"No one else in your room saw anything?"
"They say not. It was late. Dark. Those who took him must have worked quietly."
"Goddamn us all for what we do in the name of patriotism. They did a job on him, all right. Something a lot worse than a beating with fists, though I still can't figure out the method."
"Can't Billy tell us? Give us the names or at least the descriptions of those responsible?"
Billy thrashed, arched his back, cried out softly. His left nostril began to ooze blood. The doctor bent to wipe it, giving Tim a bleak look.
"If he lives," he said.
Sunset. Sea birds circling. The air was calm and cold, though in the north massive cloud banks were building rapidly. Over on the Battery, windows glowed and the last daylight touched roof peaks and steeples. Bundled in his caped greatcoat, Cooper noticed mist forming on the water.
George Dixon finished his survey of the harbor and pushed the sections of his brass telescope together. "The mist will help. We have an ebb tide to assist us when we're ready to start back. It's our best opportunity thus far. I think we'll go."
He pivoted and called to the mate. "Mr. Fawkes? Rig the torpedo boom, if you please. I want to get under way promptly."
"Aye, aye, Captain," said the former Alabama soldier. All of the landsmen had learned nautical ways with speed and relish. Having survived the underwater test, they took pride in behaving like experienced tars.
"Which of the ships will be your target?" Cooper asked.
"I think it's best to determine that once we're past the harbor bar."
"I intend to row over to Sumter to watch." He held out his hand. "Godspeed, George. I'll expect you back by midnight."
"By all means," replied the young skipper with a brief smile. "I'm very proud to be taking her out. You should be proud, too. If we succeed, this night will live in history."
"You'll succeed," Lucius said, hovering behind his superior.
"Well — good-bye, then," Dixon said, striding down the pier as confidently as any master who had first gone into the tops as a boy. "Careful with that powder, lads. It's meant to sink a Yankee, not us."
A shiver chased down Cooper's back — a reaction not at all connected with the plunging temperature. This moment made all the peril, the worry, the pleading with Beauregard — even the coldness of his wife, who simply didn't understand him or the importance of his work — worthwhile.
Lucius climbed into the boat first. Through thickening mist, they rowed hard for the landing stage of the shell-blasted fort. Halfway there, Lucius pointed over Cooper's shoulder. "She's heading out." Cooper twisted clumsily on the thwart, barely in time to glimpse a red-orange glitter on the iron hull. Then the dark clouds closed. The slight bulge on the surface of the water disappeared.
From the seaward side of Fort Sumter, they watched darkness and mist rapidly hide the blockade fleet. Only a few signal lanterns showed where the vessels lurked. The night remained very quiet, very cold. Cooper grew nervous. He had just checked his watch once again — 8:47 p.m. — when fire and noise erupted in the offshore mist.
Cooper caught his breath. "Which ship is it?"
"Housatonic," said the major from the fort who had come up to watch with them. He passed his telescope, which Cooper peered through just as a sheet of flame carried pieces of timber and rigging skyward. The roar came rolling in over the harbor bar.
"She's hulled on the starboard side," Cooper crowed. "Just forward of the mainmast, I think. I can see men scrambling up the main and mizzen — oh — she's listing already!" He fairly hurled the telescope at his assistant. "Look while you can, Lucius. She's going down."
New lanterns were quickly lit on other ships in the enemy squadron. They heard faint yells through speaking trumpets. The steam warship nearest the sinking vessel put down lifeboats while men from the Sumter garrison rushed out of their quarters, clamoring to know what Confederate battery had fired and mortally wounded the steam sloop.
"None," said Cooper. "She was sunk by our submersible boat, Hunley."
"You mean that coffin ship from Sullivan's Island?" "She no longer deserves that reputation. Lieutenant Dixon and his crew will be decorated as heroes."
But they were slow to return. At eleven o'clock, Cooper and Lucius rowed back to the pier and kept a vigil that grew colder and grimmer by the hour. At six in the morning, Cooper said, "Let's go back to Charleston."
A haunted man, he trudged up Tradd Street and let himself into the house. No one in the city knew anything about the sinking of Housatonic, only that an explosion had occurred on one of the blockade vessels. Of the submersible there was no trace.
A few days later, following the capture of a Union picket boat, Cooper was able to confirm for General Beauregard that Housatonic had indeed gone down. He was disappointed to learn she had lost only five hands, thanks to the quick arrival of rescue boats.
"Two less than the number aboard Hunley." he said to Lucius.
In the next few days, Cooper drank large amounts of whiskey and gin, hoping to induce heavy sleep. It refused to come. Every night he roamed the house or sat in a high-backed white-painted wicker chair, staring through the window at the garden drenched by winter rain. Of the garden he saw nothing. He saw instead his drowning son. Dixon's brave face just before Hunley sailed at sunset. Strangest of all, he saw the darkness that had surrounded him inside the fish-ship during the test. He saw it, smelled it, tasted it, too, knowing fully, painfully, how Dixon and the rest felt as they died. During these reveries he heard the great bells from the steeple of St. Michael's Church, though the ringing never seemed to coincide with the quarter-hours. All the clocks in the house were set wrong, he decided.
One night, nearly as exhausted as her husband by now, Judith brought a lamp to the room with the white wicker chair.
"Cooper, this can't continue — sitting up, never resting."
"Why should I go to bed? I can't sleep. The night of the seventeenth of February was a milestone in naval warfare. I try to find peace in that thought, and I can't."
"Because you —" She stopped.
"I know what you started to say. I am responsible for that milestone. I wanted it so badly I killed seven men."
She turned her back, unable to withstand his glare. He was right, though. She whispered to herself as much as to him, "You should have left her to rust. But you didn't, and I wouldn't have wished harm on any of those poor boys, but I'm glad Hunley's gone. God forgive me. I'm glad. Perhaps it will finally purge some of the madness that torments you —"
His head jerked up. "What a peculiar choice of words — madness. I performed my duties to the best of my ability, that's all. I did my work. And there's more, much more, waiting. I will do it in the same way."
"Then nothing's changed. I had hoped —"
"What could possibly change?"
She raised her voice. "Won't you even let me finish a sentence?"
"To what purpose? I ask you again, Judith. What could possibly change?"
"You're so full of this awful rage —"
"More than ever. Poor Dixon's life must be paid for, and the life of every man who went down with him." His lips turned white. "Paid for ten times over."
The shudder of her arm rattled the lamp in her hand. "Cooper, when will you understand? The South can't win this war. It cannot."
"I refuse to debate the —"
"Listen to me! This — dedication to slaughter — it's destroying you. It's destroying us."
He turned his head, stiff and silent.