and she—the flag was there, run together a bit in the vivid light, but the flag was there! And to-night he would be at sea—pulling himself together for the big story, alone with the big story—the ship never stopping—unless they stopped in ocean to drop the dead....

The actual cost of the transport passage is very little, merely a computation for food and berth; the difficulty is to obtain the permit. As it was, he had not enough money, barely enough to get up to Yokohama, second class on the Coptic; and yet, this hardly entered. It was like a home city, this American ship, to one who had been in the alien heart of the Chinese country so long. He would know someone, and a telegram from ’Frisco would bring money to him. He had a mighty reliance from the big story.

The U. S. quartermaster at Nagasaki was a tired old man. He advised Morning to cable to Manila for permission. Morning did not say that he lacked money for this, but repeated his wish to go. The old man thought a minute and then referred him to Ferry, the Sickles quartermaster. He had been doing this for thirty years, referring others to others so that all matters merely struck and glanced from him. Thus he kept an open mind. Morning wanted something to take from this office to Ferry of the Sickles. The resistance he encountered heated him. The smell of the deck-passage was in his nostrils; it seemed in his veins, and made him afraid that others caught the taint. The old quartermaster did not help him. Morning could hear his own voice, but could not hold in mind what he said.... The officer did not seem to be interested in Liaoyang. This disturbed him. It made him ask if he had not gone mad after all—if he could be wrong on this main trend, that he had something the world wanted.