Kincaid's Battery
Page 69
LXIX
SOUTHERN CROSS AND NORTHERN STAR
A red streak and white sun-lit puff sprang from the leading monitor'sturret, and the jarring boom of a vast gun came over the water, whollyunlike the ringing peals of Gaines's lighter armament. Now its oppositecranny puffed and thundered. The man smiled an instant. "Spitting on herhands," he said, but then murmured to himself, "Lord! look at thatwind!"
"Is it bad?" asked Anna.
"It'll blow every bit of smoke into our men's eyes," he sighed.
The two white puffs melted into the perfect blue of sea and skyunanswered. Fort Gaines and its besiegers even ceased to fire. Theirfate was not in their own guns. More and more weird waxed the grislydumbness of five-sided Morgan and the spectral silence of the oncomingleague-long fleet. The light wind freshened. By the bell's six taps itwas seven o'clock. The boat drifting in on the tide made Fort Gainesseem to move seaward. Miranda looked back to Fort Powell and then out tosea again.
"The worst," said Anna, reading her thought, "will be down there withthe _Tennessee_."
Miranda answered low: "Suppose, Nan, that, after all, he should--?"
Anna turned sharply: "Get here? I expect it! Oh, you may gaze! I don'tforget how often I've flouted Con's intuitions. But I've got one now, abig one!"
"That he's coming?"
"Been coming these two days--pure presentiment!"
"Nan, whether he is or not, if you'll tell us what Colonel Greenleafwrote you I'll tell you--"
For a second Anna stared, Miranda wrinkling; but then, with her eyes onthe fleet, she shook her head: "You're mighty good, 'Randa, you and Con,never to have asked me in all these months; but neither he nor Hilarynor I will ever tell that. I wish none of us knew it. For one thing, wedon't, any of us, know clearly enough what really happened. Dear FredGreenleaf!--if he _does_ wear the blue, and _is_ right now over therebehind Fort Gaines!"
She stood a moment pondering a fact not in the Union soldier's letter atall; that only through his masterful, self-sacrificing intercession inmilitary court had Hilary escaped the death of a spy. But then herthought came back to Miranda's request: "I can't tell you, for I can'ttell Con. Flora's her cousin, through Steve, and if she ever marriesCaptain Irby she'll be Hilary's cousin, and--"
There, suddenly and once for all, the theme was dropped. Some man'squick word broke in. Fort Morgan had veiled itself in the smoke of itsown broadside. Now came its thunder and the answering flame and roar ofthe _Brooklyn's_ bow-chaser. The battle had begun. The ship, still halfa mile from its mark, was coming on as straight as her gun could blaze,her redskin ally at her side, and all the others, large and less,bounding after by twos. And now in lurid flash and steady roar thelightning and thunder darted and rolled from Morgan, its water-battery,and the Mobile squadron, and from the bow guns of the _Brooklyn_ and_Hartford_.
How marvelously fire, din and smoke shriveled up the time, which thecaptain's small clock so mincingly ticked off. A cabin-boy brought afragrant tray of breakfast, but the grateful ladies could only laugh atit. There was no moment to observe even the few pretty sail-boats whichthe fearful import and majesty of the strife lured down about them onthe light side-wind.
"Has the _Tennessee_ not fired yet?" anxiously asked Anna, but no onewas sure. Across the breeze, that kept the near side of the pictureuncurtained, she perfectly saw the _Tecumseh_ close abreast of theflashing, smoke-shrouded fort, the _Brooklyn_ to windward abreast ofboth, and the Hartford at the Brooklyn's heels with her signalfluttering to all behind, "Close order."
"Why don't the ships--?" Anna had it on her lips to cry, when the wholesunward side of the _Brooklyn,_ and then of the _Hartford,_ vomitedfire, iron and blinding, strangling smoke into the water-battery and thefort, where the light air held it. God's mercy! you could see thecheering of the fleet's crews, which the ear could barely gather out ofthe far uproar, and just as it floated to the gazers they beheld the_Tecumseh_ turn square toward them and head straight across the doubleline of torpedoes for the _Tennessee._
We never catch all of "whatever happens," and neither Callender saw thebrave men in gray who for one moment of horror fled from their own gunsin water-battery and fort; but all at once they beheld the _Tecumseh_heave, stagger, and lurch like a drunkard, men spring from her turretinto the sea, the _Brooklyn_ falter, slacken fire and draw back, theHartford and the whole huddled fleet come to a stand, and the ralliedfort cheer and belch havoc into the ships while the _Tecumseh_ sunk herhead, lifted her screw into air and vanished beneath the wave. They sawMobile Point a semicircle of darting fire, and the _Brooklyn_ "athwartthe _Hartford's_ hawse"; but they did not see, atom-small, perched highin the rigging of the flag-ship and demanding from the decks below, "whythis?" and "why that?" a certain "plain sailor" well known to NewOrleans and the wide world; did not see the torpedoes lying in wateryambush for him, nor hear the dread tale of them called to him from the_Brooklyn_ while his ship passed astern of her, nor him command "fullspeed ahead" as he retorted, "Damn the torpedoes!"
