O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [13]
And Paddy said: “Oh, Jesus! We got no breaches! You told those idiots to give us scaling ladders!”
The invaders froze in their shell holes as Sumter rose up like a wounded carnivorous dinosaur and fired a volley of musket and cannon.
Boone, Paddy, and Sergeant Layton huddled tightly. “We are fucking trapped! The fort has hardly been damaged. Rebel artillery has a clear view to the water! Our people in the landing boats will be slaughtered.”
“Sure looks that way to me, sir,” Layton agreed.
“We’ll never storm through Lizard’s Gate with less than a couple hundred men,” Paddy said. “And we don’t have them.”
“Got a multicolored flare?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fire it toward our ships, high and clear!”
The warning signal arched up and burst. Its message: “All landing boats turn around and go back to your ships.”
There was so much fire from Sumter pounding the water, scoring a hit, and another, that no one needed encouragement to retreat, and those rowing in fled back to their mother ships.
“They’ll attack us from Lizard’s Gate! Layton, move your squad into place to cover a retreat. Paddy!”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m taking a dozen men to help Layton hold a rear guard. You get the rest of the people to the water and back into the whalers and the hell out of here!”
“Sir! You take them back, I’ll stay!”
“Git!” Ben snarled.
As Paddy O’Hara tried to make an orderly retreat, Boone and Layton set up a fifteen-man picket line near Lizard’s Gate.
Most of the Confederate artillery was trained on the retreating whaleboats, but some now switched to the confusion on the beach.
Heads with gray caps popped up on Sumter’s parapets.
“Yowohee . . . Yowhee . . . Yowheeeeee,” the Rebels yelled. Lizard’s Gate cracked open and out they came.
Ben’s people waited, waited, waited . . .
“Fire!”
A half-dozen Johnny Rebels went down and the rest wheeled back into the fort. With luck, it would give Boone and Layton a few minutes to get down to the beach, and this they did, into a scene of mayhem. Getting the remaining whalers to go back over the surf would be more difficult than riding it in on the landing.
“Over here! Over here!”
Jesus, it was Paddy! He had maneuvered himself and five men back near the tiny inlet. Paddy signaled that the whaler was intact and put some of the wounded in the boat.
Paddy quickly darted out, kneeling, turning over fallen men, found a pair of wounded, threw one over his shoulder, and dragged the other back to the scant cover, then went out and got another wounded, then another.
Ben screamed and was blown down hard. He tried to rise to his knees, but the pain was unbearable.
“Lay still!” Paddy commanded. Ben tried to get up again, but no, no way to make it.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes!”
“Your shoulder is separated. Your arm is busted and full of grapeshot.” Paddy cut the end of Ben’s belt off and shoved it into his mouth. “Bite down, hard!”
Paddy feverishly applied a tourniquet and, thanks to Jaysus and Mary, stemmed the flow of blood from Ben’s arm, then pulled the jacket off a dead man and used it to wrap the torn shoulder tightly against Ben’s body. Ben Boone willed himself to his senses.
“Stand me on my knees, Paddy!”
Oh Lord, what a mess. Shit! Piss! Corruption! Fuckall! How can anything be salvaged? The water was red with the blood of floating dead. Only the still and the moaning were left on the beach. In a few moments the Rebs would come out again and this time they’d reach the water. A few sailors were behind cover. They’d have to surrender or be slaughtered.
“How many good men do we have?”
“Five are in condition to row.”
The wounded on the beach would be doomed to die in their own pus if the Rebs didn’t bayonet them first. Some would be captured alive. Ben would stay with them.
“Put those wounded lads in the boat and get out of here, I’m staying.”
“Sorry, sir, I have to disobey you,” and with that Paddy opened a vial of ether, sprinkled it on a cloth, and