Thieves Of Mercy

He opened his eyes again. Davis was still staring at the manuscript and shaking his head, just slightly. Finally he looked up and addressed Mississippi Mike. “You want me to do this thing for you. What do you have to offer me?”

Sullivan, unbidden, grabbed a straight-back chair that stood against the bulkhead, set it close to Davis, and sat. He leaned toward the commodore, spoke in a low voice. “Reckon I could tell you a thing or two about the force we gots down ta Memphis.”

Bowater stiffened, felt his hands clench. Sullivan, you traitorous bastard! The whole manuscript thing was bad enough, but now Sullivan was making him an unwitting partner in treason.

Davis looked Sullivan up and down as if assessing the man, then looked up at Bowater. “What do you say, Lieutenant?”

“I say… and I say this on my honor as a gentleman… that everything Captain Sullivan has told you so far is the truth. But I did not know that he intended to trade military secrets in order to get this manuscript posted. I will not be a party to that. Imprison me if you will, I’ll not engage in such treachery.”

Davis considered that. “Well spoken, Lieutenant. Mr. Phelps, please see Lieutenant Bowater to the hurricane deck. I’ll have a word with Captain Sullivan, here.”

Phelps led Bowater to the hurricane deck. The four men from the General Page were sitting, smoking and chewing. One was engaged in conversation with the bluejacket who held a rifle on him. Bowater stood apart, folded his arms, fumed.

The coal barge thing was bad enough, when he had been made a party to theft, but now he was a party to treason.

Never mind my own culpability, he decided. He had to report Sullivan, had to see him tried and sentenced. Hung, preferably. Such treason could not go unpunished. If that meant that he, Bowater, was cashiered from the service, sent to prison, so be it. It was what honor demanded.

Some time later, Mississippi Mike reappeared on the hurricane deck. He was smiling widely. The haversack was bunched up in his hand. The manuscript was not inside.

“All right, boys, we done what we come to do. Let’s git on home.”

The sailors with the rifles looked up at Phelps for instruction. “Commodore says let the Rebs go,” he said, but the sailors still kept their weapons aimed at the Southrons as they climbed back down into the gig and pulled away.

They rowed in silence, save for Sullivan’s soft whistling, which was like a knife working under Bowater’s skin. Finally, as the Union fleet disappeared around the bend, Sullivan said, “Well, Captain Bowater, I reckon that was one successful sum bitch of a mission.”

Bowater glared at him. “You do, do you? By God, Sullivan, I’ll see you hang for that.”

Mike Sullivan laughed, that full body laugh. “Hell, Cap’n, I brung ya with me so’s you could show that fancy uniform to the Yankees, let ’em know we ain’t foolin, so’s ta help yer own book along, and now you wanna hang me? Hell.” Then, a moment later added, “Don’t you even want to know what I told the commodore?”

Bowater did not reply.

“Figured you did. I told him how at Plum Point they near wrecked half our fleet. Boilers shot out, more’n a hundred men kilt, half them that was left over skedaddled. Most of our River Defense Fleet in a sinkin condition. Told him how the only ironclad we gots down there’ll never git finished. Actually, that part’s most likely true. Anyway, he bought my stretchers right up, was jest like a little kitty, jest lappin up milk, on account of that’s what he wanted to believe.

“So now, when them Yankees do attack, and they will, now they ain’t gonna be ready fer what’s really waitin for them. An that’s jest what I’m gonna tell Cap’n Montgomery when I reports to him.”

Sullivan put a cigar in his grinning mouth. He poked Bowater in the chest with his sausage finger. “So we got our book off to that there Harper and Brothers in New York, an we got the Yankees all thinkin there ain’t no threat to them, downriver. Now ain’t that some good trick, Cap’n?”

Bowater glared at the finger and then up at Sullivan. “Go to hell,” was all he said.

TWENTY-FOUR

On returning to the ship, he [Lieutenant Jones] found that Craney Island and all the other batteries on the river had been abandoned… [T]his unexpected information rendered prompt measures necessary for the safety of the Virginia . The pilots had assured me that they could take the ship, with a draft of 18 feet, to within 40 miles of Richmond.

FLAG OFFICER JOSIAH TATTNALL TO STEPHEN R. MALLORY

Wendy could feel her confidence and her boat-handling ability growing with every foot of their course made good. She concentrated first on steering small, on preventing the boat from taking wild swings to port and starboard, on not turning so far to weather that the sails flogged, then jamming the tiller over so they swung far off to leeward. A little experimentation showed her how little she had to nudge the tiller to get a response, even with that heavy, beamy boat.

Steer small, steer small, she kept the words running in her mind until soon the tiller was amidships, the boat tracking nicely. She lined up a point of land with the boat’s stem and kept it there, correcting her course with minor adjustments of the helm as the boat tried to wander to one side of the river or the other.

“You’re getting the feel of it,” Molly said. Even she could see the difference.

They cleared Portsmouth, leaving that town in their wake, with Norfolk under their bow. Sitting on the weather side of the boat, they kept their eyes forward as they stood on toward the waterfront.

“Um, Wendy,” Molly said at last, tentative in her ignorance of boats, “we seem to be heading toward Norfolk. Shouldn’t we turn to the left?”

Port, Wendy thought, but she did not correct her aunt. After a lifetime of trial and error she was finally learning not to embarrass herself with such pretension.

“Yes,” she said, “perhaps…” It was exactly the problem she had been considering. She understood the theory of tacking, of how a sailing vessel worked to windward. She tried to feel the wind on her face, but she could get only a rough sense of its direction. Now that the boat was moving along so well, she hated to change anything.

“Perhaps we won’t have to tack,” Wendy said next. She was thinking out loud. She pushed the tiller to leeward, an inch, then another, watched carefully as the boat began to turn up into the wind. The town of Norfolk disappeared behind the sail. If she could turn just a bit more, then they could sail clear into Hampton Roads on that heading.

She gave the tiller another inch to leeward and the elegant curve of the sail’s forward edge collapsed, the canvas rippling and snapping and bulging out. Wendy jerked the tiller back and the boat swung quickly downwind, the sail filling, the Norfolk waterfront sweeping by.

Steer small, steer small! She eased the tiller the other way, brought the boat carefully back to its original heading.

“We’ll have to tack,” Wendy announced.

“All right… what shall I do?”

Wendy was not sure. She tried to picture what would happen when they brought the bow of the boat through the wind. The line from the corner of the sail, which she believed was called the “sheet,” ran through a block just in front of her and was fastened to a cleat. She did not think it would need adjustment.

“When we tack,” Wendy said, “then the other side of the boat will become the higher side, and we’ll have to shift over there.”

Molly nodded.

“All right, here we go,” Wendy said, trying to sound confident. She pushed the tiller over to the leeward side. The boat turned up into the wind, higher and higher. The sail began to flog, a distracting and unnerving sound, but Wendy kept the tiller over. The shoreline beyond swept by, the sail rippling as it passed through the wind.