Cottonclad… Taylor had laughed the first time he heard the term. Cottonclad… armor the ship with the softest, most flammable substance found in nature. Goddamned stupid peckerwoods. But he wasn’t laughing anymore. Iron in any form was not to be had in the Confederacy, for all practical purposes, while the Yankees spit out so much of it they might be paving the roads with gunboat plating, for all he knew.
But we got cotton down here, oh boy, yes, do we have cotton…
Taylor ’s eyes moved to the top of the boilers. The lever arms of the safety valves were lashed down with white cotton rope that stood out in the dim light, and he wondered if Guthrie had done that on purpose, so it would be obvious to everyone that he had lashed the valves, and done so without permission from the wheelhouse. If he had, it was a wasted effort, because Sullivan would not mind if the valves were lashed now. He would probably insist on it. Safety was not much of an issue that morning.
Taylor was at the throttle, one hand on the reversing lever. It was Guthrie’s station, of course, but Taylor had offered to take it, to free the engineer up so that he could run around like a windup toy, issuing unnecessary orders and generally annoying the engine room. Watching him as he flew from boilers to crankshaft to crossheads and back, Taylor realized that Guthrie was, at the heart of it, a smaller, shriller, quicker Mississippi Mike Sullivan. Mississippi Mike’s alabaster pard.
The sweat was slick under Taylor ’s hand. He let go of the throttle, wiped his hand on his shirt. His appetite had been good in the early morning. He’d eaten a big breakfast-eggs, grits with syrup, soft tack, bacon-but now it sat like a rock in his stomach. He was afraid he might puke.
The wheelhouse bells rang again, full speed, the third time that horse’s ass peckerwood Sullivan had rung for full speed. Taylor might have cursed out loud, but Guthrie beat him to it, cursing enough for both of them, enough for every engineer in the River Defense Fleet, for every engineer who had ever suffered the unforgivable torment of an idiot with his hand on the bell rope.
The General Page was going as fast as she was going to go upstream. Her steam pressure gauges were toying with fifteen pounds’ pressure. A lantern hung near the front of the boilers seemed to cast its light directly on the gauges, as if it was making a special point of letting Taylor know how close to the edge they were running things.
His breath was coming shallow and his head was feeling light. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply and he seemed to pull the anger further into him with every breath.
He heard the muffled bang of a heavy gun. Not the Page’s gun, a gun from another ship. The Yankees, no doubt. He wondered if they were up with the enemy, how many Yankees there were.
In all his seagoing career he had never been much interested in what went on above the main deck. All the nonsensical blather of captains and pilots about snags and chutes and shifting bars was of no interest to him. His world was valves and crossheads and connecting rods, and that was how he preferred it.
That had changed with his first fight. When they started shooting at Yankees, suddenly his interest in what took place topsides had taken an exponential leap. He had even found himself laying the bow gun in the fight at Hampton Roads. But for all that, it was always a relief to get back to the confines of his engine room, to stand amid the perfect organization and pure logic of the machine.
Another gun went off, and immediately another, and a shell ripped through the superstructure above, blowing a hole through the fidley, missing the walking beam’s A-frame by a few feet, no more.
“Shit!” Taylor shouted the word so loud that a few heads turned. “Son of a bitch…” he said, lower. He could feel his heart in his chest, banging away at twenty times the speed of the engine behind him. His breath was coming shallowly again.
Guthrie was hovering in front of him, grinning. “That there is what you call a Yankee forced air ventilator! Forced it right through the goddamn fidley! Sum bitch, them kangaroos nearly took out the walking beam! Reason a walking beam got no place on a fighting ship. You all right, Taylor?”
Taylor gulped air. “Yeah, yeah, I’m all right.”
“Really? You look like a pile of horseshit.”
Another shell hit, farther forward, boiler deck level, Taylor guessed. Some low grunting noise escaped his lips. Guthrie turned back to him.
“Think I ate something for breakfast didn’t agree with me.”
“Didn’t agree with you? Hell, it looks like it hated your god-damned immortal soul!”
“Look, Guthrie,” Taylor was talking without thinking, “I got to get topside, get some air, or I swear I’ll puke all over the fuckin floor plates.”
“Yeah, yeah, go on,” Guthrie said, taking Taylor ’s place at the throttles as Taylor stood awkwardly, bent partway over. There was a note in Guthrie’s voice that Taylor did not like, as if, in Guthrie’s opinion, going on deck was not much different from going over to the Yankees. Taylor knew Guthrie felt that way because he would have felt the same.
He tucked that worry away, knew it would bother him later, but he did not care at the moment. Now that he had stood, had made his excuse, he could think of nothing but getting out of that engine room, away from the boilers and the gauges and the damned white rope on the safety valves.
He climbed up the ladder, moving faster with every rung, threw open the door to the fidley, and stepped out onto the main deck, starboard side. He put two hands on the rail, looked out over the river. The Van Dorn was blowing holes in the side of a mortar boat tied to the bank, while the mortar boat was lobbing shells over the top of the Van Dorn to drop on the River Defense boats farther out. But Taylor did not really care.
He had thought, going up the ladder, that his first act on deck would be to puke over the side, and he hoped someone would see him, since that would lend credence to the idea that he had got hold of a bad side of bacon. But once he stepped through the door, into the relative fresh and cool air, he felt suddenly renewed, newborn, strong and able. His stomach pains eased, he felt the light breeze cool the sweat on his forehead and his drenched shirt. He breathed deeply for the first time in an hour.
