Glory In The Name

was over for him. If the Starr had had one round left he would have blown his brains out, but it did not, and Robley knew that God would not allow him so quick an end, not after all the suffering he had inflicted on others over the past year.

That was all right. He would take it, endure it manfully. It was a gift, really, a chance to repent what he had done, to beg the Lord’s forgiveness, and in the end he would see his Katherine, his boys…

The world seemed to explode around him, and at first he thought it was his wounds, but then he knew it was not. The Yankee ship was firing on them, firing its great guns, paying the Yazoo River back at last for whatever hurt Tanner had managed to inflict.

There was something else as well, some other sound, some other excitement. He turned his head. Another boat was coming alongside. Not a big ship, just a boat, like a tug or some such. Paine watched with a vague interest as it ranged up beside them, hit the Yazoo River with a thud that made the ironclad tremble. Someone came up over the side with a rope in his hand, and then another man and another. Yankees attacking? No, the Yankees did not seem willing to bother. Friends, then.

He closed his eyes against a wave of pain, listened to the sounds of men rushing around. He could barely hear, for the pounding of the blood in his head. He felt hands on him, on his face. He opened his eyes. Someone was kneeling over him, a dark shape, familiar somehow.

The big Yankee ship fired again, the light of the muzzle flash illuminating the face of the man looking down at him. Robley gasped, did not know what to think. Twenty years older, hurt, come from the grave, it was his son, Jonathan Paine. His son.

In the engine room: smoke, noise, heat, steam, an edge-of-disaster feel. Full ahead with both engines, fires carefully tended, maximum achievable steam pressure in both boilers. There was no chance the safety valves would blow. Hieronymus Taylor had tied them off, considered them a nuisance in such circumstances.

The boiler-room temperature was 132 degrees. One of the coal heavers had already passed out, had been dragged into the engine room, splashed with water, allowed to lie there. No time to manhandle him up onto the gundeck.

The glass water gauge on the starboard boiler shattered, spewing boiler water, water right on the edge of steam, all over another of the coal passers. He howled, plunged his arm in a bucket full of tepid water, but then manfully picked up his shovel again.

Burgess raced to the gauge, pulled on the chain that shut off the valves above and below it, whipped a screwdriver from his pocket. He danced around the piles of coal on the deck plates, twirling screws, as the coal passers fed the beast, the firemen pulled ashes from below the grate.

Chief Taylor stood by the reversing levers and throttles, looked around. Chaos, controlled insanity. The whole thing pushed as hard and as far as it could be pushed. Under the hiss of steam, the roar of the fires, the clank of pistons and rods and shafts, sounded the leitmotif of war, the hollow, jarring concussion of shells striking the casement above, guns going off, the uncertainty of what was happening beyond those superheated confines, the possibility of a shell coming through the side and through the boilers, scalding them all, killing them instantly, if they were lucky.

Taylor did not like the looks of the starboard feed-water pump, the “doctor.” He did not like the way the mounting bolts were working in the starboard engine, did not like the color of the rapeseed oil he lifted off the crankshaft. He was not pleased with the sound emanating from the shaft bearings. Four stay bolts were leaking on the starboard boiler, six to port. There was a lot he did not like, a hundred things within his fiefdom that he feared might let go at any moment. But so far the gauge glass was the worst disaster they had endured.

He glanced up at the telegraph. It was pegged full ahead, had been for the past hour. But full ahead now was not what it had been an hour before. The stack was shot full of holes and not drawing well, the grates were clogging with clinker from the poor-quality coal-no time to clean them now. The fires were not as hot as they could be, steam pressure falling.

Taylor pulled a rag, wiped his forehead and eyes. How much longer until a major catastrophe? How long could they push this hard?

The gundeck hatch opened, and Taylor looked up. “Holy mother…” He could see flames leaping around the casement, could see the brilliant light of a full-on fire raging in the tween decks. How long has that been burning? What the hell else is going on up there?

