Read 1901 for Free Online Page B

was now packed with people. Were they armed? Of course they were! All Americans were riflemen, and wasn’t this part of the country the home of the Minutemen?
    The captain of the
Gazelle
looked at the soldiers huddled helplessly in the little boats, jammed so tightly they couldn’t raise their arms and fire back if they wished to. Almost three hundred men being rowed toward shore and all of them possibly heading for a slaughter. He couldn’t take the chance. His duty was clear.
    “Open fire on the beach!”
    Within seconds half a dozen of his ten 4.1-inch guns roared, sending shells into the packed humanity at virtually point-blank range, while machine guns on the deck clattered and scythed the human crop on the beach. The explosions hurled sand and bodies into the air. The survivors swirled, like leaves in a vagrant wind, not knowing what to do, then turned and ran away from the ships and toward the town. A second broadside was fired with the same deadly results: the gun captains had calculated the retreat and sighted their weapons accordingly.
    Inside the hotel, Homer had indeed made contact with New York and now they were interested, very interested, particularly about the soldiers. When the ships opened fire, Homer screamed in disbelief into the open phone and, sobbing, described the carnage on the beach. He was still trying to report when a shell from the third volley crashed into the hotel, destroying it and blowing the life out of his body.
    Instead of fleeing inland with the others, a panic-stricken Willy Talmadge screamed and ran down the beach as fast as his thin legs could propel him. He was unharmed.
    Blake Morris turned and ran from the beach as soon as he saw the guns fire. The concussions hurled him to the ground and momentarily deafened him. He rose quickly and looked for his wife. She too was running from the beach. Her skirts were hiked up around her hips, and she was carrying their screaming daughter in her arms. Morris automatically figured them to be about a hundred yards ahead, and he started moving faster than he ever thought possible to reach them.
    There had to be screams, perhaps even his own, but he could hear nothing. He tried to yell for her to hurry, prayed for her to hurry.
    Suddenly, the earth about her opened up and a mountain of dirt leaped for the sky. Later, he would desperately try to recall if he saw her and the child in that explosion, but he could never be certain.
    He lurched forward to the smoking crater. There was nothing. He looked about and saw pieces of cloth on the ground and bits of things that were red. He screamed, and this time he could hear it.
    On board the
Gazelle,
the German captain called a cease-fire. The mob on the shore was no longer a threat. The lifeboats were on the sand and the soldiers already disembarking and fanning out in open skirmish formation. He peered through his telescope at the lifeless bodies on the beach and elsewhere, ignoring the fleeing survivors who were fast disappearing into the nearby woods. Search as he might, he could not see any weapons. His heart filled with a sickened dread. There had to be weapons. Dear God, there had to be weapons. Please.
    Patrick Mahan stretched his six-foot body on the stiff cot. After so many years in the military, he still found it difficult to get comfortable on one of the damned things. He was surprised that he had slept at all, but he obviously had.
    The clock on the wall told him it was six in the morning of Monday, June 3, 1901. He remembered that he was in the war room on the second level of the White House.
    He stood up, and his rustling alerted a servant, who came in with a bowl of water and a cloth to refresh him. Equally important, he directed him to the little room down the hall where he could relieve the suddenly intense pressures on his bladder and bowels. The same servant told him they had taken the liberty of cleaning and pressing the uniforms and clothing in his baggage.
    Mind and body clear, he