Thieves Of Mercy

sailor, on the wheel, and hear the familiar brisk response to a helm command.

The screech from the walking beam was even louder now as the paddle wheels stopped, then went ahead, changing the momentum of the ship from sternway to headway.

“Wheelhouse!” Hieronymus Taylor’s voice came echoing out of the speaking tube.

“Wheelhouse here!” Bowater shouted back.

“Just thought you beats might like to know, things ain’t lookin too almighty grand down here. You can ring that fuckin bell all you want, but I don’t know how long it’s gonna do you any good!”

Bowater paused. What did one say to that? “Very well,” he shouted. Very well.

Hieronymus Taylor, as a rule not overly concerned with his own mortality, still had often wondered how a condemned man could march calmly to his death. It was, after all, the final moment, the dread end.

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause, he thought, in Shakespeare’s words.

There was a strange numbness that had accompanied him down into the engine room, that awkward climb down the short ladder from boiler deck to the lowest part of the ship, on which the engines and boilers were mounted. It was like a climb up onto a gallows.

He recalled the feeling, helping Guthrie replace that fire tube, the gut-wrenching, piss-your-pants fear in the face of that dubious boiler. It was a long time past. He was almost too tired to care anymore, so sick of being afraid that he barely had the energy for it. That, he imagined, was how men went to their deaths. Since the Battle of New Orleans, since the horror of the boiler explosion that had wiped out his black gang, Taylor had pondered considerably on his reluctance to work around boilers. Now, in the middle of another fight, in a flimsy, unarmored ship, he was ready to admit the truth of the thing.

“I’m scared to death.” He said it out loud. He was marching up the gallows steps. He was a dead man. Why the hell not say it? “I am plumb, outright, full-blown, goddamned scared out of my wits. I’m like to shit myself, right here.” It felt good.

“What was that, Chief?” Burgoyne was checking the water levels in the gauge glass on the boiler face.

“Nothin, nothin.” Over the hiss and thump of the engines, through the deck, they could hear the thunderous gunfire and feel the vibration through the water that enveloped the hull.

Bowater rang four bells and Taylor twisted the throttle open. None of it sounded good-the pistons, the cranks, the walking beam-but it was holding together.

If somethin would just let go, it’d give me some damned thing to think about, he thought. As soon as that idea had formed in his head, he regretted thinking it-bad luck-but it was too late. The feed water pipe burst, spraying hot water all over the forward end of the engine room. A coal passer named Luke found himself right under the broken pipe. He screamed under the burning shower, dropped his shovel, and ran forward.

“Oh, come on, it ain’t even steam!” Taylor yelled after him, but the sound of the man screaming unnerved him. He swallowed hard. “Burgoyne, close that boiler up, get the steam down. Larboard boiler on line, come on now, stoke her up! We got enough water in there?”

Burgoyne slammed the damper shut and the third engineer opened the door on the second boiler, worked the valves to bring the steam on line. “Enough water for now, Chief!”

Taylor hobbled back, fast as he could on his splint, shut off the feed water valve, and the spray of near boiling water dropped off to a trickle. “Burgoyne, get a fish plate on that pipe, quick now!”

“Fish plate?”

“Yes, a damned fish plate. Please don’t tell me you don’t know what a fish plate is.”

“No, no. I knows what a fish plate is, hell yes. I just don’t know as we gots one.”

“Well look for one, if it ain’t too much trouble.”

Burgoyne hurried over to the workbench. The bell rang out, four bells again.

Taylor glared at it. Ol’ Bowater wants him some steam, huh? Got somethin in mind.

He twisted the valve full open. You can have all the steam I got, Cap’n, but it ain’t gonna be what this bucket could do on her palmiest day. The engine speed increased with the additional steam. The crank made a terrible sound. “Someone get some oil on that!” he shouted, but the end of the sentence was lost when the gauge glass on the working boiler shattered with a tinkling sound like a little bell, which might even have been pretty if it hadn’t been for the fireman’s shriek as the boiling water sprayed his bare arm and chest.

“Shut that down!” Taylor shouted. “An everyone stop screamin, goddamn it!” Burgoyne turned from the bench, took a step toward the boiler. “Not you, Burgoyne, you find the damned fish plate! Luke, you done screamin? Shut off the valve to that gauge glass.”

Luke approached it with caution, the boiling water spewing out, reached under and twisted the valve fast. The water stopped spraying. But now they did not know how much water was in the boiler.

What the hell was I afraid of? Hell, I wish the boiler would blow right now and put us out of our damned misery.

A shell hit the deckhouse overhead and Taylor jumped and felt his heart pounding hard in his chest. Well, maybe not.

Another shot hit with a clanging noise that reverberated through the engine room. Damn it, that’s the chimney, he thought. A shell had hit one of the chimneys.

Might not make any difference… Perhaps the firebox flue would continue to draw, the chimneys would continue to suck the smoke and poisonous gas up out of the engine room. Then Taylor saw the first tendrils of smoke wafting around the tops of the boilers.

Ah, damn …

Burgoyne came ambling up. “Got this here fish plate. It ain’t quite the same size as the feed water pipe.”

“Wrap some gasket material around the pipe and clamp that son of a bitch on. We got to get water into that boiler.”

“Gasket material?”

“Find some, for the love of God!”

Burgoyne stood there for a moment, an unpromising look on his face. Bowater’s voice shouted from the speaking tube. “Engine room, stand by!”

“Stand by for what?” Taylor shouted back.

The General Page began to heel over in a turn, as much as the flat-bottomed boat would heel, enough to make Taylor grab onto the throttle to steady himself and Burgoyne stumble a step or two. “Now what in hell is he doin?” Taylor wondered out loud. And then they struck.

THIRTY-TWO

GENERAL: I am under the painful necessity of reporting to you the almost entire destruction of the River Defense Fleet in the Mississippi River in front of Memphis.

BRIGADIER GENERAL M. JEFF THOMPSON TO GENERAL G.T.BEAUREGARD

The impact tore Taylor ’s fingers from the throttle valve and sent him careening forward. He slammed into Burgoyne, who was tumbling back, and the two men hit the deck, Taylor on top of the second engineer. He could smell the stale sweat and coal dust and residue of whiskey on the man. He could hear the wrenching sound of engine parts being torn from their mountings.

Taylor ’s arms and legs were flailing and Burgoyne’s arms and legs were flailing and Taylor had a horrible image of the two of them, looking like they were copulating there on the deck plates.

He pushed himself off and rolled away as Burgoyne scrambled to his feet.

Everything was moving. Lanterns swaying, men rushing around, shouting, stumbling. One of the boilers was leaning at an odd angle. Taylor could see it move with the twisting and surging of the ship.

Oh, dear God, don’t let that son of a bitch blow up…

He pushed himself up on his arms, but standing with his splinted leg was more of a trick. “Secure that son of a bitch boiler! Git some shorin under it! Luke, Burgoyne, git some slice bars under that thing, hold her up! Eddy!