He sat up with a frustrated sigh, swung his legs over the edge of his bunk. From beyond the great cabin he could hear the sound of shovels in coal, the tramp of men carrying coal bags up the gangways, the muted thump of the schooner tied alongside. The watch on deck was taking on coal, though, from the sound of it, with no great enthusiasm.
Pope ran his hands through his muttonchop whiskers, over his bald head, and down the fringe of hair that encircled his head like the grass skirts the South Sea Islanders were supposed to wear. Overhead the ship’s bell rang, clang-clang, clang-clang, clang-clang, clang. Three-thirty a.m. He sighed again and stood, pushed open the door of the sleeping cabin and stepped into the wide expanse of the great cabin.
It was cooler there, by several degrees. The few lanterns burning cast a warm light on the polished oak paneling. The sundry brass handles and knobs and hinges glowed dull. A lovely place, fine as any drawing room in any mansion in New York or Philadelphia, if not quite so large. But it was big enough for any reasonable man, and Honest John Pope was certainly that.
He grabbed his trousers, which were slipping down his legs, pulled them up, fastened the buttons, and then buttoned his shirt. He considered pulling on his coat and hat but could not bear the thought. Seven bells in the night watch, no need to be so damned formal, he thought. He wished his steward was awake so he could snap at him. It was a sickly climate in the Mississippi Delta, and it made him irritable.
He mounted the ladder that ran from the great cabin directly up to the quarterdeck above and stepped through the scuttle and into the black night. He closed the scuttle door and stood motionless for some time, letting his eyes adjust. The great cabin had been dimly lit, but even that was enough light to render him quite blind on deck.
Damned dark tonight…
The wind was out of the north and blowing a steady five knots or more. It wrapped itself around Pope’s heavy, sweating frame, gave him a chill, raised goose flesh on his arms, but it felt good. Over the sound of the shovels and the rattle of coal spilling down the chutes and into the bunkers, Pope could hear the swamp sounds, the thousands of frogs and insects and Lord knew what else, chirping away at their nightly choir.
He advanced to the rail, which he could just barely see, and only because the inboard bulwark was painted white, and leaned against it, staring out into the night. The wind carried on it the brackish smell of the river and the smell of rotting vegetation and smoke from some far-off place. He looked east to west but could see nothing beyond blackness from the shore.
The Head of the Passes, the two-mile-wide convergence of the channels leading in and out of the Mississippi. New Orleans was second only to New York in the amount of shipping that flowed through. Or it had been, anyway, before the Rebels set about destroying themselves. It was staggering, the amount of river traffic that had crossed that spot of water on which the Richmond was anchored.
But now, with the blockade having brought waterborne commerce to a halt, on that black, moonless, hazy night they might as well have been riding at anchor halfway between the earth and the moon, for all the activity that Pope could see. It was unsettling, that wild, foreign delta all around, harboring snakes and alligators and diseases unknown to a Northern man like Captain John Pope.
“Lieutenant…” Pope made his way forward, to where he could see the outline of Lieutenant James Whitfield, silhouetted against the tiny bit of light thrown off by the lanterns on the schooner and down in the hold. Suddenly Pope did not care to be alone on his own quarterdeck.
“Captain?” Whitfield turned, and his voice sounded a bit startled, and Pope wondered if the swamp and the darkness were unnerving the luff the way they were him. “Is everything all right, sir?”
“Fine, fine. Can’t sleep. This damned heat down here. Man isn’t born to the climate, he can hardly tolerate it.”
“Yes, sir. And it’s not even the heat so much as the humidity.”
“You’re right, Lieutenant. I hadn’t even considered that.”
Pope looked forward, down the length of the deck, which was just becoming dimly visible as his eyes adjusted to the dark. The Richmond was a big ship, 225 feet long, forty-two and a half feet on the beam, displacing 2,700 tons. A sister ship to Hartford, and heavily armed. She drew over seventeen feet aft, which made her less than ideal for river work, but Pope was not going to complain. He had worked hard, had spent many years in the navy, to rise to command of such a ship.
And Richmond, at least, was a steamer, her twin screws driven by two horizontal condensing engines, sixty-two-inch cylinders, each with a thirty-four-inch stroke. The other ships of his squadron, the Preble and the Vincennes, were entirely sail-driven, making them considerably less adequate for river work.
The thought of the other ships under his command made Pope lift his eyes from his own deck and the line of big, black nine-inch smoothbore Dahlgrens like sleeping bears at their gunports, and look outboard again.
Off their port side and downriver was the sloop Vincennes. Pope could see the dull loom of a lantern on her deck. She was one hundred feet shorter than Richmond and less than a third of the bigger ship’s tonnage, but with her four eight-inch guns and fourteen thirty-two-pounders, she was still a powerful man-of-war. Certainly more ship than the Rebels could muster.
Pope turned, looked forward, past the Richmond ’s starboard bow, though in the dark he could hardly see even the black shrouds angling up the Richmond ’s masts. He moved his head a bit, to make sure his vision was not blocked by the rigging. One hundred and fifty yards upriver he could see a single pinprick of light, a lantern on the deck of the sailing sloop Preble. Just the one light, and the enveloping darkness, and the sound of frogs and insects and the lap of water around the hull.
“Well…” Pope began, then stopped. He had heard a noise. A shout? He cocked his head.
Then another shout, loud, an order being issued, but he could not make it out. The furious beat of a drum, feet pounding on the deck. Pope looked around, trying to find the source, but he saw only Lieutenant Whitfield, who met him with eyes wide.
The sound was muted, far off, but insistent, something happening.
“The Preble! ” Whitfield shouted, pointed forward. A red light was moving aloft with awkward jerks as it was hoisted to the peak of the gaff.
“They’re beating to quarters!” Pope shouted. He looked around his own ship, unsure what to do. The night had the quality of an anxious dream. What was happening aboard Preble? Pope felt the first inkling of panic creep over him. He had once considered posting picket boats upriver—why had he not?
“Beat to quarters, sir?” Whitfield asked, and he sounded no more composed than Pope felt.
“Yes, yes, Luff, beat to quarters!”
“Beat to quarters!” Whitfield shouted, and suddenly the deck was alive with racing men, men pouring up from the hatches, running to the big, sleeping guns, casting off breeching, men racing to their battle stations even before the startled drummer was able to find his sticks.
“Port side, Lieutenant! A steamer, port side!” a voice shouted up from the waist, and Whitfield and Pope both rushed across the quarterdeck, hit the rail, peered outboard and forward.