Bagley, Desmond - Wyatts Hurricane

by Wyatts Hurricane

  Wyatt said, "Mabel is going to hit us head-on. There'll be floods."

  "There'd better be. From a military point of view Serrurier is right on top. I'll bet he's crowing."

  "He won't if he looks behind him -- out to sea."

  Dawson came back carrying a thin piece of sheet metal under his arm. "No spades; but this might do it."

  Causton and Wyatt deepened the drainage trench and scooped out another while Dawson watched them. Wyatt looked up. "How are your hands?"

  "Okay," said Dawson. "A doctor fixed them up."

  "What are you hanging round here for?" asked Wyatt. "You should get away up the Negrito while you have the chance."

  Dawson shook his head. "Have you seen those people? I've never seen a more beaten, dispirited crowd. I'm scared that if I joined them I'd get to feeling like that. Anyway, maybe I can help out here, somehow."

  "What do you think you can do?" asked Causton. "You can't use your hands, so you can't fire a gun or dig a hole. I don't see the point of it."

  Dawson shrugged. "I'm not running any more," he said stubbornly. "I've been running like hell for a long time, a lot of years. Well, I'm stopping right here on top of this ridge."

  Causton looked across at Wyatt and raised his eyebrows, then smiled faintly, but he merely said, "I think that's all we can do here. Let's go up and see what trouble is coming."

  The last of the people of St. Pierre had passed by on their way up into the Negrito Valley, but the road in the far distance was speckled with trudging figures making their way to high ground. The verdant greenness of the sugar-cane fields looked like a raging sea as the strengthening wind blew waves across the springy canes. Only the soldiers were left, and very few of those in the thin line of trenches scored across the ridge, but there would soon be more as the embattled army in St. Pierre retreated on this position.

  Wyatt strode to the top of the ridge and dropped flat near a rebel soldier, who turned and grinned at h im. He said, "What is happening, soldier?"

  ' The man's grin widened. "There," he said, and stabbed out a finger. "They come soon -- maybe ten minutes." He checked the breech of his rifle and laid some clips of ammunition before him.

  Wyatt looked down the bare slope of the ridge towards the city. The sound of firing was very close and an occasional stray bullet whistled overhead. Soon he saw movement at the bottom of the slope and a group of men began to trudge up the hill, unhurriedly but making good time. From behind him an officer called out an order and the three men grouped round a machine-gun a dozen yards away got busy and swivelled the gun in the direction of the officer's pointing finger.

  The men climbing the ridge reached the top and passed • over. They were carrying a mortar which they assembled quickly on the reverse slope. Causton watched them and said critically. "Not many mortar bombs left."

  More men were climbing the ridge now, moving steadily in disciplined retreat and covered by their comrades still fighting the confused battle among the houses below. Causton guessed he was witnessing the last jump in the controlled and planned leap-frogging movement which had brought Pavel's defending force across St. Pierre, and he was impressed by the steady bearing of the men. This was no rout in undisciplined panic like the debacle he had been involved in earlier, but an orderly withdrawal in the face of the enemy, one of the most difficult of military operations.

  Wyatt, after casting a brief glance at the retreating men, had lifted his eyes to the south. The horizon was dark, nearly black, lit only by the dim flickering of distant lightning embedded in thick cloud, and the nearer nimbostratus was a sickly yellow, seemingly illuminated from the inside. The wind was backing to the west and was now much stronger. He estimated it to be force seven verging on force eight -- about forty miles an hour and gusting up to fifty miles an hour. It was nothing to worry anyone who did not know what was coming and was merely a gale such as San Fernandez had known many times. Probably Rocambeau, if he was still in command, would welcome it as bringing rain to extinguish the many fires in the city.

  The retreating soldiers were now streaming over the ridge and were marshalled by their non-coms into the firing line and issued with more ammunition. They lay on the crest of the ridge in the shallow foxholes that had been dug for them md again set their faces towards the oncoming enemy.

  Causton nudged Wyatt. "Those houses down there -- how high are they above sea-level?"

