Wake smiled at the image. He shared the fervent desire to get away from this place and back out to sea. When he joined the navy he never thought he would be lying in the mud in the dark at a dreary collection of huts on a forgotten backwater coast, waiting for the enemy to attack and try to kill him. Colonel Holland’s last words came to him and a chill went through his body as he wondered if that prophesy that he would die here would come true. Would his family in far away New England ever understand what he tried to do here, and why?
“McDougall, I wish we had one for you to fire right about now. I truly do, gunner.”
Meade held up a hand and interrupted the banter. “They’re coming—”
Boom! A flash blasted out of the tree line and canister shot swept into the buildings. Boom! Another gun over to the right erupted with flame and more shredding sounds ripped through the night. Cheering rose from all along the Confederate side of the field as yet another blast came from the first gun position.
McDougall, tired bones forgotten, called out to the sailors in the slow baritone deck voice of a petty officer going through the drill of firing small arms. “Hold your fire until you hear the order, lads. Mark your targets. Wait for the order. Make every shot count.”
The flashes were blinding, and Wake hoped that his men could actually see the enemy when they came forward. He tried blinking his eyes rapidly to no avail and finally closed them for several seconds. By that time several more blasts had come, but thankfully without any accompanying screams of sailors hit. Then the blasts stopped and Wake could hear a brief drum staccato followed by screams and war hoops as the veterans of the Florida Fifteenth Infantry Regiment came forward at a run. Meade turned to look at him.
“I can hear ’em, sir, but I can’t see ’em.”
Wake tried to sound calm, even as he thought his heart was going to pound open his chest.
“That’s all right, Meade. They’re doing us a favor by all that yelling. When they get close just fire at the sounds, but on the command. Pass the word.”
As the bosun went along the positions of his men scattered among the huts, Wake told McDougall to check the other sides of their defenses and send more men here to bolster Meade’s men. McDougall left at a trot as Wake stared out at the mass of men almost upon them. The Rebels were running fast. They were almost there. Meade ran up and slid in the mud as he fell beside Wake. Meade’s voice betrayed his anxiety as he stared out at the approaching mass of noise.
“All ready, sir.”
Wake nodded his head and stood, shouting as loud as he could over the screaming of the Rebel soldiers only yards away. “Navy men! Fire now!”
The sailors’ muskets shot out into the advancing Confederates, flames illuminating them in a tableau that showed the ferocity on their faces. The momentum of the infantry charge carried the surviving Floridians through the blast of naval musketry and forward the last few yards in front of the defenders. The sailors had time possibly to reload and shoot one more time. Scattered shots flashed where faster seamen had gotten off a second shot before falling back.
Wake now called for his men to retreat to the back walls of the dwellings. Meade knelt to fire again but suddenly clutched his stomach and fell writhing to the ground. Wake picked up the musket and shot blindly into the dark, hearing a curse thirty feet in front of him as a shape lit by the gun’s flash fell.
Now the Rebels were firing their muskets, but targets for them were harder to locate since the sailors were hidden behind the buildings and hastily constructed walls of boxes and hay bales. Wake looked around him and found that no sailors were near—they had all fallen back to the second line, reloading and firing.
He knelt down by Meade and tried to feel for the wound, but the bosun was clutching it so tightly he couldn’t determine anything but that it was a “gut shot,” the worst kind of wound. Meade was cursing in a steady low voice and his body was curled up, rolling back and forth in his agony. Wake then ran his hands around the bosun’s back and felt an exit hole. Liquid was pouring out in spurts.
“Meade, it’s bad, but you can make it. We’ll get the holes plugged and the army surgeon will take care of you when he gets here.”
A Rebel soldier with a bayonetted musket ran by, tripping on Wake and cursing at him as he charged toward the sailors. Another ran up and stopped close by, taking aim at the nearest building and firing. Wake flattened himself on the ground next to Meade’s ear.
“Meade, I’ve got to go now but I’ll be back. Stay low and stay quiet. I’ll be back.”
Meade made no response, and Wake noticed that the bosun wasn’t moving anymore. Wake stood up and ran to the center of the crossroads. Collapsing behind a bale of hay, he realized that the firing from the Confederates was diminishing.
A yell went up close by and several sailors fired into the area that Wake had just vacated. Several others fired from another building behind him and he heard McDougall and Hilderbrandt urging the men forward, the high Irish brogue competing with guttural German for the attention of the sailors. Thirty sailors, brandishing their cutlasses in one hand, for they had no bayonets, and their muskets in the other, rose en masse and followed Ensign Robbins as he ran into the darkness where the Rebels had taken over the original defensive positions. Wake stood as they charged by him,
