Dead water

hurling instructions to the deck-hands, or the clanging of the bells that communicated from the pilot's cupola up on the hurricane deck down to the engine-room. A good pilot, January knew, kept his boat as close to the shore as possible, to avoid burning up excessive wood fighting the current mid-channel. It was a narrow margin to walk, between the force of the river and the perils close to the banks.

Some of them he could see—the snags that could tear the bucket-boards out of a paddle or the bottom out of a boat, or the long fringes of ripples that ran over sand-bars that stretched out from every point of land on the bank. Others, he knew, were visible only to the man in that high pilot-house, and some only to a man who knew this stretch of river in high water and low, who knew what to look for and what to expect.

“Are they taking soundings?” he asked a moment later as two of the deck-hands dropped the Silver Moon's skiff into the water from the bow-deck and began to row over to the nearer shore. Rose shook her head uncertainly, and one of the planters' valets, pausing for air in the galley passageway, said helpfully, “Looks like they're picking up word about the river.”

January had heard the skinny, sharp-voiced young Colonel Davis call this man Jim. “See there where he's gone up to that tree on the levee? There'll be a box nailed to it. Pilots comin' down the river sometimes leave word for each other if there's somethin' like a caved-in bank or somethin' big that others need to know about. In high water they'll just yell to each other, but you see there ain't much traffic now the river's so low.”

“Couldn't the pilot get the same information from one of the flatboats?” asked Rose as she and January followed Jim to the rail for a better look.

The older man, gray-haired and with a manner of friendly gentleness, grinned. “A steamboat pilot ask the time of day from one of them bumpkins on a flatboat? You'll see pigs flyin' on angel wings before you'll see that.” He nodded toward the main channel, where from time to time that day they'd passed those hundred-foot rafts with their pens of hogs and mountains of corn and pumpkins. “Wouldn't be no use anyway, 'cause they didn't know the river. And Mr. Molloy wouldn't ask a keelboat crew, 'less'n he knew 'em, 'cause river-pirates often use keelboats. Pirates'd have you runnin' your boat up onto a bar, where they'd be waitin' for you, like as not.”

“Even a small boat like this?” asked January.

Jim raised his grizzled eyebrows and glanced at the stacked wood that hid Ned Gleet's chained slaves from view. “There's enough cargo on this boat that'd be worth some outlaw's time. There's not near as much piratin' as there was, even a few years ago, and not many gangs on the river that'd take on a steamboat. But you look in the purser's office, an' you'll see we're carryin' a dozen guns, just in case.”

“Ben?”

The three looked up as Thu the steward came down the stair.

“Excuse me interrupting,” said the young man, “but they're asking for you in the Saloon.” He said it without expression, but as he stepped aside to let January precede him up the stair, January guessed, with sinking heart, what that phrase meant.

With half a dozen planters on board—not to mention Ned Gleet—what was coming was probably inevitable.

At least, he reflected as he passed along the promenade to the door that led to the Main Saloon, he hoped that what awaited him was some white slave-owner offering Hannibal money for him, and not a spiteful Queen Regine demanding what he was doing on the Silver Moon disguised as someone's valet.

The Main Saloon was a tremendously long, narrow room that ran most of the length of the so-called boiler- deck. Hemmed in on all sides by passenger staterooms and, at the bow end, by the daytime accommodations for the ladies, it was lighted by clerestory windows, above the level of the lower stateroom roofs, and as a result was always rather gloomy, the diffuse light being helped along by two oil chandeliers. These factors combined to give the room the air of a cathedral nave, one furnished with a suite of worn walnut furniture in red velvet, and two or three card-tables. Though the high windows were open, the stench of tobacco—both smoked and spit—pervaded the room, along with the male smells of boot-leather and pomade.

January paused in the doorway, blinking to adjust his eyes to the dimness, as Colonel Davis's high, sharp laugh barked out. “So what I get instead of proper soldiers to hunt down Chief Black Hawk and his braves are the so- called State Militia—farm-boys who can't tell their right foot from their left. I remember once when one of the companies was approaching a fence with a narrow gate in it, this beanpole captain—who obviously couldn't remember the command to form a column—shouting out, ‘Company to fall out for two minutes and re-assemble on the other side of that fence!' I nearly fell off my horse laughing, but it's no wonder poor General Taylor was never able to accomplish much.”

There was boisterous laughter although personally January would have bet his money, in single combat, on his quiet-voiced Kentucky farm-boy friend Abishag Shaw against the cocky young planter, Colonel or no. Looking around the room, he spotted Hannibal at one of the tables with Oliver Weems, a cribbage-board laid out between them. At the other table Davis and one of the several planters on board—Roberson, January recalled his name was—had a game of whist in progress with a stout gray-haired Northerner whose French valet was sleeping on deck, the fourth player being a smooth, dark-haired man of undistinguished appearance whom January guessed was a professional cardsharp.

Ned Gleet—sitting next to Hannibal—boomed genially as January entered, “Now, there's a boy does any man's heart good to see!” Despite the cheer in his voice, his eyes were as expressionless as a china doll's. “Look at those shoulders on him, gentlemen, and tell me it isn't a crime to waste a boy like that folding cravats when he could be working in the fields with the best of them!”

The young planter—Purlie, January recalled his name was—to whom Gleet had shown the slave-girl that morning was absent; January had not seen him all morning. As he'd come up he'd seen that the girl, too, was gone from the promenade, where she had been chained.

Hannibal replied very mildly, “At least it isn't a crime in the State of Louisiana, and I happen to like the way Ben folds my cravats.”

Weems said nothing, but looked at Gleet as if a cat had deposited a long-dead gopher on the chair where the slave-dealer sat.

“Hell!” Gleet spit a long streak of brown juice at the cuspidor. “If it's a valet you want, my friend, they're a dime a dozen in Louisville!” He draped a friendly arm around Hannibal's thin shoulders, and with the other hand poured three generous fingers of whiskey from his flask into the fiddler's empty glass with the clear intention of loosening up his mark's sales resistance, not having the slightest notion of how much liquor Hannibal could put away. “Kentucky's creeping with 'em! You can pick one up for six hundred dollars, and you'll have made a clear three hundred profit with that boy of yours.”

“Sir, I find your manner of speech completely offensive!” A young gentleman rose from the armchair, where