SAN FRANCISCO BAY
APRIL 16, 1906. 5:45 A.M.
In the cargo hold of the clipper Falmouth, twelve-year-old Ting Leo was awakened by footsteps on the gang ladder, the rattling of keys and the soft unlocking of the gate. "Smy-yays," she said softly, recognizing the silhouette of Smiles, the skinny sailor with the broken teeth.
The one called "Gimpy" grasped the smooth brass rails and slid to the bottom, landing softly behind Smiles. She smelled them, even above the stench of the hold after forty-three days on the Pacific.
Smiles approached. She stiffened as he reached inside her filthy shift and stroked her breasts. With the other hand, he reached inside his rancid linen pants, his hand bobbing up and down. She gritted her teeth and clenched her fists.
But Gimpy said "go on," and shoved him away. At least the men had not touched her between her legs.
"Gwo wan," she muttered softly, practicing until she could almost say "go on." She knew Gimpy was telling him to go forward. "Go wan."
She had never seen a white man until she boarded the ship, the day after her father stripped her naked and sold her for two gold pieces with eagles etched into the shiny metal, bragging that the broker had paid twice his normal price.
"Sam Fransco," she heard the sailors say. She knew that it was Gum Saan, the Golden Mountain she had heard about in her village in Kwangtung.
"Go won," she said, repeating their words: "captain," "evenin'," "aye," and "nay" and all the variations of "bastard," including "Limey bastard," "Yankee bastard," "Chinese bastard," and the like.
Ting Leo watched as Smiles and Gimpy unlocked the brig at the end of the cargo hold. Inside were the two homely girls the captain rented to the crew at a dollar a visit. At first their shrieks had terrified the other girls. Now, after too many visits for anyone to count, their cries had faded to muffled whimpers.
On the wooden slats where she lay, the strongest of the girls in the hold of the Falmouth, Ting Leo remembered the talk she heard in her village of a peasants' revolution. The other girls had asked many times if Gum Saan was as evil as their home, if the fathers there killed their infant daughters or sold them to strangers. She answered that a revolution was nearing, and soon a man would come and free them. It was all she could think of to comfort the frightened girls.
When Smiles and Gimpy had finished grunting atop the homely girls, they climbed the stairs and locked the gate behind them. The Captain bellowed on the wooden deck above.
"Hove to!"
Ting Leo sprang to her knees and scurried to a porthole left open by the crew to ease the heat and smell. She gazed at the tallest trees she had ever seen, towering over a rocky coastline.
She hurried to a porthole on the other side, squeezing between two sleeping girls. Her eyes filled with a stirring sight. Dozens of hills covered with houses, their lights glowing in the morning mist, smoke billowing from the chimneys. Hundreds of ships, their masts waving, lay at anchor along a vast harbor. Behind them, rows of stone buildings touched the sky. "Gum Saan," she cried.
Within seconds, the girls around her stirred from sleep, pushing each other aside to peer through the open portholes.
"Gum Saan! Gum Saan!"
The Falmouth rode the flood tide through the mile-wide opening of the bay. They passed a white boat with white smoke pouring from its middle, so close Ting Leo thought she could touch it.
On the white boat, men with pained looks on their faces held beams of light in their hands, running them over the surface of the water.
Ting Leo squinted, shading her eyes as one of the young men shone his light on her face.
Amidst the pained expression on his face, she saw eyes of kindness. He raised a hand and wiggled his fingers at her.
"Hunter," someone called to him. "Hunter!"
Slowly, he lowered his hand and moved to the other side of the boat, joining his beam of light with those of two other men.
"Hun-ner", she said aloud. "Hunn-ner." She watched the cloud of steam thicken and the boat pull away. In the glowing sunrise, she saw Hunter look back, again playing his light over the porthole where she stood. She wondered if he was the great man people in her village had talked about. The one who would save them from the hated emperor. This man who held light in his hand and found her in this Gum Saan.
Aboard the Alcatrice, the six young members of The Brotherhood were cold and spent from battling the turbulent bay, their batteries and hope nearly exhausted. They were making their second trip around Angel Island, aided now by the amber sunrise.
"There's something over there, tangled in the thickets," Francis shouted over the rattle and wheeze of the boiler. "Looks like a body, floating facedown."
Christian ran to the bow and threw out a weighted line, sounding for the bottom. "You still got a good twenty feet here," he yelled at Nick Hazifotis in the pilot's roost above, his voice strained from a night of vomiting.
"Is too rocky, Christian—is get shallow very fast!"
Hunter peeled down to his wool briefs and dove into the icy water, disappearing beneath the chop. He surfaced thirty yards away and quickly turned the body over.
His father's eyes, clouded by the immersion in salt water, stared blankly skyward.
Christian jumped into the frigid water and swam to them.
The Fallon brothers struggled against the surging water to tow him toward the boat. When they got close enough, Hunter took the rope still tied to his father's waist and threw the end to Francis.
With Francis, Patrick, Max, and Carlo pulling, they raised Byron's body over the rail and onto the slippery deck. Hunter and Christian were pulled aboard.
Hunter crawled to his father's cold, rigid body, cradled his head and rocked slowly, tears mixing with salt water. The grieving son let out a gasp and the quiver in his lip spread across his face, which he buried in his father's sodden vest.
Max Rinaldi glared at Christian, who had slumped to the deck, his head in his hands. Only his wobbly legs and heaving stomach prevented Max from trying to kill him.
A swirling mass of seagulls erupted off Alcatraz, screeching in frenzy, several of them colliding in midair.
"Ai-ain' n-never seen them do-do that be-before," Carlo said quietly to Francis. "Bad o-omen to a s-sa-sailin' man."