Hubbard, L. Ron (14 page)

Near the middle of November, just as dawn eased across the horizon, a strange and hostile fleet crept along the dreary fen lands from seaward toward Gravesend.

There were nearly fifty boats in all, boats which had nothing in common but their rigs. Culled by fishermen from the harbors of the north coast of France, the vessels were ex-anything but fishermen. Submarine chasers, admirals' barges, lifeboats, lighters, torpedo boats, motor-sailers and, in short, almost anything which would float and could be handled by two or three men. Their superstructures bore no resemblance to the original architectural designs. Without exception one or two masts rose up from the deck of each to which was affixed a patchwork of rags and booms to make up the crudest kind of sails.

Once these vessels had had a very warlike aspect and though, for years, this had been missing in favor of fishing, once again there was some semblance to the battle boats they had been. They were crudely armored along the gunwales with barricades of sandbags and scrap plate and even boards.

On nine of them artillery was mounted behind adequate shields and eight of them were carrying machine guns of widely different types.

It was a very quiet flotilla, quietly slipping through the thick and swirling mists like a number of spirits from the deep come to land to beg back their lives.

Leadsmen chanted softly as they found their deeps and marks, and impressed French sailors sat glumly at their tillers, depending wholly on the lead and lookout for their course, so impenetrable was the fog, so treacherous the shoals.

Soldiers lounged behind the barricades, finishing a light breakfast and silent now that an action might begin soon. They did not think much about it, for they had gotten out of that habit in early youth. It was enough to know that there was much food in the hold and that the Lieutenant was up there in the lead, watching out for anything which might develop and plotting the downfall of England.

Fifteen English fishermen had been picked up and their vessel and catch commandeered. These were piloting with all their faculties, for they had no liking for these handy guns and the faces of such hardened veterans. At first they had been very reluctant and one vessel had grounded on a bar. Now that there were but fourteen of them, they did their work very well.

Mawkey was the only one who could keep the shore in sight. To all others it was wholly invisible save at rare instances. Indeed there was not much shore to see, only flat, endless swamps, different from the water only in that they did not move with the inshore breeze.

Abreast of the leading vessel were two others, forming a slight triangle.

The flanking pair were motor-sailers, some forty feet in length and very lightly burdened to have a shallower draft. In these, to port and starboard of the lead respectively, were Carstair and Swinburne. In the admiral's barge which felt the way was the Lieutenant.

"Bottom at two and a half fathoms," said the leadsman. "Bottom at two.

Bottom at three. Bottom at three and a half fathoms."

The English fisherman turned frightened eyes to the Lieutenant. "We're in the river proper now."

"Keep on to Gravesend," said the Lieutenant.

On crept the flotilla, feeling through fog so dense that even Mawkey could no longer find the shore. But the leads told their story to the fishermen.

They were coming in with the tide, aided by a very slight breeze from the sea which had come with dawn. There was, as yet, no indication that the fog would lift at all, but the Lieutenant had his hopes.

It seemed so strange to be coming back. It was as though he had never been here at all, so filled his mind had become with five years of war, packed upon eighteen years of it. He recalled very little of the Thames, except that, in this time of year, the fog sometimes lifted for a little while in midmorning and then settled back for the entire day, and that these very marshes were the rising places of that fog. If he had calculated aright, they would be sighted only when they reached Gravesend.

If the gods of battle were kind.

They had nearly run down a great cliff which loomed high above them in the fog. Panic gripped the English pilots and orders ripped across the fleet.

In a moment the cliff was plain and they were going around it.

A great battleship was here, solidly held up by mud. It had burned to the water and its plates were twisted and gaping. The turrets were all awry and half the guns had been blown away. The rails were trailing over the side, eaten by rust and still clutched by the tattered dead. This had happened long ago and the name of the vessel was not decipherable.

In three hours the fog began to lift a little and the shores became dim outlines which gradually took form. They had timed their arrival well.

Gravesend was to port, Tilbury to starboard.

There was not much left of Gravesend
¯
a few walls, a lonely stack, the bones of lighters upon the mud, a few vessels sunken at their wharves. The Royal Terrace Pier was a collection of stumps in the water. The ripraps which had held back the banks had given way here and there, spilling abandoned buildings into the river. The chalk hills which sloped up and away were denuded of trees and buildings alike, the whole having been consumed by fire. Not even a shrimp fisherman was here.

