Chapter 35 The Gem of the Sea
As he lay under the tarpaulin, Li could not help but listen to the raunchy
voices of Dao and the Ox; both men had obviously been drinking heavily. The
third man seemed to be quiet.
"By the sword of the Great Khan I hope this is our last job tonight, Dao."
"Don't worry, my friend; the four of them will be food for the crabs in
half an hour, and then we can get back to our little pleasure-girl. I can't wait
to spread her pretty legs again!
Li heard the rumble of a mighty belch. "Ah! The wine was good tonight!" A
moment later the deep voice continued. "Right! And to squeeze those juicy
tits!
The two Scorpions continued their obscenity-laced conversation, in much the
same vein until they reached a secluded part of the harbor, and it was there
that Lin, the Scorpion whom Ming-tsu had sent to follow them, caught up with the
cart and told his comrades of her instructions. In the increasingly foggy
darkness, the Scorpions quickly searched the clothing of the four victims, one
at a time, with Chiang Chan watching carefully to make sure that none of his men
pocketed anything. But they found nothing other than small amounts of money,
and Li Chang's ticket for the voyage to Taipei that he would not live to take.
Li continued to feign unconsciousness as they conducted this search, which
was agonizingly difficult when their hands touched his fractured limbs. It
brought him little comfort that the jewels, whomever they belonged to, were
safely stowed in Feng's prodigious gut, and would soon go with him to the bottom
of the bay. Along with himself and the bodies of his loved ones.
After the cart pulled up to a dilapidated old wharf, the Scorpions threw
his body, and the others, into a small dinghy that they kept there for such
grisly errands. With the four bodies, there was only room for two of the
Scorpions in the boat, and it was decided that the Ox, the strongest oarsman,
and Lin, the lightest, would be assigned the unpleasant task of throwing the
bodies into the bay. Li felt lengths of heavy chains being thrown on top of his
body, chains that without doubt would be used to weigh his body and those of the
others down.
Just before they cast off he heard a voice say, "Be sure to use the chains!
No mistakes, now!"
Moments later he could hear the sounds of oars rippling through the water
as one of the Scorpions, no doubt the broad-shouldered Ox, plied the oars, and
the rattling of iron chains, suggesting that Lin was wrapping lengths of chain
around the other bodies.
A short time later he heard the high-pitched voice of Lin. "There! That
takes care of the girl and the old man; two more to go!"
Then he felt the boy, who reeked of alcohol, lifting his still body so that
he could wrap the chains twice around his chest.
"Damn!" he heard Lin exclaim.
"What's wrong," demanded the Ox in his cavernous bass as he put his back
into the oars.
"There are only two locks; the other two must still be in the cart."
"Don't worry about it boy; just tie the chains off. Dead men don't swim."
A few minutes later, after having apparently reached deep water, Li heard
the sounds of one body splashing into the water, then a second, and then a
third, much louder spash -- Feng's, he thought. Then, still feigning
unconsciousness, he felt four hands reach under him, prop him up against the
gunwale, and with a mighty heave throw him painfully over the side.
His body nearly went into shock when he hit the water. But somehow the
water's icy grip served to revive Li's desire to live. Although he had been
resigned to his fate for some time, the primeval instinct for survival took
over, and he had surreptitiously taken a great breath of air just before his
body went under the water. Then, offering a silent prayer that the two boatmen
were not paying close attention, he used a shoulder to propel himself silently
away from the boat underwater. All the while his hands clawed feverishly at the
chain, which fortunately had been rather clumsily knotted around his torso by
the alcohol-impaired hands of Lin the Drooler.
Once the chain fell away beneath him and drifted downward to the bottom of
the bay, Li struggled to hold his breath as long as possible while remaining
just below the surface of the water.
The Scorpions, after having watched Li's body sink like the others beneath
the surface of the dark water, waited half a minute or so to see if it would
resurface and then rowed away into the dark night, anxious to return to the Pit
and the pleasure girl who awaited them there.
Li held his breath for as long as he could, for well over a minute, before
being forced to surface. With his legs being virtually useless, every movement
required heroic amounts of energy. His difficulties were compounded by the
relentless tug of the water on his sodden clothes and the painful sting of the
salt water on his branded face.
The cold sea water seemed to pour into his mouth and nose as he thrashed
around desperately trying to stay afloat. Miraculously, just when his strength
was at its lowest ebb, his flailing arms struck a barrel, jettisoned by some
unlucky smuggler, that was bobbing on the surface of the dark water, and the
buoyancy of the wooden cylinder helped him to stay afloat.
Praying that there were no sharks in the vicinity, Li clung for his life to
the awkwardly-shaped barrel for perhaps half an hour, willing himself to survive
not so much because he had any great desire to live, but in order to revenge
himself upon those who had taken the lives of Wen-chi and Liu. Just when it
seemed that he could no longer find the strength to keep his head above water,
and his head dipped under the surface of the briny water for the second time,
he heard a female voice, cry out, "Father, Look! There's someone in the water!"
Moments later a pair of callused hands, hardened from years of handling
fishing nets, grasped Li by the shoulders, and, after some considerable effort
pulled Li's broken body onto a boat and atop a slippery, shiny mound of
squirming fish, their pale bodies -- the object of the boat's nocturnal voyage
-- gleaming in the moonlight.
Li, coughing and spitting up copious quantities of brine, managed to gasp
out, "Thank you... kaughgh!!" he spat again, "my friend, thank you. Can you...
do you see any other bodies?" Li asked weakly. "There was ... a girl. And an
old man. aughh!! kauhhgh!!!" Li struggled to catch his breath, oblivious to the
excruciating pain in his legs; there was nothing to be done for it.
