Commander Cantrell in the West Indies(235)
Anne Cathrine rushed into the rear of the trench, next to Leonora, and watched the horde of Kalinago warriors approach. They wore little, bore brutal-looking clubs, stopped here and there to fire their bows. They were good marksmen, but only a few shafts found flesh through the gaps in the cover, and only one of those hits was fatal.
Seeing the Kalinago looming like a wave, and the arrows flying towards them, many of the defenders became restless. One of them in the southern ditch raised up on one elbow, sighted his wheel lock rifle, eased the hammer back—
“You there!” shouted Michael. “You can track a target, but if you fire, I swear to God, I’ll shoot you myself.” The restlessness in the trenches subsided slightly.
The Kalinago came on, the volcanic cone of The Quill rising up behind them like a green pyramid erected by a cockeyed, atavistic island god. It seemed impossible that the near-naked warriors could run so quickly, so far, and it defied belief when, as they cleared the canebrake, the first of the mob redoubled their already considerable speed into a flat-out charge.
Anne Cathrine watched McCarthy, who, tensely watching the approach, waited two more seconds before he cried. “Fire!”
Almost a hundred muskets spoke in a loose sputter along the barricades and trenches. Perhaps a third that number of the natives staggered, cried out, or fell limp. However, the Kalinago had done battle with Europeans before and expected no less. And today, they still had at least seven hundred warriors in the field.
Anne Cathrine raised her pistol, knew not to fire until the third volley, felt her underarms, back, and brow awash with sweat that owed nothing to the heat of the sun. McCarthy’s voice grew increasingly stentorian. “Swap muskets! Reloaders, we’re depending on you. Shooters: aim . . . and . . . fire!”
The second volley was even more ragged, but did more damage, in part because the persons using fowling pieces and musketoons were now at range. Only fifty yards away, almost forty of the Kalinago went down. Many of the survivors drew up short—but not because they intended to flee, but rather to return fire.
Arrows keened among the barricades and clipped into the edges of the ditches. Several found their mark, promising the fate that was now overtaking those who had been hit earlier: poison-inflicted convulsions. The leading edge of the warriors was now ragged where it had been chewed at by the Dutch musketry, and none of those natives still had bows in hand. Instead, their war clubs were held far back, primed for skull-crushing blows.
Anne Cathrine raised her pistol and looked for a warrior who was either larger or more adorned than the others. She found one, cocked the weapon’s hammer, then gripped the handle of her gun with both hands, just as Eddie had taught her. She wished—very strongly, and throughout her whole body—that she could have seen and held Eddie just one more time. Then she was aware of nothing except for the Kalinago warrior she could see over the brass bead atop the end of her pistol’s muzzle. To either side of her, the reloaders were pushing the first muskets back into the shooter’s hands, then drawing their own pistols or swords. She wanted to glance at Michael McCarthy, wondered if he hadn’t called for the last volley because perhaps he’d been hit with an arrow, feared that maybe someone else—she herself?—had to take charge now, give the final order to—
“Fire!” shouted McCarthy.
Anne Cathrine was both too relieved and too focused to double-guess her aim. She fired the double-charged pistol, saw the male torso upon which the muzzle was superimposed stagger and fall out of the sight picture. Along the line, the blast of musketry was more uniform, and louder, with the loaders’ pistols contributing to it. And from behind, she heard the sound of running feet approaching—but only a few. Had some of the natives gotten behind them, sneaked in through town from the north—?
She hadn’t the time to think. Although the Kalinagos had taken horrible losses with this volley, many of the charging warriors were too far ahead of the wave of casualties to be stunned or panicked by that destruction. They sprinted closer, racing toward the trenches and the barricades, suddenly so near that Anne Cathrine could make out the individual teeth in their mouths as they shrieked their war cries and thirst for mortal vengeance—
From behind, a fusillade of pistol fire startled her. Had the rest of the soldiers been sent from the fort? Turning, she discovered the gunfire was coming from fewer than a dozen men: the Wild Geese who’d still been in the infirmary, now wielding their revolvers with deadly, much-practiced precision among the Kalinago who most closely approached the defensive lines. Several made it to the northern barricade, but there, Michael McCarthy’s own, larger cap-and-ball revolver sent out a steady stream of thunderclaps.