The Cruise of the Pak Tang

One morning early last month the 21-ton motor junk Pak Tang (Whits Surge) cleared the tiny South China coastal island of Tarn Kung and headed for Changchow. Aboard the Pak Tang were 35 migrant laborers who since early April had been building a breakwater on Tarn Kung. These were the proletariat of the "New China"--men who under the Nationalists had been schoolteachers, civil servants, army and police officers. They were all together by prearrangement. They had complained to their bosses that the three smaller junks in which they usually traveled made them seasick. As some of the 35 lazed on the sunny deck, one of them engaged the Pak Tang's armed Communist guard (there is always one aboard) in a game of chess.

As the guard bent over the chessboard, absorbed in the play, he was seized from behind. As he struggled, one of the nearby sun bathers snatched up an ax, sent it smashing into his skull. A moment later the carefully concealed knife of another laborer slammed twice into his stomach. Finally, someone gave the guard the coup de grace--with his own pistol.

Even before the guard was dead the rest of the Pak Tang's human cargo came swarming out of her holds. At this onrush, one of the government's two functionaries aboard leaped into the sea; the other, after a brief struggle, was wounded and overpowered. Jubilantly, the mutineers ordered the Pak Tang's nine cowering crewmen to change course for Hong Kong and freedom. But despite all threats, the crew refused, and at last, in desperation, one of the mutineers took the helm. Luckily, before the morning was out the Hong Kong Marine Police spotted the drunkenly weaving junk, boarded her and took her into custody.

Last week the British dutifully returned the Pak Tang and her crew to Red China, but sent the 35 mutineers, at their own request, to Formosa. Awaiting them was a heroes' welcome and the promise of jobs from the Nationalist government. But to the men who had been on the cruise of the Pak Tang, this prospect, while gratifying, was almost unnecessary. "I'm satisfied just being here," said ex-Colonel Yui Teh Hsiu, once the commander of a Nationalist regiment. "We agreed among ourselves that if we failed we would all jump overboard."

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