Glory In The Name

thought could be gained in a few months. Something had happened, and now he could hardly recall the Wendy who had so annoyed him. Nor could he entirely recall the Samuel Bowater who had been so annoyed.

“Very well, then.” Bowater sighed, set the canvas up. He looked at the paints and the brushes. Something frightened him, and he did not know if it was an inability to get what was in his heart on canvas, or fear that it would all pour out, that he would make it all appear before him, and have to look on it again.

September turned to October and the cheerless days of autumn, with the cold wind tearing brown leaves from the trees, swirling them down the cobbled streets of Norfolk. Bowater, for all the pleasure he was now taking in Wendy’s company-they walked together, set up their easels, painted side by side, working away for hours in companionable silence-was desperate now to get back to the Cape Fear. He extended his walks beyond the confines of the hospital, strolling along the waterfront, looking longingly out over the river, assessing the shipping that plowed the gray water under gray skies.

Wendy urged him not to overtax his strength, and he did not, mostly, but he pushed himself to the brink.

In mid-October he sent word that he would be rejoining the Cape Fear, that he would take passage to Elizabeth City and meet her there. On that very day he read with some amusement how a band of ad hoc Confederate gunboats had chased the mighty Richmond and two other men-of-war from the Head of the Passes below New Orleans. Employed an ironclad ram, first such vessel built on the American continent. The CSN stealing a march on the Yankees.

Rams… That ancient weapon of Athens and Rome, made obsolete with the ascendancy of sail over the oar. Now with the rise of steam, the oldest of naval weapons was voguish once more.

He read of the first of the Yankee ironclad gunboats, the Carondelet, sliding down the ways. He hoped she was as unreliable as this Manassas appeared to be.

At last the doctors pronounced him fit to leave. With great enthusiasm he packed his few belongings, dressed in the new uniform he had ordered, his third, the second of cursed gray cloth. Tailored to the same measurements as the last, but he found it hung loose on him, was ill-fitting. He ignored that, ignored the aches he still suffered, the short-windedness. He would have ignored a missing limb to get out of the hospital and back to his command.

He said goodbye to Wendy, and it was an awkward thing, with a part of him wanting to embrace her, even kiss her, the other part quite unsure of how it was with them. In the end he gave her a hug, she gave him a sisterly peck on the cheek.

“We are in Elizabeth City quite often,” he said to her, a veiled suggestion.

“I could take the train down…” she said.

Bowater took passage aboard the Raleigh, which was transporting supplies from Norfolk to Roanoke Island. He could see the Cape Fear, tied to the dock, a half mile away, as they steamed down the Pasquotank River, leaving the Great Dismal Swamp Canal astern.

Samuel Bowater felt a charge he had not expected, a delight at seeing his little command, as he looked her over through a pair of field glasses. She looked good. Trim, tidy, her paint freshened, the brass howitzers on the afterdeck glowing dull under the overcast skies.

“She look good, Massa Samuel,” Jacob said.

“Here, have a closer look.” He handed Jacob the field glasses. “Are you eager to get back to her?”

“Oh, yassuh. Hospital ain’t no place for no navy men like us, suh.”

The Raleigh’s skipper brought his boat neatly alongside the Cape Fear. Bowater stepped aboard his own vessel to the kind of formal greeting he would have expected Lieutenant Harwell to organize. There were bosun’s calls and a sergeant’s guard with rifles and lines of men at attention. It was all very stirring, but Bowater did not really notice.

It was the smell that struck him at first. The smell of the Cape Fear. Before, he would not have said there was such a thing, a distinct odor to his ship. But now, coming back aboard after a month and a half absence, he realized there was. Paint and coal smoke and tar and the unique smell of Johnny St. Laurent’s galley-oh, how he had missed St. Laurent’s cooking! They all melded together to give the boat a unique and distinct ambiance. Bowater breathed deep, happy to have that in his lungs again.