  Wyatt considered. The ridge was not very high and the slope to the city was long. He said, "If this ridge is on the eighty-foot contour, then they shouldn't be more than fifty feet up."

  "Then the tidal wave should wash as high as that, then?"

  "It will," said Wyatt. "It will probably wash half-way up the slope."

  Causton pulled at his lower lip. "I think the idea here is to pin the Government troops against those houses. They're three hundred yards away and the troops will have to attack uphill and across open ground. Maybe Favel will be able to do it, after all. But it'll be tricky disengaging the last of his men."

  Dawson said, "I hope you're right, Wyatt. I hope this tidal wave of yours doesn't come boiling over this ridge. It would drown the lot of us." He shook his head and grinned in wonder. "Christ, what a position to be in -- I must be nuts."

  "Perhaps we're all light-headed," said Causton. "We're seeing something that's never been tried before -- the use of a hurricane to smash an army. What a hell of a story this will be when -- and if -- I get out of here."

  "It has been done before," said Wyatt. "Favel quoted a precedent -- when Moses crossed the Red Sea with the Egyptians after him."

  "That's right," said Causton. "I hadn't thought of that one.

  "It's a damned good--" He pointed suddenly. "Look, something's happening down there."

  A long line of men had emerged on to the slope, flitting about and on the move all the time, stopping only briefly to fire back at the houses. The machine-gun near-by cleared its throat in a coughing burst, then settled down to a steady charter, and all the men along the ridge began to shoot, giving covering fire to the last of the rebel army retreating towards them. They had the advantage of height, little though it was, and could fire over the heads of their own men.

  There was a sharp crack from behind as the mortar went off, and seconds later the bomb burst just short of the nearest house. There were more explosions among the houses, and from the rear came a louder report and the whistle of a shell as one of the few remaining guns fired. Again Causton heard that unearthly twittering in the air about him and pulled down his head below the level of the ridge. "The bastards haven't any politesse" he said. "They're shooting back."

  The last of Pavel's men came pouring over the ridge, to stumble and collapse in the shelter of the reverse slope. They had left some of their number behind -- Wyatt could see three crumpled heaps half-way up the slope, and he thought of the sacrifices these men must have made to hold back the Government army until the city had been evacuated. The men rested and got back their breath and then, after a drink of water and a quick snack Which was waiting for them, they rejoined the line.

  Meanwhile there was a pause. Desultory and sporadic firing came from the houses, which had little or no effect, and the rebels did not fire at all under strict instructions from their officers -- there was little enough ammunition left to waste any of it. It was obvious that the Government general was regrouping in the cover of the city for the assault on the ridge.

  In spite of the rapidly cooling air Causton sweated gently. He said, "I hope to God we can hold them. When the attack comes it's going to be a big one. Where's that damned hurricane of yours, Wyatt?"

  Wyatt's eyes were on the horizon. "It's coming," he said calmly. "The wind is rising all the time. There are the rain clouds coming up -- the nimbostratus and the fractonimbus. The fighting will stop pretty soon. No one can fight a battle in a hurricane."

  The wind was now fifty miles an hour, gusting to sixty, and the smoke clouds over St. Pierre had been broken down into a diffused haz
e driving before the wind. This made it difficult to see the sea, but he managed to see the flecks of white out there which indicated even higher winds.

  "Here they come," said Causton, and flattened himself out as the shooting from the houses suddenly increased to a crescendo. A wave of soldiers in light blue uniforms emerged at the foot of the slope and began to advance, the individual men zig-zagging and changing direction abruptly, sometimes dropping on one knee to fire. They came on quickly and when they had advanced a hundred yards another wave broke from the houses to buttress the assault.

  "Jesus!" said Dawson in a Choked voice. "There must be a couple of thousand of them down there. Why the hell don't we shoot?"

  Not a shot came from the top of the ridge as the flood of blue-clad men surged up the slope. The wind was now strong enough to hamper them and Wyatt could see the fluttering of their clothing, and twice the black dot of a uniform cap as it was blown away. Some of the men lost their footing and, taken off balance, were pushed by the gusting wind, but still they came on, scuttling at the crouch and continually climbing higher.

