The Yangtze Kiang rises in the lost regions of the roof of the world. For hundreds of miles it flows through an Unknown country, emerging into civilization in the rich province of Szechwan. To reach the great lower plain of China this yellow torrent refuses to follow the easy, sensible method of most rivers, for from Chungking to Ichang it strikes boldly through ranges running at right angles to its course. There result tremendous gorges where the river narrows to an unbelievably small width. It backs up behind these gorges and forces its way through these vast gashes in the rock with swift and vicious currents which in many places are fierce rapids.
Not far below Chungking lies one of these gorges. It is known to the Chinese as Hwang Tsao, to the foreigners as the bellow Flower gorge. At certain seasons of the year and consequent fitting levels of water it is easily passable by steamers. In times of flood water it is a rapid so swift that it is capable of being surmounted only by the most powerful of modern steamers.
The Palos and the Monocacy never were cither modern or powerful gunboats. They were designed with good engines and forced draft boilers. Theoretically they should have been able to cruise through the gorges and overcome these perils with a minimum amount of trouble. Actually they were incapable of negotiating these difficulties without grievous concern on the part of their successive commanding officers.
They possessed a fundamental fault of design. The forced draft system involved the entire fireroom. The firemen were sent down, the hatches were closed, and the blowers were put on. Everything worked satisfactorily until it became necessary to open the hatches, either to shift watches or to dispose of the ashes, for there was no way to get rid of the ashes other than to haul them up on deck and dump them over the side. The fires fouled far too readily for consistent steaming, for most of the coal available was impure and poor.
Hence the captains were faced each day with the steam beginning to drop after an hour’s cruising. Lower and lower would the gauge fall. Since the current was rarely slack enough to permit the ship to be slowed sufficiently to clean fires, it was the custom in the gorges to swing into the bank with regularity, anchor in a quiet stretch if possible, or spar-moor to the shore, running out a wire to a convenient rock or tree to prevent an unauthorized and perilous cruise during the meal hour. On we would go after the fires were cleaned and built up to popping gauges. For a time the ship would bowl grandly along, but after an hour or so the inevitable would occur, and the vessel would slow to a crawl which became more pronounced as the afternoon wore along.
In 1921 there were operating in the gorges three or four new steamers which could manage all but the fiercest rapids without too much difficulty. It was necessary that year for the two American gunboats to move several times through the gorges, for our trade was increasing and clashes with bandits and local generals were keeping step in their usual ratio. The Yellow Flower gorge managed to strike an embarrassing level each time it was approached by the gunboats. After several attempts had produced a succession of failures there remained nothing to do but to moor below the gorge and wait there until the river level lowered or one’s coal ran out. When the amount in the bunkers reached a minimum, there was no alternative other than to unmoor, head down river, and anchor at the first port where one could obtain coal. But that point was 60 miles below, and we disliked giving up and retreating all the more after having already conquered that unpleasant stretch of yellow water.
It seemed to be diabolical coincidence that each time this happened our new merchant ships would be on their runs up from Ichang. They would shout jeering sympathy, pass us, smash into the rapid, and triumphantly ascend it with no more than their customary struggle. Chungking began referring to this stumbling block to the American Navy as the Yellow Flower Naval Station. The gibes we received on the tennis courts of the First and Second Ranges opposite the city during our stays there made this exasperating condition all the more upsetting, particularly to the nerves of the Mate. However, by the end of that summer we had counter retorts available, for out of the twenty-one steamers which started operating in the gorges that spring—this including gunboats and merchantmen of all nationalities—exactly one-third of the number were totally wrecked by autumn. And among the survivors were the Palos and the Monocacy still in cruising condition.
On July 10, 1921, the Palos was en route for Chungking, and dispatches from the Consul had urged us not to linger by the wayside. The river was rising rapidly as we approached Hwang Tsao that morning, and at nine the Palos spar-moored to the bank. We cleaned fires, got up steam again, and tackled the rapid. We might as well have tried to steam up Niagara. Not content with this rebuff, we again attempted the passage. It was obviously impossible at that level, for the speed of the current was clearly greater than the maximum speed of the ship. We edged over to the Naval Station and spar-moored alongside a steep bank covered with corn- We tied up the ship with wires to sturdy trees, painted watermarks on a rock abreast the vessel, and settled down to wait until the Yangtze decided to behave.