He stepped down the lines of men, drawn up to greet him. There was a genuine warmth in their welcome. Bowater was touched, and not a little surprised.

“Tanner.” He stopped in front of the seaman, dressed out in his best uniform. Tanner, and some others, Bowater noticed, had embroidered “Cape Fear” on the silk bands around their caps. “I don’t recall much of what happened that morning at Fort Hatteras, but I do have some memory of your tending to me. Thank you.”

Tanner shrugged, hemmed, looked genuinely uncomfortable. “Whatever I could do, sir…” he managed to get out before Bowater released him from his discomfort, offered him a hand to shake, moved on down the line.

Hieronymus Taylor and his small engineering department were drawn up at the end of the line. Burgess, Moses Jones, Joshua Beauchamps, Nat St. Clair, and two new faces Samuel did not recognize, black men, one a big, burly fellow, the other more slight, around Bowater’s height.

“Welcome back, Cap’n,” Taylor said, hand outstretched. Samuel took the offered hand and shook. Taylor’s clothing, his frock coat and shirt and pants, were perfectly clean, with a crispness that far exceeded even Lieutenant Harwell’s. Bowater looked down the line. It was true of all of the black gang; their clothes were as clean as if they sent them out. How do they do that?

“Cap’n,” Taylor was saying, “these here are two new members of the engineering division, hired on by permission of Lieutenant Harwell. This big fellow is Lafayette Jefferson-how’s that for a patriotic name-and the little fellow is Tommy. Jest Tommy, he says. I took ’em on as coal passers.”

And not just their clothes. There was a generally scrubbed appearance about their persons-none of the coal smudges and sweat stains and matted hair Bowater associated with the engine room, as if they had access to a bathtub, or a shower bath. How do they do that?

“Ahh,” Bowater continued, “is that not an excessive number of coal passers, for one boiler?”

“Well, suh, I’m bringing ol’ Moses along as fireman, see? I think he’s ready for a step up in the world.”

“Very well.” Samuel’s head was swimming. He wanted desperately to sit.

“You will forgive me, Chief…” he said, and making his goodbyes he headed off to the privacy of his cabin, with Jacob close behind.

Da, da-da, da-da-da-da-daaa… He’d been back two and a half months. His strength had returned. With the rolling deck underfoot, the ladders to negotiate two dozen times a day, and Johnny St. Laurent’s cooking, he was soon nearly back to his former self.

The first week in November brought no relief to the monotony of patrolling Albemarle Sound, the Cape Fear now one of the mosquito fleet under the command of Flag Officer William Lynch.

From the south, reports arrived of the Union capture of Port Royal, South Carolina. Big Federal men-of-war pounding the little Confederate forts to dirt-it was a virtual reenactment of Hatteras Inlet on a somewhat larger scale. But on Albemarle Sound, there was little happening. Except a concert by the Norfolk and Elizabeth City Symphony Orchestra, and it was taking on an importance all out of proportion with its promise.

Bowater finished dressing, let Jacob help him on with his coat, pulled his cap over his eyes, and stepped out into the cold. There was the distinct smell of winter in the air, carried on the lashing wind. The Cape Fear thumped against her fenders, rocked hard in the short waves piling up around her hull, a lot of motion for a vessel tied to the dock. Bowater stepped down the ladder and ducked behind the deckhouse, catching a lee from the wind.

He tramped down the side deck, opened the engine-room door. The blast of heat was welcome now. He looked down the fidley. Burgess was hunched over the workbench. At the sound of the door opening he looked up.

“Chief Taylor down there, Burgess?”

“Naw. ’E’s inna gaal-lay, Cap’n,” Burgess said.

Bowater nodded. What the hell did he say? It was not worth asking him to repeat it. “Thank you, Burgess.”

Down the side deck came the scrape of a violin, the first pass of the bow before tuning the instrument. The note had come from forward-they must be staging their evening concert in the warmth of the galley.

Samuel hurried along, stepped into the galley, the smell of baking bread and a simmering cheese sauce like a