The First to Land (1984)

by Reeman, Douglas

  They split into two squads, each in the charge of a corporal. Kirby, breathing hard, stayed with Blackwood.

  The land climbed slowly but steeply and as Blackwood got his bearings and pointed towards the beginning of a ridge he sensed the uneasiness amongst his small party. One hillside had already shut off the river, and he could hear the faint hiss of a breeze as it stirred the dry grass like a hidden army of serpents.

  Kirby had already sent two scouts ahead of the others and he could imagine their feelings as they occasionally lost contact with their comrades. Few ever considered men like those, he thought vaguely. The ones who spearheaded an attack, and those who covered a retreat. The lonely ones. The expendable. He stopped his wild thoughts with sudden force. It was like the last time, only the country was different.

  Kirby peered at the sky. The rim of hillside was already sharper, or were their eyes getting more used to the gloom?

  One of the marines caught his foot in a root and fell on his rifle with a clatter. Everyone froze, barely able to breathe.

  Kirby swore obscenely and snarled, ‘Take that bugger’s name!’ But like the rest he was thankful that nothing worse had happened.

  ‘Rest, Sergeant. Ten minutes. Pass the word to the scouts.’

  Blackwood threw himself down and saw Swan sitting nearby, cross-legged like an Indian fakir. The sight made him want to laugh out loud. They were creeping towards a hill they knew nothing about, which they would probably find deserted. Whoever had seized Earle possibly thought that was enough. It might have been an accident more than a planned attack. Austad would be raising steam now, he thought. Shortening his cable in readiness to continue upriver. How on earth had a man like him found his way out here, he wondered.

  He thought suddenly of the countess. She at least should be safe. The reduced number of marines had nowhere else to go. Even under Bannatyre’s hesitant leadership they would give a good account of themselves. Fox would see to that.

  Blackwood rolled over on to his elbows and stared at the hillside. What a place to end up. Only the river provided a lifeline and it, like many of the others in China, was dotted with trading missions, which in turn were protected by gunboats from a half a dozen countries. It was a strange impractical arrangement.

  It was time to move.

  He stood up and stifled a yawn. He could not remember exactly when he had last slept or eaten. ‘Check your weapons.’ Blackwood walked slowly amongst his men.

  Private Kempster who came from Leeds, whose homely Yorkshire voice could usually be heard around the barracks. Trent, a swarthy-faced man who looked more like a Spaniard than anything. Even his friends called him Dago, and yet he came from four generations of marines. Corporal Lyde, who should have been a sergeant but had lost his stripes more times than he could remember for brawling ashore. Roberts, the ex-farm labourer from Sussex, amiable, slow, but probably the best shot in the company. They glanced at him as he passed without recognition. Each one was thinking of himself. If things go badly, how will I behave? Fight? Die?

  ‘All correct, sir.’

  Blackwood unclipped his holster and raised his arm to signal the advance. His arm seemed to stiffen in mid-air as if he had been paralysed. Then he heard it again. Surely nothing human could sound like that?

  Kirby exclaimed thickly, ‘Must be Mr Earle, fer Christ’s sake!’

  Blackwood wanted to press his hands to his ears. Anything to shut out those terrible agonized screams.

  So they were there. He had been right. Waiting for the Bajamar while they tormented their victim yet denied him death.

  Blackwood swallowed hard as somebody retched uncontrollably behind him. He knew that some of them were staring at him, pleading for him to attack and end the terrible cries.

  It was too soon. If they ran all the way to the salient without knowing the strength of their enemy or waiting for Austad to appear, they would lose everything. But that would mean little enough to these men.

  He said, ‘Advance. Extend to right and left.’ He heard their feet dragging, a gasp of horror as one terrible shriek scraped their minds like a hot wire. Then like the slamming of a great door it stopped.

  Blackwood loosened his revolver and strode steadily through the coarse grass. As he had done before, as his ancestors had done in a hundred places and as many battles. It was what he had wanted, what everyone expected.

  He felt the sweat running down his spine. It could have been Ralf up there.

