A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, April 1950 — page 114: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

114 A. MBRRITT’S FANTASY When we massacred one charge, the reserves started another. They made scal- ing ladders of corpses and came up the - stockade wall like monkeys. One chocolate rush managed to storm and dynamite the gate. An orange blast shook the stockade, and I saw the gate desintegrate in splinters. On the wall my boys were giving them the bayonet. Machine guns were chatter- ing; pistols barking ; knives clashing, lead flying and ricocheting everywhere. Add smoke and red flame-light from the burn- ing Village, a smell of powder like brim- stone, blood and mud, shrieks from the wounded, prayers from the dying, wild oaths in American accent from Tennessee to Massachusetts, crashing explosions and the voodoo battle screams of those Caco blacks—and you have a pretty fair picture of Hades. Whew! You don’t remember much in a scrimmage like that, but I remember this much. I was on the wall when the gate blew open, and I hollered for my top ser- geant to bring hand grenades and raced with him to close the breach. That old topkick had been at Manila with Dewey, and he was a darn good bomber. The blacks were pouring through the opening when we got there, and the old man and I tossed a shower of pineapples that turned the stockade entrance into Inferno. Crash! Crash! Crash! I saw five howling Cacos go to pieces like so many black-red jigsaw puzzles. That stopped the crush-in for a minute, but the mob behind was gathering for another rush; and I had my teeth in a grenade pin, preparing to throw, when the ser- geant grabbed my arm. “Captain! Look out!—the woman up there! My God!” _ There’s another thing that could have happened only in Haiti. Mrs, Peabody! Heaven knows how she got up there, but she was up on the stockade wail by the gate. YET a picture of her up there in the flame-glare and smoke, the splintered gate below, Caco corpses piled up like cordwood, the stockade posts smeared with strawberry jam. Standing up there on that machine-gunner’s platform, the gun disabled and the gunner sprawled dead at her feet; posed up there like granite with that expression on her face —that statue of a fisherman’s wife looking out to sea. Great Jerusalem! Bullets were whin- ing around her head like bumblebees. Black hellions were climbing the stockade not a dozen steps away; Marine bayonets were working like knitting needles; and bombs had almost blown the platform out from her shoes. Yes, and in all that hell- scene she stood like rock. Unies Calm. That figure in stone. I don’t wonder the dead Marine on the platiorm looked up at her with astonish- ment fixed in his eyes, mouth open. Hands folded on her breast, she was staring out over that screaming Caco mob and burn- ing village as if she saw. out there the shore on the other side of Jordan. “I am waiting for my husband.” That’s what she gave me when I climbed up there shouting, ““Mrs. Peabody! Mrs. Peabody!” to grab her down. You could’ve knocked me unconscious with a feather. “T haven’t seen him yet. fred’s out there—”’ My Lord! I made to catch her around the waist and lift her down to the sergeant below; then something almost did knock me unconscious, and it wasn’t feathers, either. Seeing we weren’t throwing pine- apples, that black mob rushed the gate. Chocolate, blue-indigo, fudge, peanut brittle, all shades of black and brown those But if Wil- devils stormed through. Caught in a desperate scuffle, the ser- geant was whirled away. A great blue- black Negro climbed at me, slashing his machete. That big razor-blade took a slice from my left shoulder as thin as boloney. The pain dazed me, and it seemed I just stood there with an arm around that granite woman while the knife played a dazzle of lightning in front of my face. It was a close shave that cannibal gave me. My, yes! His second swipe sheared the globe-and-anchor insignia off the front of my hat and took the crown clean away in front of my eyes. His third slashed the pistol holder from my hip. I’ll never un- derstand why the woman and I weren't chopped down. Maybe that assassin cmuett the look on her face and:paused imawe. I don’t know. comicbooks.com