“Slow ahead, Mr. Kinney,” he said, soft, and once again Kinney reached for the bell cord and tugged.
I will have to shoot that coward before we are through here… Robley thought. He held Kinney fixed with his eyes until he felt the stern wheels begin to turn again, felt the Yazoo River ’s momentum build. She was out ahead of the others now, but that was where Robley wished to be.
Then, from deep below them, from somewhere near the bottom of the ship, a terrible wrenching sound of metal. Something snapped with a sharp report. The starboard paddle wheel stopped instantly, as if the hand of God had been laid on it, and the boat began to slew.
“Meet her, meet her!” Robley said to the helmsman. They had gone through this drill before. The helmsman spun the wheel, compensating for the off-center thrust of the single paddle wheel.
“Well, shit, reckon that’s it,” Kinney said with a hopeful tone.
“We have two engines, Mr. Kinney, and we have lost only one.”
“You don’t mean to keep on here?”
“Slow ahead, Mr. Kinney. I shall signal you when to stop.”
Paine walked out onto the hurricane deck. Am I mad? he wondered. He knew it was a terrible risk he was taking, driving the Yazoo River forward until she was within range of the Yankee’s guns. He could not muster even the slightest concern for his own welfare, or for that of his ship and men, which he considered no more than an extension of his own will.
Madness!
But can I be mad, if I understand that what I am doing is madness?
The bow gun fired again, and he traced the trajectory right to the big steamer’s hull. They were not above five hundred yards away, easy for their big rifle, and well within range of the Yankee’s broadsides.
The round shot was falling all around them now, kicking up spray that fell on the Yazoo River ’s deck, but the gun crew was performing well, loading and firing, seemingly as oblivious to the shot as was Robley. He was proud of his crew. Were it not for Kinney, all would be perfect.
From the Yankee ship, a muzzle flash, a foreshortened black streak, and Robley watched as it slashed toward them, screaming by his ear, leaving a jagged hole in the wheelhouse astern. He was standing in the hail of iron, leaning into it, as if it was a cool rain at the end of a hot, humid summer day. He was revived by the gunfire, refreshed by the proximity of death.
You sulfurous and mind-tempting flames, vault couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts, singe my white head!
A Yankee ball came in on a flat trajectory, plowed down the hurricane-deck rail on the port side, snapping off the stanchions like a scythe through wheat.
Now what are the chances of that? Robley wondered as he looked at the unusual site, the twisted metal posts and rails, hanging at odd angles.
He turned to the wheelhouse, held up his hand for Kinney to ring slow astern, which would hold them on that spot in the river.
From the Yankees came a new note, a sharper crack, not like the flat, dull boom of the smoothbores. Robley brought his field glasses up to his eyes. The smaller ship, the one run bow first on the mud, had moved two guns aft and run them out of the after gunports. These were not smoothbores but rifles, Robley could tell by the higher pitch of their report.
As he watched through the binoculars, the port gun fired, the crack of the gun and the scream of the shell whirling past coming one on top of another. Exploding shells. This was dangerous stuff, much more so than the round shot. Robley felt exhilarated.
The air was filled with the sound of battle, a continuous rolling fire from the Rebels and the Yankees, the buzz of round shot passing close, the scream of the rifle shells, the occasional crash of shot hitting the Yazoo River, taking off bits of the superstructure, chipping away at the wheelhouse. And under it all, the hiss and puff and clank of the single engine, driving the single paddle wheel slow astern. And then it stopped.
Paine was aware first of the change in sound, some part of the tapestry of battle noise gone. And then the Yazoo River began to turn, to drift downstream, spinning broadside to the Yankee fleet, the current sweeping her into the deadly broadsides.
What…what… Robley was not sure what to do. They had never lost both engines. They had never been under fire.
Kinney appeared on the deck below, running forward with the awkward run of a short, stocky man. “Let the anchor go! Let the anchor go!” he shouted as he ran. Someone let fly the ring stopper and the anchor plunged down into the water and the chain raced out after it.
From the hurricane deck, Robley watched the action take place but did not know what to say. He turned and looked at the wheelhouse, but there were no answers there. How in hell did Kinney get down there so fast? Why didn’t he just call down from the wheelhouse?
The chain ran its length and stopped. The anchor grabbed hold and the Yazoo River spun around, bow upstream, hanging at the end of the chain, the Yankee shot falling all around and passing over her deckhouse to fall in the water beyond.
Now what in hell? Robley was at a loss. Robley, who was starting to feel his oats as ship’s captain, realized he had no idea of what to do.
Boots on the ladder and Kinney appeared on the hurricane deck, and behind him, Brown, the engineer, filthy, sweat-soaked, face streaked with coal dust, eyes red, watery, and utterly disingenuous.
“What is it, Brown?” Robley demanded.
“Lost the rod on the starboard engine. Now it’s a bearing on the port crankshaft. It’s a fucking mess.”
Robley shifted his gaze to Kinney, who met his eyes with defiance. “You best signal one of them towboats to come over here, give us a tow upriver. Fight’s over, Cap’n.”
For a long moment no one moved, no one spoke. Paine, Kinney, and Brown, they stood facing one another.
Paine broke the silence. “I know you two.” He pointed to Kinney, put his finger right in the pilot’s face. “You are cock”—he moved his finger to Brown—“and you are bull, and you are both goddamned liars. Go get that engine going.”
“I done told you, the bearing…”
“Don’t you lie to me, you son of a whore!” Robley could feel his control slipping, the emotional dam he had built up to keep the rage contained crumbling. If it collapsed he did not know what would happen, and he was afraid. The dam was the thing that stopped him from simply roaming the streets and shooting down every son of a bitch who did not deserve to breathe, but still did, while his boys did not.
Brown took a step back. He looked frightened, frightened of what he saw in Robley’s eyes. “Cap’n, I ain’t…”
Kinney’s hand came out of his coat, a five-inch double-barrel Remington derringer in his meaty palm. “You’re a goddamned lunatic, Paine, and all your money don’t change that. Keep yer hand away from that pistol.”
Robley reached across his chest, put his hand on the butt of the Starr.
“I said keep yer hand away from that pistol,” Kinney repeated, his voice rising in pitch. Paine pulled the heavy weapon loose, swung it up.
“Put the goddamned gun down!” Kinney screamed, but Kinney had made a big mistake, because he was a coward, and cared for nothing but his own skin, and was as terrified of hanging for murder as he was of being killed by Yankees, while Robley Paine did not care a whit about any of it.
Robley pointed the Starr at Kinney’s trembling hand and just when Kinney realized he had better shoot, because Paine was beyond being threatened, Paine pulled the trigger. The Starr roared, and the.44 bullet hit the derringer with a sharp pinging sound, blew the gun and three of Kinney’s fingers clean off the hurricane deck.