not showing any flag of truce when we spotted you. Don’t think you can come spying around here, and then go scot-free with a flag of truce.”
“Now, Lieutenant, you don’t have to be like that. Jest want to have a word with whoever you gots in charge here.”
The lieutenant scowled at them. He looked at Bowater but Bowater just shrugged. “I think we’ll let Captain Davis sort this out,” he announced at last. “You will proceed to the flagship, there”-he pointed over his transom at the larger of the ironclad gunboats-“and go aboard. We’ll follow directly astern. If you alter course one degree, we’ll fire into you.”
“You ain’t even gonna offer us no coffee or biscuits? Now that there,” Sullivan addressed his men, “is Yankee hospitality. Makes a man grateful to be a Southron, don’t it? Ship oars! Give way!”
The gig crept past the picket boat and the picket boat turned and followed in her wake and together they pulled for the flagship.
“Sullivan… what the hell…” was all Bowater managed to get out through his clenched teeth, his jaw tight with rage. It was the coal barge all over again, and once more he had let Sullivan play him for a sucker. But this time, for his stupidity, he would end up in a Yankee prison.
“Don’t you fret, Cap’n. Hell, you gonna thank me for this, one day.”
They swept up alongside the flagship where a dozen sailors in white frocks aimed a dozen muskets at them, while a petty officer with a pistol gestured them aboard. They climbed the ladder built into the gunboat’s steeply angled side, the iron plating still damp from the morning dew.
Bowater counted five gunports in her broadside, but he could not see the size of the ordnance hauled back into the dark of the interior. His eyes swept the hurricane deck as they stepped off the ladder and under an awning spread from the bow amidships. Two deck howitzers. Despite the anger and uncertainty he could not stop gathering intelligence.
The lieutenant from the picket boat followed behind. “Mr. Grimes,” he addressed the petty officer, “hold these prisoners here while I see if the captain will see them.”
“Aye, sir,” said Grimes, waving the Confederates amidships.
“Come under a flag of truce! We ain’t prisoners!” Sullivan shouted at the lieutenant’s back, but the lieutenant did not respond.
“We’re whatever the Yankees say we are, you stupid ape,” Bowater said in a loud whisper. “Prisoners of war, spies, whatever the hell they want.”
“Now don’t let the blue devils get ya, Cap’n. They may be Yankees, but they got some civ-li-zation, I’spect. Ain’t gonna keep us prisoner when we come under a white flag.”
Bowater folded his arms and glared out over the water, too angry to reply. Soon the lieutenant was back and he ordered Bowater and Sullivan to follow him, with the rest of the crew to remain topside under guard.
They followed him forward and down through a small, square hatch to the gundeck below. It was dark, save for the patches of light that came in through the open gun ports and around the big guns hauled inboard. Bowater, his eyes not accustomed to the dark, could just make out the cavernous space on the beamy vessel, the rows of guns, much like the gundeck of a seagoing man-of-war. Forward, four bow guns leered out over the river. The ordnance seemed to be a mixed batch, thirty-two-pound smoothbores, fortytwo-pound rifles, and a few others mixed in. A heterogeneous lot, but a powerful array of weapons.
They did not linger on the gundeck, to Bowater’s disappointment. He would have liked to gain as much knowledge as he could about the ironclad, but the lieutenant, wanting no doubt to prevent that exact thing, led them down another ladder to the deck below.
They were under the waterline now, and Bowater imagined they must be very near the bottom of the shallow- draft vessel. They were in an alleyway lined with brightly varnished wood-panel doors. Behind them, a bulkhead separated this living space from the boilers and engine room aft. The space was illuminated by a series of lanterns mounted on the cabin sides.
“This way,” the lieutenant said tersely as he led them forward. He stopped at the penultimate door and knocked.
“Come.” A voice from within.
The lieutenant opened the door, waved his prisoners in, followed, and shut the door behind. They were in a wide cabin, a place that functioned, apparently, as the captain’s office, day cabin, and dining room.