  Another half-hour passed and the sky became suddenly clearer. The marines rested amongst some bushes and in a low gully which must have once been cut by torrential rain.

  Blackwood looked at them, their set expressions, their uniforms stained and torn as they clutched their rifles and peered at the skyline. The last horizon.

  It was hard to picture these same men in scarlet and blue, the wheeling columns and hoarse commands across the barracks square. Even Corporal O’Neil had nothing to offer to break the tension. The screams still lingered in each man’s mind.

  Blackwood tugged out his watch and flicked open the guard. It had been given to him by his mother on his twenty-first birthday. It was light enough to see its face. He replaced it in his pocket and tried to appear calm. Where the hell was Austad?

  A great screech made most of them start with alarm, but Blackwood was too thankful to notice. The Norwegian had kept his word. Right on time, even in the poor light he had picked his way up the river to play his part.

  Blackwood said, ‘Stand-to.’ He glanced at Sergeant Kirby. ‘Fix bayonets, if you please.’ Then he drew his sword and felt Swan watching him. His shadow. Strangely enough it made him feel better. Stronger in some way, although he knew it might not last.

  He shut Earle from his thoughts and said, ‘Royal Marines will advance!’

  The General would have been proud, he thought. Perhaps it would warrant another painting one day, to join all the others at Hawks Hill.

  He saw pale sunlight touch the point of Swan’s bayonet.

  It was time.

  6

  A Walk in the Sun

  From one corner of his eye Blackwood saw a swirling plume of dark smoke rise above the salient, proof of Austad’s efforts to follow his orders. It was like moving up towards a cliff edge, he thought, the ground so steep that the land beyond as well as the river was completely hidden. To his right he could see a pyramid-shaped hill, still shrouded in early mist, and what looked like tiny dwellings scattered at its foot.

  It was hard to imagine that over there people were living peacefully, probably hoping to be left undisturbed by Boxers and foreign troops alike.

  It was all completely unreal, the slow-moving smoke, the swish of dry scrub against his feet and legs, and his men fanning out on either side of him in a ragged line, their bayonets glinting to mark their slow advance. A walk in the sun.

  Blackwood found time to marvel, not for the first time, that training and tradition could hold them all together under any situation.

  A figure burst from the ground almost at his feet. There was no place to hide and yet he was there as if he had broken out of hell itself.

  Blackwood barely had time to think other than to realize that he was dressed in the same robes as the attackers aboard the Delhi Star. He felt the jarring pain in his arm as he parried the man’s heavier blade with his own and used the force of his charge to take him off-balance. He heard him scream as he drove his sword under his guard and through his ribs. Swan silenced a last cry with the butt of his rifle.

  They stared at each other, barely aware of the sporadic firing which came from the edge of the redoubt. It was the same madness. Blackwood could feel his mouth fixed in a wild grin.

  ‘Together, lads! Charge!’

  The marines gathered their strength and blundered up the remaining slope, their eyes slitted against the pungent smoke from the Bajamar’s funnel.

  There were about twenty of them. Kneeling or lying along the rim of the land as the hidden paddle-wheeler pounded t
owards them. Some whirled round, eyes staring and wild as Corporal Lyde’s squad poured a rapid volley from the right flank, followed instantly by the second party.

  Blackwood held his revolver in his left fist although he did not recall drawing it from the holster.

  ‘Advance!’

  A wounded Boxer ran and hopped towards a discarded rifle and sprawled gasping as Kirby drove his bayonet through his chest. Not the crazy lunge of a recruit but the cool reaction of the old campaigner.

  Blackwood yelled, ‘Over there, O’Neil!’ He gestured with his sword. ‘The gun!’

  It was carefully hidden in branches and dead leaves but there was no mistaking the ugly revolving snout of an old Hotchkiss cannon. Old perhaps, but if fired directly down on to the Bajamar’s helm and bridge it would have a devastating effect.

  Blackwood aimed his revolver and saw one man fall, the other turning to cover his face with his arms as he realized for the first time that the marines were amongst them.

  ‘First squad!’ That was Lyde again. ‘Kneel! Take aim! Fire!’

