“Come on,” the man said, led Robley back down the pier. At the far end, half on the road, half on the pier, stood a heavy wagon, and behind it another, the sorry-looking draft animals standing patient in the traces.
Paine followed the soldier around to the back of the wagon. The man looked at his partner, gave him a nod of the head, and the other man leaned his rifle against the wheel and climbed into the wagon. He pulled back a piece of heavy, stained canvas. Underneath, the gleaming barrel of a ten-inch Dahlgren.
“New-cast, fully rifled. Come right out of the dockyard at Norfolk,” the man said, as if he was the proprietor of a store. Paine looked at the barrel, awestruck by the potential power of the thing.
“Lessard didn’t say nothin’ about carriages,” the man said. “Carriages you got to get on your own. See here.” The man led Paine to the second wagon, and once again his partner jumped in the back, pulled the cover off two six-pound smoothbores, just as Lessard had promised. Paine shook his head in wonder.
“Where did these come from?” he asked.
The greasy man exchanged a smile with his partner. “Oh, we know people. Railroad people. Things gets diverted, you understand.” He was grinning.
Paine squinted at the man. The light from the lantern, held at his waist, threw deep shadows over his face, making him look even more evil. “You stole these…” Paine said at last. “This is Confederate property, and you stole it and now you are reselling it.”
“You watch what you say, hear?” the man said. “Stole it? I’m a Confederate soldier, and you calling me a thief…”
Robley Paine felt a deep loathing in his gut. Confederate soldier? His boys had been Confederate soldiers, not this pig. His boys were dead, killed for the Confederacy, and this filth was profiteering from the cause, the cause for which his boys died.
“See here,” the greasy man said in a more conciliatory tone, “the Confederate Army gots no idea who needs what or where. We gonna lose the war, waiting for them politicians in Richmond to figure where supplies should be. So you think of me as like a private supply officer. It’s my business to see gentlemen like you gets what they need to fight proper.”
Paine’s hand moved for his gun, a practiced move; the muscles of his arm and hand had not lost the motion from his army days, even after all those years. His palm hit the butt, his fingers wrapped around the grip, found the trigger as he pulled the weapon free, his eyes on the startled face of the greasy man who was flailing for his own weapon.
The Starr came up, right in the man’s face, hammer back. The gun banged out and Robley let his arm absorb the strong, satisfying kickback. He turned, found the second man in the light of the fallen lantern, and from four feet away put a bullet neatly through his forehead.
Robley Paine looked down at the man at his feet, flung back, one arm stretched behind his head, the other still reaching for his holstered pistol.
A private supply officer … “I disagree, sir,” he said.
25
On Tuesday afternoon, the 27th of August, about 4 o’clock, I discovered a large fleet in sight off Hatteras… On the morning of the 28th, between 8 and 9 o’clock, a heavy fire was opened from the steamers Minnesota, Wabash, Susquehanna, and other war vessels…Being a fire of shells only, it might well be spoken of as a flood of shells.
— Report of Colonel William F. Martin, 7th Regiment Infantry, North Carolina Volunteers
The Cape Fears fired five shells from the ten-pound Parrott rifle, at maximum elevation, before they decided with absolute certainty that they could not reach the anchored Yankee fleet. Their gunfire did, however, attract the Yankees’ notice, and soon shells were falling all around them, sending plumes of water as high as the boat deck as they dropped in Pamlico Sound.
Hieronymus Taylor clumped up the ladder to the wheelhouse. He was in shirtsleeves, the wet patches of sweat radiating out from under his arms and under the straps of his braces, turning his otherwise brilliant white shirt gray. In his mouth, the ubiquitous cigar. He paused, squinting around, the corners of his eyes crinkled with amusement.
Samuel Bowater, in the middle of issuing his orders to Lieutenant Harwell, paused, turned his head, as the spray from a shell, landing no more than thirty feet away, lashed across himself and the lieutenant and Taylor.
“Damn,” Taylor said.
“They are getting the range on us, I perceive,” Bowater said, changing the course of his orders. “Once I am away, please shift the anchorage, say, one hundred yards north. That should put us out of most of their line of sight. No need to expose ourselves to fire if we cannot return it.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“We’ll keep steam up, then, Cap’n?” Taylor asked.
“I think so, Chief.”
“Pity the fort can’t shift one hundred yards off,” Taylor said.
Fort Hatteras did not seem to be returning fire. Bowater wondered if the garrison was out of ammunition, or if the fleet was out of range. With a small garrison and an enemy pounding them mercilessly, it did not seem a very hopeful situation.
“See that there?” Taylor said, nodding south, and Bowater turned and looked.
“What?”
“Ocracoke Island. That’s where Lieutenant Maynard come and ambushed Blackbeard the pirate. Cut his head right off, hung it from the bowsprit. Another case of them damned Yankees comin down here and givin grief to a good Southern boy, just lookin for his fun.”
“Hmm. I’m not certain your history is entirely correct there, Chief Taylor.”
“No, I…” A shell whistled by, passing close, and plunged into the sound right astern of Cape Fear. “No, I’m sure it happened right there.”
“I mean about Maynard being a Yankee. Or Blackbeard being a Southerner, for that matter.”
“You sure? Blackbeard spent a power of time in the South. Spent some time in Charleston, I do recall. Where you’re from. Hell, he may be your great-great-granddaddy. They say he had fourteen wives.”
“He most certainly…” Another shell came in, screaming down on the starboard side, exploding inches above the water, and Bowater’s comment was drowned in the rat-tat-tat of shell fragments hitting the Cape Fear ’s side and shrieking past their heads.
“Sir?” Ordinary Seaman Dick Merrow was standing on the wheelhouse roof, scanning around with the big telescope.
“Yes?” Bowater said, happy for a distraction from the silly conversation into which Taylor had drawn him.
“Small side-wheeler coming down sound…I reckon she’s about three miles off.”
“Let me see.” Merrow handed the glass down and Bowater focused it in the direction the sailor pointed. He could see the side-wheeler, smoke belching from her stack, could see the dot of white under her bow as she drove hard. From her masthead flew a flag, and though it was blowing straight aft, it appeared to be the broad pennant of a commodore, which made Bowater smile despite himself.
“This would be Barron in Winslow, ” he said to Harwell. “Let us hope he comes with some plan for salvation.”
The Cape Fear’s boat was lowered and Bowater climbed down to the stern sheets, with Eustis Babcock as bow man and Tanner at stroke oar. They pulled for the beach, ground up on the barrier island, splashed out, and pulled the boat up on the sand.
Bowater tramped up the beach, stopped, and looked around. Extraordinary. Shells were falling in a nonstop hail, exploding on the ramparts, within the fort, on the beach around the fort. With the sun heading toward the west, the fort and the sprays of dirt from the exploding shells were washed in an orange light. The noise was constant—the scream of the shells, the blast of exploding ordnance. And then every so often, by coincidence, there would be no firing, just silence, which was strangest of all. But it never lasted above ten seconds, and then the next shell, and the next, was hurled at the fort.