From the natives who gathered along the bank as usual Yong Ki, steward, interpreter, and major-domo of our gallant craft, learned that it might be possible to buy coal from a point near by. Not averse to a pleasant walk, the Skipper set forth after tiffin with a retinue consisting of his fireman coal expert; Joe, his personal boy; and the Number Two pilot, who had somewhat grudgingly agreed to give up his afternoon opium pipe in order to serve as guide. Rumor had given as the source of the coal supply a village but a short distance up the gorge. It was a grueling hot walk, but at length the promised hamlet came in sight. After the Skipper and the fireman had examined a vein of coal breaking into the broad light of day on a bars point of rock, an hour was consumed in negotiations. In the end, after much shouting and bargaining during which the veins stood out on the foreheads of Joe and the Number Two pilot—probably to make sure of enough cumshaw to themselves out of the impending transaction—the Skipper made a verbal contract and ordered ten tons at 20 cash per catty, which is a most confusing way to buy coal. The Skipper tried to calculate how much he was paying: 2,100 cash equals one Mexican dollar; 100 catties equals one picul; one picul equals 133 pounds; and he didn’t know what had happened to the exchange between Mexican and American dollars since we’d left Hankow. In the end he turned the matter over to the Mate, who mumbled something and retired to his box of a stateroom and then came back to the wardroom and snowed the table under a litter of calculations. We decided at the Controller General’s office would any rate be equally stumped. Our premise was probably correct, for no unpleasantness resulted after a number of years of fearful uncertainty.
Two firemen went after the coal the next morning, and they returned at noon with the supply in sampans, shooting the rapids in safety, though from the ship it did not seem possible for these frail, overloaded boats to live in that boiling torrent, the coal was trimmed into the bunkers, and the test we immediately gave proved it to be above average. That dismissed one worry from our minds, for we then knew that unless we ran short of food there would be no occasion to return down river.
The food problem solved itself with equal facility. Joe set off on an exploring expedition and presently returned from a village four miles away reporting a good market where chickens, eggs, and pork could be obtained. Then, too, the peasants of the countryside brought their little stores of fowls, eggs, and beans down to the bank abreast the ship and squatted patiently there until Yong Ki was free to bargain with them. The average cost of a chicken was nine cents.
The river kept steadily rising. Each Corning and evening we shifted our mooring lines and spars as the ship gradually progressed up the bank. By the 15th we were riding 32 feet higher than upon our arrival. That same day the rain stopped, and the following morning the river began falling. We promptly got under way and steamed for the gorge. We made three attempts to get up it, spending altogether over an hour in the rapid itself. But we had to acknowledge defeat, and we steamed back over to the station and resumed our old moorings. Our overjoyed friends, the peasants, dashed off for more chickens and eggs. The bonanza had returned.
We were somewhat concerned as to the developments which might be going on in Chungking. It was exasperating to be lying there a mere 45 miles below the city with no possible way of assisting the Consul in his troublous situation. There was nothing to do but purchase more chickens and eggs, renew our coal supply on a verbal contract which said “Same as before,” due to the Mate’s tendency toward apoplexy, and vary our diet with the purchase of a squalling porker which had been carried in a litter for miles so as to preserve its virgin weight. Fortunately for the Mate’s tendency no upbound vessels passed, for at that level all shipping was helplessly tied up below impassable rapids.
The river began to rise again, hesitated, and then slowly fell. On the morning of the 18th old Li, the Number One pilot, so far committed himself as to admit that possibly we might get over the rapid.
“More better wait,” he advised. “Mebbe wait six, seven days.”
This not being in accord with naval policy, the Skipper gave the order to get up steam. The Mate put his best firemen on duty. We lay at the bank until the boilers were popping. As we were casting off, old Li, after studying the rapid above us, shook his head and addressed the Skipper: “Captain, no can. More better wait two day, mebbe one day.”
The Skipper correctly interpreted this reduction of the preceding estimate as Li’s guess that we had a fair chance of making it. So we angled out a bit from the bank and headed upstream. The Mate bawled up that he would in person descend into the infernal regions. He disappeared down the fireroom hatch.
The rapid was plainly visible but a quarter of a mile above us. The Palos was entering a great gash in a vast rock, a canyon through a mountain of stone. Halfway through this solemn passage a break in the walls permits the river to open out to twice its width, and into this open space down both sides of the mountain slope steep valleys. Just above this widening of the river there had been a great slide of rock on each side with the result that the Yangtze was cut down to a fraction of its normal width. Above this point the river had backed up in the gorge, creating a dark, quiet lake of apparently stationary water, an occasional whirlpool alone revealing the torture of those depths.
Out from the jaws of this gorge roared the Hwang Tsao, a huge rush of furious flood like the licking tongue of a serpent. The Yangtze was violently agitated for a long distance below this discharge, for the central tongue, visibly higher than the water outside it, charged raging down the river. But on each side, beyond the whirlpools which marked the outer limits of the tongue, was a swift, silent backwash, an enormous whirlpool which swept upstream along the bank until it was sucked under the very tongue of the rapid where the torrent fell out of the confining gorge.
It was into the right hand of one of these great whirlpools that Li directed the ship. The little vessel, which had already begun to labor against the increased current, now leapt forward with the rush of the whirling race, and the engines were slowed to a speed merely sufficient to keep steering control while the ship was in the backwash. It was essential to keep our head of steam until we really needed it.
