Glory In The Name

“Captain?” The pilot, Wilcox, stepped up, one hand on the rail, looking out into the dark.

“Yes?” Pope said. His voice sounded guilty in his own ears.

“We’re getting mighty close to the right-hand shore. I’m afraid we’ll be aground directly.”

“I’ve tried to get her head around but it won’t answer.”

“Perhaps if we go astern on the engines we can work off?”

“Perhaps. Ring full astern.”

The bell was rung, the engine room jingled in response, and moments later came the jerky, screeching, clanging, hissing noise of two big steam engines turning in reverse, engines that were anything but reliable, particularly in reversing.

The fire rafts, drifting fast downstream, threw the occasional cast of light over the shoreline, illuminating the scrubby trees and dense marsh grass. The engines protested. All eyes on the Richmond’s quarterdeck were fixed on the shore, what they could see of the shore, in the fire rafts’ light. The minutes ground by and the big ship swept downstream and the engines turned with the cacophony of something going terribly wrong, until, foot by foot, they succeeded in pulling the Richmond backward into midstream.

“Perhaps we have steam enough now to turn her head upstream?” Pope asked hopefully, but Wilcox shook his head.

“We don’t have room here to turn, sir,” he said. “We’ll have to wait until we are down by Pilot Town. Should be room enough there.”

For a moment Pope said nothing. Continue on like this? They were floating sideways down South West Pass, with fire rafts in pursuit and enemy gunboats behind them. There was an unsettled, nightmare quality to the whole thing. But what could he do?

“Very well, Mr. Wilcox, we’ll try again at Pilot Town.”

Robley Paine looked at his watch. Five twenty-three a.m. An hour and forty minutes after the initial attack. The ram and the fire rafts had scared hell out of the Yankee fleet, sent them skedaddling, but they did not seem to have done more than that.

The rafts had grounded on the western bank and were now burning themselves out. The ram had limped off after her initial attack. Lieutenant Warley, who had command of her, was no coward, Robley knew that, so Robley had to imagine that she was disabled in some way. The engines, he knew, were hardly reliable.

But that was fine. They had done their work, the Manassas and the fire rafts. Now was the moment for the gunboats to plunge ahead, to blast holes in the fleeing Yankees, to make sure the Anaconda understood it was not the only dangerous beast in those waters.

“First light,” Paine observed. In the east, a band of gray was glowing dull near the horizon. Robley could see the bow of the Yazoo River and the bulwark of cotton bales bathed in the dull, blue-gray dawn. Beyond that, the Confederate fleet and the Mississippi River were still lost in gloom.

Kinney grunted, said nothing.

They had been waiting. In the dark, it was hard to know what was happening downriver. The fire rafts cast their wide circles of light, which reflected on the black hulls of the panicked Yankee ships. The mosquito fleet was able to follow behind the rafts, keep an eye on the enemy, until at last the fire rafts grounded out and the Yankees were swallowed up by the darkness down South West Pass.

The head of South West Pass loomed like a cave, and they dared not enter, because there was no way to know what was in there. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps the Yankees had fled clear to the Gulf. Or perhaps the Confederates would meet up with three heavy men-of-war, anchored, spring lines rigged, heavy broadsides waiting for the gunboats.

That possibility gave Robley Paine no pause. He would have gladly steamed ahead, attacked whatever he found, thrown himself and his ship at the Yankees, offered all up to the memory of his sons.

But Hollins was not so inclined, and Hollins was in command, so they waited. Paine stepped out of the wheelhouse, paced the hurricane deck, glanced up now and again. It was growing light fast. He could see the shapes of the other vessels of the squadron, to the east and west of him, shadowy vessels with plumes of dark smoke coming from their stacks. He could see the far banks of the river now, dark against the lighter sky.

He could not see the Yankee fleet. They were gone, driven from the Head of the Passes.

The sight of that empty water, where just two hours before a powerful enemy squadron had anchored, spread joy through Robley Paine like the light of the rising sun.

And then, hard on the heels of that good feeling, fear.

Hollins would never give up the fight as won? he thought.

He looked up at the Calhoun, Hollins’s flagship, wondering how he might determine the flag officer’s intentions. He saw a belch of black smoke pour from her stack, saw the water churn white as her side wheels began to turn and the five-hundred-ton steamer began to inch ahead, the eighteen-pounder rifle on her bow pointing the way, like the nose of a hunting dog on its quarry’s scent.

Paine stepped eagerly back into the wheelhouse. “Half ahead, Mr. Kinney,” he said. He had been puttering about the river long enough that he was beginning to feel comfortable in his role of captain. “Keep pace with the flagship.”

Kinney grunted. “Flagship…” he muttered in a derisive tone, and it did sound a bit foolish, said that way, but Robley did not care. They were plunging ahead, down South West Pass, chasing after the fleeing enemy, and that was all he needed to know.

Kinney rang the requisite bells, and down in the engine room Mr. Brown jingled back. The Yazoo River seemed to come awake. The big stern wheels began to turn and the bobbing, erratic motion of a ship stopped in the stream-underway but not making way, in the parlance of the mariners-changed into the steady rhythm of a ship steaming ahead.

Paine looked east and west. The others, the McRae, the Ivy, the Tuscarora, the Calhoun, and the Jackson, they were all gathering way, heading downriver in line abreast. Here was the bold advance, the waterborne cavalry charge. The fleet looked to Robley like a line of mounted knights, rolling forward.

And on this charge cried “God for Henry, England, and St. George!” Robley Paine was not happy-happiness was a thing from his past-but he was at least satisfied.

They eased their throttles open, Commodore Hollins’s squadron, and churned the brown water white and under parallel trails of black smoke steamed the fifteen miles down the South West Pass to the sea.

Kinney fidgeted, chewed hard, spit on the deck and the sides of the spittoon. “Don’t know what in hell y’all think you’ll do, if you come on them Yankees…” he muttered, and Paine was not sure if he was looking for an answer, but he gave it to him anyway.

“We will go to battle with them, Mr. Kinney. We will fire on them and endeavor to do as much damage as we can.”

“‘Fire on them…’” Kinney muttered. Paine did not answer again.

The fleet was capable of eight knots over the ground, with the boost they got from the current, and the marshy shore seemed to fly past. The sun broke the horizon and turned the sky a light, hazy blue. Two columns of smoke rose from stacks somewhere down the South West Pass, and the Confederate fleet was closing fast.

“Come left, you stupid son of a bitch,” Kinney growled at the helmsman, who turned the big wheel a few spokes. The pilot was becoming visibly more nervous with each mile made good and turning his fear into abuse.

“Steady, Mr. Kinney,” Robley said, hand resting on the butt of the Starr. “Don’t lose your nerve yet. The iron has not yet begun to fly.”

“‘Iron fly…’ Ain’t what I goddamned signed on for! How many time I got to tell you? You never said nothing about fighting no Yankees.”

“Mr. Kinney…” Robley pulled the Starr from his holster, spun the cylinder to see that each chamber was loaded. “Please be assured that you have much more to fear from me than you do from the Yankees.”

Kinney looked from the pistol to Robley’s face. He turned, stared out the window at the water under the bow. “‘More to fear from me…’ Crazy son of a bitch…” he said, lower this time, low enough so as not to invite response,