The invasion fleet came into view, silhouetted by the dawn. Twenty or so versts beyond it rose the rock of Kjell, with the ruins of a lighthouse at its promontory. Another troop ship like Dunstable, called Wessex, was the largest vessel in the convoy. Alongside her steamed the protected cruisers Sophie and Beatrix, resplendent in their tropical white hulls capped by buff superstructures and funnels. At the head of the convoy was the oceangoing monitor Unyielding, a squat, gray ship mounting a single massive naval rifle at her fore.
Granger stood at Fletch’s signal lamp, flickering a greeting to the other ships that was promptly returned by Beatrix, the invasion’s flagship under Rear Admiral Pritchard. Noting it, Granger addressed the engine room speaking tube. “Full ahead, we are to link up with the fleet immediately.”
Fletch accelerated virtually in tandem with Dunstable.
“When does the shooting start? Surely the Bexarians must see us, or at least the bulk of the fleet.” Bethany wondered.
“When the landings begin. No one but Pritchard knows the exact hour of that but, I ‘spect it is coming soon.” Boyle replied.
“Couldn’t they simply begin firing on us.”
“No girl, none of our ships are within their range, and, even if they were, they will wait as long as they can to fire. When they do that monitor will sight on them and open up with her big gun.”
“Where is their fleet?”
Boyle considered this with some effort. “A fine question, that. All I know is that Bexar’s high seas fleet is only one fifth the tonnage of our own and this coaling station means more to us than it does to them. They are likely spread too thin to cover it. Truly, this ain’t much of an invasion. My da’ was on the Marion in the last war, saw 30,000 fellows go ashore under the fire of nearly a thousand guns.”
“What came of it?”
“They didn’t beach no big ships like now, it was for them to row ashore. A good many boats were holed by grape and officers shot by riflemen before they ever got ashore but ultimately we had plenty of men. We were after the Rhin Salient, and we got it, only to give it back in some treaty.”
A bugle call emanated from Dunstable’s forecastle and all on Fletch’s deck turned to look. The noise had called together scores of soldiers who formed neat rows. Their end was not clear until a chaplain came before them and mounted on a capstan so as to be seen easily. He opened his book and began to read to and bless the assembled troops.
“Can’t hurt.” Boyle observed. “I don’t envy those lads, strange to think they woke in a warm bunk this morning and tonight they’ll be sleeping in a trench or in the grave.”
“That’s terribly grim.” Bethany admonished.
Boyle frowned. “Aye, it is.”
The soldiers began to sing hymns.
At exactly noon a plain green flag ran up Beatrix’s mizzen. She and her sister ship lay one verst from Kjell, parallel with the island’s largest beach. Just behind her, acting on the signal, Unyielding, touched off her main gun, creating a sizable explosion inland. True to Boyle’s prediction, this triggered a barrage of fire from concealed gun positions along the beach and atop the islands few barren hills. Responding to fire along the beach, Beatrix and Sophie loosed full broadsides. On Fletch’s deck a few eager sailor’s whooped with joy at the display. Granger, standing in his full uniform with sword and pistol buckled on, ordered them to stay quiet. Fletch was the furthest fighting ship from the action at three versts distant. Only the troopships were farther out, and the yacht’s duty was to keep watch over them until their hour of sacrifice came.
Bethany was on the bridge so as to stay out of the way of the men on deck should fast action be called for. This was a compromise, she had first been instructed to stay below, and only her protest that if she witnessed the landings she could paint them later, and thereby ensure Fletch’s role was preserved for history, had secured her this place. To aid this she had been furnished with a spyglass, which was presently focused on the three ship firing line. They made a strange orchestra: the crashing, coordinated fire of the two cruisers playing against the apparently more precise but much slower, louder booming of the monitor’s rifle. At least twenty fires burned on the island now. Some rose from shell holes, others emanated from flaming structures: the scant colonial settlement and garrison, along with whatever the Bexarians had seen fit to add during their occupation. The coaling station itself, a mole lined with cranes, and barges for feeding ships, was unscathed.