Closer and closer to the bank did old Li conn the vessel, until our men could have jumped from the deck to the rocks along the shore. Faster and faster the Palos glided toward the rapid as if eager actually to begin the conflict. Twice it was on the Skipper’s lips to direct Li to sheer out clear of the rocks we were almost touching. But he had confidence in the old Chinese, and he knew it was necessary for the ship to gain every particle of help the backwash had to offer her.
The thunder of Hwang Tsao grew apace as the Palos rapidly approached the fearful tongue. The roar was appalling- “Stand clear the fo’c’sle!” the Skipper shouted, and the men who were there scrambled to the upper deck, for they could see what was coming. The boom of the rapid crescendoed until it filled the very air. The backwash was hurling the ship at the tongue, which at this last moment loomed high above the bow.
“Can do!” Li shouted above the roar, and the Skipper threw the engine indicators over to Full Speed. The little ship lurched forward and smashed into the rapid. There was the crash of falling water onto the fo’c’sle as the Palos buried her bow in the rushing torrent. She shook all over, and the Skipper’s glance at the shore showed him that she was as effectively stopped as if she had rammed her nose against a wall of granite. As if it would help, the crew were yelling to firemen who couldn’t possibly hear them: “Give it to her, boys! Come on! Push her over!” On the bridge these cries sounded as if they came from a great distance.
The little ship trembled and strained- Old Li was calmly directing the helmsman: “L-Left a litty bit!—Steady!” The Palos shuddered her bow clear of the tons of water under which it had been buried, and the crew, watching from the upper deck, gave a cheer as she wallowed free. She lurched forward a bit, gaining inch by inch on the rapid.
“What think?” the Skipper shouted to Li above the tumult.
“L-Left a litty bit!” came the voice of the old pilot. Then to the Skipper: “Mebbe can do. Mebbe no can do.”
The ship kept gaining on the racing flood, the Skipper saw from his bead on two rocks on the precipitous shore, but now the little gunboat was forging ahead slowly and by painful inches. Progress decreased, and there came a disheartening moment when there was no more gain and the Palos was stationary.
“All hands forward to the bow!” the Skipper shouted, and the crew scrambled own from their perches and rushed over the slippery deck into the eyes of the ship, where they huddled together as far forward as they could jam themselves. Now clear of the top of the rapid, the bow thus suddenly had transferred into it the weight of some fifty men, and the after part of the ship was therefore free of this not inconsiderable weight. With a lurch and a deep roll the vessel wallowed ahead again, painfully laboring but nevertheless steadily gaining on the rapid.
The Skipper glanced at the steam gauge and found it falling. He shouted down to the Mate through the fireroom voice tube: “Keep the steam up! If we can hold steam, we’ll be over in five minutes more!”
But the gauge kept dropping, very slowly but none the less steadily. Ninety-five pounds—ninety! It was going fast now. The Skipper had to keep in mind the danger of letting it fall too low, for should the Palos fail to accomplish the rapid there was then the descent to be made, and enough control of the ship must be kept to enable her to dodge the rocks sprawling ugly across the river below.
The Skipper’s quick look at the boulders on the shore abreast the vessel showed him that the Palos was slowly gaining, inch by inch. Li’s voice continued patiently, serenely on: “L-Light a litty bit!—L-Light!” His doom was foreordained. What if this crazy Captain was putting his ship into a position of deadly peril? When the hour of death comes, it comes, for it is fate. The old pilot concentrated his utmost attention on the river. Everyone of those long years of his training had been worth his effort, was essential for this task. All the knowledge and cunning the old man possessed he gave to the situation at hand. Like a live thing the little ship weaved its path through the torrent, seeking this whirl and that streak, desperately straining, struggling, trembling to the stroke of her engines.
Again the Skipper glanced at the gauge. Eighty pounds! He hesitated, his hands on the indicators ready to signal Slow.
“No, no!” cried Li at this moment. “Mebbe can do!”
He suddenly swung the ship diagonally across the river, making for a backwash just below a projecting reef. The gunboat gained the lee of this rocky point with the narrowest margin of safety. Released from the grip of the main rapid, the ship seemed almost to catch her breath. Then she forged steadily ahead.
There was a bad moment later when she nosed around the corner of this reef, while Li held her in toward the rocks until it seemed certain she would touch. But she steamed gallantly around this obstruction, and suddenly, as if great restraining chains had dropped free of the vessel, she surged ahead into the dark quiet lake above the rapid, rolling a little. A shout burst from the ship’s company.
To give the Mate a chance to build up his steam the Skipper rang up slow speed on the indicators. He turned and grasped old Li’s hand. “Thank you,” was all he said, and Li bowed with his quaint dignity and they both smiled. The Skipper felt for a cigarette.
On deck below the Mate was wiping the sweat from his forehead. “Yong Ki!” he was shouting, “break out that box of cigars in my room.” He passed them around to the firemen. All hands were on the broad grin. It was done with and over, that hellish Hwang Tsao, and their old Palos had turned the trick.