Kings of the Sea

by Van Every Frost, Joan

  On their return, Luce accosted him. “Where is the little bastard? I’ll teach him to lie to us.” He almost seemed a caricature in his rage.

  “I won’t tell you,” David said calmly. “I told you he didn’t know.”

  Luce peered at him murderously for a moment, then suddenly looked older and very tired. He shook his head. “You don’t understand, Hand, do you? You haven’t been in a fighting outfit, so of course you don’t understand. Can you even imagine what it’s like to watch your men cut down by an enemy that half the time you never even see? Wait until you see El Gallo’s leavings, villages looted and left to starve, people buried alive, our men executed with their own balls stuffed in their mouths … I’d do anything to get my hands on the dirty murdering little assassins. Wait until you’ve been here for a while — you’ll see, and so will Funston.” He turned abruptly and left.

  David did begin to see. His week with Valerie seemed like something he had dreamed one day, for here there was no love, no beauty, no peace — only brutality, violence, and death. Funston asked him to accompany the forays out in search of guerrillas so that should prisoners be taken they could be questioned immediately before their escaped fellows were too far away. The army’s tactical policy was changing, and it was decided that the only way to deal with a foe as swift of foot as the insurgents was to hunt them down with mounted men.

  Time and again David saw the swift and deadly appearance of enemies whose presence the hunting party had not so much as suspected, and time and again the guerrillas got clean away. Funston emphasized that the most important result to try for was the capture of arms. The guerrillas could replace men indefinitely, but they couldn’t replace guns. The campaign out of San Isidro turned into a war of attrition in which each rifle captured weakened the enemy by a small but significant degree.

  During all of that time David was solitary, with one exception, a little Scottish first lieutenant named William Duncan, nicknamed Wee Willie even by the men. He was small and merry, always with a jest on the tip of his tongue and seemingly completely fearless. At first David tried to stay away from him, but when Willie set himself to it, he could be irresistible, and he would soon have even David laughing. What really drew David to him, however, was Willie’s sympathy for the insurrectionists.

  “If I were in their place,” Willie said, “I’d keep right on doing what they’re doing now. They’re running our bloody asses off and tying up, what is it now? Sixty or seventy thousand men? As long as Aguinaldo’s there to rally them, the clever little buggers will make us pay for every hour we spend in this benighted country.” He snorted in disgust. “That’s what comes of trying to snatch what’s not yours. The only way I can stand this fucking war is to laugh at it.”

  By July the rainy season was in full swing, and the American raiding parties went to bed wet and wakened wet. Before it was light they would mount their soaked horses and slither through the cold rain looking for the nonexistent enemy. By noon they would be steaming in a hot sun, though the humidity never allowed them to dry completely. In the late afternoon or early evening the thunder-heads would pile up again, forerunners of the rain that meant a tireless camp and another wet sleep. Willie was detached for duty with the so-called Headquarters Scouts, a special tactical group of twenty-five men that Funston had handpicked to ferret out guerrillas. As a reward for his surprising and singlehandedly running down and capturing an insurgent party of five, Willie was sent to Manila with the next supply requisition. David gave him a letter to deliver to Valerie in Malolos on his way. He returned in three weeks with a letter from Valerie for David.

  “You’re a lucky man, laddie,” Willie told him with a twinkle in his eye. “If it weren’t you were a friend of mine, I’d have made a real try there. Yes, that’s quite a lady, Davey — I envy you.”