  The figures around the Hotchkiss rolled away from the mounting and ammunition like rag puppets.

  Kirby was yelling, ‘At ’em!’ Watch that bugger, Roberts!’

  Private Roberts, the farm-boy from Sussex, did not appear to take aim. He waited until the running figure was right on the lip of the salient and then fired from the shoulder. He could have been despatching a rabbit.

  Kirby almost kicked Private Trent aside as he gasped, ‘No quarter! They’ll cut you down, else!’ His bayonet lunged and withdrew just as smartly, the blade edged in red.

  Blackwood lowered his sword and stood sucking in great gulps of air. He hardly dared to look at his wild, breathless marines. One was staring at the sky, his face stiff with pain as Corporal Lyde expertly knotted a bandage around his arm.

  Blackwood saw Kirby watching him and nodded. ‘Well done, lads!’ He walked slowly to the edge of the land and stood looking down at the curving river. It was yellow like the sun. He could feel his arms shaking, his whole body reacting to the swift attack. Not a man dead. It was still hard to believe. He removed his white helmet and waved it slowly from side to side. Far below Austad responded with another jubilant screech on his siren.

  Kirby called, ‘No sign of Mr Earle’s body, sir.’

  Blackwood watched the Bajamar’s anchor splash down, the two sampans already lowered to retrieve a landing-party which he doubted if anyone had ever expected to survive.

  ‘Shall we bury this lot, sir?’ The sergeant watched him curiously.

  ‘No. Leave them. As a warning.’

  He wiped his neck and face with a filthy handkerchief. ‘Fall the men in. We’ll march down to the river.’

  He saw his weary, dazed men straighten their backs as if a silent order had been issued.

  Corporal O’Neil shouted, ‘Come along now, Dago! This is no-time at all for slacking!’

  Blackwood replaced his helmet and pulled the chinstrap into place. It was not exactly an army. He looked around at the sprawled corpses and an isolated patch of dried blood where they must have tortured Earle before killing him. But he knew he would not have exchanged them at this moment for a whole battalion of his own. Almost to himself he murmured, ‘I’m sorry, Charles. I should never have sent you.’

  Then he turned on his heel and followed his men down the slope towards the river.

  Blackwood stood on the Bajamar’s open bridge and trained a borrowed telescope on the slow-moving river-bank and the blue hills beyond. The bridge was little more than a spidery catwalk which linked the two paddle-boxes on either beam together. In the fierce midday sun the rails were too hot to touch. Half of the marines stood guard along the bulwarks, helmets tilted to shield their eyes, their rifles resting on the rails ready for instant use.

  But from the moment they had returned aboard and Austad had raised anchor again they had not sighted a living thing. Their return was something Blackwood would not forget. The anxious, grimy faces along the vessel’s side, and then, suddenly, the tension had snapped like a taut mooring-wire and the marines had stood to wave and cheer despite every threat which Fox had hurled at them. Even Austad’s villainous looking crew had joined in.

  ‘I’m going below.’ Blackwood glanced at the big Norwegian. His pipe was going well, and he seemed strangely content after what had happened.

  Austad grunted. ‘We shall reach the mission soon.’ He chuckled. ‘That German gunboat captain will be feeling very small, I think!’ He was still laughing as Blackwood lowered himself to the deck.

  He walked through the saloon his eyes almost blinded by the sun. The marines off-watch made to stand but he waved them down. They were amazing, he thought. In spite of all that had happened, Earle’s capture and torture, and the swift savagery of their fight on the salient, he saw that his men had managed to shave and fold their blankets as neatly as in their barracks. There was a smell of coffee, and of something cooking in the tiny galley.

  Swan was waiting for him at the forward end of the saloon, his rifle slung from one shoulder, his helmet on the back of his head. ‘Beg pardon, sir, but the Countess would like to see you.’

  ‘Yes.’ Blackwood felt suddenly drained, the relief that they had somehow survived dragging at his last resources like claws. He wanted to see her, just as he knew he should stay away. Soon she would be reunited with her husband. He would become just a part of her memories.