Dick Merrow came scampering down the ladder. His face was blackened, holes charred in his clothing. “Chief, Chief, captain says we can’t charge the fire hoses! Whole casement’s going up!”

Taylor clamped on his cigar, and while Merrow danced around as if the floor plates were red-hot, waiting for an answer, Taylor traced in his mind the entire firefighting system, from auxiliary steam to the water pump to the intake, to the piping to the casement, to the hoses. “All right,” he said at last, “tell the old man he’ll have water as soon as humanly possible.”

Merrow nodded, got some relief from the words, raced up the ladder.

Bang, bang, shells hit the casement above, made Taylor stagger. Damn… Whatever ship was hitting them now, it was much closer, or throwing heavier metal. The sound of the impact was deep and dull, a visceral sound. The Yazoo River staggered as if it had been hit with a fist, pushed sideways through the water. Taylor wondered if a shot toward the waterline would blow its way into the engine room, into the boiler room. Probably.

Fire pump… He pulled himself back to the immediate threat. Problem had to be with the fire pump, or the steam line going there. He cursed under his breath. The pump was in the most awkward of positions, aft, behind the port engine, right up against the after bulkhead. He thought of sending Burgess to crawl into that filthy, dark place and fix it, but he could not do it. Too lousy a job to delegate.

“Burgess!” Taylor shouted. Burgess looked up, held up a hand to signal he heard. “I’m going to see to the fire pump!” Taylor pointed aft. “Take over here!” Burgess nodded.

Taylor grabbed up some tools and a lantern. He worked his way around the engine, ducking under the piping, skirting the condenser. Shells slammed into the boat; Taylor staggered, put his hand against the cool, damp metal of the condenser, steadied himself. He inched on, following the steam line that led to the pump. Found the steam gauge-pressure enough to drive the thing. Reckoned the pounding of the shells had knocked something on the pump galley west.

He pushed aft, moving fast. The shells came faster, slamming into the ship, the dull, ugly sound frightening in the sweltering shadows of the engine room. He dropped to his knees, crawled along under the long shafts driving the paddle wheels, the creaking pillow blocks.

Got to damn well move… he thought, picturing the fire above, and then he was tossed aside as if he had taken a swift kick in the ribs, slammed into one of the pillow blocks.

The engine room filled with a flash of light; Taylor had a second’s image of lightning and deep shadows on the engine and the bulkheads and sides of the engine room. Filling the room: the sound of gushing water, flying metal, the deep sound of an explosion, but muffled, like a bomb going off in a pile of sand. The furious hiss of steam, then dark again, and a hot, fine mist enveloped him, fell on his hands and face, just on the edge of painful.

A shell had hit a boiler. The starboard engine stopped, the noise in the engine room cut in half. Taylor closed his eyes, prayed that everyone had been killed in that instant. And as he prayed, the first horrible, insane shriek of agony rose up from the shadowy place forward of the engine, followed by another, and a third. Taylor clenched his teeth. The sound did not seem human, could not come from a human throat, save for a person in unimaginable agony, the flesh seared from his body.

“Die, damn it, will you die!” he cried out. There were three men shrieking-there was no way to tell which three-the screams in no way resembled human voices, or indeed anything earthly at all.

Taylor hesitated. Go back? Fix the fire pump? He crawled on, dragging his tools and his lantern. He found the fire pump, his hands moving on their own, reaching for tools, twisting, banging, wrenching.

The pump leaped to life-it took its steam from the port boiler-and even as Taylor heard the water sucking up through, pushed up the pipe to the hose above, he could not have told anyone what he had done to fix it. The screams of the dying men filled the engine room, pushed every other thing out of Taylor’s head. He was sobbing loud, bawling like a baby, completely consumed by the sound of his men screaming their lives away. He was too aware of the twitching agony he felt in his head to know or care about the pump.

He left the tools, grabbed the lantern, crawled back the way he had come, banging his head, lacerating his