  Among other things, Valerie wrote, “How slowly the time passes when you are not here. The very minutes become small eternities, and each night the length of a northern winter … I take it from Willie that the war goes not so well. He is a marvelous man, by the way — I didn’t think the Americans had any like him. You should be glad to know that the Americans are not the only greedy ones. The British are trying to do the same thing to the Boers in southern Africa over gold and diamonds that you are trying to do to the Filipinos over sheer possession of territory. Thus far the British have managed to take the Boers’ capital, Pretoria, just as you took Malolos, and like you they are finding out that guerrilla warfare has no victors. I’m afraid that in the end both you and the British may ‘win,’ but at what a price …”

  David was hurt. Valerie was lumping him in with all of the Americans, though she knew perfectly well how he felt — after all, she was in large part responsible for his feelings. She was right, however; it was something of a sour comfort to know that the United States was not the only nation to make war for sheer gain. The important part of the letter, of course, was that she missed him. During all of their lovemaking, all of their time together, she had never said that she loved him. When he wanted to speak of love, she always turned the subject aside. If time dragged so for her when he wasn’t there, he comforted himself, she must love him, mustn’t she?

  In October the rains let up, though they didn’t stop entirely, but at least most nights in the field were no longer spent soaking wet. Some commanders were encouraging their men, now that it was getting dry enough, to burn out villages that were thought to harbor insurgents gone to ground, but Funston would have no part of it. Luce, however, if he thought he was far enough away from headquarters to get away with it, burned villages anyway, and his men applauded him.

  “I think the British may have the right of it,” he suggested. “Have you heard what they’re doing to the Boers? Section by section they’ve burned out the houses, killed or taken the animals, and locked up all the men, women, and children they can find in concentration camps. They’ve set up a system of block houses and are making systematic drives just like driving game to round up the Boer commandos. I say that’s what we ought to do here.”

  Funston looked at him for a long moment. “I thank God, major,” he said at last, “that MacArthur is no Kitchener. As for me, I have no stomach for burning and starving out civilian populations.”

  Only a week later Wee Willie was lost, either killed or taken prisoner. They had gone out on a larger patrol than usual, including both the Headquarters Scouts and a detachment of Luce’s men, for patrols had brought in word of a sizable movement of insurgent forces headed for the near mountains. They flushed several men some hundred yards off the trail, and Willie and three troopers had gone plunging off after them even though Funston himself had called for them to stay put. When an hour had passed with no sign of them, it became clear that Willie’s luck had indeed run out.

  For the next three days every available mounted man was employed to search for the missing men. On the fourth day a man from a nearby village with whom David had spoken before asked to see him. When David asked him what he wanted, the man was obviously distraught and didn’t really wish to tell him more than he had to.

  “A half day’s journey over there,” and he pointed, “are the men the horse soldiers seek.”

  David thought he knew the reason for the man’s unease. There was an insurgent camp out there, and he feared for his life if they identified him as an informer. “Can you show us the way?” he asked. “Once we get near enough so that you can tell us exactly, you may leave us.”

  The man nodded without speaking, and an hour later fifty men under Luce galloped out of San Isidro at the heels of David and the informer, both on native ponies. Funston with another fifty was circling north of the area to cut off a retreat along the foothills, and Mitchell was cutting the area off from the south. At that particular point the mountain slopes were so steep, as the Americans had good reason to know, that a direct retreat back into them even for a man on foot was all but impossible.

  “We’ve got them now!” Luce exulted, riding up beside D
avid.

  David wasn’t so sure. They had never before managed to trap any sizable group of guerrillas, though several times they had come upon camps so newly deserted that the ashes were still warm. He was desperately worried about Willie but couldn’t imagine a situation that the resourceful little man couldn’t slither out of unless put down by a bullet. Moreover, the insurgents in the past had been far more interested in the prisoners’ guns, ammunition, and horses than in the men themselves.

  The Filipino pulled up his pony in the midst of a large open area of short savannah grass and pointed to a stand of distant trees. “There,” he said.

  “How many are with them?” David asked yet again, for in San Isidro he couldn’t get the man to answer.

  Now the Filipino rolled his eyes and, putting his heels to his pony, galloped off the way they had come.

  “Shall I stop him, sir?” one of the troopers asked Luce, who shook his head.

  “Sergeant Margrave, you and Sheldon take ten men and flank those trees. When we’re sure you’re in position, we’ll go in.” Luce knew his business well enough. If the men were fired on as they went into the trees, the enemy would be distracted by an attack on their flank.

