I did not see Timson for three weeks. He went about the city in a velvet-trimmed suit and had most of his backers lined up and his company of men filled. But we had yet to draft an agreement. I despaired. Had he found a replacement for the biscuit? I neglected the handbills and spent my days in the warehouse, waiting.
Fortunately, my uncertainty was not prolonged. At the month’s end Timson moved his lodgings from the Tremont to his steamer, the Maria—payment for its use was being footed by twelve Houston bankers — and sent a messenger to request that I join him. It was night, and I had dined already with Dr. Smith, so I took my coat, locked the warehouse, and followed the messenger, a skinny lad of thirteen, down to the ship. There Timson introduced me to Lyons and Wayhurst, two Louisiana planters who were to provide the expedition with guns. We went aboard and toured the deck, Timson guiding us with a lantern past the paddle wheel and the stack. The harbor was black all around us, here and there lights from boats and dock houses meeting us from across the emptiness like phantom eyes, and the only sound was the chug of the night steamboat returning from the mainland. In the captain’s quarters we sat while Timson led us in prayer, raising his right hand high as he called down Jehovah and beseeched Him to dwell in the cabin. Lyons and Wayhurst exchanged worried looks, but I motioned for them to have no fear, this was all in the normal course of things. Timson stamped his foot, his eyes drifted, and he spoke as if through his nose, hissing his words. “Praise ye! Praise ye! I bless this transaction!” Then he let his hand fall and banged it on the table. “We have an agreement,” he said to the two planters, his voice calm, the red retreating from his face, his eyes settling into their regular tracks.
The cabin was now very still, none of us knowing what to do next, and we waited in the quiet until Lyons or Wayhurst — I can’t remember which — said, “Excellent!” The silence broken, they arranged for the guns’ delivery, shook hands all around, then went into town seeking whores. I watched them through the porthole, their arms at each other’s backs as they walked up the dock toward the lights of the city. I exhaled, clearing my mind of envy (in my great loneliness I too have been tempted), and looked over at Timson. He had not noticed the planters’ departure; he was busy signing Honduran banknotes for the payment of his men. They were for a hundred reales each, and had been printed four to a sheet.
“Do you still desire the biscuit?” I asked, watching as Timson cut the notes with great care. I saw before me sailors starving at the antipodes, children in need of precious nutriment. Must they suffer due to the whim of a fickle public? “Please tell me the meat purveyors have not gotten to you with their slanders.”
The Maria rocked and creaked ever so slightly in the harbor waters. Timson looked up from the notes. “The Lord spoke to me of the biscuit,” he said, and I hung on his words — so much hung on them! “He said I should feed my men by your bread and none other.”
I rejoiced, shook Timson’s hand, and bowed several times, not caring if he thought me a madman. Ready to complete the business, we went over the final agreement. Dr. Smith and I would provide Timson’s militia with the remaining meat biscuit, supplying the entire expedition, and in return we asked only two things. I requested that Timson write a testimonial to the biscuit’s goodness, and Dr. Smith wanted a banana plantation. Timson offered no objection, we both signed the contract, and it was done.
With my new plan for the box I was exuberant, despite the mocking of the city men. I instructed John to roll up the carpets and prepare the house for our long absence, and hired a reliable man, Hiram Wheelock, to open the Cooling Safe after the first frost, paying him five dollars in gold and promising him five more once he greeted us at the heat’s end. I also retained James Johnson, the cartwright, to do the services in the case of Hiram’s passing, and contracted with Levy the merchant to supply the ether. Twice a week he would deliver a new jug and note for me any variations shown by the gauges. The city was silent, every corner hung with death, and as I went about making my arrangements, I ran into Dr. Smith, with whom I had not spoken since the day I had first shown him the box. He took me aside and asked in hushed tones if I truly meant to go through with the freezing. When I said yes, he shook his head. “I have remained silent too long. Every man mourns in his own way, but this must stop!” I ignored his remonstrance, and he suggested I at least try a pig first. “Hog flesh is sound for experiment,” he said, but I slipped from his grasp and told him I needed no counsel.
Yet I did fear, briefly, that during our entombment the fever’s toll would mount higher than in seasons past, would take the whole city and leave no one to wake us, or that perhaps another hurricane would cross the island and wash the city along with the box into the bay. Still, enterprise requires risks. The death of one inventor and one slave boy was a small offering to lay at the altar of discovery, should such a misfortune occur.
The day Timson sailed for Honduras, I went down to the docks like everyone else. He had filled the steamer’s stores to the fullest with meat biscuit, leaving room only for the guns and his robes of state, fashioned from the old curtains of the Star Theater. A brass band played, people cheered, and Timson’s men lined up on the steamer and waved their hats over their heads in farewell.
The crowd pressed close as girls handed flowers up to the men, and after some minutes, in answer to cries from his admirers, Timson came to the railing and addressed us. “With this endeavor,” he said, shouting so all could hear, “we shall not only preserve our Union, we shall perform God’s work on this earth, fulfilling His holy plans for slave and free!”
We applauded, and several in the crowd shot off their guns in celebration as the steamer broke away from the wharf. Timson moved to the stern and raised his hands, and between the blasts of the ship’s horn, over the churn of the engine, we could hear him blessing our city. Everyone stayed, watching until the steamer had cleared the harbor and rounded the tip of the island. Then we let out another cheer and some, mostly children, ran across the island’s humped middle to the gulf, to watch the steamer pass into the broad waters. Soon she was beyond the horizon and all that could be seen was the last puff of smoke belched from her stack, grayish black on the gulf’s far edge, and then this too disappeared. I returned to the warehouse. Dr. Smith was already there, standing beside the table and looking out the window, his hands clasped behind his back. “Today I treated a man for the fever,” he said. “First of the season.” I turned my eyes to the floor, grimy near the stove, and said nothing. That night I fried us some of the biscuit — even after Timson’s men had taken all they could, we were left with above a thousand pounds.
The morning I had set for our confinement, I woke to find John gone. I called his name throughout the house and in every corner of the yard and heard only the echo of my own voice. I wondered if he had been stolen — in the midst of the fever there had been a rash of slave thefts, the stolen negroes turning up in the market at New Orleans — and then if he had run away. I had no time to investigate and, hoping the latter was the case, wished him good journey and readied myself for the box. I slipped the ring of Penelope’s hair over my finger, kissed it, and stepped into the yard. Dressed in a wool garment of my own design, I performed a series of exercises, bending at the waist and stretching my arms, then crouching and holding my hands at my hips, in order to even the blood for optimal freezing. I had not seen a soul all morning, yet as I was opening the box’s iron door, Dr. Smith came riding up. I hailed him, but he did not answer. Instead he leapt from his horse, bolted toward me, and gave me two hard punches in the jaw. The second one felled me.