Barratry

“ Lower still is the old quay, five centuries old, with brown fishing nets hung up to dry, and with a half-score or so of trawlers moored to old corroded guns embedded in the masonry, their tall masts swaying idly on the long swell that now, at high tide, fills the little harbour. The fishermen are still busy over their gear. When all is stowed they will make their way up here, to the wall yonder, or to this bench, to talk over the doings of the day. Here the old captains, grey-headed, storm-beaten sea kings, sit, night after night, and spin over and over their well-worn yarns. ”

“ The harbour itself simply teems with life. Not a moment passes throughout the hours of daylight that some craft or other—whether battleship, torpedo boat, destroyer, excursion steamer, yacht, or trading schooner, barque, brigantine, or rust-red collier—is entering or leaving it through the narrow jaws between Blockhouse Fort and Point Battery. ”

“ Afraid to face the men outside, whose jobs they had taken, these strike-breakers were to live on the dock, under cover of police. Soon half of them lay snoring on long crowded rows of cots. Food and hot coffee were served to the rest. Then I heard the harsh rattle of winches, I saw these negroes trundling freight, the cargo went swooping up into the ship—and with a deep dismay, a sharp foreboding of trouble ahead, I felt the work of the harbor begun. ”

“ The appearance of the structure is so light and graceful that the spectator finds it hard to conceive of the difficulty and the greatness of the work itself. Architecturally, the barrage is very beautiful, with a noble front and a grand effect, produced by a line of castellated turrets, which mark the site of the sluice gates. ”

“ The harbor swarmed with evil-smelling junks and sampans. War-ships of France, England, Germany, and Russia, compact as watches, of dirtied colors but extreme cleanliness and threatening design, rode in the harbor, and rose above the huddling junks as unfeelingly as robber castles stand above villages on the Rhine. Far up the harbor, by the dry-docks, a mud-colored raft, pointed at both ends, supported two squat, mud-colored turrets and a giddy flag, much too big for it, that was just beginning to be known and feared in the far East. ”

“ Negotiations were on foot for carrying out this system when the British engineers arrived in Egypt. They soon resolved that it would be very much better if the original scheme of using the barrage could be carried out, and after a careful examination of the work they were satisfied that this could be done. The barrage rests entirely on the alluvial bed of the Nile. Nothing more solid than strata of sand and mud is to be found for more than 200 ft. ”

“ A suddenly projected arm snatches the lantern off the quay—and, warped along by a line at first, then with the regular tug of four heavy sweeps in the bow, the big half-decked boat full of men glides out of the black breathless shadow of the Fort. The open water of the avant-port glitters under the moon as if sown over with millions of sequins, and the long white breakwater shines like a thick bar of solid silver. ”

“ When the enemy shells intensively, if he means business, his barrage is closely followed by his infantry. When the barrage lifts, therefore, it is of vital importance to man the fire-step immediately. It is not easy to turn a large number of men quickly out of [50] deep dug-outs which may thus prove only a Fool's Paradise. In one of the raids made near the sea, our infantry, following closely up to the barrage, caught the enemy taking refuge in dug-outs, and had no difficulty in capturing or accounting for the whole garrison of the raided trench. ”

“ Again, a well-thought-out barrage has a very decisive effect in enabling the assaulting Infantry to rest and reorganize at intermediate objectives selected by the staff as suitable places for pauses in the operations.
A normal barrage will also assist the attacking troops in maintaining direction under adverse weather conditions and in the confusion and smoke of a battle. In an attack which involves an advance of several thousand yards to particular objectives, this function of the barrage is most important. ”

“ In the first place there must be a barrack run up for the men on shore between the barracoon and the storehouses. It [Pg 50] must be made of stout beams. I don't mean squared, but young trees placed side by side so as to be perfectly musket-proof. The palisades should be made of strong saplings, wattled together, say, ten feet high. A hundred and fifty sailors, aided by three hundred and fifty able-bodied negroes, should make quick work of it. The schooner's crew can see to the removal of the guns from the batteries and their establishment upon platforms behind the palisade. ”

“ You go to the wharf—a peculiar odor of coal, manure, dampness, and of beef strikes you; thousands of objects of all sorts—wood, meat, gabions, flour, iron, and so forth—lie in heaps about the wharf; soldiers of various regiments, with knapsacks and muskets, without knapsacks and without muskets, throng thither, smoke, quarrel, drag weights aboard the steamer which lies smoking beside the quay; unattached two-oared boats, filled with all sorts of people,—soldiers, sailors, merchants, women,—land at and leave the wharf. ”

“ The lift of a major third in his tone is accomplished without any appearance of muscular effort. He opens another cylinder and lets the additional power find its own pitch in the reverberating brass of the fog-horn. And the effect is as if the devastating crash of the barrage had come suddenly and horribly near. Perhaps, for one instant, the attack of his voice ceases, and then while the room still trembles to the echo of his last statement, the barrage leaps forward and spills its explosion into the secret refuges of my being. ”

“ A demoralizing barrage is just what its name signifies, a demoralizing rain of shells upon the enemy. A protecting barrage is for the purpose of protecting the infantry as it charges into the enemy's lines and it is raised slowly as the infantry advances so as to keep over the heads of the marching soldiers. As soon as the protecting barrage was fired in this drive, the first waves of infantry went over the top.
Most people have a misconception of what going over the top is. The prevailing idea is that a great [45] mass of troops rush over the top and into the German trenches. ”

“ There were piers at all the beaches, all built under shell fire, to stand both shell fire and the sea, and at the piers there was always much busy life, men singing at their work, horses and mules disembarking, food and munitions and water discharging, wounded going home and drafts coming ashore. ”

