The Filibusters by Charles John Cutcliffe Hyne (book club suggestions TXT) 📖

A VERY pestilence of bullets swept against us as we left the cover of the trees and dashed across the bare strip, and every moment the line of heads above the white parapet of the fort grew blacker with numbers. Our men were falling with fearful rapidity, but their discipline held. They kept to their line, neither spurting forward nor lingering behind; and because the order had not been given, they fired no single shot. A set of iron targets could not have endured that terrible punishment more stoically.

We reached a point thirty yards from the walls, and a bugle rang out a lusty call. One half of our little force stopped instantly, dropping behind any boulder or clump of grass which would offer a vestige of shelter, and offering a smart fire with their repeating rifles to cover the attack of the rest. It was the fusilade of practical marksmen, and as coolly delivered as if they had been firing at the range on the White Tortuga Key. It did heavy execution, but there was such an abundance of men in the fort that as fast as one fell another was ready to stop up the gap.

By this time we had come to a very fit mind for the work. We had ceased to be men having human fears; the thought of death or maiming had gone from us; the lust of the battle had filled us like long draughts of spirit. We bit our teeth, and thought of nothing but getting at handgrips.

We reached the foot of the white concrete wall, and stood in a ditch sown with empty tins and crockery. For an instant we found a lee out of the pelting; but for an instant only. The next the soldiers were craning over the parapet and shooting down on us.

I cannot speak of what happened collectively after this. It was a time for individual striving. I only know what occurred to myself. From out of the blinding, stinking smoke one of the defenders fell down between me and the wall, striking my arm as he fell. I gripped one of our fellows, drew him to me, and made him stand on the corpse. Then I clambered on to his shoulders, and stood for a second panting and blindly nuzzling the wall. The sweat and the smoke poured in my eyes, and I could not see a thing, but sweeping about with my fingers found a crack in the masonry.

Somebody from above made a stab at me with a bayonet. My spare hand closed on it; I gave a spring from below, and next instant was on the ridge of the wall. The man with the bayonet wrenched it from my grasp and drew it back to stab. At the same moment some one behind raised a rifle and fired, and the man fell with half his head blown away.

Remembering the thing afterwards, I concluded that that shot was intended for me; but at the time I did not stop to think; was not even thankful for the let-off; but picking up a rifle from the ground, raged with the butt against every man I could see. Indeed, there was no lack of them. They ringed me round in a fence of weapons and savage faces with teeth gleaming like dogs, and had not relief come they must surely have got me down in another few seconds.

But first another of our men clambered up, and fired a revolver from so close behind that the grains of powder stung my neck; and then from through the smoke the General came with a dozen others; and then from the other side of the fort there came a diversion of another kind. Carew’s men had turned up just in the nick of time.

We knew of it first by a rattle of startled yells, then by some unmistakably British shouts (which, if the truth be known, were mainly curses), and then by some bugle calls and a thinning of the soldiers who were trying to drive us back over the walls. The fight eddied, and staggered, and dwindled like a snowball which is set on a warm hob. The Spaniards began to throw away their weapons and run for the barracks in the middle of the fort. Our men killed a little more to appease the ” manes ” of their comrades: ” Here’s an end to you to square up for poor old Frank,” one would say, and “To hell you go, my son,” another would shout, ” because you sent my best chum there ten minutes back;” but considering the place had been carried by storm, there were no glowing atrocities in the sack. The men soon calmed down, what few there were left of them, and stood ready to do the General’s bidding. There was much to be gone through before he got his hand over all Los Angeles.

Orders followed on the heels of one another with quick despatch. First, nine men were sent to summon the other nine forts to surrender, each of them being accompanied by a comrade who carried a white flag. Next, we set about gaoling the prisoners, disarming them thoroughly, and stowing them in a long, narrow cellar. At the entrance of this a couple of Nordenfeldts were run up, so as to rake the whole, if necessary, and, as only two men could be spared as sentries, the prisoners were given clearly to understand that at the least sign of trouble, they would be annihilated. And then gun crews were apportioned off to the big Krupp cannon with which the fort was armed, with ammunition carriers to supply them.

We officers saw to these duties, and then gathered round the General, who had stationed himself at the foot of the flagstaff in the centre of the fort. Carew had a red bandage round his left arm, and carried it in a sling made from his sash. The rest of us were unwounded, save for myself, who had picked up from somewhere or other a bayonet graze against the fifth rib.

“Fluellen,” said the General, ” has failed me badly. He will probably have good excuses; but I do not care for excuses; I prefer good service.