It was a large sampan, loaded with Chinese, and being propelled by poles from its stern, so that the men using them were concealed from the marines’ rifle fire.
Someone cheered. ‘It’s aground! The bugger’s hit the bottom!’
Fox shouted, ‘Hold yer noise, damn you!’
Blackwood turned and looked at Austad’s smoke-shrouded figure. The Norwegian made a chopping motion with his fist. The river was too narrow. They would have to keep going. Straight for the big sampan.
Blackwood cupped his hands. ‘Stand by to repel boarders! Corporal Lyde, take your squad aft! It’s the lowest point!’
The Bajamar was moving at full speed and yet it took an eternity to reach the other craft. The men at the poles were trying to thrust the sampan into deeper water, but she was too overloaded, and they were still shouting and screaming like fiends when the end of their boat took the full impact of the Bajamar’s blunt stem. Blackwood struggled with his sword hilt and dragged it from the scabbard.
‘Stand fast, Marines!’ The deck swayed over and a whole section of the Boxers’ sampan reared up above the bows like something from the depths. Several of the Boxers were sucked bodily into the paddles, others were trapped in their shattered hull as it rolled along the bottom breaking up as it went. But there were many more who managed to climb over the rails unscathed, their teeth bared in unbelievable ferocity.
Blackwood waved his sword. ‘At them, lads!’
The marines needed no urging now that the danger was right here, amongst them. Striding shoulder to shoulder, their boots catching and stumbling on fallen gear and ringbolts, they thrust at the Boxers with their bayonets, holding some against the guardrails, driving a few over the side into the frothing water.
Blackwood aimed his revolver as a great blade flashed in the sunshine and struck a marine on the shoulder. It was like an axe driving through a sapling. The revolver recoiled in his hand and he saw the yelling Boxer vanish amongst the gasping, stabbing figures. The marine fell and did not move, nor would he. The blade had all but severed his arm and shoulder from his body.
Bullets cracked amongst the Boxers who found themselves trapped in the narrow confines of the side-deck. Lyde and O’Neil were firing from aft with their men; they took their time to make each shot tell.
Blackwood saw a giant figure in white, his red headcloth rising above his companions like a banner, hacking and stabbing his way through the marines. There were blood streaks over his clothing, and he must have been dying on his feet.
Kirby shouted, ‘Watch out, sir!’ Then he had to swing round to parry a blade aside with his bayonet before thrusting it into his attacker’s chest.
The tall Boxer did not blink as he kept his eyes fastened on Blackwood. Like an enraged serpent, and making him even more terrible, he was frothing at the mouth.
Blackwood raised his revolver and levelled it on the giant’s waist. He felt his heart jump as the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. He had fired every bullet without even noticing.
He saw the long blade glitter as it swung towards him, felt the pain in his wrist as he parried it aside with his sword. There was no change in the Boxer’s expression nor did he falter as he pushed a marine aside to give himself space for another, final cut.
Swan darted forward and fired, Blackwood saw the Boxer stagger, the blood glinting like an eye in his shoulder. Then he fell. It was incredible. As he rolled on to his face Blackwood realized he must have been bayoneted or shot several times.
It was like a signal. Chased on by the battle-crazed marines the remaining Boxers were leaping over the bulwarks, floundering or wading in the shallows or falling to the rapid fire from aft. Blackwood dropped his arms to his sides and took several deep breaths.
He saw some of his men tipping the dead and wounded Boxers into the river, others frantically reloading in case of a fresh attack.
But when Blackwood looked at the nearest bank it was deserted. As if the running, chanting figures had been swallowed up. Bannatyre came over to him, his chest heaving as if he was in pain.
‘We did it, sir!’ He looked about to cheer, or weep.
Sergeant Major Fox joined them. ‘Three dead, including young Elmhirst, sir. The others are Munro and Becket.’
Blackwood straightened his aching back. ‘Wounded?’
Fox watched him calmly. ‘Five, sir. I’ve ’ad ’em took below.’
Blackwood nodded and looked at the bloodstains on the deck. It was a miracle they had not lost half their number. But it was bad enough.
