That was not something you shared with the black gang.
But Wendy, she was a different matter. Women by their very nature were more attuned to such things, more able to recognize beauty where men could see only function. And a girl with the imagination to paint as well as she did, and the grit to dress as a sailor and sneak aboard a man-of-war going into battle, she, of all people, should have the ability to see in the engine the elegance of mathematical grace. If anyone could get it, Wendy should.
But Wendy did not get it. She nodded as Taylor pointed out the steam dome and traced the main steam line aft, said “Indeed?” as the chief showed her the throttle and Stevenson links, looked politely at the things Taylor pointed out. But there was no passion there, only politeness. She asked intelligent questions until somewhere around the hot well pump her eyes began to look as if they were encased in thin glass. For all her imagination, she could not see in the machine what Hieronymus Taylor saw. She was not interested.
Taylor stopped his tour of the engine before coming to the part where the water returns to the boiler, and Wendy did not even notice. “Reckon if you want to see somethin, you best get topside,” Taylor said, a muttered, taciturn admission of defeat.
“Topside? On deck?” Wendy looked by parts elated and afraid. “But sure I’ll be discovered there.”
Taylor shook his head. “More’n half the hands we got aboard are shippin the first time today. Doubled our crew for this here excursion. Ain’t no one knows everyone aboard. Jest keep out of the way, act busy if you can. Won’t be no problem.”
Wendy smiled, and the look nearly compensated Taylor for his disappointment. “Thanks, Chief!” she said and scrambled up the ladder, left him alone, as he usually was, with his passions.
Now things were heating up, and he was not sure about it. He had been below before during times of great excitement—steamboat races, violent storms, collisions with other vessels—and still he preferred his engine room above all things.
But this was different. This was fighting, killing Yankees. Arrogant damn Yankees, like used to swagger around the docks at New Orleans, off their Boston-built ships, loading cotton for England, treating them all like they were field hands, white men and black.
Bowater. He was not much better. Just the fancy Dan that Taylor had expected, prim as Queen fucking Victoria, but now he was driving this little boat into combat, going to kill Yankees with unprecedented boldness, and Taylor wanted to be part of it. Not down below, not this time, but up on deck. This time he wanted to see the fun, because there had never been this much fun before.
It was crowded now in the engine room. Normally, there would only have been one fireman, Burgess or O’Malley, and one of the coal heavers, along with Chief Taylor. But now, at quarters, both firemen and all three coal heavers were down there, standing by for an emergency.
Navy fashion… Taylor thought. Six men to do the work of two. “What the hell you starin at, Moses?”
“Well, Massa Taylor, I ain’t ever seen you in sich a state. You ain’t afraid of dem Yankees, is you?”
“Afraid? Shut up, ya damned darkie.”
Moses smiled at that, which just further infuriated Taylor. “Clean the ash out of that damned boiler, you lazy son of a bitch,” he said and stamped off.
Taylor stood by the wheelhouse bell, peered up through the fidley. The sky beyond the skylight in the deckhouse roof was clear blue, as if the glass was painted that color. Behind him, he heard Moses’s shovel scraping up the ashes, heard the black man singing, just loud enough so that Taylor could hear, a song to the tune of “Dixie.”
O, I wish I was clear of ol’ Chief Taylor
Lock you down like a mean ol’ jailer
And the other stokers joined in, soft,
Heave away, heave away, heave away, Taylor-man.
Well the engine room, it’s his frustration,
Thinks he’s on a fine plantation
Heave away, heave away, heave away…
Taylor turned, ready to put a stop to their nonsense. He was in no mood for it. Then, overhead and forward, the ten-pound Parrott fired with a roar that sounded through the vessel like the end of the earth. The deck below their feet shuddered and the blast of the gun echoed and died and suddenly it seemed very quiet below, despite the roar of the fire and the hissing and clanking of engine and pumps. Everyone stopped and stared up at the roof overhead, as if they could divine something from looking at it.
For a long time they stood like that, staring up at the deckhouse roof. The Parrott went off again, with its visceral roar. It was more than just sound. It was sound and reverberation down to the ship’s fiber, a shudder in the deck, the smell of spent powder in the air, sucked below by the boiler’s air intake, mixing with coal dust and oil, a full sensory experience as up in the sunshine the gun crew blasted away at the Yankees.
“Goddamned…” Taylor muttered, not certain who or what he was damning. He pulled his eyes from the overhead, paced back and forth, paused in his pacing. “Burgess, ya Scots ape, get some oil on them drive gears, they’re squealing like a couple of rutting pigs,” he shouted—a problem the Scotsman was well aware of—then set in pacing again.
The gun crew, raw as they were, were getting their shots off every two minutes. Taylor kept count without realizing he was doing so—three, four, five; he wondered if they had found their target, if he was justified in going topside to see.
Gettin’ to be like a damned old woman… Taylor thought, and then a crash from above, the shattering of wood, an explosion as some part of their ship was blasted apart.
The Cape Fear shuddered again, an entirely different sensation, and Hieronymus Taylor was on the ladder, racing topside, shouting, “Burgess, you’re in charge here! Look to the bells!” as he burst through the fidley door and onto the deck.
Taylor stepped into a scene of confusion. He looked forward. Men were crowded on the side decks, staring around. No one moved.
He looked aft. Wendy was there, by the door. She looked frightened. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could Taylor said, “What happened?”
“A…bomb…of some sort hit. Up there.” She pointed to the wheelhouse.
“All right. Come with me.” He turned and ran forward, heard a few hesitant steps before Wendy caught up. He did not know why he had told her to come along. He would figure that out later.
A quarter mile ahead, a paddle wheeler was bearing down on them, pushing aside the smoke from her bow gun, churning the water white under her bows and her paddle wheels. One of the ad hoc Yankee river fleet, slapped together to combat the ad hoc Confederate fleet. The Yankee fired again, flame and smoke shooting from her forward gun, the shell screaming so close overhead that Taylor flinched and ducked, involuntarily.
Where the hell is Bowater? Taylor pushed through the stunned and stupid men toward the bow and the ladder to the top of the deckhouse. Could the vaunted Samuel Bowater be frozen in terror, unable to issue orders, stammering with indecision?
Son of a bitch patrician son of a bitch… Taylor raced up the ladder and when his head cleared the deckhouse roof he paused. The entire after end of the wheelhouse—the master’s cabin—was blown to splinters. There was nothing more than jagged bits of bright-painted wood sticking out at odd angles, and the cabin roof, caved in in the middle and draped like a shroud over the wreckage
Taylor took the last few steps slower. What was left of Able-Bodied Seaman Littlefield was flung half out of the wheelhouse and was hanging on the window frame, shredded clothing and skin draped over a spreading pool of blood on the deck below him. Lieutenant Harwell was lying toward the starboard side, a pool of blood spreading around his head. The blue-gray heap to port was Bowater, apparently. There was no one moving on the upper deck.