Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (45 page)

"It's no easy job, bending rails and blowing up bridges. Probably the cavalry was just detained in its work."

"And the harbor at Goose Bay. What do you make out by this light, Adam?"

"It seems peaceful." There was a glow in the sky—a dusty patch of the Northern Lights, which waxed and waned—and I saw a few masts and ships at anchor—Dutch commercial shipping, I supposed. "They threw all their gunboats against us at Striver, and lost them."

"I see the same. What I
don't
 see is any American ship of war. I had hoped Admiral Fairfield would be shelling Goose Bay by now, or at least positioning his vessels."

That was true ... and the absence seemed ominous, now that he pointed it out to me.

"Perhaps they'll arrive in the morning," I said.

"Perhaps," said Julian wearily.

I have not yet said very much about Sam Godwin and his role in these events.

That's not because his part was insignificant, but because it was performed in intimate consultation with Julian, and I didn't participate directly in battle- planning.
⁷³
But Sam pored over the maps just as intently as did Julian, and brought his greater experience into play. He did not attempt to take command, but made himself sympathetic to Julian's suggestions, and seldom contradicted them, but only offered nuance in their refinement. I supposed this was the role he had played with Julian's father Bryce during the successful Isthmian War, and at times, when the two of them put their heads together, I could imagine that twenty years of history had been rolled back, and that this was the command tent of the Army of the Californias ... though Julian's unusual yellow beard belied the daydream, as did the cold November weather.

Julian, in any case, succeeded in maintaining a fragile optimism about the campaign; while Sam, though he tried not to show it, was obviously less hopeful. Ever since we sailed from Manhattan, all humor had fled from him. He didn't joke, or laugh at jokes. He scowled, instead ... and there was a glitter in his eye that might have been fear, sternly suppressed. I expect Sam had concluded that he might not see New York City, or more importantly Emily Baines Comstock, ever again in this earthly life; and it was my fervent wish that Julian might succeed in proving him wrong. But the events of the next day were not encouraging.

The Dutch counter- attacked at dawn.

Perhaps they had done some scouting of their own, and calculated that our army, while intimidating, was not as large as they feared; or perhaps reinforcements had arrived by rail during the night. What ever the case, their resolve had grown firm and their courage was not lacking.

Though the defenders of Goose Bay lacked a Chinese Cannon, their field artillery outranged ours by several hundred yards. They had figured that difference finely, and used it to their advantage. Shot and shell pummeled our forward ranks and masked their first advance. Our men soon brought their own weapons to bear, including the formidable Trench Sweeper; but the Dutch had come ahead too quickly for our field-pieces to be of much use against them, and an important hill, along with an entire artillery battery, was captured before Julian or his lieutenants could react.

All that morning I heard the unceasing roar of cannonry and the cries of wounded men as they were carried back from the front. Dutch and American regiments went at one another like clashing sabers, shooting off sparks of blood and mayhem. Messengers arrived and departed with desperation in their eyes, and each one seemed more exhausted than the last. An entire battalion collapsed on our right flank, driven back by cannonade, although reinforcements held the position—barely.

Noon passed, and the smoke of the battle continued to rise like a crow-colored obelisk into the wan and windless sky. "Panic is our greatest enemy now," Sam said grimly.

Julian stepped away from his map-table, throwing down a pencil in frustration. "Where is the Navy? There's nothing happening here the shelling of Goose Bay wouldn't correct!"

"Admiral Fairfield promised us his armada," Sam said, "and I believe he meant it. What ever keeps him, it must be dire. We can't count on him arriving."

"Do you suppose this was my uncle's plan all along—to plant us here among the Dutch, and then withdraw the Navy?"

"I wouldn't put it past him. The point is that we don't have the Navy, and we can't
expect
 to have the Navy. And without the Navy we can't hold our position much longer."

"We will hold them," Julian said flatly.

"If the Dutch flank us and take the road we won't be able to retreat to Striver—and that'll be the end of us."

"We'll hold," Julian said, "until we know for a fact that Fairfield isn't coming. He doesn't strike me as a man who would abandon a promise."

"He wouldn't, though he might be unable to fulfill it, for any number of reasons."

