Clive Cussler; Craig Dirgo

by The Sea Hunters II

  DEEP INSIDE THE earth below New Madrid, Missouri, all was not well. The layers forming the first thousand feet of overburden were twitching like an enraged lion. Molten earth, heated by the immense temperatures below ground, mixed with water from the thousands of springs and dozens of tributaries along the Mississippi River. This superheated, black, slippery liquid worked as a lubricant on the plates of the earth that were held in place under great tension. Earth had given fair notice of the wrath it was about to unleash. The birds and animals had sensed the danger. A great burp from the earth was building. And the burp would soon erupt.

  New Orleans was steaming right toward the inevitable eruption.

  The Ohio River current ran faster nearing the Mississippi River, and New Orleans was steaming smoothly. In a few moments, the ship would arrive at the confluence of the two rivers, hours ahead of schedule. The mood aboard the steamboat was one of happy contentment. The deckhands went about their duties with gusto. Markum had already cleaned the cabins and was hanging the sheets from a clothesline stretched between them. Andrew Jack was taking a short nap on the bow while Nicholas steered. When Roosevelt sent word that they were at the confluence, he would go to the pilothouse to direct the passage.

  Hilda Gottshak was putting the finishing touches on a dozen meat pies for lunch.

  “What’s wrong, boy?” Lydia asked Tiger.

  The Newfoundland had started whining. Lydia checked and found no obvious injuries. Tiger kept up the low, relentless howl. Lydia chose to ignore the animal, hoping he would quiet down on his own.

  In the comer of the pilothouse, Roosevelt was figuring the profits New Orleans could generate. From the start he’d envisioned the steamboat running from Natchez, Mississippi, to New Orleans. That route would ensure the vessel a ready supply of cargo—bales of cotton and a fair amount of passenger traffic. Roosevelt and his partner, Robert Fulton, figured to pay off the construction costs in eighteen months. Nothing Roosevelt had learned on the journey had made him alter this opinion. Folding up his charts, he slipped them back into his leather satchel.

  The smell of the meat pies piqued his appetite. Roosevelt figured that once Jack resumed control of the helm, he would wander into the kitchen and see what Helga had to tide him over until lunch.

  He was sure the worst was over, and his appetite had returned with a vengeance.

  At the sight of the mighty river, Jack took the wheel from Roosevelt. As he made a sweeping turn into the muddy waters flowing from the north, the Roosevelt baby awoke screaming. At almost the same time, Tiger began to howl as if his tail were caught in a bear trap. To compound matters, the river was rougher than usual, and the boat was suddenly rocking to and fro. Stepping out the pilothouse door, Jack stared at the sky above. A flock of wrens darted back and forth as if their leader had no idea of their intended flight direction. Along the shoreline, the trees began to shake as if responding to an unseen gale.

  Though it was not yet noon, the sky to the west was an unearthly orange color.

  “I don’t like this,” Jack shouted, “there’s some—”

  But he never finished the sentence.

  Deep below ground, where the sun will never reach and the cool of a light breeze will never be felt, the temperature was six hundred degrees Fahrenheit. A river of wet, molten earth one hundred feet in diameter roared toward a just-opened fissure. Slipping into the opening, the wet slop acted like Vaseline on glass. The plates of the earth, at this point just barely held in place, slipped like a skater on clear ice.

  The earth snapped and stung at the surface.

  “Good Lord, what is happen—” Nicholas Roosevelt started to say.

  He was standing in the kitchen, trying to talk Helga out of a slab of cheese. Staring out the window for a second, he watched as a geyser of brown water shot eighty feet in the air. Then the water arced over the decks of New Orleans, as dozens of fish, turtles, salamanders, and snakes rained down. Then a rumbling was felt through the decks in the hull.

  Back in the pilothouse, Jack struggled to keep the steamboat on course.

  On the shore, undulating waves swept across the earth like someone shaking a bedspread. The trees along the bank swayed back and forth until their branches intertwined and locked in place. Then they snapped like breadsticks in a vise. Branches were turned into spears and shot across the water like a gauntlet of arrows. Fissures dotted the ground along the river. Streams of water ran into the low-lying areas. Then, seconds later, the ground belched as torrents of shale rock, dirt, and water blasted in the air.