Gun smoke rolled across the water in vast clouds. It mingled with waste steam, pure white in contrast to the dirty smoke, that hissed from every funnel in fleet, the product of boilers fired to their peak in anticipation of sudden action. As the smoke clouds grew larger they formed a great haze lying between the firing line and Fletch, pierced only by the muzzle flashes of friendly and enemy guns.
Bethany peered down at Fletch’s gunners. They stood around their weapon as if it were about to inspected by an Admiral, awash with tension, seemingly unable to move, let alone sit. Nock was the only one engaged in any activity, he watched the action through the gun’s rangefinder.
Without warning, a horrible sound rose from the firing line, followed instantly by an explosion whose fire soared high above the veil of smoke. The men on Fletch’s deck moved to the gunnel on the side nearest the blast and stared at it. Granger and his officers sighted on it with spyglasses.
“It’s the Beatrix!” A sailor shouted.
Threlfall burst from the chart room holding a scrap of paper, addressing Granger he announced: “Sophie reports Beatrix struck amidships, magazine explosion likely. Pritchard’s status not known. Captain Halstead to command in his absence.”
An alarmed murmur rippled across the deck. Bethany saw a handful of black shapes in the water near the disappearing stern of the Beatrix. Sophie and Unyielding declined to rescue them and moved back from the beach, slowing their fire, concentrating it on a single spot. Finally, there rose a fireball from the center of the island.
“Battery responsible for loss of Beatrix has been destroyed.” Threlfall reported, leaning through the open chartroom door. The crew did not celebrate this, they knew well enough that more such guns could be lurking on the island.
The surviving cruiser and monitor fired a few more barrages and then halted. When no fire was seen or heard coming from the island, Sophie made a long call with her steam whistle: ‘troopships, advance!’
Dunstable and Wessex began to move, gaining speed rapidly. When they passed Fletch Granger ordered full ahead and told the helm to follow a few hundred arshins behind. Enormous battle flags broke out at the troopships’ sterns. They were Grand Jacks, generally reserved for warships - issued to the doomed vessels as a sort of funeral honor. Scores of men stood in ranks on the fantails and forecastles of the ships, headed by small parties assigned the task of deploying the nets their brothers would clamber down. An occasional rifle shot or small shell flew past the rapidly advancing vessels to little effect. Sophie prosecuted the emplacements responsible for the latter as quick as she could find them.
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Farley and his marines came on deck, heavily armed. It was unlikely that the Bexarian defenders would bother to fire on the small ship, but if they did, the marine marksmen could pick them off more efficiently than the deck gun.
Bethany fixed her glass on the beach, it was framed on either side by the hulls of the troopships and growing nearer quickly. A hideous screech echoed from beneath the ships as they crossed the reef at speed, gouging their bottoms. It was a potentially fatal move, but the beach was only a few score arshins away now, and they would float long enough.
“Mustn’t we stop?” Bethany asked the helmsman.
“Not at all, we have a far shallower draft.” The young man replied.
Puffs of smoke and steam appeared as burning debris on the beach, much of it Beatrix’s, was smothered by the tide the ships generated. Bethany thought she saw at least one sailor from the wrecked cruiser disappear beneath Wessex. Before she could be sure her attention was stolen by an explosion at Dunstable’s fore followed by the whip-crack sounds of snapping cable. Her foremast, entirely decorative except for a lookout’s post, had been struck by a shell and was breaking away. Men ran from pilot house at the center of the bridge as the steel structure smashed into it and came to rest against the cables that supported the ship’s fore funnel. It remained stationary there for but a moment before rolling to starboard and falling from the deck toward the sea, stopped halfway down by the strength of the single guy-wire that was still attached to its middle. Her helm destroyed, Dunstable weaved a bit but her inertia carried her onward toward the beach.
The landing itself surprised Bethany with its mildness. Pressing into the soft sand was nothing compared to going over the reef. Both vessels got nearly a third of their length entirely out of the water and Bethany could faintly see the red anti-fouling paint on the lower portions of their hulls. Vast geysers of steam rose from the beached ships’ funnels as their engineers opened the pressure valves to the emergency dump position while the stokers slammed their dampers shut. The sooner the fires died the better, for the now trapped ships could no longer avoid shellfire and a boiler explosion was almost as bad as a magazine going up.
