Rice Papers. Hugh Leigh Norris
used to have a heavy iron bar with iron grapnels, with which we dragged for drowned bodies—and not without success, in those days; but they often had little more than the clothes on them, so we never became very prosperous.
“One night we had anchored just astern of a foreign devils’ warship, and some time after dark there was a big commotion on deck. It appeared that a man had fallen overboard, and about a minute after, our sampan gave a lurch, and a spluttering white man grabbed hold of our gunwale and tried to get on board. Mother was cooking the evening rice and fish at the time, and she made a cut at one of his hands with a big knife. She chopped off four fingers, and he gave a yell. Father jumped forward at once and gave him one blow over the head with an axe, and he sank like a stone. Two or three boats were lowered from the man-of-war. They heard the man scream, and one boat came alongside us, and an officer jumped aboard. He began talking away hard in English, and grabbed father by the queue. Of course we couldn’t understand him, but mother, who was always quick-witted, suddenly picked up the four human fingers, chucked them in the stew of rice, and stirred them up hurriedly. The officer could find no reason for suspecting us, so soon shoved off in his boat to search elsewhere for the missing man. We couldn’t afford to waste rice, so after mother had picked out the fingers we had our evening meal. Then we up anchor and started to dredge with our grapnels for the dead man. It was about slack water when father killed him, so we knew he couldn’t be far off; and some two hours after we hooked on to him and dragged him up. Then I learnt where your British sailors keep their money: in a belt of flannel they wear next their skin. We took eleven dollars from that man, besides a silver finger-ring and his clothes, and then we cast him adrift. Not a bad night, although our rice had been partly spoilt by his dirty fingers.
“But these happy days were soon to be ended. When I was between nine and ten years of age the small-pox came. Father got it first, and in his delirium jumped overboard and was drowned; mother had it at the same time, and she lay down in the sleeping-space amidships. She died there the next day, and I was alone and afraid in the sampan. However, I cooked some rice and dried fish, and the next day tried to get mother out of the hold and throw her overboard. But she’d got stiff by that time, and I couldn’t move her any way. For days I continued to cook rice and try to move mother, but it was no good. As I told you, I wasn’t yet ten years old, and couldn’t yet properly manage a sampan alone; so one day the police noticed something wrong with my boat and came alongside. Then they found an old woman dead in the hold and your humble servant, aged nine and a half, in command. Being unable to escape, I had to go along with the police; and I remained about two days with them when a Chinaman came to see me, said he was my uncle, my father’s brother, and that he would care for me as his own son. Myself and the sampan, which contained no inconsiderable quantity of dollars, were handed over to this man, and he conducted me to his establishment. I’m sorry to say that this uncle was a very bad man, very bad indeed; he treated me shamefully.”
“You surprise me,” remarked the surgeon; “after the lovable description you have given of your father, it seems impossible that his brother should not have been possessed of ten thousand virtues.”
The Chinaman took no notice of this remark but proceeded.
“My life in my uncle’s house was hard and unlovely, and I should certainly have run away had I been able. He kept a gambling and boarding-house, where a man, after losing all his money, could go further and lose his body. A man who had lost all might stake his liberty against a sum of money, perhaps five dollars or more; once he’d lost this he became the property of the winner and passed into ‘the mansion of supreme blessedness,’ or, in other words, my uncle’s boarding-house; there he was kept and fed, and on occasions would be sent to sea in whatever ship required. In other words, my uncle was a crimp and supplied sailors to the foreign ships that required them. He was well known to all the China traders, and could be relied on to fill up a ship with whatever number of hands they required; in fact, I’ve known him put dead men on board if it chanced that he had not the number in ‘the mansion of supreme blessedness’ that a captain required. He’d explain that the man was drunk, carry him on board at night, and put him in the fo’c’sle when the ship was sailing next morning at daylight. He kept careful records of all he shipped and the ships they sailed in, and when the unfortunate men returned to Hong Kong my uncle would be the first on board, would have them again conducted to ‘the mansion’ to be kept till again required, and would himself draw their pay from the Shipping Office. In this way you can imagine that my wicked relation soon grew rich. Me he kept as a sort of servant to wait on the unfortunates in ‘the mansion of supreme blessedness’; and for over two years I remained there, being beaten, overworked, and underfed, and had it not been for the healthy open-air life that I had previously led I might have succumbed to the hardships; still, foul air never chokes a Chinaman, and somehow I grew and increased in strength. The ‘mansion’ must have got unusually depopulated at one time, because without any previous warning I one day found myself put on board a steamer with the remainder of my uncle’s guests. The steamer was bound for London with tea, and my job was to cook rice, etc., for the firemen and stokers. This job necessitated my turning out in every watch. I was kicked and cuffed by all the engine-room hands, and was at their beck and call day and night. Sleep I got when I could, food what I could steal, wages none, and my continual unhappiness bred in me an ever-increasing hatred of and desire for revenge on my paternal uncle. Of the voyage to England I remember nothing, and I saw nothing of London except the docks, as my work never allowed of my going ashore. I managed, however, to pick up some English from the stevedores, and after an absence of about nine months I was once more back in Hong Kong. To show you how unpopular my uncle’s methods were with some of his ‘guests,’ I may tell you that the night before we entered Hong Kong harbour three of his protégés jumped overboard and were drowned, rather than partake of his further hospitality. As was to be expected, the much-respected father of the flock was the first on board, and all the Chinese were conducted as usual to his ‘boarding-house,’ while my uncle talked politely to the captain and arranged about drawing the pay next day.
“We Chinese are an easily governed race, and it never occurred to anyone of our crowd to break away or resist my uncle’s orders, so we all went ashore and walked quietly to the ‘mansion.’ There we found a meal composed of better food than usual, and I found that my place as servant had been taken by a small boy, so I could beat and curse him, as the others did me in former days. Our condition as ‘guests’ had also greatly improved. We occasionally had money with which we could gamble, and now and then musicians to play to us in the evening. By some means my uncle found out that I could speak a little English, and from that time he had me to attend at his office all day, in case my knowledge of English might be useful. I soon picked up considerably more of the language from the English ship-captains, and in time became quite indispensable to my uncle; but throughout the whole time I was waiting but to revenge myself on him for the hardships he had made me endure as a child. I soon learnt that my ‘Tai pan,’ or head of the business, as my uncle was, was never without a shining revolver, which he carried somewhere in his loose silk jacket. He also was surrounded by secret agents and spies, who reported any matters concerning his clients or subordinates that might be of use to him. In many ways I made myself useful to my uncle. I studied the written language and learnt to keep accounts, and was soon allowed considerable freedom after ‘office hours.’ I studied to make myself indispensable to my employer, and my success and discretion in all matters entrusted to me soon raised me high in his esteem, and the importance of my work enabled me to learn much of the inner workings of his business. My uncle, when in his office, invariably sat at a heavy black wood table which faced the door, and this door was approached by a narrow passage gained by a steep staircase from the street. The whole of this passage could be seen by anyone seated at the table, and the flight of stairs leading to the street was so steep that no one from the street could see anything that might happen in the passage. As I became more necessary to my employer I also began to receive more servile treatment from the other clerks, until it became the custom that when my uncle was abroad I would take his seat and arrange myself behind his table. This pleased me excessively, and on one occasion, while seated there, I began pulling knobs and drawer handles near my seat. To my great surprise, on pulling one of these handles, two iron-grated doors closed on the passage opposite my table, their closure having the effect of barring the exit or entrance of anyone who had mounted the stair and was