  “The river is out of its banks,” Jack shouted.

  Engineer Baker walked into the pilothouse.

  From deep beneath the river’s former channel, the blackened trunks of decomposing trees that had become waterlogged and sunk into the mud now shot up into the air with a smell akin to that of putrefied flesh. Baker watched a family of black bears hiding high atop a cottonwood tree, trying to escape the devastation. Suddenly the tree shattered as if a bomb had exploded at the base. He watched as the bears fell to the ground. They began to run west as fast as they could shuffle.

  At that instant, Roosevelt burst into the pilothouse.

  “It’s either an earthquake,” he said quickly, “or the end of the world.”

  “I think the former,” Jack said. “I felt one in Spanish California a few years ago.”

  “How long did it last?” Roosevelt asked.

  “That one was small,” Jack said. “Only lasted ten minutes or so.”

  “I’m going to check on my wife,” Roosevelt said, as he turned to leave.

  “Could you ask Miss Markum to come in here?” Baker asked.

  “I will,” Roosevelt said, as he sprinted away.

  Just then, the earth twitched, and the river began to flow backwards from south to north.

  Markum poked her head inside the pilothouse door, her face white with fear.

  “If we make it out of this alive—will you marry me?” Baker asked.

  “Yes,” Markum said without hesitation, clutching Baker around the waist.

  Deep below the river, the liquid was squeezed from between the plates, and the grinding together of coarse rock stopped. The first shock had ended, but there was much more to come.

  Jack spun the wheel completely to its stop as the Mississippi River changed direction again and returned to a north-to-south flow. Gazing through the window of the pilothouse, he saw that the boat was traversing a farmer’s field. Fifty feet off the right side of the boat’s hull was the upper story of a large red barn. Several milk cows and a lone horse were huddled on the upper loft, avoiding the rushing water. No trace of a farm-house could be seen.

  When Roosevelt came into the pilothouse, Jack was intent on staring off the right side of the bow far in the distance. There was an opening in the ground ahead that was swallowing up most of the river flow. As the land on the far side of the opening came into view, he could see puddles of water and acres of mud where the riverbed used to lie.

  New Orleans was less than a hundred yards from the chasm and was being sucked closer. With only seconds to spare, Baker managed to get the beams reset for reverse running. Inch by inch, the steamboat began to back away from the tempest in the water. Twenty minutes later, New Orleans was nearly a mile upstream. Scanning the unearthly landscape, Jack found a tributary that had eroded a straight path through what had once been the river bend. Slipping the boat into the current, he steered past the void and then into the main channel once again.

  CROUCHED IN THE thick brush of Wolf Island, the Indian braves were as frozen as petrified wood. They had paddled their canoes out to the island before the first shock of the earthquake. When the worst of the tremors struck, their resolve was only strengthened. The Penelore was wreaking havoc across their land, and it needed to be killed. Straining to hear, the chief caught a faint unknown sound coming from upstream. With a series of hand signals, he motioned for his braves to climb into their canoes for the attack.

 
LYDIA RUSHED TO the pilothouse and stuck her head in the door. “The baby has started to cry, and Tiger is whining up a storm.”

  Roosevelt turned to Jack. “That’s the signal another shock is coming. Keep to the main channel to give yourself as much leeway as possible.”

  Jack pointed through the pilothouse front window. “An island coming up.”

  Roosevelt scanned through The Navigator, the chart book of the river written by Zadoc Cramer. “A lot of this has changed since the earthquake,” he said, “but if I had to guess, I’d say it was Wolf Island.”

  “Which side is the best channel?” asked Jack.

  “The left channel has the deepest water.”

  “The left channel it is.”

  “How long before the next shock?” Roosevelt asked Lydia.

  “Judging by Tiger’s howls, not long.”