  As they galloped toward the trees, David hoped that their attack wouldn’t mean death for the prisoners. He kept waiting for the typical irregular insurgent rifle fire, and hoped that these would be as poor marksmen as most other Filipinos. Nearer and nearer they approached the dark clump of yacal trees, and still no fire. It was unlike the guerrillas to have enough discipline to hold their fire like this until every shot could count. Perhaps this was a guerrilla group new to the area. At last they had to pull up short, for no horseman was going to be able to get through that thicket. It had become clear that if there had been any guerrillas in there, they had long since left.

  Dismounted, they threaded their way on foot along a game trail and soon came to a small clearing. David thought at first that the four men dangling from the protruding branch were Negroes from Clifton’s battalion, for although naked they were black in color. Then he realized his terrible mistake. Christ, what had they done to them to make them that color?

  “Flayed, by God” Luce exclaimed in an awed voice. “I can’t believe it! They actually skinned them!”

  As they came closer to cut them down, David saw that the blackness came from their being alive with flies and all sizes of ants that were pouring back and forth on the ropes from which the bodies were suspended. Several of the troopers were vomiting, but instead David felt a rage so black and engulfing that the world went dark for a moment before his eyes. If they had simply shot Willie, he would have grieved but at the same time accepted it as the fortunes of war. But this obscenity was so monstrous, so incredibly vicious, that he was instinctively infuriated. He would have been deeply upset had it only been the troopers, but that this terrifying cruelty had been inflicted upon the gaiety, gentleness, and courage that had been William Duncan made him sick with the longing for revenge.

  He felt his shoulder gripped and looked around to find Luce regarding him with sympathy. He pointed off through the trees. “Look, your gugu friend has stopped back there to see what we’ll do. I’ll bet he knows who did this. Take my horse and catch him up.”

  David stumbled out through the trees to where Luce’s horse was being held along with the rest by a trooper. He sprang into the saddle and took off at a dead run, the big roan eating up the ground between him and the now alarmed Filipino, who was lashing his pony, no match for the larger grain-fed American horse. As he caught up, David reached out and dragged the pony to a halt by his rope bridle. Without thinking he slid off his horse and pulled the Filipino from the pony’s back.

  “Who did that?” he demanded. “Where are they?”

  The Filipino was terror-stricken. “I think Gallo. He has been seen around here. I don’t know where he is.”

  The rage that threatened to consume David rose ever higher. “Yes you do know!” he shouted. “You know and you’re going to tell me!”

  “No. Before God, no. I was going to the village of Bula-gong to see my sick uncle and I chanced to pass through that grove of trees —”

  As David took him by the shoulders and shook him until his teeth rattled, one part of his mind was aware that the Filipino was no bigger than Valerie. “You lie! No one on a horse could force his way into that clearing except for good reason and on foot. You’re one of Gallo’s men, aren’t you? Aren’t you?”

  As David went on shouting questions, he began to hit the other man, who sank to his knees cowering, blood running from his nose and from a cut on his mouth. “Laddie, laddie,” Willie remonstrated inside his head, “dinna fash him mair — have done.” Instead of staying his hand, however, the familiar voice with its playful Scottish accent brought up such a hurting lump in his throat that it threatened to strangle him, and when Luce finally reached him and pulled him off, his hands were red with blood and the tears ran unchecked down his face.

  “Now at last you know what it’s all about — what we’re all about,” Luce said as he patted David’s back and let him weep.

  Chapter VII

  Early in January, Funston called David into his office.

  “Before I transfer you,” the colonel said, “I wanted to ask you what was wrong. Luce tells me that Willie Duncan’s death hit you hard.”

  David shrugged and nodded.

  “Would you like to talk about it?”

  “No sir.”

