Robert Wilson - Julian Comstock - A Story of 22-nd Century America

The three of us—Sam, Julian, and I—understood that this expedition wasn’t meant to be survived, at least not by Major General Comstock. But Julian argued that any campaign, even the most apparently hopeless, might turn on a small contingency and produce unexpected results. Usually this observation worked to buoy my spirits. But today, despite our recent naval victory, a little of November had crept into my soul. I was a long way from home, and apprehensive.

If I expected Julian to repeat his reassurances, on this occasion he did not. “The worst is ahead of us,” he admitted. “Admiral Fairfield has orders to land the infantry at Striver for an attack on Goose Bay—and Goose Bay won’t be easy pickings. They’ll know we’re coming—their telegraphs must already be chattering.”

I looked out across the windy gray waters abaft of us. “It’s not myself I’m afraid for so much as Calyxa. She’s alone in New York City , she’s already earned the enmity of Deacon Hollingshead, and for all I know she may have offended other authorities in the meantime.”

“She has my mother to defend her,” Julian said.

“I thank your mother, but I wish I could do the job myself.”

“You’ll be back at Calyxa’s side soon enough, if I have anything to do with it.”

Deklan Conqueror had banked on Julian’s youth and lack of experience to make him an easy target for the Dutch. But the President had almost certainly underestimated his nephew. Julian was young, and many of the troops he commanded had initially balked at taking orders from a yellow-bearded boy. But Julian had covertly arranged for copies of my pamphlet to circulate among the literate soldiers, who read it aloud or summarized its contents for the non-readers, and his reputation had grown accordingly. Nor was Julian as ignorant as Deklan Comstock might have hoped. Under Sam’s tutelage he had long studied war in the abstract, and during the Saguenay Campaign he had been able to compare theory with practice. “Perhaps we’ll return to Manhattan in triumph,” I said.

“Yes, and force my uncle to find a more prosaic way of killing me.”

“We’ll outlast old Deklan Conqueror,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Sam believes we will.”

“I hope he’s right. In the meantime, Adam, look at you, you’re shivering—shouldn’t you be in your cabin recording the heroism of the hour?”

My cabin was close enough to the bilge that fresh air was often desirable, no matter how cold it might be. But Julian was right. I had agreed to keep a narrative of events for publication in the Spark.

The Fall of Eskimo Island would make an exciting episode, with little need for dramatic exaggeration. “I will,” I said. I had already produced many thousands of words. I hoped they would be in some sense useful. But none of them would float the Basilisk if she were holed below the waterline, or deflect for a moment the enemy’s missiles.

I left Julian on deck. He continued to stand at the taffrail, gazing back toward the Narrows as if lost in his thoughts. His eyes were shadowed by the brim of his Major General’s hat, and his blue and yellow jacket flapped in the chill wind off the Mealy Mountains.

Once the Narrows had been secured we sailed for Striver, a town on the north shore of Lake Melville.

We found a handful of Dutch warships anchored there. They were formidable craft, heavily armored and heavily armed; but we came hard at them in the first light of dawn, and before their anchors were well up we had already sheered their masts with cannonfire and put a few dents in their armored flanks.

The Basilisk took heavy fire that day. I sheltered with the infantrymen belowdecks, while the sailors fought above; and I was present when a solid shot struck us amidships. Such a projectile could not penetrate the plating that protected the Basilisk ’s engine room and boilers, but it could and did pierce the wooden hull just where we sat. I wasn’t injured in the explosion, but huge splinters speared several men who were situated near the bulkhead, and a freshly-drafted Kentucky lease-boy suffered a crushed skull, which spilled his brains out on the deck, and was fatal.

After that I could hear nothing but the sound of the artillery battle and the screaming of the wounded. The Basilisk fired one cannonade after another, both shot and shell, from its big guns. At one point I risked a look through the newly-created “window” in the side of the ship, but I could see nothing save the hull of a Dutch vessel very close by—and I ducked back hastily when the business end of a Dutch cannon, still smoking, hove into view. Several times our vessel shook in the water like a palsied dog, until I was certain we must have lost our engines; and I fully expected the deadly waters of Lake Melville to rush over us in an icy flood at any moment.

But that was only the stink of the blood and the gunpowder making me giddy. Eventually the battle ended. Then Julian himself came down to the hold where the infantrymen were huddled, to tell us that we had conquered the enemy and taken control of the harbor.

I went up with him to survey the results.

Smoke still hovered over the lake, for there was no wind to dispel it. The sky was overcast. One of the Basilisk ’s masts was down, and a gang of sailors was busy casting the remnants of it overboard. The damage we had sustained was not critical, but other ships in our small armada had been more severely hurt. The Christabel was burning steadily, and the Beatrice rode perilously low in the water.

The Dutch had had the worst of it, however. Of the eight ships defending the town of Striver fully six had sunk, with only fractions of them showing where their hulls rested on the stony lake-bottom. The two still afloat were mastless and gouting black smoke. We sent out boats to pick up survivors.

Basilisk and her sister vessels had also placed a few strategic shots among the buildings and warehouses at the foot the town’s main thoroughfare, an action that caused white flags to be sent up where the defiant Mitteleuropan banner had lately flown, signifying a wholesale surrender. “We’ve reclaimed a little piece of America , Adam,” Julian said. “The homeland is enlarged by a few square miles.”

“I don’t know how you can be cynical, after winning such a battle.”

“I’m not cynical. The victory was tremendous, but it’s Admiral Fairfield’s, not mine. I’ve done nothing useful on this expedition except drill my men on the quarterdeck. But that’s about to change. This is where we land the infantry.”

He explained that all the footsoldiers in our flotilla would go ashore this day. Two entire divisions would soon follow, if the troop-ships were on schedule and our garrisons continued to hold the Narrows. When the army was landed and assembled Julian would lead it to Goose Bay by road, while the Admiral and his flotilla shelled that town from a distance and kept the Dutch defenders busy.

I promised I wouldn’t get in his way, if I could help it.

“You’re not in my way. Don’t you know you’re one of my most trusted advisors?”

“I don’t recall giving any advice , as such.”

“It’s not your advice I value so much as your sensibility.”

“You give me too much credit.”

“And you’re my friend. That’s a scarce commodity in the circles we’ve moved in lately.”

“My friendship at least you can rely on. And my Pittsburgh rifle, when it comes to fighting on solid ground.”

“It’ll come to fighting soon enough,” said Julian, turning his face away as from an ugly truth.

More than two thousand additional infantrymen were landed at Striver over the next several days, ferried in from bases in Newfoundland under the Admiral’s protection. All the Dutch soldiers in Striver were taken captive, and sent back in the emptied troop-ships to the War-Prisoner encampments on the Gaspé Peninsula. Harmless citizens of Striver were advised to stay indoors, if possible, and a strict curfew was imposed. On our part, discipline was stern enough to prevent the sort of large-scale theft, rape, pillage, and arson that local citizens invariably find distressing. We didn’t lack for provisions, since the rail line had been recently extended from Goose Bay , with Striver acting as an alternative off-loading point for European goods bound for the interior of Labrador. The Stadhouders like their luxuries: dockside warehouses yielded slabs of smoked fish, barrels of uninfested wheat flour, huge wheels of odorous cheese, and similar interesting items.