Hubbard, L. Ron (16 page)

"Very good, Hanley. Carry on."

The Lieutenant thoughtfully shuffled his deck. Time was dragging and he leaned back to catch forty winks, knowing he would awaken as soon as the tone of the firing changed.

He did. Carstones machine guns started up about twelve thirty and continued for fifteen minutes in short, careful bursts. Then, one by one, the guns stopped, the shooting taken up by rifles. After a little the rifles faded out and the night was quiet.

The Lieutenant came on deck and ordered Pollard to call out to the returning boats, giving them an accurate bearing.

Presently Swinburne, with his empty sleeve ripped, his face dark with powder and dirt, and his one eye blazing with battle, came aboard.

"We brought them all the way back to Limehouse, Lieutenant. And we left them jumping up and down and swearing purple'

"Casualties?"

"We suffered three dead and nine wounded, two of them seriously. All officers returned safely." He took the glass Mawkey was handing him and drained it thankfully. "We must have cut them up pretty badly, though there was nothing to shoot at but rifle fire and we used pneumatics as much as we could. Whatever it was for, it came off very well."

"Very good, Swinburne. You'd better get back to your boat and see to it.

Pollard, check the redistribution of the troops and stand by to weigh anchor in fifteen minutes."

"Yessir."

"We're bound upriver," he said to Swinburne.

"Then you're not going to attack the Tower?" said Swinburne. "They've built it up again, but I think we could do it. If we'd thrown the Second Regiment west of that place, we could have had it tonight when we sucked the garrison out."

"Carry on, Swinburne. Orders, Pollard. The Lieutenant went below and turned in, instantly asleep.

All that night the flotilla eased slowly upriver. The fore part was spent in locating and skirting the remains of fallen bridges and sunken vessels, with no slightest glimpse of the shore or sky to aid them. A gunboat went so solidly aground that it had to be unloaded, its mortar transferred and the craft fired. Behind them the blaze was but a dull glow which turned the pea soup faintly red. Firing was heard in that direction, interspersed by the occasional thunder of a larger gun. But evidently the river in general and not the flotilla was the target, for nothing came near.

With the morning came a heavy, cold rain which somewhat dispelled the haze for all its wetness, and the brigade found itself far upriver from London, in fact, approaching the half-tide lock just below Richmond.

Soldiers swathed in their rainproofs looked questioningly at the barrier.

The tide was later here and it was just passing into the second half of the flood. Along the footbridge of the lock, which was in repair, a small force was gathering, evidently the garrison of some nearby fortress. Others were dragging two 'field pieces down the slope from the terrace, but these, as yet, were far off.

When the flotilla came to within two hundred yards of the lock, both sides opened fire. But orders went swiftly back and the last six boats, under the command of Toutou, eased in to the shore and unloaded. Gian was impatient, but he knew his fire would damage the lock.

Toutou wasted no time in his attack. He curved far out through the heavy brush and formed his line. The garrison immediately drew up there, only to be raked from the flank by a merciless fire from Carstone and two mortar shots from Gian. Toutou swept up and through and, tossing bodies away from the runway, opened the lock and guarded the flotilla through. Sergeant

Chipper took twenty men and lanced up the slope to capture the field pieces, which he destroyed.

Once through, the flotilla paused, anchoring in midstream, until Toutou, under orders, mined and destroyed the lock. And even then they did not go on, but lay at lazy anchor, watching downstream.

About four, the vanguard of the shore forces put in an appearance about half a mile downriver, word of which was hastily brought to the fleet. But the Lieutenant was in no hurry. He waited until the vanguard was within shelling range and then had Gian drop two mortars into them. The vanguard hastily drew back. In half an hour the main body was seen, skirting Terrace Hill as though to cut off the flotilla from the upriver side. Two more mortars were dropped by way of promise and the flotilla, taking advantage of the very strong wind which had sprung up with the thickening of the rain, upped sail and continued west, past Richmond, and around the S bend which led to Kingston.

The wind slacked down with the rain, and clouds began to scurry, belly to earth. The lowpressure area was somewhere in their vicinity and the wind they got now was very uncertain, constantly shifting. Visibility thickened as the day faded. The rain stopped entirely at dark and it seemed to the shore forces that the stage was set for an ideal battle in their favor.

They sent patrols up with the dusk and these met a very strong fire. The shore troops then got their artillery into position in the woods and scurried about, gaining the ire of every farmer in the surrounding countryside for their destruction of fences for barricades.

At seven *lock the shore batteries opened up into the black and churned the river expanse before Twickenham where the fleet had anchored. They were very thorough about it, supplementing the guns with machine-gun fire. A force, meanwhile, scoured the banks for a mile both ways, getting everything that would float and then manning barges and lighters and rowboats with all the weight they would take They were certain now that the fleet was short on ammunition for no fire answered them and they knew that a force without many bullets will wait until the last possible moment.

Valiantly they launched their attack upon the inky river. Twice or thrice they fired on their own boats. They drifted with the current for a little way and then combed back. They set up excited, angry yells.

The flotilla was gone!

It had not passed Teddington pound lock.

It had not made the shore.

They abandoned their leaky vessels in favor of firmer land and hastily began to rake the countryside and shores for any sign of the Fourth Brigade.

They found none.

With sweeps and sails and current, but all in the heaviest of silence, the flotilla sped through the night, downstream to London. Past hamlet and bar, point and ruined castle they swept on their way.

And by four of the following morning, having negotiated wrecked bridges and derelicts and spits, they dropped quiet anchors just off the Tower but all the way across the pool. They were not lazy now, but keyed to high pitch for the coming action.