  It was not until the first of them were half-way up that a Very light soared up from the top of the ridge, to burst in red stars over the slope. Immediately pandemonium broke loose as the rebels opened up a concentrated fire. The rifles cracked, the machine-guns hammered, and from behind came the deeper cough of the few guns and mortars.

  The oncoming wave of men shivered abruptly and then stopped dead. Causton saw a swathe of them cut down like wheat before the scythe as a defending machine-gun swivelled and chopped them with a moving blade of bullets, and all over that open ground men were falling, either dead, wounded or desperately seeking cover where there was none. He noted that half of Pavel's machine-guns were firing on fixed lines so that the attackers were caught in a net stitched in the air with bullets -- they would die if they advanced and they would die if they ran because in either event they would run right into the line of fire of the angled machine-guns.

  Mortar bombs and shells dropped among the trapped men -- Favel was firing his last ammunition with extravagant prodigality, staking everything on the coming hurricane. The earth shook and fountained with darkly blossoming trees and the clouds of smoke and dust were snatched by the wind and blown away. A pitifully thin fire came from below, perhaps there were few to shoot or perhaps those alive were too shattered to care.

  For five minutes that seemed an eternity the uproar went on and then, suddenly, as though on command, the line of attackers broke and ebbed away, leaving a wrack of bodies behind to mark the highest level of the assault, a bare hundred yards from the crest of the ridge. And as they ran back in panic, so they still died, hit by rifle bullets, cut in two by the murderous machine-guns and blown to pieces by the mortar bombs. When all was still again the ground was littered with the shattered wreckage of what had been men.

  "Oh, my God!" breathed Dawson. His face was pale and sickly and he let out his breath with a shuddering sigh. "They must have lost a quarter of their men."

  Causton stirred. "Serrurier must have taken over," he said quietly. "Rocambeau would never have made a damn'-fool frontal attack like that -- not at this stage of the game." He turned and looked back at the mortar team just behind. "These boys have shot their bolt -- they have no ammunition left. I don't know if we can stand another attack."

  "There'll be no more attacks," said Wyatt with calm certitude. "As far as the fighting goes this war is over." He looked down the slope at the tumbled heaps of corpses. "I wish I could have said that half an hour ago, but it doesn't really make any difference. They'll all die now." He withdrew from the ridge and walked away towards the foxhole.

  Down in St. Pierre thousands of men would be killed in the next few hours because he had told Favel of the approaching hurricane, and the guilt weighed heavily upon him. But he could not see what else he could have done.

  And there was something else. He could not even look after the safety of a single girl. He did not know where Julie was -- whether she was dead or alive or captured by Rocambeau's men. He had not properly seen her in his preoccupation with the hurricane, but now he saw her whole, and he found the tears running down his cheeks -- not tears of self-pity, or even tears for Julie, but tears of blind rage at his stupidity and impotent futility.

  Wyatt was very young for his years.

  Causton listened to the fire-fight still crackling away to the left. "I hope he's right. When Favel was faced with a similar problem he outflanked the position." He jerked his head towards the distant sound of battle. "If Serrurier breaks through along there he'll come along the ridge rolling up these rebels like a carpet."

  "I think Wyatt's right, though," said Dawson. "Look out to sea."

  The city was lost in a writhing grey mist through which the fires burned redly, and the horizon was black. Streamers of low cloud fled overhead like wraiths in the blustering wind Which had sharply increased in violence and was already raising its voice in a devil's yell. Lightning flickered briefly over the sea and a single drop of rain fell on Causton's hand.

  He looked up. "It does look a bit dirty. God help sailors on a night like this."

  "God help Serrurier and his army," said Dawson, staring down at St. Pierre.

  Causton looked back to where Wyatt was sitting at the edge of the foxhole. "He's taking it badly -- he thinks he's failed. He hasn't yet realized that perfection doesn't exist, the damned young fool. But hell learn that life is a matter of horse-trading -- a bit of bad for a lot of good."