  A GHASTLY SOUND reached the ears of the Sioux braves hidden on Wolf Island. The grinding of metal, the hissing of steam, the thumping of the walking beam. The great beast grew larger as it neared. The beast was blue like the sky—but this was nothing that came from the heavens. An ugly, pointed nose gave way to two waterwheels halfway down the trunk of the beast. Just behind them were a pair of black tubes where the smoke from the fires of hell spewed forth.

  A few white men walked on the decks—dark lords of this evil creature.

  First they would kill the white men. Then they would run the beast onto land and put the fire to her skin. When the Penelore was twenty yards upstream, their leader gave the signal, and the braves rose as one. With a war cry, they ran for the water.

  The Mississippi River running underground added more much-needed lubricant to the jumble of opposing plates. Once again the earth let loose in a spasm. This tremor would last longer.

  At the same instant that the Sioux braves were sprinting to the water, the ground nearby opened up as if it had been pierced by a thousand spears. Funnel-shaped holes in the earth spewed hot jets of water, and the jets formed an arc nearly one hundred feet overhead. Larger craters opened up in the ground, then spewed forth all manners of woody material: trees, branches, coal. It was a bizarre sight.

  “Indians approaching from the island!” Roosevelt shouted.

  Jack glanced toward Wolf Island and saw a group of braves carrying canoes racing toward the water. Wearing full head-dress, they carried bows on their backs.

  Then, all at once, the downstream end of the island collapsed into the water.

  The screams from the Sioux braves filled the air. Scalded by the hot water shooting from the ground, they let go of their canoes and stumbled into the cool water for relief. Twenty of them managed to launch a few canoes unscathed and began paddling into the river with every ounce of their strength, determined to destroy the monster they believed was the cause of the tempest.

  They began to close the gap, gaining on New Orleans.

  “Pour on the steam!” Roosevelt shouted to Baker. “They mean to have our scalps.”

  Baker and his stokers began throwing wood in the firebox like madmen, building up to a full head of steam. Slowly, New Orleans began increasing speed. But the Indians were gaining. Putting their backs into it, they could paddle their canoes at a rapid pace.

  One canoe slowed as its occupants dropped their paddles, took up their bows, and shot a flight of arrows at the riverboat. Several arrows struck the rear cabin, giving it the look of a porcupine. Tiger ignored the threat and stood on the stem, barking at the attackers.

  The first canoe was only twenty feet behind the stern now. Roosevelt and three of his crew loaded their flintlock muskets and prepared to fire point-blank when the Indians came alongside.

  The boarding assault never came. Baker had the steam pressure wavering at the red line, and New Orleans began to pull away, black smoke pouring from her funnel. Seeing the frustrated Indians falling behind, he couldn’t resist adding to Tiger’s barking with a series of shrieks through the steam whistle.

  Soon the Penelore had disappeared around the next bend, and there was no way for the Sioux to catch the beast.

  The series of unforeseen dangers past, Jack glanced to the river ahead. The sun looked like a smoking copper plate framed by a purplish haze of atmosphere. Jack glanced at the shoreline ahead. The earthen hills alongside the great river were tumbling down like sand castles in a tsunami. Large chunks of peaty soil floated on the water, along with downed trees, part of a house, and what looked like a floating casket wrested free from the earth.

  “The channel’s shifting,” Roosevelt said easily. “I’d steer to starboard now.”

  New Orleans would be miles downstream before the quaking stopped. Amazingly, she made it through the holocaust with minimal damage.

  IN MISSISSIPPI YOU can sweat even in January. Particularly if you are dressed in a wool band uniform left over from the Revolutionary War and are carrying a tuba. Cletus Fayette and the rest of the makeshift band hurried toward the waterfront.

  A tuba, a single large drum, and a fiddle—not really a band, more of a trio.

  Word of the dramatic voyage of New Orleans had reached Natchez three days before. The mayor had wasted no time assembling a suitable welcome. Along with the band, Titus Baird, the mayor, was planning to give Roosevelt the key to the city. Two city councilmen were pressed into service for the obligatory speeches. Several of the local girls had been rounded up to present flowers to the brave women aboard. A banquet would follow in the evening.