The gunboats were disposed above and below the fortress, out of range of the land batteries but within range for their own guns. Some forty boatloads, then, hastily checking their equipment for the last time and memorizing their duties, warped in to the shore and effected a swift but silent landing amid the debris of buildings and wharves.

The Lieutenant, muffled in his cloak and helmet, crouched in the cover of a pile of stone and waited. Three-quarters of his forces, or three hundred and sixty men, were silent in the rubble-strewn dark about him.

It lacked about an hour of dawn and, with the usual consistency of London weather, a few stars were trying to shine in the murk. It would be a reasonably clear day.

Presently, to the east of the Tower, firing began. Swinburne had engaged the garrison as he had once before. And it was a startled garrison which tumbled from their bunks to snatch rifles and form inside the newly made east entrance. A sortie was made, driving the attacker back. And the raiding party seemed to be just as afraid to come to terms this time as it had the last.

The battle drew slowly away to the eastward, toward Limehouse.

Reinforcements went out to settle the business once and for all. And when the garrison's sortie was nearly a mile from the Tower, its officers were dismayed to hear artillery upon the river which, by its sound, was certainly not their own, but good guns.

The Lieutenant crouched low. He could make out his gunboats now and he knew that Gian had the range. Solid shot was blasting away at the Middle Tower, the outermost rampart. The gate crumpled and, as though Gian had counted its bolts and measured its thickness with exactness, he wasted not one shot too many upon it. He transferred his fire to the Byward Tower, firing so as to blast any gate which might be there. Then he shifted two mortars and dropped a savage spray of shrapnel into the Outer Ward.

Without waiting for Gian to finish the job, the Lieutenant leaped up and waved his troops forward. They rushed through the Middle Tower and across the damaged bridge. The gate of the Byward Tower needed a grenade to finish the bursting of its lock and then they were in the Outer Ward. Gian had already begun to drop shells into the Inner Ward, having shelled the gate east of the Wakefield Tower until it could be breached. A few shots were fired down from the Bloody Tower as the troops rushed by, but as the defenders had to lean out to aim, they were dropped before they had gotten more than two men.

The Lieutenant scrambled over the rubble of the gate and leaped down into the Inner Ward. The mortars had cleared away the fence and now all that was left was the White Tower.

Just as bombs had failed to destroy it, Gian's artillery could make but little dent upon this ancient Norman keen for its walls were fifteen feet thick. But there were doors and windows on those walls and now grenadiers came up with their bags of grenades, exploding one after another against the door. It gave ever so little under the onslaught.

Soldiers were firing down from the Tower now that Gian had stopped shelling. Snipers in the Fourth began to take their toll of the remaining defenders.

The Lieutenant saw that they were balked. He ordered the snipers to cover the slots and the bulk of his troops to withdraw to the Outer Keep. Then, gathering up a heavy bag of grenades, he rushed to the door, pulled the pin of one and chucked the whole into a slight break near the bottom. He swept around the side of the wall and pressed himself against it.

In a moment the grim old courtyard was torn with the thunder of this concerted explosion. The brigade yelled and dashed forward across the pavement.

They were within the keep and dashing toward the upper floors when a machine gun met them from a landing. Half a squad dropped. Grenadiers came to the fore and succeeded in pitching up a grenade to silence the gun.

Up swarmed the assault party. Each landing found a few defenders, but these, too, were vanquished.

In twenty-three minutes of 'attack, according to Gian's chronometer, the Tower of London had passed into the hands of the raiders.

But there was no Hogarthy. A shivering staff informed the Lieutenant that Hogarthy had gone with the main garrison, up the river in pursuit of the elusive gunboats.

But the Lieutenant was not disappointed. He liked it that way. And when he had had a breather and a glass of ale from Hogarthy's special stock, sitting the while in Hogarthy's chair of office in the frowning old mom, he began to issue his commands again.

Swinburne had stopped running when the firing had begun from the river and had let the garrison run into a gantlet of fire which brought them to swift surrender. And, having worked so hard to take them, he was astonished indeed when the Lieutenant ordered him to take them outside the walls, to place but three men over them and thereby let them escape.

It was done. And the soldiers fled west toward Hogarthy's forces.

Meantime the boats were unloaded and the Fourth Brigade assigned to barracks in the old towers. They were fed and allowed to rest, except for those under Weasel, who had gone out to contact Hogarthy's vanguard a mile or two from town, when Hogarthy appeared.

The Lieutenant drank another glass of Hogarthy's special ale and broke out his pack of cards.

What happened to Hogarthy is history. How he floundered eastward through the mud, in haste to contact the invaders before they could repair the gates and walls and so entrench themselves. How he camped at dusk some three miles from Tower Hill, well aware that his troops, fagged out from days of stumbling along the river bank, must have rest.

The sortie which sucked Hogarthy out of that camp before he could even get his troops fed was led by Carstair, who battled back through the dusk to Tower Hill with every evidence of panicked flight.

The place where the battle was fought was well chosen by the Lieutenant, for it was flanked all around, at that time, with the wreckage of great buildings while the center was reasonably clear. It was into this that Gian dropped a murderous mortar fire and across this that Carstone swept his guns. Those facts in themselves would have accounted for Hogarthy's defeat.

But the main cause was weariness. Hogarthy's rabble bad been whipped by their own Father Thames, and when they came to battle they were so exhausted that they cared not whether they stayed, or died, or fled. When the Lieutenant dosed upon them from the west, from the very direction to which so many tried to flee, all fight was knocked out by the mere sight of a solid barrier of rifle fire. Hogarthy was dug out of a swamp two days later and dragged into the Tower by an exuberant Bulger.

The town, however, had already paid its homage to the Lieutenant and the countryside all about was anxiously sending food to make peace with this fox of a conqueror.