The flotilla wore about and approached Tilbury. And as they neared they found that the Tilbury Docks were not in better condition. A few stones marked where Tilbury Fort had stood. Only an ancient blockhouse, dating almost from Roman times, was whole and sound. Of the great deep-sea docks there was very little sign. Of the great petrol storage tanks there was nothing but a scorched area, which accounted for the burning of both the north and south-bank cities, just as the absence of the government powder magazines higher up accounted for the collapse of the higher walls. This was all old to the Lieutenant, but it seemed as if he saw it for the first time. But there was one thing new. The river was cleaner than he remembered it and the fog less yellow.

As he had hoped, they were sighted from the shore, for a man went racing along the dike toward the blockhouse. And, a moment later, several other men came streaming forth to see for themselves.

The flotilla picked its way among the bars which had formed from the lack of dredging and the breaking, here and there, of the dike. Two large freighters were decaying, held fast by the rising bars, unable to make the sea as they had made the shore. But they were too far out for the Lieutenant's purpose.

Some distance west of the blockhouse he brought the flotilla to anchor, parallel with the shore and a hundred, yards or so out from the nearest tide flat. The sulphury odor of tidewater grass was strong in their nostrils.

The Lieutenant examined the beach. It afforded very slight cover anywhere within rifleshot save for the remains of a few boats. And as the only sound ones of these appeared to be wrecked destroyers out of some attacking fleet, it was highly unlikely they would be out of the water at high tide.

The place suited him.

The anchor lines of the small vessels stretched out taut with the tidal current, broadside to the beach. They were perfectly quiet.

Before long a considerable force came floundering along the partially inundated marsh. The Lieutenant estimated them as numbering around six hundred. For the moment he was made to wonder, for it did not seem likely that such a number would be kept at Tilbury.

The tide still exposed a long bar and down this came a commander with three staff officers and a twenty-man guard. The commander halted with arms akimbo, the faint wind in his cape, staring at the leading boat.

"Where from?" he bellowed.

"France!" replied the Lieutenant. "The Fourth Brigade coming home!"

There followed a brisk consultation and then the commander hailed the fleet again. "Turn back! We have orders to annihilate you if you attempt to land!'

Swinburne and Carstair, in their vessels close by the Lieutenant's, were shocked to see a happy grin suffuse their leader's face. "For what reason?"

"We have been advised," bawled the commander, "by General Victor's headquarters that you have mutinied. We want nothing to do with Continental soldiers! Turn back or we'll fire upon you."

"Carstone!" shouted the Lieutenant. "Kill me those officers!"

Carstone, in the fourth boat, bawled an order to his gunners with the range.

Instantly three machine guns began to spit and cough. The tide flat was churned by ripping slugs. The shore officers had whirled and raced madly toward their troops, but before they had gone twenty yards they were hammered down and sent rolling. In less than thirty seconds there was nothing alive on the spit.

"Cease firing!" said the Lieutenant.

Higher up the gathered troops, seeing the dead bodies of their leaders, leaped into activity, scooping out foxholes and throwing themselves down to begin a hysterical fire upon the ships. But they could see no targets behind those barricaded gunwales, and though the water frothed and steel clanged with the fury of the fusillade, little harm was done and no fire came from the vessels.

There was a lull. Messengers could be seen dashing away across the marshes to the west, obviously heading for London with a plea for reinforcements.

And still no fire came from the fleet. The boats lay in the hazy sunlight, apparently asleep.

Both Swinburne and Carstair were aghast at the wanton execution of the shore officers, not because men had died, but because of the result which was inevitable. Every man available, every gun which could be fired would be rushed to this place to wipe them out of existence. Such a maneuver would outnumber them and make it quite impossible to effect a landing. For once it was obvious that the Lieutenant's luck was not holding, or else that his hopes of being received peaceably had gone glimmering with the replacement of rage for wisdom.

The fire from shore slackened for lack of targets and had almost ceased when the Lieutenant gave another order: "One rifleman each vessel snipe the shore!'

The fire was deadly, for cover on the beach was sparse. Madly the troops there strove to deepen their foxholes, many dying before they could achieve it. Further messengers went snaking off through the marsh grass toward London.

The result was a wild increase in firing from shore. As soon as it became dangerous to return it from the boats, another order was passed:

"Cease firing!'

Two men had been wounded in the arms out of the Fourth Brigade. At least thirty-five were casualties ashore.