They saw his ship and her small consort sweep undestroyed over thedead-line, the _Brooklyn_ follow with hers, the Mobile gunboats rakethe four with a fire they could not return, and behind them Fort Morganand the other ships rend and shatter each other, shroud the air withsmoke and thresh the waters white with shot and shell, shrapnel,canister and grape. And then they saw their own _Tennessee_ ignore themonitors and charge the _Hartford_. But they beheld, too, the_Hartford's_ better speed avoid the fearful blow and press on up thechannel and the bay, though torn and bleeding from her foe's broadside,while her own futilely glanced or rebounded from his impenetrable mail.
Wisely, rightly their boat turned and slowly drew away toward FortPowell and Cedar Point. Yet as from her after deck they saw the sameexploit, at the same murderous cost, repeated by the _Brooklyn_ andanother and another great ship and their consorts, while not a torpedodid its work, they tearfully called the hour "glorious" and "victorious"for the _Tennessee_ and her weak squadron, that still fought on. So itseemed to them even when more dimly, as distance and confusion grew andrain-clouds gathered, they saw a wooden ship ram the _Tennessee_, butglance off, and the slow _Tennessee_ drop astern, allow a sixth tallship and small consort to pass, but turn in the wake of the seventh andall but disembowel her with the fire of her great bow gun.
Ah, Anna! Even so, the shattered, steam-scalded thing came on and thelast of the fleet was in. Yonder, a mere league eastward, it moved upthe bay. Yet proudly hope throbbed on while still Mobile, behind otherdefenses, lay thirty miles away, while her gunboats still raked theships, while on Powell, Gaines and Morgan still floated the Southerncross, and while, down in the pass, still unharmed, paused only forbreath the _Tennessee_.
"Prisoners! they are all our prisoners!" tearfully exulted the fondCallenders. But on the word they saw the scene dissolve into a new one.Through a squall of wind and rain, out from the line of ships, four oftheir consorts glided away eastward, flashing and howling, in chase ofthe overmatched gunboats, that flashed and howled in retort as theyfled. On the west a Federal flotilla in Mississippi Sound, steaming upathwart Grant's Pass, opened on Fort Powell and awoke its thunders. Ah,ah! Kincaid's Battery at last! Red, white and red they sent buffet forbuffet, and Anna's heart was longing anew for their tall hero and hers,when a voice hard by said, "She's coming back, sir, the _Tennessee_."
Out in the bay the fleet, about to anchor, turned and awaited the newonset. By the time it was at hand the Mobile gunboats, one burning, onefled, one captured, counted for nothing, yet on crept the _Tennessee_,still singling out the _Hartford_, and here the two Callenders, theirboat hovering as near Powell and Gaines as it dared, looked on thetitanic melee that fell round her. Like hounds and hunters on a bearrobbed of her whelps, seventeen to one, they set upon her so thicklythat their trouble was not to destroy one another. Near the beginningone cut her own flag-ship almost to the water-line. The first that smotethe quarry--at ten knots speed--glanced and her broadside rolledharmless into the bay, whil
e two guns of her monster adversary letdaylight through and through the wooden ship. From the turret of aclose-creeping monitor came the four-hundred-and-forty-pound bolt ofher fifteen-inch gun, crushing the lone foe terribly yet not quitepiercing through. Another wooden ship charged, hit squarely a tearingblow, yet slid off, lay for a moment touching sides with the ironclad,while they lacerated each other like lion and tiger, and then droppedaway. The hunted _Hartford_ gave a staggering thrust and futilebroadside.
So for an hour went the fight; ships charging, the _Tennessee_ crawlingever after her one picked antagonist, the monitors' awful guns foreverpounding her iron back and sides. But at length her mail began to yield,her best guns went silent, her smokestack was down, her steering-chainswere gone, Buchanan lay heavily wounded. Of Farragut's twenty-sevenhundred men more than a seventh had fallen, victims mainly of the bearand her cubs, yet there she weltered, helpless. From her grim disjointedcasemate her valorous captain let down the Southern cross, the whiteflag rose, and instantly, everywhere, God's thunder and man's alikeceased, and the merciful heavens smiled white and blue again. But theirsmile was on the flag of the Union, and mutely standing in each other'sembrace, with hearts as nearly right as they could know, Anna andMiranda gazed on the victorious stars-and-stripes and wept.
What caused Anna to start and glance behind she did not know; but doingso she stared an instant breathless and then, as she clutched Mirandafor support, moaned to the tall, wasted, sadly smiling, crutched figurethat moved closer--
"Oh, Hilary! Are you Hilary Kincaid?"