“Here we go!” Taylor shouted, twisting the throttle open. He felt the deck plates tremble with the increased turns of the engine, and then the helm was put hard over, the Cape Fear heeling into the turn.
Taylor managed to grab hold of a stanchion and keep himself from tumbling to the floor. Billy Jefferson, shovel jammed in a coal pile, stumbled, fell sideways, put his hands out to steady himself, flat against the steam pipe. Smoke rose from his palms and Billy screamed, a piercing, high scream that made Taylor wince.
He launched himself off the post, raced forward, but Moses was there first, grabbing Billy around the waist, pulling him back from the boiler to the deck.
“St. Clair! Water! Cold water, here!” Taylor shouted. St. Clair hurried off and Taylor looked quickly around, counted heads. Some of his men were standing, some lying where they had fallen, but he could see no other injuries.
He stepped back to the pressure gauge. With the throttle opened, the pressure in the boiler had dropped off, but it was still high.
“Moses! Let St. Clair tend to Billy there! You stoke her up! Coal now, you hear? O’Malley, bear a hand there!”
“Yassa!” Moses knocked open the firebox door with his shovel. The fire was white-hot, an undulating bed of heat, throwing weird shadows and light through the gloom of the engine room, the eternal twilight of that lower region.
Burgess was there. “Bearins runnin hot,” he grunted.
“They’ll hold for now.”
“Lotta damned pressure,” he said, nodding toward the boiler.
“That’s why we have safety valves.”
Actually, they didn’t. Taylor had tied them down, figured he knew better than a damned bit of iron and springs when he was pushing his boiler too hard. One of the advantages of the navy, he found: no damned inspectors poking around his engine room.
“O’Malley!” Taylor shouted. The Irishman was sulking in a corner. “I told you to tend the water!”
“What? I’ll not go near that damned boiler, and you running twenty and more pounds of steam! That’s work for one of the niggers, that is!”
“Niggers are too busy, and if there ain’t any niggers we got to use a Mick! Now go!”
O’Malley stamped over to Taylor, but he did not seem inclined to check water levels in the gauge glass.
“I’ve about had it with yer abuse, do ya hear? I’ll not stand for it, and me, a white man, and treated worse than yer darling niggers!”
“You work as hard as my niggers, I’ll treat you as well as my niggers,” Taylor said, stopped as he heard a hissing sound—water or steam getting away. He looked up just in time to see the crack in the feed-water line opening like a grinning mouth, hot water—not boiling, but hot enough—spewing out.
“Ah, shit! Stand clear!” Taylor shouted, and Burgess and O’Malley and Moses and St. Clair scattered and the pipe burst with a groan and a snap and the feed-water pump forced hot water in a great spray over the engine room, hissing off the pipes, showering the floor plates, spraying over Billy Jefferson, who lay beneath it, screaming and trying to shield himself.
“Damn it! Get the valve, Burgess!” Taylor held his arm over his face, raced forward, slipped on the wet steel plate, and came down in a heap, skidding to a stop with feet against the boiler face. The hot water was lashing at him, burning his face like snake bites, and Billy was screaming, unable to stand with his burned hands.
Water was spewing from both ends of the broken pipe, pushed out by the feed-water pump and draining from the boiler, and if the water in the boiler got too low, there would be hell to pay. The fusible plug would melt, but that would be the least of their problems.
Taylor looked up as best as he could, trying to keep his face from the blowing, scalding water. He rose unsteadily to his feet, the slick decks and the hot water and the burning pipes threatening from every direction. He grabbed the valve on the boiler face—it was painfully hot but Taylor was accustomed to that—and he cranked it shut, heard the sound of the water flow die off.
He turned and looked aft. Burgess, his face red from the hot water, had reached the feed-pump valve. The water was off. Billy was lying on the floor plates, whimpering in pain. O’Malley was nowhere to be seen.
“Burgess, check the gauge glass, keep an eye on that boiler!” With no water going to the boiler, and quite a bit lost, they did not have too much steaming left before the thing began to melt down.
There was a snap to his right, a crack like metal giving way. Ten inches from where he had been standing, the steam gauge blew clean off the pipe, flinging itself up and off to one side. The flying gauge shattered against the boiler-room bulkhead and a whistling white plume of condensing steam came bursting out of the hole where the gauge had been.
Might be pushing it now… Taylor admitted to himself. “Moses! Shut off the valve to that gauge,” he shouted as he moved quickly aft, “and close that damper on the fire door, you hear?”
“Close the damper!” Moses called, and Taylor heard the reassuring sound of the damper slamming shut and hoped he had not pushed his luck too far.
Hail Mary, Mother of God, the Lord is with thee… he muttered, feeling like the Lord’s own hypocrite, but childhood training died hard and he hoped the prayer might do some good.
He looked around, at the dripping engine room, the dripping, burned men. Burned but still alive. “Damn,” he said. That was all he could think to say.
Ian O’Malley raced up the ladder, desperate to get out of the engine room before the boiler blew. He was frightened, to be sure, and angry and wounded in his pride. But most of all he was bitter about the treatment he received. He had spent the better part of his life being bitter about the way he was treated. The emotion fit him like a well-worn pair of trousers, enveloping and comfortable.
Bloody bastard… he thought, throwing open the fidley door and stepping aft, stomping through the sunshine and relatively cool air.
Bloody Southerner and he treats his niggers better than me…and me a fireman first class…
That was another sore spot. His mother’s second cousin, chief engineer of an oceangoing packet, no less, had given him recommendation enough that it should have garnered him first assistant engineer’s papers, at least, despite what little experience he actually had. It should have been him telling Taylor to check the feed water and clean the damned grates…
Suddenly he was aware of gunfire. Far off, but he could hear it, shells whistling past. He looked outboard. They had turned, and he could see the Yankee ships astern, and the big one was firing.
I made a bloody mistake, didn’t I? he thought. Should have joined with the bloody Yankees…
He heard a voice behind, a soft voice. “Mr. O’Malley?” He turned. The boy Taylor had brought with him was there, but O’Malley had his suspicions. In fact, if he was right, it would be enough to get Taylor cashiered from the navy, which would be justice done. “You…” O’Malley said, took a step toward the speaker, hand reached out, and then his whole world was consumed by the whistle of a shell that seemed to suck the air out of the day, and then it blew up.
Wendy felt an odd sort of calm as she walked around the decks, even with the iron flying. It was like being in a bell jar, looking out, able to see everything, protected. It was an illusion, a dangerous one, and she knew it and told herself as much, but she could not shake it, so instead she enjoyed it, experienced it.
After fleeing the wheelhouse she had hunkered down by the forward end of the deckhouse, watched Taylor lay the gun, disable the Yankee. She had cheered with the rest, spontaneously, until she realized her voice might give her away. But Taylor had been right. No one seemed to care who she was or what she was about.