  Funston sat looking at him for several moments. “Lieutenant Hand, I would have sent you back to Manila a long time ago if we could have gotten a replacement, but I needed you. However, they are now sending me a Spaniard named Segovia who also has some Tagalog. I’ll give you the same advice I’ve given men like you before. War is a nasty, brutal business, and the more assiduously it is waged, the faster it is over. The only way a man can stand it is to make himself realize that moral decisions, over and above acting with ordinary decency when it is possible, are not in his power to make. There is no use stewing over them. Duncan and his men died a bad death, and I’m as sorry about it as anyone, but to mourn too long or to tear yourself apart over how you feel toward their captors is a reaction that Duncan himself would be the first to tell you not to entertain.”

  Funston shook his head. “We always want to give others the benefit of our experience, don’t we, and it’s never possible. Anyway, I think a change of scene may do you good, so I’m sending you back to Major Burns. You’ve done good work for us, David, even if it didn’t seem to have much result, and I’m grateful to you. I wish you the best of luck and a tranquil mind.” He rose and put out his hand.

  David shook hands with him. “Thank you, sir. I want you to know that my — my unhappiness has nothing to do with you. It has been a pleasure to serve under you.”

  When he said goodbye to Luce, it was with mixed feelings, for Luce symbolized to him his own thoughts — thoughts he didn’t care to examine too closely — and Luce understood the dark side of him more than a matter-of-fact good soldier like Funston ever could.

  “Cheer up, David. You’ll have a marvelous time in the flesh pots of Manila. I envy you.”

  “Thank you, George — for everything. I hope the war is over soon.”

  As he left the site of the last of his innocence behind, he thought grimly once again of the trees in that clearing and of their dreadful fruit. He put Duster into his distance-eating amble and thankfully left San Isidro behind. He spent the night with the garrison at San Miguel, but felt too tired to eat and went right to bed. He had felt tired for so long that he could hardly remember how it felt to be fresh. Even in this coolest part of the year the sun was hot at midday and the air more laden with moisture than it ever was in Boston.

  Boston. Home. Another planet. He found it difficult to remember a time when he had been elsewhere than in this world of high yellow cogon grass, dark gnarled yacal trees, broad-leafed banyans, rice paddies, sugar cane, tobacco fields. Had he ev
er ridden anywhere without unconsciously watching for the telltale movement of a leaf that betrayed a hidden sniper, the tossing heads of grass that could be an ambush? Every peasant farmer he passed on the road made him wonder what guerrilla band he belonged to, what kind of rifle he had hidden in his thatched nipa hut.

  Janice wrote that the war was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States, especially as more and more troops were being poured into the Philippines, apparently with little result beyond the growing casualty lists. She sent him a photograph of Francis and Elisabeth, solemn children of three and four years old looking uncomfortable in their best clothes, Francis in a sailor suit with a beribboned straw hat perched on his curly head, and Elisabeth in an elaborate pinafore, long white stockings, white patent-leather shoes, and an enormous bow in her long blond hair. For all that he felt any attachment to them, they might have been a neighbor’s children.

  “Rob — Dr. Connors, that is — says that if all children were like Elisabeth, he would be out of business. However, I’ve had Francis to him so often that I feel as if he and I were old friends!”

  The day David left San Miguel for Malolos seemed unseasonably hot, and the nagging headache he had suffered from for several days turned into an agonizing pounding. The mule train of supplies he had picked up in San Miguel for security sent up a roiling column of dust from the dry road, and he could feel the grit of it where his collar rubbed against his neck, under his eyelids, even in his teeth. He contemplated cantering ahead to get out of the dust but lacked the energy even to do that. As the afternoon wore on, he began to nod in the saddle, coming awake every now and then in painful starts. He felt a general malaise so great that it was all he could do to stay on his horse.

  Sunstroke, that was what was wrong with him, he decided. How strange that it should catch him now when he had gone through months of hard riding in the intense heat during April and May without suffering so much as a dizzy spell. He remembered all of the men he had seen who had been affected: the paleness, the retching, the convulsions, and sometimes the death. They had lost more men to sunstroke and dysentery than to all other causes combined, including the guerrillas. It was as if the very country itself were trying to evict them.