But Julian refused to be swayed. To the rear of the fighting there was a hill with an old spruce tree on it, and Julian posted an agile man atop this tree as if it were a mizzenmast on an ocean-going vessel, and gave him a sailor's chore: to watch Lake Melville for ships. Thus any hint of Admiral Fairfield's tardy arrival would be relayed directly to Julian's headquarters as soon as it was perceived.

In the meantime he bowed to Sam's suggestion and gathered his subordinates to plan an orderly retreat, should it become necessary. If we must withdraw, Julian said, then it ought to be a fighting withdrawal, making the enemy pay for every yard of mossy soil he gained. Julian described how troops could be placed along ridges and behind the humped earth of the railway embankment, so that Dutch soldiers in pursuit of a retreating regiment might be drawn into an ambush and killed. Messages were quickly sent out to battalion commanders to coordinate this strategy, and to keep the planned fall-back from turning into a general rout.

The scheme was successful, in so far as it went. Our front buckled—or so it was made to seem—and Mitteleuropan forces poured into the gap. The Dutch infantry were hooting and firing their rifles in triumph just as rows of hidden men turned Trench Sweepers on them and artillery shells began to burst in their midst. Their cross-and-laurel flag, which had been coming ahead at full speed, was suddenly thrown down, along with its bearer and dozens of common soldiers. Dutch troops continued to pour into the line of fire from the rear, but they roiled over their dead comrades uncertainly and were slaughtered in turn.

It was a hideously costly advance for the Dutch ... but in the end it
was
 an advance, hard-won or not. Sam argued that we should strike our headquarters immediately and get the wagons rolling back toward Striver, where we could at least supply ourselves in the event of a siege.

Then Julian's crow's-nest observer dashed into the tent and told us he had seen smoke across the water.

Julian stepped outside, taking a pair of captured field glasses with him. His position was more exposed than it would have been even an hour ago—Dutch shells burst dismayingly nearby—but he stood unmoved in his bright Major General's uniform, looking out over the leaden waters of Lake Melville.

"Smoke," he confirmed, when Sam and I joined him. "A vessel approaching under steam. Burning anthracite, by the look of it, which makes it likely one of ours." And after a moment's pause: "A mast. A flag.
Our
 flag." He turned to Sam with a kind of fierce satisfaction in his eyes. "Tell the men to hold their positions at all costs."

"Julian—" Sam said.

"None of your pessimism right now, Sam, please!"

"But we don't know for certain—"

"We don't know
anything
 for certain—battle is risk. Give the order!"

And Sam, like a dutiful servant, did so.

Ten minutes later the whole ship was visible, and it was the familiar
Basilisk,
Admiral Fairfield's vessel. We expected the rest of the American armada to follow in its wake.

But we were mistaken in that hope.

Soon it became obvious that there was the
Basilisk
—and there was
only
the
Basilisk.

I cannot describe Julian's appearance as this unwelcome truth sank home.

His skin took on an additional pallor. His eyes grew haggard. His bright blue and yellow garb, which he had worn so boldly, clung to his slumped shoulders like an admonition.

Admiral Fairfield did what he could with his single ship. The
Basilisk
 was one of the finest vessels of the Navy, and he worked it ingeniously. He came in under full steam, all sails reefed, the ship's stacks gouting smoke as if half the coal in all the world were burning belowdecks. He slid obliquely past the Dutch wharves at Goose Bay, strafing the town with well-placed cannon shots. Then he came up the shoreline and attempted to shell the Mitteleuropan positions where we fought. That bombardment would have helped us enormously, had it succeeded. But the Dutch shore batteries were well-manned and well- entrenched. They raked the
Basilisk
 in return. She with-stood the barrage for many minutes, trying to work in close enough to be of some use to us. But the closer she got, the more vulnerable she became. Her masts were nearly chewed away, and flames had broken out on her forecastle by the time she finally gave up the attempt. She could do nothing but limp away while her engines were still capable of turning her screws. She seemed to be headed for Striver, or some other protected place up-lake.

Julian watched until she was nearly out of sight. Then he turned and ordered Sam to call a general retreat. His voice sounded as chill and eerie as if it emanated from a gap in some old hollow log. Sam was glum as well, and walked off speechlessly, shaking his head.