  Nearly a hundred citizens stood on the hill and glanced upriver for sign of the steamboat.

  “YES,” NICHOLAS SAID, “we’ll be in Natchez at least a week.”

  “I’ll bank the fires, then. The boilers need a break.”

  “Fine,” Roosevelt said, “we should have sufficient steam to reach the dock.”

  Nicholas climbed from the engine pit and glanced at the scenery. The virgin forest of the upper Ohio River, the falls near Louisville, the terrible cataclysm of weeks of earthquakes and aftershocks were still a vivid memory. His ship and crew had survived the trials with courage and conviction. He and Lydia had grown closer, and Engineer Baker still planned to marry Maggie Markum when they reached New Orleans. Andrew Jack had started to exhibit a hidden sense of humor.

  New Orleans rounded the last bend, and Roosevelt glanced toward Natchez.

  Baird signaled for the band to begin playing as soon as the steamboat came into sight. The band kept repeating the only song they knew, a crude rendition of “God Save the Queen,” but, for some reason, the steamboat stayed away.

  Mayor Baird watched as the ship began a turn to make its way to the dock, then began to drift with the downstream current.

  “I don’t have enough steam to make the dock,” Jack said.

  Nicholas Roosevelt could only laugh. The steamboat had successfully navigated a thousand miles of toil and trouble. With salvation only yards away, they had run out of steam. The situation was so ludicrous it was humorous. Baker walked into the pilothouse. He was already dressed in a clean white shirt, and his hands and face looked freshly washed. The grimace on his face was barely hidden.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said quietly.

  CLETUS FAYETTE’S HEAD was spinning. A man could play a tuba only so long before he needed a break and a cigar. Fayette had reached his limit.

  “We need to take a break, Mayor Baird,” he shouted.

  “Okay, Cletus,” Baird said, “but hurry up. Smoke is coming from the stacks again.”

  Fifteen minutes later, New Orleans was tied to the dock in Natchez. The weary crew walked down the gangplank and made their way through the reception committee to a local hotel and a hero’s welcome. The remainder of the journey would be a cakewalk.

  In the dead of winter, the trees in the forests surrounding Natchez were devoid of leaves. From the bluff outside town, Nicholas Baker looked north. He could see where the river made a giant loop before passing the city and flowing downstream. A stiff wind blew west, bringing the smell of fields in Alaba
ma being cleared with fire.

  “I made arrangements with a preacher in town,” Baker said eagerly. “We can be married this afternoon—if you still want me, that is.”

  “Of course,” Markum said, “but what brought this on?”

  “I just don’t want to wait any longer,” Baker said.

  “Have you told the Roosevelts?” Markum asked.

  “No,” Baker admitted, “but I thought we could both tell them right now.”

  “Now?” Markum said.

  “Yes, now,” Jack said, “if you want them at the service.”

  A little over an hour later, on the deck of New Orleans, moored just off Natchez, Nicholas Baker stood next to Nicholas Roosevelt. Lydia Roosevelt, holding Henry the baby, wrapped in a clean white blanket, stood next to Maggie.

  “Do you, Maggie Markum,” the preacher said solemnly, “take Nicholas Baker to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

  A yes and a kiss sealed the deal.

  The first marriage on a steamboat turned out to be brief.

  A few days later, the first cargo of cotton was loaded aboard New Orleans. Once the bales were secured on deck and the wood for the boiler secured in the hold, there was little else to do. They left for New Orleans on the seventh day of January 1812.

  DAWN CAME LIKE a lamb on January 12, 1812. A clear sky greeted Nicholas Roosevelt as he sat alone on top of the aft cabin. The air was dry, with only occasional small gusts of wind that rippled the placid surface of the river. After all that had transpired, it seemed odd that New Orleans would arrive so calmly in the city for which she was named. Nicholas stared to the west. A flock of pelicans, three dozen in all, flew overhead from west to east. The flock was headed for Lake Pontchartrain, some three miles distant. The city of New Orleans was only two miles farther.

  “What are you- thinking?” Lydia said, as she climbed up onto the roof.