A sailor came bounding up the steps, paused and saluted Bowater. “Tanner, sir, here to relieve the helm!”
Bowater jerked his thumb over his shoulder, did not look back.
Tanner stepped into the wheelhouse, said in an official tone, “Here to relieve the helm.” He paused, as if waiting for a response, and when Wendy could think of none he said, “What course?”
“Course?”
“Where are we heading?”
Wendy shook her head. “I have no idea.”
Damn, damn, damn… Taylor watched their penultimate shell pass close over the side-wheeler and plunge into the sea three hundred yards astern. Close. Not close enough.
He was standing behind the gun, having raced down the steps from the wheelhouse. Harwell was moving a bit, he noticed, was not dead yet. A gash on his head, blood matting his hair. Taylor could not tell how bad it was and did not pause to investigate. He had grabbed the rails of the ladder and slid down to the deck, pictured Bowater tossing Littlefield’s body aside. Cold son of a bitch…
The gun crew was swabbing out, ramming home, going through the drill which Mr. Harwell had tortured into them.
“Ready!” Williams stood back, lanyard taut.
From on high, Bowater’s voice. “This is your last shot, Mr. Taylor!”
Last shot, Mr. Taylor? How the hell did this become my responsibility? He stepped up to the gun, sighted over it. I should have stayed in my damned engine room!
The side-wheeler, bow on, was right in the sights. But, Taylor recalled, it had been before, and the shot had gone over. He grabbed the elevating screw, cranked it up, depressing the muzzle, thought, If this gun goes off now I am one dead bastard… Heard Williams make some noise, but the devil take him.
“Give me that lanyard, Williams!” Taylor demanded. Williams paused, could see resistance would be futile, if not dangerous, handed the fancy line over. If Bowater was going to make him responsible, then he was not going to let anyone else make a hash of it.
He looked over the barrel again. The Cape Fear and the Yankee were coming bow on, both armed the same, both equally vulnerable.
But not quite. That Yankee whoremonger has side wheels! Gotta take out one of them side wheels! “You there!” he shouted to the men with the handspikes. “Move this here around to starboard, just a hair!”
The handspike men jammed their bars in the deck, levered the gun over. There it was!
“Git back! Git back!” Taylor shouted, and he jumped back and the handspike men jumped back and Taylor pulled the lanyard. The gun went off with a terrific roar, painful, since Taylor had forgotten to clap a hand over his ear. It leaped back against the breeches but Taylor’s eyes were on the side-wheeler alone, the side-wheeler steaming down on them, the side-wheeler whose port wheelbox suddenly burst into a spray of shattered wood and broken buckets and twisted metal, flung up in the air.
“Sum bitch! Sum bitch! Yeeeeha!” Taylor shouted, and he knew he was shouting as loud as he could, and so were the men around him, but he could hear only a muffled version of the noise, as if he was listening from underwater. No matter. They had hit him, right where it hurt.
The side-wheeler slewed around to port as the starboard wheel drove her on, then stopped dead as her captain rang out all stop to sort out the damage.
Now what? Taylor wondered. His blood was up, he was ready to go and board them like pirates of old. He looked up, grinned up at Bowater, but Bowater was staring forward at the disabled Yankee, hands behind his back, expressionless. He was not shouting.
Cold son of a bitch…
Samuel Bowater stepped into the wheelhouse, eyes still on the disabled Yankee, rang slow ahead. Close enough. Decision time.
He wanted to shout. He wanted to yell and wave his hat the way the others had. But of course he did not.
“What’s your name, sailor?” he said to the new helmsman. This one had the hard, casual look of a real sailor, not the whimpering incompetence of that boy Taylor for some inconceivable reason had dragged up there.
“Ruffin Tanner, of Mobile, sir, by way of the Congress, which were my last ship.”
“Welcome aboard the CSS Cape Fear, Tanner. How do you like it so far?”
“I like it fine, sir, mighty fine.” He gave the wheel a quarter turn, brought it back amidships. “Man’s blood gets a bit thick, sittin’ around one of them Yankee men-of-war.”
“Indeed.” Bowater remembered Harwell, lying in a pool of his own blood, remembered his own shocking disregard for the man. In a flush of guilt he stepped out of the wheelhouse and around the front, knelt beside the lieutenant, lifted his head.
“Mr. Harwell? Mr. Harwell?” The lieutenant’s eyes opened, his lips moved to say something, but Bowater could not make out the words, so he ignored him, examined the wound on his head.
A splinter had opened up a nasty gash, which had bled profusely, and had no doubt rattled the luff’s brains, but as far as Bowater could tell, he was not seriously injured. He was a horrible sight, with the blood streaking his face and congealed in his hair. He looked as if he had no business being alive, but he did not seem mortally wounded.
“I’m…I’m all right, sir…” Harwell said in a stronger voice, and put a hand down on the deck to prop himself up.
“You just rest here, Lieutenant, as long as you need,” Bowater said. Harwell looked as if he was going to protest, but happily he passed out again and that was an end to it. Bowater laid him out, stepped into the wheelhouse again.
From the long black side of the Wabash, a puff of smoke, and then a shell plunged into the water nearby, and then another puff, another shell. They had steamed right into the range of the smoothbores.
“Hard a’port, Tanner,” he said and rang up four bells, full ahead. Time to leave.
It was 114 degrees in the engine room, hotter than that in the boiler room, and the firemen were struggling to get the fire hotter still.
Hieronymus Taylor wiped his forehead with a filthy rag. It was bad enough when you were in the engine room all day, but coming from the relative cool of the upper deck made it seem much worse.
He wiped the face of the pressure gauge on the front of the boiler. Nineteen pounds and building. That was just about all the pressure the boiler would take. He turned to Moses. “Get some more coal on, spread her nice and even, she’ll take more than this!” he shouted.
“Oh, we cookin now, boss!” Moses shouted, spreading the white-hot coal with his shovel.
“Goddamn it, man!” O’Malley shouted. “Yer gonna blow us all to hell, damn it! The boiler can’t take it!”
“What the hell do you know about it, Ian? You just make sure there’s water enough, and you can bet I’ll kill you before the boiler does!”
“You’re mad!”
“Get!” Taylor pointed toward the boiler and its gauge glass. O’Malley scowled, turned, and stamped off, his boots loud on the metal plates on the deck, even over the groaning, straining, hissing, clanking engine.
Taylor resumed his pacing fore and aft. Through the fabric of the hull, he heard something, some muffled detonation. The Cape Fear ’s hull was like an eardrum, picking up the vibrations, turning them into something else. Taylor could not tell what it was—he had never heard such a thing—but he guessed it was ordnance exploding in the water. The side-wheeler or the Wabash getting in her shots. Might be time we got out of here, he thought, and as he did, the bell rang four times, full ahead.