He tried to think more clearly, but all he could do was marvel they had survived. Behind him Swan was reloading his revolver and whistling quietly to himself. They were still together. He did not seem to need much more than that.
Bannatyre asked in a steadier tone, ‘Will they come at us again?’
Blackwood stared past him at the land as it began to climb more steeply. It was not over. Perhaps it had not even begun. There was more smoke above the hill; if they had to anchor the Boxers would try to set the ship alight again with their fireballs and stink-pots.
Down aft he could see Corporal O’Neil and his squad hauling at the towline, making certain that their floating bomb was ready for immediate use. He heard a change in the paddles’ beat and knew Bajamar was slowing down.
When he shaded his eyes to look for Austad he saw him framed against the sky, he was beckoning urgently with his telescope. Blackwood made himself walk to the bridge ladder. They were all watching him, looking for their fate in his eyes. Dirty, bloodied, ragged and red-eyed, they looked as if they had little more to give him.
He climbed swiftly up the ladder. The handrails were already hot in the sunlight. On the buckled catwalk he saw the extent of their damage, the charred deck and hatchways still smoking from the hastily flung buckets.
But they had done it. In spite of everything.
Even without the telescope he could see the boom. Supported on boats which they must have dragged from some nearby fishing village, the boom consisted of trees, long sharpened stakes of bamboo, the whole roped together from bank to bank. If they attempted to ram it they would lose control or put one of the paddles out of action.
He knew Sergeant Kirby was staring up at him from the foredeck. It was strange he had been so eager to volunteer for the job. Corporal O’Neil had also volunteered, but that made more sense. He was a superb swimmer, and just about mad enough for anything. They would have to swim upstream for about fifty yards after the Bajamar had dropped her stream anchor. It was unlikely either of them would survive.
He realized that Austad was staring at him, the telescope held out to him like a baton.
‘Here. Look.’
Blackwood raised the glass and saw the crude barrier spring into focus, even a few figures scampering for cover as the vessel pounded towards them.
In the centre of the boom, on a pike, its empty eye-sockets watching their slow approach, was a severed head.
Blackwood handed the telescope back and allowed the hideous spectacle to fall into distance.
‘Prepare to anchor. Tell Sergeant Kirby to be ready.’
There was no longer any mystery about Earle’s fate. They must have been saving it for this very moment.
‘Stop engine.’ He felt desperately sick and knew he must not show it. Not now of all times.
‘Let go!’ He heard the anchor clatter down, the hawser just enough to hold them in midstream.
‘Silence on deck!’ That was Fox. As if he already knew.
It was like a tribute to their first casualty, respect for his final degradation.
8
A Bit of History
Sergeant Jeff Kirby put his shoulder to the long pole and heaved. A few feet away Corporal O’Neil lowered his rifle to watch as the sampan moved slowly away from the Bajamar’s bows where it had been hauled by the men on deck.
Kirby said, ‘Probably the last time we see that lot, Paddy!’
O’Neil, whose name was Sean, gave
a broad grin. Like the sergeant he was stripped to his white trousers and in spite of the tension appeared almost relaxed.
He grinned. ‘A good swim will liven things up, eh, Sarge?’
Kirby thrust the pole into the bottom again. When he straightened his back he could see the boom across the river. The cunning bastards. At the narrowest point.
He glanced again at the anchored paddle-steamer. She already looked out of reach and he felt a twinge of panic. It was so deathly quiet after the swift battle, the feeling of hate and madness which had held them together as they had driven the enemy back into the water. He looked at his own rifle where it lay within his reach. There was dried blood on the bayonet, like black paint in the hard sunlight.
O’Neil raised his rifle and lowered it again. ‘The buggers can’t make us out, Sarge. There’s two of ’em on that ridge, see?’
Kirby swallowed as the sweat poured down his body. The boat handled better than he had expected. Maybe there was still a chance. He winced as a sandbar swam to the surface like some sleeping fish. No, there was not a hope in hell. As Captain Blackwood had explained, if abandoned too soon the sampan might run aground or drift into the bank.
He peered at the boom again. It seemed no closer.