  Blackwood walked outside and tapped on her door. He knew he looked like a vagrant in his filthy uniform, streaks of dried blood on his sword-arm.

  She opened the door and studied him gravely. ‘Please enter, Captain.’

  He noticed that the little Chinese maid was not present. He had barely been alone with her before. How did she manage to appear so cool, so elegant? She had changed her clothes again and was dressed in a pale yellow gown with an Oriental sash that revealed the smallness of her waist. She was about the same age as himself and yet so different. Distant in spite of her crowded surroundings. Like Royalty. It made him feel even less confident. Unclean.

  She asked, ‘Do you like what you see, Captain?’

  He flushed. ‘I was staring. I am sorry.’

  She gestured to a chair. ‘You apologize too much.’ She watched him for several seconds. ‘You did not come to see me when you returned.’ It was an accusation. ‘I was anxious. Worried for you.’

  He looked at her. ‘I am –’

  She smiled gently. ‘Sorry?’

  He grinned. ‘I suppose I was too concerned with getting the ship under way again. It seems quiet enough, but I’m not sure.’

  She walked across the cabin and stared through an open scuttle. ‘That poor young man. He died because of me. If I had not insisted on rejoining my husband it would never have happened.’

  Blackwood twisted round to look at her but she gripped his shoulder tightly and exclaimed, ‘Please. Do not turn. I do not wish you to see me so.’

  He could feel the emotion in her voice just as the strength of her grip told him something new about her.

  He said, ‘Mr Earle died doing his duty. If anyone is to blame it must be me. Ours can be a dangerous calling. Men die, some for no reason we can understand. We accept it.’

  He saw her hand reach round and grope for his. ‘You say that to protect me. To help me forget.’ She shook her head, the piled crown of hair shining in reflected sunlight from the scuttle. ‘I shall never forget.’

  Blackwood felt the smoothness of her hand and could smell her perfume, her fragrance. What would she do if he took her in his arms here and now?

  She turned and looked at him, her face in shadow.

  ‘I know what you are thinking, my gallant young Captain. And I am ashamed of my own feelings towards you.’ As he made to rise she pressed him back into the chair. ‘But it cannot be. Such a secret is impossible to hide or to share.’ She touched his face as she had that other time, as if to memorize every detail. ‘Perhaps we shall meet
again one day.’ She smiled at him but it made her look incredibly sad. ‘In the line of duty as you would call it, yes?’

  There was a nervous tap at the door. It was Swan.

  ‘Well?’ Blackwood tried to sound calm. ‘What is it?’

  Swan glanced at a point between them.

  ‘The Skipper sends ’is compliments and –’

  ‘Spit it out, man!’

  Swan looked at the countess. ‘Well, sir –’

  Blackwood said quietly, ‘It’s all right. You can speak in front of our passenger.’

  Swan let out a sigh. ‘The mission is round the next bend, sir. But the river’s so wide ’ere you can see it already with the glass.’

  Blackwood reached out and took her hand. It seemed natural and easy in front of Swan.

  Swan said wretchedly, ‘There’s nothin’, sir. The place is in ruins. Knocked to bloody hell, beggin’ yer pardon, Ma’am.’

  ‘No ship?’

  Swan shook his head. ‘All gone, sir.’

  ‘Tell Austad I’ll come up directly.’ As the door shut he was conscious of the silence which hung over the vessel, so that the beat of her paddles seemed to intrude like muffled drums. He needed to think and act quickly.

  She stepped closer and placed her hands on his shoulders.

  ‘What will you do?’

  He stood up. ‘We shall anchor and stand off until I have gone ashore to investigate. Don’t worry, I said I would protect you. So I shall.’ Without realizing it he put his arm around her shoulders. He felt her stiffen as if about to pull away. Blackwood said, ‘There may have been an attack.’ He dismissed the idea instantly. ‘No, the gunboat would not withdraw. She would be more than a match for a mob of Boxers.’

  He felt her breast touching his tunic, the painful beat of his heart which she must feel. ‘I have to go.’ He lowered his arm. ‘You will be safe here.’ He was barely aware of what he was saying. ‘Keep away from the ports and scuttles.’