  "I hope he never does learn," said Dawson in a low voice. "I learned that lesson and it never did me any good." He looked Causton in the eye and, after a moment, Causton looked away.

  II

  Rawsthorne was not a young man and two days of exertion and life in the open had told on him. He could not move fast over the hilly ground -- his lungs had long since lost their elasticity and his legs their driving power. The breath in his throat rasped painfully as he tried to keep up a good pace and the muscles of his thighs ached abominably.

  But he was in better shape than Mrs. Warmington, whom the years of cream cakes and lack of exercise had softened to a doughy flesh. She panted and floundered behind him, her too generous curves bouncing with the effort, and all the time she moaned her misery in a wailing undertone, an obbligato to the keening of the rising wind.

  In spite of her wounds, Julie was the fittest of the three. Although her legs were stiff and sore because of the bayonet jabs, her muscles were hard and tough and her breath came evenly as she followed Mrs. Warmington. The brisk sets of hard-played tennis now paid off and she had no difficulty in this rough scramble over the hills.

  It was Rawsthorne who had made the plan. "It's no use going further west to escape the army," he said. "The ground is low about St. Michel -- and we certainly can't stay here because Rocambeau might be beaten back again. We'll have to cut across the back of his army and go north over the hills -- perhaps as far as the Negrito."

  "How far is that?" asked Mrs. Warmington uneasily.

  "Not far," said Rawsthorne reassuringly. "We'll have to walk about eight miles before we're looking into the Negrito Valley." He did not say that those eight miles were over rough country, nor that the country would probably be alive with deserters.

  Because Rawsthorne had doubts about his ability to climb the quarry cliff -- and private, unexpressed doubts about Mrs. Warmington's expertise as a climber -- they went down the track towards the main road, moving stealthily and keeping an eye open for trouble. They did not want to meet the guard who had disappeared in that direction. They left the track at the point where they had originally climbed up to the banana plantation, and Julie got a lump in her throat when she saw the imprint of Eumenides's shoe still visible in the dust.

  The plantation seemed deserted, but they went with caution all the same, slipping through the rows of plants as quietly as they could. Rawsthorne led them to the hollow where they had dug the foxholes in the hope of finding a remnant o
f food and, more important, water. But there was nothing at all, just four empty holes and a Utter of cans and bottles.

  Julie looked at the hole that had been filled in and felt a great sorrow as she thought of the Greek. First we dig 'em, then we die in 'em. Eumenides had fulfilled the prophecy.

  Rawsthorne said, "If it wasn't for the war I would recommend that we stay here." He cocked his head on one side. "Do you think the fighting is going away or not?"

  Julie listened to the guns and shook her head. "It's difficult to say."

  "Yes, it is," said Rawsthorne. "If Rocambeau is defeated again hell be thrown back through here and we'll be back where we started."

  Mrs. Warmington surveyed the hollow and shuddered. "Let's get away from this horrible place," she said in a trembling voice. "It frightens me."

  And well it might, thought Julie; you killed a man here.

  "We'll go north," said Rawsthorne. "Into this little valley and over the next ridge. We must be very careful, though; there may be desperate men about."

  So they went through the plantation, across the service road and, carefully avoiding the convict barracks, pushed on up the ridge on the other side. At first Rawsthorne kept up a cracking pace, but he did not have the stamina for it and gradually his pace slowed so that even Mrs. Warmington could keep up with him. The going was not • difficult while they were on cultivated ground and in spite of their slower pace they made good time.

  At the top of the first ridge they left the banana plantations and entered pineapple fields, where all was well as long as they walked between the rows and avoided the sharp, spiky leaves. But then they came to sugar-cane and, rinding the thicket too hard to push through, had to cast about to find a road leading in the right direction. It was a narrow dusty track between the high green canes, which rustled and crackled under the press of the breeze. In spite of the breeze and the high feathery clouds which veiled and haloed the sun it was still very hot, and Julie fell into a daze as she mechanically plodded behind Mrs. Warmington.