the bridge from one side to the other, the deckhouse with its windows and skylight and vent above, enclosing the fidley. Gloomy, hot, bad-smelling, and loud, it was his fiefdom and he was well pleased with it.
At the workbench below, fireman Ian O’Malley was seated on Taylor’s stool, his face hidden behind a newspaper, and the sight of the man deflated the good cheer the chief felt at looking upon his engine and its domain. He clattered down the ladder and across the engine-room deck.
“Y’all hold her dere, now…” Moses’s voice came from behind the engine, a place deep in the recess of the engine room, inconspicuous and hard to see from the engine-room door above. “Good, now gimme dat wrench…”
Taylor ducked under the piping for the condenser and straightened. Coal heavers Joshua Beauchamps and Nat St. Clair were holding a three-foot-square metal box, the hot well from a small steam engine, against the overhead, while Moses bolted it to the deck beams. The hot well had been Moses’s idea-he had noticed it in the yard one morning while they were taking on coal, and Taylor agreed that it was an improvement over his initial idea of a barrel as a water tank.
He watched for a moment while Moses tightened the bolts, then said, “Secure that tank, then belay the thing, Moses. We got to get underway.”
“Damn!” said Moses, never taking his eyes off the bolt head. “Can’t we ever finish one damned thing ’round here?”
“Not as long as we got a master’s division.”
“Massa’s division?” Moses tightened the bolt until it was snug, then lowered his arms and stepped back. “You de only massa we gots, Massa He-ronmus. You de massa of dis whole fine plantation here.” With a sweep of his arm he gestured toward the engine and boiler rooms.
“And don’t you forget it, neither. Now hurry it up.”
He left them at it, ducked back under the piping, ambled over to where O’Malley was lounging. “Morning, O’Malley,” he said cheerfully.
O’Malley looked over the top of his paper. “Morning, Chief,” he said and raised the paper again.
“Say, O’Malley…the captain has a notion to get underway. Think you might stoke up them fires?”
O’Malley lowered the paper once more. “I reckon one of them niggers can do it,” he said and raised the paper again.
Taylor smiled, nodded, waited until the urge to pull the paper from O’Malley’s hands and stuff it down his throat had passed. “I can see you wouldn’t care to get them new dungarees all covered with coal dust. Where’d y’all get ’em?”
O’Malley lowered the paper. “I got ’em up to Norfolk last Saturday, and a right bargain they were. Are they not the handsomest you’ve seen?”
Taylor nodded. The cloth was dark blue, and the light from the skylight overhead danced on the new steel buttons. “Very nice. It grieves me to ask you to get them all soiled, but Moses and the others are still working on the shower bath.”
“Ah, very well,” O’Malley put his paper down with a sigh. “I’ll do it me self. Easier than trying to get a bloody darkie to do a job of work…”
He slid off the stool, ambled over to the boiler, on the other side of the open bulkhead. “’Tis no great hardship, soiling me clothes, now that me and Burgess have that famous clothes washer set up.”
The Irishman whipped a rag around his hand, opened the door to the furnace. He picked up a shovel and spread out the coals banked in the firebox, then began to scoop more coal from the hopper and feed it to the glowing orange bed.
Taylor picked a match up off the workbench, scratched it, and lit his cigar. He leaned back to watch the fun.
O’Malley continued to feed coal into the firebox, and Taylor heard the first hiss of steam beginning to form.
“Easy with the coal, O’Malley. Don’t smother it. Want to get her nice and hot.”
“I’m not goin ta bloody smother it,” O’Malley growled. He paused in his shoveling because in fact he was.
The fire was getting hot, Taylor could feel it from the engine room. O’Malley was starting to do a weird little dance, squirming a bit, as if something might be in his pants.
“We’ll need some speed today, O’Malley. Get her good and hot!”
“Aye!” O’Malley called, his back to Taylor. Taylor hurried to where the coal heavers were working on the shower bath. “Moses, you all, come see this!” He got back to his stool in time to catch O’Malley give a little jiggle, as if he was trying to shake something out of his new dungarees.
“Good and hot, O’Malley!” Taylor prompted, grinning around his cigar.
“Aye!” the Irishman shouted, more irritated this time. He scooped another shovelful, then another, leaned forward to spread the coals out. He paused for a second, then dropped his shovel and whirled around.
“Ahh! Ahh! Ahhh, bloody shit, bloody hell!” He leaped up and down, plunged his hands in his pants, screamed again, pulled his hands out. “Ahhh!” He jerked his belt loose, tore the buttons of his pants open, and dropped his dungarees around his ankles. He stood there, mindless of who might be watching, and clasped his private parts, sighing with relief.
It was a minute at least before Hieronymus Taylor could open his eyes and wipe the tears from them enough that he could see. What he saw, not surprisingly, was Ian O’Malley, staring hatred at him.
“Do ya think it’s bloody funny? A man burns himself, acting on your rutting orders?”
“O’Malley, you stupid bastard. Every coal heaver been on the job a week knows you don’t wear pants with goddamned steel buttons. Burn your pecker clean off, if you got one. Where the hell did you get your papers?”
“Shut yer bloody gob, you bastard, I’ll do for you.”
Taylor stood, spread his arms in a sign of welcome. “I’m waiting…” he said, but O’Malley just stared and said nothing.
“That’s what I reckoned,” said Taylor. “Now go and put some engineering pants on and get your ass back here. We got a war to fight, in case you ain’t been informed.”
“Chief?” Johnny St. Laurent called down the fidley. “Boat’s puttin off, Chief!”
“Thank you, Johnny.” O’Malley forgotten, Taylor climbed up the ladder and onto the side deck, walked quickly around to the fantail. He could see the boat pulling for them, brilliant white on the blue water. In it, the hands he had sent ashore. And one he had not.
He waited impatiently, glanced up at the wheelhouse, but neither Bowater nor Harwell was to be seen. He drummed his fingers on the cap rail. At last the boat pulled alongside and the sailor in the stern sheets called, “Toss oars!” and the boat came to a gentle stop at the
One by one the men hopped out. Taylor met Wendy’s eyes, gave her a quick wink, then paid her no more attention. He resisted helping her out of the boat, and she managed well enough without his help, despite an obvious unfamiliarity with watercraft.
The bowman pushed the boat off, and Taylor was able to get a better look at her. She was dressed in sailor garb, the wide-bottomed trousers, loose-fitting frock, and wide-brimmed straw hat; the uniform of men-of-war men the world over. She looked like a kid playing dress-up.
“Come on,” Taylor said, led her forward and then down the fidley ladder to the engine room. It was only there, in his fiefdom, that he finally felt safe to turn and look at her directly, and address more than two words to her.
“Everything go all right?” he asked.
“Perfect!” she said low. He could see she was thrilled by the adventure of the thing. They had been planning it for weeks, had put all the elements in place. Taylor had needed only to hear that they were going into battle. He was beginning to think it would never happen. And then, that morning, Bowater had informed him of their orders. Johnny St. Laurent was dispatched to town with a confidential message, on the pretext of buying fresh galley stores, a mission that Bowater the gourmand, who adored all that hoity-toity slop, would never refuse or question.
“Welcome to my little kingdom! Burgess, Moses, this here is Ordinary Seaman Atkins. He’s gonna sail with us today, observe, if you will.”
Burgess and Jones nodded to Wendy, their faces expressionless, and Wendy nodded back. She looked around
