“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Nor do I; but I expect his imagination will have been shaped by stories of ancient European wars, which were fought with all sorts of fanciful and terrifying weapons, including aircraft and poison gas. I hope the sound of the Tubemen gives some vague inspiration to these nightmares, and that the Black Kites will confirm them. We’ll know soon enough, in any case.”
I cleaned and oiled my Pittsburgh rifle by lamplight while we waited, and I kept a generous supply of ammunition handy, for even the Major General’s staff would not be exempted from the coming battle—every able-bodied American soldier in the vicinity would be pressed into action before the day was done.
Julian could not give orders from the rear echelons. The kites were to be launched from behind a low rill, set about with earthen lunettes and perilously close to the Dutch lines. The effect would be most useful coming in utter darkness, so we had to launch well before dawn, even before the false glow that precedes the rising sun; and our regiments were prepared to advance at first light. Julian stood in our frozen trench, or paced back and forth in it, consulting his Army watch and an almanac for the precise hour of sunrise. He muttered to himself at length; and with the collar of his coat turned up, and his yellow beard flecked with motes of ice, he looked far older than his years.
His adjutants and sub-commanders waited impatiently for Julian to read the auspices. At last he looked up from his watch and gave a pallid smile. “All right,” he said. “Better too early than too late.”
With that he went up to the very edge of the battlements and ordered the Stringmen to stand by their reels and the Furlers to “loft up.”
The effort proceeded much as it had on the rooftop in Striver, though with certain important variations. At the warehouse the kites had been loaded with buckets of sand. Tonight there were heavy skin bags attached to their bridles. I asked Julian what the bags contained.
“Anything noxious we could find,” he said. “Some contain pure caustic soda or industrial solvents. Some are filled with liquid bleach, some with waste from the tannery or the field hospital. Some have lice powder in them, and others are stuffed with ground glass.”
The bags had been broadly daubed with luminous paint, just as the buckets had been. Otherwise there would have been nothing to see, nor any way to judge the kites’ ascent. I had worried about the wind, which was capricious; but just lately it had picked up speed and was blowing gustily. The kites unfurled with loud, crisp bangs. They rose, tested their luggage, hesitated. Then the glowing cargo swept skyward with terrifying speed.
Julian quickly called on the Tubemen to begin their whirling again, to make sure the Dutch were on alert.
I cannot say to what height the kites flew, but their clever design kept them level with one another and stable in flight. They appeared as a hundred and more eerie, bobbing green lights, risen above the crowded Mitteleuropan army camp like rogue stars. To an enemy infantryman it would have been impossible to gauge the true size or proximity of the phenomenon—which was why Julian had worked so hard to fertilize the Dutch imagination with hints and legends.
Certainly the kites didn’t go unnoticed. Almost immediately enemy trumpets began to sound, loudly enough that the howling of the Tubemen did not entirely drown them out. Peeking through an embrasure in the earthen embankment where we sheltered, I saw lanterns flicker in the staff tents of the Mitteleuropan camp. A few stray shots were fired in haste. I cupped my mouth in my hands and leaned toward Julian’s ear. “Won’t they shoot down the kites, Julian?”
“Not yet—they’re too high. And when they do shoot, Adam, they won’t aim at the kites, which are more or less invisible, but at their cargo.”
The chief Stringman called out numbers from his immense twine-reel, which had been calibrated to gauge the amount of line paid out. The other Stringmen presumably kept pace, while Julian worked numbers with a pencil and a paper pad,* and the hempen twine bucked and sang at the anchored reels.
At last Julian reached the conclusion of his figuring and sent out the order to “lax line.” The Stringmen let their cord play out freely a moment longer, then braked the reels with wooden chocks.
The luminous, toxic cargo glided closer to the enemy infantry, and fresh rifle shots rang out.
These increased in volume and intensity. Peering across the flat expanse of darkness where the Dutch were encamped I could see the flash of rifle fire as if it were the play of lightning inside a thundercloud—a vast, wide crackling of rifle fire, shockingly intense.
The Tubemen increased their hooting to a high unholy pitch. I expect all this show intimidated the Mitteleuropans—in fact it was beginning to intimidate me. Those Dutch rifles, though aimed at the kites, were pointed roughly in our direction, and bullets began to drop out of the sky around us, not entirely harmlessly. Hails of them fell against the earthen embankments.
In the sky to the east of us, the luminous floating targets jerked and danced as they were struck and struck again.
I pictured in my mind what must be happening on the field of battle. I reminded myself that the Dutch had intercepted the letter Julian entrusted to Private Langers, and that what they perceived was not a theatrical effect but the actions of (in Julian’s words as I had transcribed them) a HELLISH and SATANIC DEVICE, insidious in its LINGERING EFFECTS. As the skin bags were perforated and finally obliterated by volleys of bullets they released into the night air their unpleasant contents, which descended onto the fearful infantrymen like a ghastly dew.
“Light on the eastern horizon, sir,” an adjutant soon reported to Julian. I looked and detected a brightening there, the air-glow of the coming dawn.
“Reel in!” Julian ordered.
Even such feeble first light soon made the battlefield more visible. A few of the Black Kites had been battered beyond utility, or had their strings cut by rifle fire, and these had fallen like enormous wounded bats among the Dutch. But the Mitteleuropan troops weren’t paying much attention to the fallen kites—in fact they were running aimlessly, many of them.
I tried to put myself in the shoes of one of those soldiers and imagine it from his point of view. Woken from a troubled sleep by an unearthly keening, he’s called out into the darkness and finds a great number of peculiar Flying Lights descending on his encampment. All manner of fears and fancies compete for his attention. He’s grateful when the order to fire freely rings out, and he lifts his Dutch rifle—let’s say he’s a marksman—and discharges round after round at the eerie targets above him. If his aim isn’t accurate, it doesn’t matter; a thousand men like him are doing just the same thing.
The shooting bolsters his courage. But before long he perceives a certain rank scent, unpleasant but unidentifiable, composed (though he doesn’t know it) of all the poisons Julian’s men have sent aloft: powders for killing rats, solvents for paint, lye for soap, offal from the field hospital …. A drop of something touches his exposed skin, and tingles or burns there. He squints once more into the night sky; his eyes are doused with caustic agents; he weeps involuntarily, and cannot see.…
There was not enough of toxins and poisons in those bags to kill an army of Dutchmen, perhaps not enough to kill even one Dutchman, barring a lucky chance. But our hypothetical soldier chokes, he sweats, he fancies himself murdered or at least mortally tainted. It’s not a threat he can contain or confront. It comes out of the night like a supernatural visitation. All he can do, in the end, is run from it.
He’s not alone in reaching this conclusion.
I looked out on the Dutch encampments and saw chaos. First light could do nothing to dispel the fears Julian had so adroitly conjured. And Julian’s conjuring wasn’t finished. “Fire canister!” he cried, and the order was swiftly conveyed to our artillery emplacements. Evidently Julian had ordered certain canister shells to be filled with (as he later described it to me) a combination of flea powder and red dye. These exploded in huge clouds of amber dust, which the wind carried among the Dutch infantry in swirling clouds—harmlessly; but the Dutch reckoned the shells to be full of potent poison, and they fled from them the way they would never have fled a conventional artillery barrage.