A retreat is not as glamorous a thing as an attack, but it can be accomplished either well or badly, and Julian deserves credit for a careful withdrawal from the disaster Goose Bay had become.

Still it was a costly and humiliating maneuver. By the time we were in acceptable form for a forced march to Striver, the Dutch were swarming at our backs. Julian assigned fresh troops (in so far as we had any) to the rear, and their careful feint- and-fall-back operations helped protect the bulk of the army.

Much of our cavalry had been lost in the futile foray behind the Mitteleuropan lines, so we were vulnerable to sniping from Dutch horse men. Their detachments came at us from oblique angles, attempting to cut away companies of American troops and "take them in detail." More than a few infantrymen were scooped up in this fashion. But whenever such a firefight erupted Julian would ride to the place like a human battle-flag, to shore up morale; and we fought these battles with a ferocity that appeared to startle and un-nerve our opponents.

By sundown we were within sight of the outskirts of Striver. Messengers had warned the garrison that we would be arriving under Dutch harassment, and a defensive perimeter, with abattises and lunettes and clean lines of fire, had already been established. These were a welcome sight for battered survivors. The Dominion wagons went in ahead of us, so that their cargo of wounded men could be received by the field hospital.

Julian and Sam, and I along with them, helped fight the rear-guard action while the bulk of our men sought the safety of the captive town. This went well enough for a time, for the Dutch had straggled in their pursuit and couldn't put together a formal assault. But as soon as their artillery came up we were in a ticklish situation.

Explosive shells landing in a tight mass of men, all of whom are within sprinting distance of safety, are a perfect recipe for death and panic. That's what happened. In terms of actual losses it wasn't too bad—Striver's defenders silenced the Dutch cannons as soon they could range in on them—but the mossy ground in front of our entrenchments was quickly watered with a great deal of patriotic blood, and festooned with other patriotic body parts, during that long cold and terrible dusk.

Julian on his horse was a conspicuous target, and I was astonished that he was not picked off immediately by some far-sighted Dutch rifleman. But—as in the Battle of Mascouche outside of Montreal—he seemed wrapped in some cloak of invulnerability, which warded off hot lead.

The miraculous protection didn't extend to those beside him. Our battle-flag went down when a staff officer's horse was killed by shrapnel from an exploding shell. Sam dismounted at once and stooped to retrieve the banner. But he had barely raised it again when a Dutch bullet took him, and he toppled to the ground.

I don't remember exactly the events that followed, except that I rallied two men who helped me carry Sam to a Dominion wagon, where he was stacked with a dozen other wounded soldiers awaiting treatment. The ambulance driver flogged his mules when I told him he had one of Julian's staff aboard; and I rode along with him to the makeshift hospital in that wide street in Striver called Portage.

Sam's wound was in his left arm, below the elbow. I couldn't tell whether it was a bullet or shrapnel that had struck him. What ever it was, it had broken the narrow bones above the wrist and torn away so much flesh that what remained was little more than tags and tatters. His entire left hand was nearly severed, and kept its association with his body only by the merest hinge of bloody gristle.

He was conscious, though groggy and pale, and he told me to tie a tourni-quet about his arm to staunch the prodigious bleeding. I did so. I was glad to be helpful, and did not mind the blood which spattered across my already torn uniform, so much of it that when we arrived at the hospital an attendant looked at me wide-eyed and asked me where I was hurt.

The hospital was already crowded, and quickly becoming more so as cart-loads of injured men were unloaded at the door. Three medics were in attendance, but two of them were already engaged in operations that couldn't be interrupted. Luckily there was a kind of triage-by-rank being practiced, and the third doctor came promptly at the announcement of Sam's high position.

The doctor made a hasty inspection of Sam's injury and announced that it wanted an amputation. Sam did not like this idea, and began a feeble protest, until the medic doused a cloth with liquid from a brown bottle and held it against Sam's mouth, which caused the patient's eyes to close and his struggles to abate. It looked more like murder than mercy; but the physician, rolling up one of Sam's eyelids to inspect his pupils, seemed satisfied with the result.