Chung-hua, for that was the fisherman's name, lifted up an oil lantern and
peered into the darkness, as the boat described a wide circle in the water. A
few minutes later, he called out, "Yes, I think I see something! Look! Over
there!" and Li followed his glance, only to be disappointed by the macabre
sight of Feng's lifeless body, floating face down in the bay.
"Fisherman," Li gasped, "if you are able, pull that ugly fish on board. He
has swallowed some fine bait tonight, and you shall have a reward for helping
me. Do you see anyone else?"
The woman's voice spoke again, "No, I can see nothing." After Chung-hua
and the possesor of the soft voice had hauled Feng's heavy body on board, the
fisherman waved the lantern around again, and for the first time its light fell
squarely on the ugly face of Feng the Butcher. Wearing the hideous grin of a
man suprised in death, and displaying a red-edged gaping smile across the throat
that Liu had slashed.
"Aaahhhh!! Father!" the woman with the soft voice screamed softly.
"I am sorry, Lily, my child. His injuries are indeed horrible."
"It is not that, father," continued the young woman called Lily. "It is he.
The one I told you about. The one who beat me. After... after my husband's
boat was lost." Lily's throat seemed to clutch at her words. "And I could no
longer pay the gangsters their extortion money."
Had Feng still had eyes to see, he would have recognized the pretty face,
and connected it to the nicely rounded derriere he had punished with the same
broad strap he had used on Liu's tender thighs. For indeed Lily was the young
fishmonger's widow who had flitted through Feng's dark remembrance only hours
earlier.
Li asked, "Do you know him, then?"
Chung-hua turned the lantern toward the survivor. As he did so, its light
fell on the pretty face of the young woman, whose intelligent almond eyes were
once again searching the water intently. Li recognized her as the girl he had
seen from the quay earlier in the evening. He was evidently aboard the "Gem of
the China Sea".
"Yes," Lily replied. "We should have left his ugly carcass for the sharks
to feed on! Throw him back in the bay, father!" Then she glared at Li Chang.
"And we should throw this one to the sharks, too, if the fat one was his
friend!"
"No, wait," Li stopped him. "I was no friend to him, I assure you. Can you
not see my face," Li turned his head so that his rescuers could see the horrible
brand. "That is the gift that he left me. But do not throw his body over the
side just yet; you shall have good cause for keeping it before the night is
out. But first, can we search for the others?"
The honest old fisherman assented willingly, and for hours the Gem of the
China Sea plied its way back and forth across the endless waters of the bay.
But at last Chung-hua and his daughter were forced to concede defeat. "I am
sorry, my friend, but their bodies must have gone to the bottom," the fisherman
said. "Lily," he addressed his daughter, "let's return home."
"Farewell, Wen-chi. Farewell, Liu," Li whispered softly. "May your souls
find peace."
"Did you say Wen-chi, young man?" the fisherman man asked. "I knew his
son; he helped us fishermen to pool our money to help the families of those who
were lost at sea. A good man; until they killed him. The gangsters, that is.
And looted our fund."
Li nodded; he had heard Wen-chi speak of his son's undertaking. He thanked
the fisherman and the girl once again for their efforts, feeling utterly
desolate, wracked with the horrible guilt that not only had he been blind to
Liu's affection, but that he had cursed and reviled her only minutes before she
had taken her life.
When the fishing boat reached a secluded part of the bay on its voyage back
to its mooring place, Li instructed the fisherman to gut the bloated body of
Feng the Butcher.
Chung-hua gave the man he had rescued a bewildered look, but at Li's
insistence did as he was bid. Lily looked on with astonishment as her father cut
open the bloated abdomen of her malefactor, and slowly retrieved, one by one,
the diamonds and pearls that had constituted Feng the Butcher's last supper.
Even in their gory state, the gems were obviously of great value. As the
fisherman and his daughter carefully washed them off in the ocean water, the
full moon once again peeked through the receding storm clouds, allowing the
diamonds to dazzle brilliantly in the pale moonlight. When Li was certain that
they had recovered all of the jewels, the fisherman and his daughter tipped the
bloated, bloody body of Feng the Butcher over the side. Half a minute later, Li
saw the first dorsal fin cutting through the water, attracted by Feng's gutted
body. And then a second, and a third, and a few seconds later there was a
hideous thrashing in the water as the jagged-toothed creatures of the deep fed
on the body of their human counterpart.
Li Chang shuddered as he watched the frenzied shark-fest, and when it was
done, he swore his rescuers to secrecy about the events of the past few hours.
He promised Chung Hua and his daughter that if they kept faith with him, and
helped him find refuge for a time, that they would be assisting a righteous
cause, and that one day their kindnesses would be rewarded.
Li Chang's heart was heavy as the fisherman steered the boat back into the
harbor. Although he had not been paying particularly close attention at the
time, the words of the poem that Liu had recited at dinner on the prior evening
were etched indelibly into his soul.
"How sad it is to be a woman;
Nothing on earth is held so cheap.
She bows and kneels countless times;
She must humble herself even to the servants.
His love is as distant as the stars in heaven.
A hundred evils are heaped upon her.
Her face will follow the year's changes.
Her lord will find new pleasures."
As he mourned the loss of the truest heart that he would ever know, he
rolled a few of the gleaming pearls around in his hand. And soon the rhythmic
click of those treasures of the sea began to suggest to him the outlines of a
plan to avenge the death of his loved ones.