Seated behind a desk was a man in shirtsleeves and braces, a man in his mid-fifties or so, thinning dark hair combed over, a dark and very full moustache that covered his upper lip entirely, and a gray beard that ran just along his jawline, leaving his chin oddly exposed. On the desk was a scattering of papers and journals and a plate with remnants of egg and toast. The man leaned back and looked at the Confederates. He did not stand. He did not smile.
“Sir, these are the Rebel spies we apprehended,” the lieutenant announced.
“Spies?” Sullivan began but the officer behind the desk held up his hand and Mississippi Mike fell silent.
For a long and uncomfortable moment the officer just looked at Bowater and Sullivan. His eyes were dark and penetrating, but Bowater met them and did not look away. Finally, the Yankee spoke.
“I am Flag Officer Charles Davis, commanding United States naval forces on western waters.” He leaned forward for emphasis, elbows on his desk. “Lieutenant Phelps here tells me you were scouting our forces under cover of the shoreline when he apprehended you.” He addressed his words to Bowater.
“We was flyin a flag of truce,” Sullivan began, but Davis held up his hand again.
“I was speaking to the officer,” Davis said. “As he is in uniform, he is liable to be considered a prisoner of war. As you are not”-he looked at Sullivan for the first time-“you are liable to be hung as a spy.”
“Oh, hell, Commodore, spy, my Royal Bengal. We come under a flag of truce ’cause we wanted to have a word with you. Got a thing to discuss, goes way beyond this here unfortunate hostility betwixt North and South.”
Davis shifted his gaze to Bowater, and Bowater wondered what in hell he was going to say. He himself had had no intention of approaching under flag of truce, had no idea of what Sullivan was up to. But he couldn’t say that, because the flag of truce was the only hope they had to keep out of some stinking Yankee prison.
“My name is Lieutenant Samuel Bowater, Confederate States Navy,” he said, very formal. “This gentleman is Captain Mike Sullivan”-Bowater came within an inch of saying Mississippi Mike-“of the River Defense Fleet of the Confederate States Army. They are irregulars with no uniform, but they are legitimate combatants. Captain Sullivan asked me to accompany him on a parlay with the commodore under flag of truce, and I agreed.”
“Parlay? About what?”
Bowater stood for a second. He could not bring himself to say “I don’t know,” which was the only true answer.
Sullivan jumped in. “Here she is, Captain.” He took a step forward, so that he was leaning over the captain’s desk. “Captain Bowater and me, we’re what you might call men of letters. Been writin a book, hell of a book. An now we’re done with her, and we have to get her off to New York, on account of that’s where all them publisher fellas is.”
Davis ’s eyes narrowed. “You… wish to send a book to New York?” He looked over at Bowater, but got no help from Bowater’s incredulous expression.
“That’s right. They’s a place called Harper and Brothers, they done a whole mess of books, and we reckon they’d just be eager as can be to get their hands on this one.” He reached into the haversack, which Bowater had not even noticed in Sullivan’s hand, and pulled out the familiar sheaf of papers, the manuscript of
Davis looked warily down at it, as if it might not be safe to touch. “Let me understand you… You came to us under flag of truce because you wish me to mail a book to a publisher in New York?”
“That’s it exactly, sir,” Sullivan said, straightening and smiling wide. “ ’Cause some things, like art and such, well, they don’t know the boundaries of war. Ya understand? Can’t let a little thing like this here unpleasantness git in the way of havin lit-rit-ur get to the folks what would appreciate it. And hell, there ain’t no other way I’m gonna get this to New York, without I gets a Yankee to send her. Here, I wrote the address down, right there.”
Bowater felt himself flush red. Before, he had been frightened by the possibility of becoming a prisoner of war. Now, he was simply humiliated to have this naval officer regard him as a part of Sullivan’s idiocy. He closed his eyes.