O’Neil was humming softly to himself and Kirby was torn between hate and envy.
He said brutally, ‘You know what that bloody object is they’ve stuck on a pike?’
O’Neil regarded him curiously. ‘To be sure. The little officer you left on his own, right?’
Kirby felt the blood pound in his veins. ‘It wasn’t my fault, you know it!’
There was a crack and a bullet hit the water several yards abeam. O’Neil lifted his rifle again and readjusted the backsight.
‘Now there’s a thing.’ The rifle sounded twice as loud in the confines of the high banks, and O’Neil jerked open the bolt as a tiny figure rolled down the slope.
Several more shots cracked from the hillside, and from the anchored Bajamar came an overwhelming response. Machine-gun and rifle fire, and then one of Austad’s little cannons which made the air shake. It probably sounded much more deadly than it was, Kirby thought. Why had he volunteered? To die perhaps in a blaze of glory? And now all he wanted to do was stay alive. It was so unfair.
A heavy shot burst through the side of the boat and made the canvas cover in the bows start to smoulder.
O’Neil was there in a flash and shouted, ‘Must have been one o’ them big muskets, Sarge!’
He snatched up his rifle and triggered two more shots as some men ran down a cleft in the hillside, firing as they came.
Kirby locked the pole in position and opened fire with his own rifle. He saw one of the bastards drop. But it gave him no satisfaction. Close-quarters, where you could see the enemy’s strength or terror as you crossed blades with him, that was more like it. The rifle bucked hard into his bare shoulder and he saw another white-clad figure roll down amongst the scrub, one leg kicking for a full minute as if detached from its dead owner.
As he reloaded his magazine he glanced astern. The Bajamar was wreathed in smoke as every man who could pull a trigger laid down a barrage of fire across the salient.
The boom was nearer now, and more figures were thronging the nearest bank, some kneeling to shoot as the little boat drifted towards them.
Bullets slammed into and through the bulwarks, and others spurted water around the two crouching marines with barely a break. Kirby dashed the sweat from his eyes and tried to gauge the distance. He thought briefly of asking O’Neil’s opinion but discarded the thought immediately. He was only a corporal and a bloody Irish one at that.
It must be now. Had to be. He felt something like a blow from an iron club and found himself on his back, his head on the bottom boards and one foot dangling from the gunwale.
‘Bloody hell!’ O’Neil stooped over him and stared at the blood which seemed to be pumping from Kirby’s chest in an unstoppable torrent.
Kirby shut his eyes against the agony. He attempted to move but almost lost consciousness as the searing pain drove through him. He tried to speak clearly, but his voice sounded like a sob. ‘Fuses! Light ’em now!’ When the corporal’s shadow remained over him he gasped, ‘Do it, you Irish clod! Fer Christ’s sake, light ’em!’
O’Neil stumbled towards the bows. He took time to fire and bring down a crouching marksman on the bank before he flung himself beside the fuses, his mind grappling with what he must do. He thought vaguely of Kirby’s attempt to frighten and torment him over the severed head. It was just like him. Now he was probably dying. Like they all would unless he could blow the bloody boom. He recoiled, startled almost by the sudden spurt of life from the fuses.
Shots whined and cracked around him but he took time to reload before struggling aft again to Kirby’s sprawled body. It was probably hopeless anyway, he thought. But those fiends would never take him alive. Never.
In a steady voice he barely recognized he said, ‘Right, Sarge, we’re off then.’
He looked at the river and tried to shut out the sound of those two hissing fuses behind him. It would be a hard swim even without Kirby.
Kirby gasped thickly, ‘You go. That’s an order, damn you! Leave yer rifle. I’ll take a few of the bastards with me!’
O’Neil ignored him. Instead he flung Kirby’s rifle over the side and said, ‘Give us yer arm. Lively then.’ He waited for Kirby to hit the water and submerge, the blood trailing pink around him. Then he fired a full magazine of eight bullets and then with a kind of defiance hurled his own rifle into the river.
The water felt cool after the remorseless sunlight, and with his arm supporting the barely conscious sergeant he began to paddle slowly upstream.