The nets unfurled fore and aft and men began to race down them. At the vessels’ sterns the soldiers found themselves in neck deep water, and so a mad rush forward began, most deciding it would be far more survivable to walk ashore rather than try to swim with the weight of a rifle and pack. The resulting crush at the forwards nets sent a few tumbling from the top of the nets to beach, breaking their backs.
For the first time since the landings began, a Bexarian gun spoke. It was was a small, wheeled, artillery piece operating from edge of the beach. Bethany supposed it must have been brought up after the bombardment, for it could not have survived it. The first shot struck Wessex near her starboard anchor, breaking its chain and sending it hurtling into the sand. It tore off a soldier’s cap, just missing his skull, but did no other damage.
The Bexarian gun fired again, this time targeting the knot of men already on the beach, and succeeded in killing a handful of them. Their fellow soldiers scattered away from the impact then coalesced further up the beach and began to advance on the gun. As they did so another was brought up by a team of men pushing hard against its carriage. The weapon was loaded, traversed, and fired to cover its twin. One of the few deck guns on Dunstable tried to fire on the newcomer but could not aim low enough, sending its shell over the enemy instead.
Apparently undeterred by the arrival of the artillery, scores of men poured down the nets and onto the beach. Seeing this, the Bexarians targeted the sides of the troopships where the nets lay and fired into them, tearing the nets and vaporizing tens of unlucky soldiers while sending countless others plummeting into the sand. Bexarian riflemen used the chaos to rise from their cover in a trench behind the guns and fire volleys into the advancing troops. Under this cover, five more artillery pieces were brought, some harnessed to horses.
Granger leaned into the chartoom and demanded: “Has Sophie said anything, are they seeing this? Those boys need fire support now!”
“They are getting reports but cannot see past the troopships from their vantage point.” Threlfall answered.
“Tell them to start shooting, overshooting preferably, and we will walk their fire in.” Granger commanded.
Threlfall turned immediately to his pen: “Right away.”
In short order, a barrage of 80 line shells rained down behind the Bexarian position, shaking what few trees remained on the island.
“Mr. Nock, range?!” Granger inquired.
“Shots landed about 200 arshins beyond the gun line, sir!” Nock replied, consulting his rangefinder.
Granger turned back to Threlfall: “Tell them to reel it in by 200 arshins.”
“Already done, sir.” Threlfall reported.
Sure enough another barrage whistled over Fletch and this time struck two thirds of the enemy line.
The soldiers who had until now been lying prone on the sand stood with a roar and advanced. Just above what had been the troopships’ waterlines, hatches opened and soldiers began to leap from them into the surf, bypassing the largely destroyed nets.
“Can we not fire?” Bethany asked, looking over bridge rail at Granger.
“This close in we’re liable to hit our own lads, there would be no arc to the shell.” He explained.
Using Sophie’s hits to lay her gun, Unyielding fired next. Her 150 line shell struck the periphery of the Bexarian position but managed to knock out one enemy piece. As the soldiers advanced, Sophie and Unyielding swept the gun line until all of the enemy positions were destroyed outright or at least deprived of men. Bethany watched the leading group of soldiers mount the small breakwater at the end of the beach and look about them, sighting down their rifles.
“Fields scribes report the beach has been cleared. Repeat, we have a beachhead.” Threlfall announced from the chartroom. The sailors and marines on Fletch’s cheered and this time Granger allowed it to go on.
All of the soldiers were now at least one verst inland and the distant crack of rifle fire made it clear that their advance was not unopposed. The sun was low in the sky, which was cloudless save for the plumes of smoke from battle. Fletch proceeded dead slow ahead toward the beach to evacuate the troopship crews. Bethany stood at the prow, looking across the water. It had taken on a strange, syrup-like consistency, and was no longer the fine tropical blue it had been in the morning. This was the result of a heavy slick of blood - from soldiers and Beatrix’s sailors - and grease - from Beatrix’s engineering spaces that sat on the sea and formed a crimson froth at the peaks of waves. Small bits of coal from the destroyed cruiser’s bunkers washed ashore, contrasting with glistening shards of tea cups and dinner plates from her officer’s mess.