“ I think, in the first place, we must complete the barricade round the hut. At present we are open on two sides to a sudden rush, which would overpower us by force of numbers. Behind, the rise of the rock is so precipitous that they could only climb it with great difficulty, one by one. We must place our best marksmen up there, and the others behind our barricades down below. We must put a man, when the darkness comes on, at the very extremity of the reef, nearest to the wreck. He will be able to distinguish what they are doing sufficiently well to tell us when they are launching their raft. ”

“ The continual barrage on our lines of communication makes it very difficult for us to ration and relieve our troops, to supply water, ammunition, and building material, to evacuate wounded, and causes heavy losses. ”

“ Many a one never woke again to hear the earth-shaking clamour of the barrage, to see that eternal procession of men, men, mules, limbers, men, guns, ambulances, men, lorries, going on and on like some gigantic frieze. ”

“ To the West of this is the great pass of Barrataria, where is about nine to ten feet of water: enough to float the ordinary pirate or privateersman’s vessel. Within this pass—about two miles from the open sea—lies the only safe harbor upon the coast, and this is where the cut-throats, pirates, and smugglers gathered under Lafitte. They called themselves Barratarians, and they were a godless crew. ”

“ When he flashed across the river at Mezy, with some eight hundred feet to spare, he turned and waved a light-hearted O.K. to Larkin, and began to look for some landing place free of shell craters.
It was not unlike looking for land in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Barrage after barrage had marked the earth with the deep scarred pocks of war. He must push on toward the rear with the last inch that could be wrung from that motor and then land straight ahead, leaving the outcome to Lady Luck. ”

“ The approach to Kingstown—as the barracks and huts are called—is properly difficult. A long low reef—probably originally a portion of the barren rocks of Nepean and Philip Islands, which rise east and west of the settlement—fronts the bay and obstructs the entrance of vessels. We were landed in boats through an opening in this reef, and our vessel stands on and off within signalling distance. The surf washes almost against the walls of the military roadway that leads to the barracks. The social aspect of the place fills me with horror. There seems neither discipline nor order. ”

“ Living in small villages, or in cottages in the country, they can very rarely procure employment in the neighbourhood of their dwellings, and so they are usually content to regard these as simply their homes for the winter and earlier spring months, when they have nothing to do, and to remove for work to other parts of the country, where bridges, or harbours, or farm-steadings are in the course [Pg 192] of building—to be subjected there to the influences of what is known as the barrack, or rather bothy life. These barracks or bothies are almost always of the most miserable description. ”

“ The impassable barrage comes a hundred feet below the point where the left-hand torrent precipitates itself at right-angles into the current of the right-hand one, and the two lines of whirlpools converge in a “V” and form one big walloping sockdolager. Him there would still be room to run by if he were “whouf-ing” there alone; but his satellites won’t have it. Their accursed team-work is such that the spreading “V” [Pg 213] above catches everything that comes down stream and feeds it into the maw of the big whirlpool as into a hopper. ”

“ Now the soldiers would probably land. If the people meant to save anything it was time to be stirring. Boats were hastily put out from the wharf, and such clothing, nets and other valuables as could be handled were brought ashore, loaded into hay carts, and carried away.
It was of no use to resist. The soldiers, of course, were well armed, and if the people made a stand among the houses, that would not prevent the enemy from destroying the shipping.
As the tide spread out over the sandy flats it filled the harbor so that, instead of a small channel, it became a wide and beautiful bay. ”

“ Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street.
Wanders and watches with eager ears.
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door.
The sound of arms and the tramp of feet.
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread. ”

“ The barrage ahead of them was terrific—the most appalling fence of shells that has ever been placed before advancing troops in this war. All our men describe it as wonderful. "Beautiful" is the word they use, because they know what it means in safety to them. ”

“ Each time the barrage lifts forward—which it does according to a scheme previously worked out to the minute and the yard—the attacking lines must instantly move up behind it, as close as possible to the shelter of the appalling curtain of flame and death which it lets down before them. The progress of the wave being thus so strictly scheduled, it must often leave small enemy posts in its rear, or dug-outs sheltering furtive bands of machine-gunners. ”

“ Prisoners are landed on the eastern side, and such advantage is taken of the natural conformation of this precipitous rock, that a man climbing the steep zigzag stairway which leads to the inhabited portion is hidden from sight of any craft upon the water even four or five hundred yards away. Nothing seen from the outside gives any token of habitation. The fishing-boat, I suppose, is kept for cases of emergency, that the Governor may communicate with the shore if necessary. ”

“ Forty wholly removable, regulating weirs were constructed in the Seine several years ago. When wholly closed up in summer, they maintain the required depth of water for steamboat navigation. When wholly open in floods, they cause no stoppage in the river surface. A remarkable barrage mobile has been in action for several years at a place called Port à l’Anglais, above Paris, and above the junction of the Seine and the Marne. When all is open there is not a ripple on the river flowing by. ”

“ A strong fortification of stone-work ran from this bulwark towards the water-side, having its southern end beside the king's storehouse of provision and munition for his ships of war. Here, moreover, was the barrack in which certain of the galley-slaves were cabined at night, for when the galleys lay idle the greater number of the oarsmen was employed on shore in sundry laborious exercises—repairing the fortifications and the like. A little way southward of this barrack was a rampire of earth built close against the sea-wall, and furnished with three great pieces of ordnance. ”

“ Near the dock-yard are the barracks, which can, if necessary, contain two thousand men. The frigate Rhine lay in harbour as guard-ship. There was one ship repairing in the dock, none building. For the purpose of repairing there is, behind the basin of the dock-yard, a dry, terrace-shaped, walled basin, or dry dock, large enough for a ship. When the ship is brought into this dock, the gates are closed, and the water pumped out by a steam machine of thirty horse-power. ”