Eventually San dared to ask about JA.
Who was this man who never gave up until he had tracked down San and his brother and ruined their hearing? Who was this man who derived pleasure from torturing other people?
‘I’ve heard things,’ said Brown, biting hard on the stem of his pipe. ‘The story is the rich men in San Francisco who invested money in this railway gave him a job as a guard. He was good — chased after escapees and was clever enough to use both dogs and Indians. And so they made him a foreman. But sometimes, as in your case, he reverts to chasing escapees. They say that nobody has ever got away from him, unless you count the ones who died out there in the desert. In such cases he cut off their hands and scalped them, just like the Indians do, to demonstrate that he’d tracked them down despite everything. A lot of people think he’s superhuman. The Indians say he can see in the dark. That’s why they call him Long Beard Who Sees in the Night.’
San thought over what Brown had said.
‘He doesn’t speak like you do. What he says sounds different. Where does he come from?’
‘I don’t know for sure. Somewhere in Europe. From a country in the far north, somebody said, but I’m not sure.’
‘Does he ever say anything about that himself?’
‘Never. That stuff about a country in the far north might not be true.’
‘Is he an Englishman?’
Brown shook his head. ‘That man comes from hell. And that’s where he’ll go back to one of these days.’
San wanted to ask more questions, but Brown was reluctant.
‘No more about him. He’ll soon be back. His fever is dying away, and water doesn’t run straight through his stomach any more. When he’s back here there’s nothing I’ll be able to do to save you from dancing with death in the baskets.’
A few days later JA was back on duty. He was paler and thinner than before, but more brutal. The very first day he knocked out two Chinese who worked alongside San and Guo Si simply because he thought they didn’t greet him politely enough when he came riding up on horseback. He was not pleased with the progress made while he had been sick.
The brothers were sent back up in the baskets again. They could no longer count on any support from Brown.
They burrowed their way deeper into the mountain, blasting and hacking, shifting boulders and moulding hard-packed sand to form the roadbed on which the rails would be laid. With superhuman efforts they conquered the mountain, yard after yard. In the distance they could see the locomotives delivering rails and sleepers and gangs of labourers.
As the nights grew colder and the autumn advanced, Guo Si fell ill. He woke up one morning with bad stomach pains. He ran out of the tent and only just managed to pull down his trousers before his insides exploded.
His fellow workers were afraid that they might all be infected and so left him alone in the tent. San brought him water, and an old black man by the name of Hoss kept moistening his brow and wiping away the watery mess that leaked out of his body. Hoss had spent so much time tending the sick that nothing seemed to threaten him any longer. He had only one arm; he had lost the other in a landslide.
JA was impatient. He looked down in disgust at the man lying in his own faeces.
‘Are you going to die, or aren’t you?’ he asked.
Guo Si tried to sit up but didn’t have the strength.
‘I need this tent,’ said JA. ‘Why do you Chinese always take so long to die?’
The days grew shorter, and as autumn gave way to winter, miraculously, Guo Si began to get better.
After four years, they had served their time and could leave the railway as free men. San heard about a white man named Samuel Acheson who was planning to lead a wagon trek eastward. He needed somebody to prepare his food and wash his clothes and promised to pay for the work. He had made a fortune panning for gold in the Yukon River. Now he was going to traverse the continent in order to visit his sister, his only living relative, who lived in New York.
Acheson agreed to employ both San and Guo Si. Neither of them would regret joining his trek. Samuel Acheson treated people well, irrespective of the colour of their skin.
Crossing the whole continent, the endless plains, took much longer than San could ever have predicted. On two occasions Acheson fell ill and was confined to bed for several months. He didn’t seem to be plagued by physical illness; it was his mind that descended into gloom so murky that he hid himself away in his tent and didn’t emerge until the depression had passed. Twice every day San would serve him food and see Acheson lying at the back of his tent, his face averted from the world.
But both times he recovered, his depression faded away and they could continue their long journey. He could have afforded to travel by rail, but Acheson preferred his phlegmatic oxen and the uncomfortable covered wagons.
Out in the vast prairies, San would often lie awake in the evenings, gazing up at the endless skies. He was looking for his mother and father and Wu, but never found them.
They eventually reached New York, Acheson was reunited with his sister, San and Guo Si were paid and they began looking for a ship that would take them to England. San knew that was the only possible route for them to take, since there were no ships sailing directly to Canton or Shanghai from New York. They managed to find places on deck on a ship bound for Liverpool.
That was in March 1867. The morning they left New York, the harbour was shrouded in thick fog. Eerie foghorns wailed on all sides. San and Guo Si were standing by the rail.
‘We’re going home,’ said Guo Si.
‘Yes,’ said San. ‘We’re on our way home now.’
The Feather and the Stone
14
On 5 July 1867, the two brothers left Liverpool on a ship called Nellie.
San soon discovered that he and Guo Si were the only Chinese on board. They had been allocated sleeping places at the very front of the bow in the old ship that smelled of rot. On board the Nellie the same kind of rules applied as in Canton: there were no walls, but every passenger recognised his own or others’ private space.
Even before the ship left port San had noticed two unobtrusive passengers with fair hair who frequently knelt down on deck to pray. They seemed unaffected by everything going on around them — sailors pushing and pulling, officers urging them on and barking orders. The two men were totally immersed in their prayers until they quietly stood up again.
The two men turned to face San and bowed. San took a step back, as if he had been threatened. A white man had never bowed to him before. White men didn’t bow to Chinese; they kicked them. He hurried back to the place where he and Guo Si were going to sleep and wondered who these two men could be.
Late in the afternoon the moorings were cast off, the ship was towed out of the harbour and the sails were hoisted. A fresh northerly breeze was blowing. The ship set off in an easterly direction at a brisk pace.
San held on to the rail and let the cool wind blow in his face. The two brothers were now on their way home at last, to complete their voyage around the world. It was essential to stay healthy on the voyage. San had no idea what would happen when they arrived back in China, but he was determined that they would not sink into poverty once more.
A few days after they had left port and reached the open sea, the two fair-haired men came up to San. They had with them an elderly member of the crew who spoke Chinese. San was afraid that he and Guo Si had done something wrong, but the crewman, Mr Mott, explained that the two men were Swedish missionaries on their way to China. He introduced them as Mr Elgstrand and Mr Lodin.