Fletch stopped lest she beach herself and one of her launches was prepared. A small party would go ashore to liaise with the late troopship’s officers whose men would then proceed to Fletch in their own lifeboats and be ferried to Sophie.
A sailor’s corpse bumped against Fletch’s bow and was pinned there. Bethany looked down long enough to realize what it was, then looked away reflexively. Curiosity drew her gaze back, and she studied the dead man. He was covered in soot and his uniform was torn away, leaving him largely naked. His stomach had been slashed or burst somehow, allowing his entrails to hang out. His eyes were frozen wide open, and were shockingly white against the rest of his corpse. Bethany vomited over the side, turning away from the body so as to spare it one more indignity. Seeing this, a sailor ambled over with a boat hook and pushed the carcass clear of the bow.
Bethany slumped against the gunnel, deathly pale. “Shouldn’t we be retrieving these men so they might be buried?” She asked, shakily.
“Someone will - they will make a detail from the Bexarian prisoners - but that’s not for us, thank God.” The sailor replied.
Bethany stood. “How can you be so callous as to just send him away like that.” She began, then continued in a lower voice: “I don’t mean any offense, I envy it, in truth. Have you been to war before, is that it?”
“No, but if that was me there I’d much rather sink and disappear than stick like that, scaring people. The sea is a decent enough rest, at least for a man like that, or for me. You would do well to go below, miss, there is more where he came from.” The sailor pointed to the beach where at least 100 corpses, most of them soldiers, were arranged in a neat line.
“What will happen to them? Will they go home?”
“Perhaps, but more likely, provided we take this island, they’ll bury them here. Some of the officers will be repatriated, if their families pay.”
Bethany returned to her cabin and sent for tea to wash the taste of vomit from her mouth. When it was brought she lit her lamp and took up a pencil and paper to make studies for the battle scene she had promised to paint. She had made that vow with no actual intention of completing the work, having done only portraits, but she was now desperately in need of a distraction.
Eight bells, midnight, found her half-awake and the floor of her cabin dotted with unfinished studies. The earlier attempts were relatively faithful, but the one now on her desk was little more than scribblings - keeping her hands busy to quiet her mind. She had known, of course, that embarking on this voyage would entail witnessing death. Even if they never saw the enemy, there was a sizable risk of fatal accident at sea. She had given it little thought, and when it had entered her mind, she had dismissed any fear of what she might see - it was nothing she had not seen before, she was no hothouse flower, rather a murderess and fugitive. Bethany had personally killed in one of the most intimate fashions, though she remembered little of that. In the city, however, an acquaintance had starved to death before her eyes, and one of Marah’s friends had died in her arms, an overdose. She could recount the exact details of the latter deaths with comfortable detachment and also the hangings she had seen, but even beginning to think of the battered, bloated sailor at Fletch’s prow made her mind revolt.
She suspected it was the nature of the sailor’s death, instant and horribly violent, that made it so wrong. It was too much like Angeline’s, and too unlike those of the addicts and condemned men. When one was given time to accept it, death seemed far sweeter, and in most cases gradual death left a presentable corpse, which should not matter, but did. In her cell, after the third day without sleep, she had utterly resigned herself to the rope and began to wish for it, if only because it would give her rest. It was said that roughly half of those sentenced to death did so, while the others wept right up until the trap dropped. Bethany had seen that. Of the six hanged before her, four were complete wrecks, their minds in tatters, while two seemed deeply calm. Of those two, one did not speak at all, while the other, the ringleader of the sextet’s conspiracy to murder a wealthy family and raidtheir house, had loudly proclaimed: “You are fine people doing good work. I forgive you.”
Bethany dosed herself with papaver and put out her lamp, drifting off still sprawled in her chair.