Walk in Hell

"Good thing it doesn't happen very often, too," added Sherwood McKe

George Enos took a swig of coffee. It was vile stuff, but that wasn't the cook's fault. The Empire of Brazil, which produced more coffee than the rest of the world put together, had remained neutral. That meant both the Entente and the Quadruple Alliance went after its shipping with great enthusiasm. Most of the other coffee-growing countries were in the Entente camp. Not even the finest cook in the world could have done much with the beans that had gone into this pot.

"Well, if we don't fight other monitors much," George said, setting down his mug, "what do we do?"

"Bombard enemy land positions, mostly," Pitchess answered. "Moving six-inch guns down a river is easy. Hauling them cross-country is anything but. And we're a harder target to hit back at than guns on land, too, because we can move around easier."

"And because we're armored," Enos added.

"That doesn't hurt," Sherwood McKe

Lifting the coffee mug again, this time as if to make a toast with it, George said, "Here's hoping we never find out what the difference is." Both his bunkmates drank to that.

Sleeping belowdecks was stifling, especially in the top bunk, which Enos, as a newcomer aboard the Punishment, had inherited. Sometime in the middle of the night, though, a couple of the deck machine guns began to hammer, waking up everyone who was asleep. George didn't stay awake long. As soon as he figured out the shooting wasn't aimed directly at him, he rolled over-carefully, so as not to fall out of the narrow bunk-and started sawing wood again.

Next morning, he found out somebody on the Kentucky shore had fired a machine gun at the Punishment, hoping to pick off someone on deck or in the cabin. Wayne Pitchess took that in stride. "He didn't hurt us, and we probably didn't hurt him," he said around a mouthful of sausage. "That's the kind of war I like to fight."

Cautiously, the Punishment pushed farther down the river. Now Te

Enos eyed the woods ru

With a low rumble, the turret of the Punishment began to revolve. The guns rose slightly. George had never heard them fired before. He braced himself.

Bracing himself wasn't enough. The roar seemed like the end of the world. Sheets of golden flame spat from the guns' muzzles. One of them blew a perfect smoke ring, as he might have done with a cigar, only a hundred times bigger.

His ears still ringing, he watched the gun barrels rise again, an even smaller movement than they had made before. They salvoed once more. He couldn't tell where the shells were coming down. Someone evidently could, though, and was letting the Punishment know, perhaps by wireless. That repositioning must have been what was wanted, for the twin six-inchers fired again and again. Somewhere, miles inside Te

After a while, the bombardment stopped. The gu

A

"Punctures?" She shook her head. "Punctures are nothing." She counted herself lucky to be alive. With a dashing submersible commander, she'd been at a rather seedy hotel near the edge of one of Charleston's Negro districts when the riot or uprising or whatever it was broke out. They'd piled into the Vaux-hall and escaped just ahead of the baying mob. She'd delivered Roger Kimball back to the harbor and then, not bothering to get the bulk of her belongings out of the much finer hotel where she was registered, she'd headed for home.

Down the road toward her, filling up most of it, came a wagon pulled by a horse and a mule and filled to overflowing with white men, women, and children-several families packed together, unless she missed her guess. She stepped on the brake, hard as she could. The Vauxhall came to a shuddering stop. Its sixty-horsepower engine could hurl it forward at a mile a minute-though not on the Robert E. Lee Highway-but slowing down was another matter.

Some of the whites wore bandages, some of those rusty with old blood. Over the growl of the motorcar's engine, A

"It's bad, ma'am," the graybeard at the reins answered, tipping his battered straw hat to her-he could see she was a person of consequence, even if he didn't know just who she was. "We're lucky we got out alive, and that's a fact."

The woman beside him nodded vehemently. "You ought to turn around your ownself," she added. "Niggers up further north, they gone crazy. They got guns some kind of crazy way and they got red flags flyin' and sure as Jesus they're go

"Red flags," A

The fellow in the straw hat tipped it again, then guided his mismatched team off the road so the wagon could get around the automobile. As soon as she had the room, she put the Vauxhall in gear and zoomed forward again. Along with other i

Every so often, trees shaded the road. Something dangled from an overhanging branch of one of them. She slowed down again. It was the body of a lynched Negro. A placard tied round his neck said, THIS IS IF WE KETCH YOU. He wore only a pair of ragged drawers. What had been done to him before he was hanged wasn't pretty.