“Well, sir…” Lessard said. “This is New Orleans. For a price, my friend, all things are to be had here…”
It was ten days before the Star of the Delta could get underway. She bore a new name then, Yazoo River. Changing the name had been the only simple part of her transformation.
There were two significant differences between the Star of the Delta and the Yazoo River. One was the addition of a four-foot iron ram on her bow, a foot below her waterline. It fit snugly around the cutwater and protruded forward like an iron shelf, a foot thick. Heavy bolts went clean through the ram and the Yazoo River ’s cant frames and held the weapon securely in place.
The second addition was a letter of marque and reprisal, making the Yazoo River an official privateer. Robley had tramped through one office after another, filled in government forms, slipped bribes to greasy officials. It was the way of things in New Orleans. He had always understood it and accepted it. But it was harder now. His country was at war, and wicked people were making profit by obstructing the efficient prosecution of that war. It was insufferable, but Paine clenched his teeth, handed over the gold, tolerated it because he had to.
It was a formality, the letter of marque, as far as Robley was concerned, a bow to the legitimate authorities. Privateers captured prizes. Robley Paine was not interested in capturing anything. He intended only wholesale destruction, and he did not need a license for that.
The Yazoo River was a cotton-clad. Her armor, piled high on the foredeck and around the wheelhouse and the side decks, consisted of tightly compressed bales of cotton. They might help against small arms fire, Robley imagined, might make the men at the guns a bit more bold with the absurd belief that they were protected by the bales, but they would do no more than that.
Paine had actually purchased the cotton bales to pile on the decks, and that could not fail to amuse him. His fortune was based on growing and selling cotton; he had never purchased it in his life. Fortunately, it was not expensive, with the Union blockade already resulting in surpluses of the crop piling up in warehouses and docks.
Ten days of feverish work, of fighting with shipyard workers and recruiting sailors and engine-room crew, of getting his hands dirty working on the ship and kowtowing to corrupt officials, and spending gold at an extraordinary rate, buying coal and engine parts and food and charts and oil and shovels and slice bars and dockage. All things were to be had in New Orleans, and everyone had his hand out.
Ten days, and finally they cast off from the dock and Mr. Kinney, whom Paine had engaged as pilot, backed the Yazoo River out of her berth and into the Father of Waters. He spun the wheel once, rang up the engine room for half ahead, spun the wheel some more. Robley listened to the sounds of the big paddle wheels stop, a moment’s quiet, then the clank and splash and creak as they reversed direction.
“How does she feel, Mr. Kinney?” Paine asked. He was nominally captain, but he made no pretensions of knowing anything about boats. He left that aspect to Mr. Kinney and Brown, the engineer, both of whom treated Paine with a veiled contempt, and neither of whom Paine particularly liked. Paine did not think a fit Southern man had any business not being in the armed service. The very fact that Kinney and Brown were available made them suspicious in his mind.
“She’s fine, so far.” Kinney chewed thoughtfully at the plug of tobacco in his mouth, spit a stream into a spittoon, wiped a brown streak from his thick beard with the back of his sleeve. “Don’t know how long them goddamned engines’ll go, ’fore they blow all to hell, but so far she ain’t bad.”
Paine nodded, looked past the piles of cotton on the bow, at the brown water moving past. For all of his concerns about the ship and her crew—most of them were foreign, a surly and uninspired lot—he felt buoyed to be underway. If nothing else happened, nothing at all, he had a ship with a ram and he could end his life plowing it into the side of a Yankee man-of-war and have that to take to his grave, to tell his boys in heaven that he had done that much at least for them.
They steamed south from New Orleans, through the low delta country, the wild marshy places where the big river began to make its slow segue into the sea. The sun moved toward the horizon, but Kinney, for all of his objectionable qualities—and they were many—knew the river, and day or night, it made no difference.
It was well past dark, with the moon coming up, a thin gold sliver, when Paine began to worry. “We’ve not missed it?” It seemed as if they had been underway for some time, but Robley had never been that far down the river before.
“We ain’t missed it,” Kinney said. “Misser Lessard said the long pier north of St. Philip. We ain’t missed it.”
Daniel Lessard had helped with every step. He arranged the dockyard, located Kinney and Brown, put Robley in contact with the foundry that cast the ram. He had put Paine in the way of heavy guns. All that was needed now was to pick them up.
Another fifteen minutes and Paine could see lights on the high bank to the north, where the river made a dogleg turn, and Kinney rang up slow ahead. “There it is,” he said, nodding his head toward the dark window, but Robley could see nothing, so he simply nodded.
Kinney spun the big wheel, rang full astern, spun the wheel again, rang stop. He leaned out of the wheelhouse, called, “Git them goddamned dock lines ashore, you hear?” to someone below, and then with a bump the Yazoo River was there.
Where, Paine was not sure.
Kinney turned to Paine, working the tobacco in his jaw. “Here we are, Misser Paine. Long pier north of Fort St. Philip. Whatever business you got here, I ain’t got no part of it, hear? You go ashore, do what you want. Me, I stay here.”
Paine glared at the man, unsure of what he was implying. They were here to complete a transaction set up by Lessard, and Paine could not imagine there was anything illegitimate about it. So he said nothing, stepped out of the wheelhouse and over the gangplank the crew had set over the side.
It was dark where they had landed, and Paine had to wonder how Kinney had found the place, never mind bringing the Yazoo River alongside. He could hear the sound of a million insects carried on the humid air, along with the saline smell of brackish water, the swamp smell of decay.
Thirty feet away, a lantern unshuttered, the light spilling on the hard-packed ground and the sturdy wooden pier on which Robley stood. From behind the lantern, a voice that carried nothing but accusation said, “Who’s there?”
“Robley Paine.”
“Who sent you?”
“Mr. Daniel Lessard, of New Orleans.”
Quiet for a moment, then, “Come on over here.”
Robley stepped forward, trying to see the man who spoke, but he was holding the lantern in such a way that no light fell on him. Then, when Robley was no more than ten feet away, the man raised the lantern, let the light reveal him. A stout man, stout in the way of men who did physical labor, several inches shorter than Paine. He wore a Confederate uniform that did not fit him well, hugging his midriff too tight. The butt of a pistol showed from his holster. Another man stood a few feet behind him, a rifle conspicuous in his hands.
“Who are you?” Paine asked. It occurred to him that Lessard had never told him whom he was to meet.
“You don’t ask no question. You got money?”
“Perhaps…” Paine said. He was not too happy with the way this was playing out. “Do you have guns?” This greasy fellow, more of the overseer type than the soldier, did not seem to be a man in a position to be selling guns. How would a soldier get cannons to sell?