سه نامه

CHAPTER EIGHT

Three letters

The Nan-Shan arrived in Fu-chau on a bright, sunny day. She looked a real sight, and soon everyone in the harbour was talking about her.

‘That ship looks like she’s just come back from a war,’ said one.

‘It looks to me like the crew found her at the bottom of the sea and pulled her up to sell her for the metal,’ said another.

‘I’ll buy her - for live pounds!’ said a third.

Less than an hour after MacWhirr’s ship arrived, a small boat took a thin man with an angry red face off the ship, and left him on shore. While the boat moved away, the thin man turned and shook his hand angrily at the Nan-Shan. A tall fat sailor with watery eyes came over to speak to the man, who was no longer the Nan Shan’s second mate.

‘Hello, old friend!’

‘Hello, there. What are you doing here?’ said the thin man, quickly shaking hands.

‘I heard that perhaps there’s a job going,’ said the fat man.

The one-time second mate shook his hand angrily at the Nan-Slum again.

‘I wouldn’t let the captain of that ship be in command of the poorest river boat!’ he cried angrily.

‘Really?’ said his fat friend.

‘Of course, I’d like to make trouble for him. But he’s sailing under a Thai flag. What can I do? You know, he told his chief engineer that I wasn’t right in the head. Me! He’s the stupidest man that ever sailed the seas! You can’t really be thinking of.’

‘Did you get your money?’ asked his fat friend suddenly.

‘Oh, yes. He paid me before I left. “Have your breakfast on shore!” he told me.’

‘Did he? Shall we go and have a drink then?’

‘And he hit me.’

‘He didn’t! You must tell me all about it. But not here. I know a quiet place where we can have a bottle or two of something nice and cold.’

And so the two of them walked away together into town.

Jukes watched them go, and then went back to planning the repairs that the poor old Nan-Slum needed. She was no longer the beautiful ship that sailed out of Dumbarton just three years before. She looked old and tired, like an enormous animal that has won a great fight against a terrible enemy, a fight which has broken it inside.

While Jukes was speaking to the crew, telling them what to do, Captain Mac Whirr stood on the bridge, looking at the harbour and at the town behind it. He was thinking about what he would need to buy in Fu-chau. His pens and pencils all went overboard during the typhoon, and he would need to get new ones. And he needed a new rainhat. too. He was happy to survive the typhoon, but he did not think about that much now. Perhaps the only thing that the typhoon really did was to take this quiet man. shake him up a little, and make him speak a few more words than usual.

Back in England not long after that, three people were reading three letters. The first, Mrs MacWhirr, was reading her letter in the same way that she read all her husband’s letters. She read a few words here and there, to get an idea of more or less what it was about.

‘They are called typhoons. Jukes didn’t seem to like it. some things that you can’t find in books.’ Why were his letters always so long and full of details? ‘A calm that lasted for more than twenty minutes. see you and the children again.’ Now why did he say that? He was always thinking of coming home! What need was there for that when he had such a good job?

Worriedly, she quickly went on a few pages: ‘. only three with broken legs. the fairest way. tried to do the right thing.’ No, there was no more about coming home. Reading so quickly, she didn’t see the part that said: ‘For a while I thought that I would never see you and the children again.’

The door opened and Lydia, her daughter, ran into the room. Seeing the letter in her mother s hand, she stopped in surprise, and waited to hear the latest news.

‘Your-father’s well,’ said Mrs MacWhirr. Lydia did not look very interested.

‘Go and get your hat,’ said her mother. ‘We’re going out: there’s a sale at Linom’s, that shop which you like so much.’

‘How wonderful!’ shouted Lydia, and she ran to get her hat.

Outside Linom’s, Mrs MacWhirr saw one of her friends. They talked about shops, clothes - and their husbands.

‘No, he’s not coming home yet. It’s terrible that he has to be away from us for so long, but it’s good to know that he s well. He likes the weather in the China Sea.’ From the way that she talked, it seemed that poor Captain MacWhirr only sailed to China because of his health.

Mrs Rout was reading out her husband’s letter to Rout’s mother: ‘The captain of the ship did something very clever. It’s difficult to explain how clever it really was. Do you remember Captain MacWhirr? Solomon said that he wasn’t the quickest thinker.’

Young Mrs Rout turned the pages to find out what this clever thing was. But she could find nothing.

‘Oh no. I don’t understand.’

‘What don’t you understand, dear?’ asked old Mrs Rout. She liked her son’s letters, although she couldn’t remember very well what he looked like. It was a very long time since she last saw him.

‘Well, there’s nothing more about this clever thing that the captain did. Why doesn’t he tell us more about it?’

‘I don’t know my dear,’ said old Mrs Rout.

But the last part of the letter the younger Mrs Rout read silently to herself: ‘I know that we can’t do anything at the moment because of my mother. But I want you to come out here. I’d like to buy you a small house where we could see each other We spend so little time together and we’re not getting any younger.’

Young Mrs Rout was quiet for a while, and she looked unhappy. Then she shook herself, and said to old Mrs Rout: ‘He’s well, the same as always. Come on, let’s have a cup of tea.’

Jukes’s letter to his friend gave all the details of the ‘clever thing’ that Captain MacWhirr did. First, he wrote all about the typhoon, and then about how he and the crew made lifelines for the Chinese labourers in the hold.

‘The problems started when we picked up all their money. They thought that we were trying to steal it. Only very desperate robbers could think of stealing money in the middle of a typhoon! Some of them even started shouting at us. When I spoke to the captain, I said that we should be careful when we were giving the money back.

I said that all the crew should be there and that we should have some guns with us. That way there would be no problems. He didn’t seem to like my idea. Well, we had a lot of repairs to do after the typhoon, and I made the men start working on them. I was very tired after nearly thirty hours without sleep, so I went to lie down on my bed for a while.

Sometime later one of the crew woke me. He told me that the Chinese labourers were all on deck and that MacWhirr was giving them their money. I couldn’t believe it. I called some of the crew, we got the guns, and we ran there as quickly as possible. When MacWhirr saw me, he was really angry, and he told me to put the guns away.

It seems that, while I was sleeping, he decided - because all the labourers were seven-year ones-that the fairest thing was to give each labourer exactly the same amount of money. One of the Chinese labourers helped to explain this to the others. And so MacWhirr gave each man his money, while all the others waited their turn.

Then he gave the injured labourers their money. In the end there was a little extra money, and he gave this to the ones who were the most injured.

For a man who’s always so slow and sure, I must say that he did very well.’