down. For a long minute they lay there, unmoving, their hands clapped on their heads, as if that would save them from the falling granite of the dry dock.
Another explosion, and they felt the cobbles tremble under them.
Bowater rolled over, sat up, realized that lying on the ground would do them no good. He could see the fires at the ship houses had redoubled, and the wooden frame that had once been at the center of the inferno was gone.
“Reckon that was the dry dock?” Taylor asked.
“No,” Bowater said. “Probably some powder stores, or such. They put two thousand pounds of powder down in the dry dock. If that had gone off we’d be under half a ton of granite right now.”
He turned and looked at Taylor, who was on his belly and propped up on his elbows. Incredibly, his cigar was still in his mouth. The engineer nodded.
The three men hauled themselves to their feet, stumbled off again. The roar of the flames had dropped off a bit, as the fire consumed everything it could and began to starve.
They found the others, and together the lot of them made their way back to the
The tug was where they had left her, tied to the seawall, but lower with the ebbing tide. She looked like a ghost ship in the early-dawn light and the ubiquitous smoke. Samuel could see men moving about her deck.
Quite a lot of men, it seemed.
His weary mind toyed with this observation as he and his men shuffled the last hundred yards to the vessel. And then, twenty yards away, he became aware of more men, to his right and left, men closing in on them, and suddenly he was alert again, and his pistol was in his hand.
“Hold!” a voice called. Bowater turned. Men were coming at him from both sides, armed with rifles, some in uniform, most not. “Hold, sir!” the voice said again, and the man calling stepped forward, a sword in hand. He stood directly between Bowater and his tug, pointed with his sword to the pistol in his hand.
“Lay down your weapons, all of you!” he said in a commanding voice. “You are all prisoners of the Provisional Army of the State of Virginia!”
Bowater watched the officer’s expression of cool command turn to anger as he holstered, rather than dropped, his expensive presentation pistol. He did not know what to say. He wanted to laugh, but he was far too tired for that.
Book Two
11
TUESDAY MORNING…APRIL 23, 1861
DESTRUCTION OF GOVERNMENT ARMS AND STORES
ESCAPE OF THE PAWNEE:
EXCITING INCIDENTS, amp;c., amp;c.
Passengers from Norfolk last evening assure us that the amount of guns, stores and ammunition secured by the Virginia forces after the burning of the Navy-Yard, was enormous, and our correspondence confirms the fact. The guns in many instances were imperfectly spiked in the hurry and alarm of the Federal incendiaries, and are in no respects damaged.
Appearances indicated that it was intended to cripple this admirable and useful work, by blowing up the gates, but from some cause this work was not done, and the dock was found to be altogether unhurt.
We cannot bring ourselves to believe that an officer of a Navy, distinguished hitherto by a high sense of honor and chivalrous courage, could willingly condescend to such an inglorious mode of warfare as this. We rather regard it as an emanation from the wretched cabal at Washington, and a practical carrying out of the tactics laid down by the villainous Sumner, and other orators of the Black Republican party. Burn, sink and destroy is the word with them.
The Petersburg Express has the following by telegraph from Norfolk:
The prisoners taken this morning are Capt. Wright of the army, and young Rogers, a son of Commodore Rogers of the navy.
The enemy took two of our young men prisoners last night. They were reconnoitering on their own account.
To: Stephen R. Mallory
Norfolk, April 22, 1861
North left for Charleston to-day; I answer your dispatch. The