The gunfire seemed to be over and around him as the marines opened rapid fire once again. Through the effort and the pain in his arm O’Neil heard the ship’s siren give a loud toot as if to encourage him, to urge him on. He recalled the little pleasure steamers at Galway, on his own Ireland’s west coast. Recalled too his dead father who had also been a corporal in the Corps.
‘Come on, me boy!’ His breath was bursting out in great gulps and once he swallowed some water. It tasted of salt and he thought of the sea. Safety. His pals around him.
Kirby had his eyes closed but knew what was happening. He tried to free himself from O’Neil’s iron grip but heard him gasp, ‘Together, Sarge, or not at all!’
The explosion when it came was more of a sensation than a sound. O’Neil felt as if his whole body was being crushed and caressed at the same time as the exploding charge bowled a miniature tidal wave upstream and caught them both in a drunken dance. O’Neil could see it all in his dazed mind, and wanted to laugh, to cheer for what they had done. But his mouth was choked, and his body seemed to be filling with water.
Dying was not so terrible after all.
‘Rapid fire!’ The remainder of Fox’s words were lost as the kneeling and prone marines took aim and squeezed their triggers, oblivious to everything but the distant white figures which were running towards the water.
Blackwood gripped a guardrail until the pain helped to steady him. Set against the land, the sluggish river with the crude boom across it like a gate, the sampan seemed puny. A pointless gesture.
Austad held the telescope to his eye and said, ‘The sampan has been hit again, I think.’
Corporal Lyde was yelling, ‘Train that gun to port!’
The belt began to jerk in time with the Maxim’s laboured stammer and Blackwood thought of Kirby and his sudden anger over the machine-gun. Now he was up there with O’Neil in company with enough explosive to blast them to powder.
‘Cease firing! Reload!’ Fox strode behind his panting, sweating men. Blackwood wondered how he could do it. Fox’s eyes were everywhere, and his voice never let his marines falter or give in. They were hating him, but he got the results he wanted.
Blackwood cupped his hands. ‘Stand by to slip!’ He saw Austad’s big hand close
around the telegraph handle and pictured the stokers crouching below in terrible heat, wondering when a shot would burst in amongst them or split open a boiler.
Lyde said harshly, ‘One of ’em’s down, sir.’
Blackwood nodded. It was obviously Kirby. Even at this distance he could see the boat sway as the other figure scrambled aft to assist him.
Fox muttered, ‘Near enough.’ He was speaking aloud but to O’Neil. ‘Get out while you can, dammit!’
Another said in a whisper, ‘Gawd, Arthur, the mad bugger is bringing the sergeant with ’im!’
Blackwood shaded his eyes as more running figures rose like birds from cover.
‘Take aim, rapid fire!’
A puff of smoke and Austad’s squat cannon reared inboard on its tackles. Blackwood saw the packed charge scythe above the scrub and bushes, catching one of the Boxers and lifting him several feet in the air.
‘Slip the stream anchor!’ Blackwood could barely tear his eyes from the two bobbing heads in the water. He felt the deck shiver as the paddles began to churn slowly, almost gently, at the surface.
‘All clear aft, sir!’
Blackwood ran to the side and leaned out to watch O’Neil’s progress. Over his shoulder and in between sporadic bursts of rifle fire he shouted, ‘Corporal Lyde! Warn Mr Bannatyre to stand by in the bows! It will have to be done quickly or we’ll lose them in the paddles!’
There was a vivid flash from the boom, followed by a thunderclap of an explosion which seemed to push the Bajamar off course for just a few seconds. As a dense pall of smoke lifted and writhed across the river hundreds of fragments splashed down to throw feathers of spray from bank to bank.
Blackwood saw two of Austad’s crew and Lieutenant Bannatyre leaning over the bulwark, while two half-naked marines were lowered down the rough plates on bowlines. It was touch and go. O’Neil would be protected by the hull on one side only, but bullets were still striking the rusty plating from the opposite beam.
‘Second Section! Rapid fire to starboard!’ Fox pushed a young marine with his boot. ‘Take aim, you blockhead! Don’t just blaze away!’
The First to Land (1984) Page 11