He was angry now. His body and his mind were betraying him, his unmanageable fear stripping him of the very thing that he was. The engine room was where he should be, but his traitorous self had driven him out. There was nothing more unforgivable than betrayal. What did you do when you caught yourself betraying yourself?
Great God almighty, I’m scared, he thought. There, the word was out at last, free floating in his mind, at least, and probably in Guthrie’s mind too, and that son of a bitch Bowater’s. Bowater, he was certain, would never comprehend such a thing as what Taylor was suffering. You had to be a human being with human feeling to get yourself in the position Taylor was in, and he doubted Bowater qualified on either count. Ice cold son of a bitch…
Taylor was getting more angry, now that he was no longer standing in the presence of the beast, the beast that had seared the skin clean off of James Burgess and left him a horrible writing thing on the deck plates, screaming for death to take him, and Hieronymus Taylor appointed the angel of mercy with a double-barreled shotgun.
In the engine room he did not feel anger, because the other thing was so powerful, but up on the main deck, in the sunshine, it was only anger. He made his way forward, stepped around the forward end of the deckhouse just as the Page’s bow gun was going off. He watched the gun slam back, the river and the shore and the Yankees lost behind the gray cloud of smoke from the muzzle.
The General Page steamed straight into the cloud, the smoke whipped aft and engulfed Taylor, and then the ship broke out into the blue sky and Taylor could see the lay of things.
The Yankees were coming downriver, casting off from the bank, steaming to the aid of the mortar boat. The closest of the ironclad gunboats was just a few hundred yards upriver, down-bound, stern first, and firing like mad, guns going off from her broadside and stern gun ports. She was directly ahead, and Sullivan seemed to be
making to ram her. Taylor pressed his lips together. He wanted Sullivan to slam the ship into the bastard, really hit her good.
He heard gunfire to larboard, and in the same instant the side of the deckhouse seemed to explode, a shower of splinters and shattered wood blown out over the water. Taylor shielded his face with his arm as sundry bits of debris bounced off of him. He raced forward, looked off the larboard side. There was a Yankee gunboat, one hundred feet off; he had not even known it. She was lashing out in her death throes. Taylor could see she was listing, limping for shallow water, the crew spilling out of the casement onto the hurricane deck as their vessel sank under them.
“Die, you son of a whore!” Taylor shouted at the gunboat. He ran forward to the bow where the gun crew were running the big gun out again. Buford Tarbox was captain of the gun, the crew made up of the riverboat men, but also the former Yazoo Rivers, his shipmates, joining in with the General Pages. Ruffin Tanner was handling the swab, and he and Taylor nodded their greeting. Tanner’s face was smeared black with powder smoke and his shirt was torn, a bloody gash visible though the rent cloth, but not enough to slow him down, apparently.
They were closing fast with the ironclad, but not as fast as the Van Dorn, which had turned its attention from the mortar boat to the new Yankee threat coming downriver. The Van Dorn was crossing over from the eastern shore, crossing the Page’s bow, making a ramming run at the iron gunboat.
“Get clear, you bastard!” Taylor shouted. “Stand off!” He waved his arm frantically, trying to get the Van Dorn to clear the way for them. He felt a need like great hunger to have the Page drive her ram into the Yankee. He wanted to get right up with the blue-belly sons of bitches and start killing them, kill them as fast as he could.
“Get clear, for the love of God!”
There was no chance he could be heard aboard the Van Dorn, and no chance he would be obeyed if he were. He knew it. He could not keep from yelling. Some of the gun crew took up the shouting, yelling with him, waving their arms. Some shook their heads at the display.
“Run out!” Tarbox yelled. In place of his slouch hat he now wore a gray kepi he had picked up somewhere.
The men at the gun tackles leaned into the pull, the awkward gun carriage rolled forward. The ironclad was filling the air with shot, shells screaming past. Taylor could feel the concussion of her cannon in the air and in the Page’s deck. He saw a respectable section of the Van Dorn’s deckhouse torn clean away, but she did not pause in her headlong rush to be the first to impale the Yankee.
“Stand clear!” Tarbox yanked the lanyard. The gun went off with a terrific blast, hurling inboard, blanketing everything in the cloud of smoke. Taylor felt the deck jerk under him, shudder as if they had hit a rock. It felt good, revitalizing. He relished the nearness of death, Yankee death, his death perhaps, a clean death from a bullet. He was not afraid.
The Page plowed through her own gun smoke and the scene opened up again, though now the haze hung so thick it was like steaming in a light fog. Visibility was perhaps two hundred yards through the smoke.
The Yankee was still under their bow, the distance closing fast, but now the Van Dorn was on her, churning up the last fifty feet. The Yankee gunboat turned hard, swinging her bow away from the ram, and an instant later the Van Dorn struck. Taylor could see the ironclad roll and twist with the impact, he saw the Van Dorn shudder and pause as her submerged iron ram pierced the wooden hull of the ironclad and kept on going. But the Confederates had struck at an angle, only a glancing blow, and not the bone-crunching right-angle impact they had hoped for.
The Van Dorn continued on upriver, past the ironclad she had just struck, right into the withering fire from the Yankees farther upstream, but Taylor had no more interest in her. The way was open now for them to hit, a clear stretch of water between the General Page and the Yankee gunboat.
Taylor stepped forward, the madness on him like he had never felt before. He looked up at the wheelhouse. Bowater was there, hand on the rail in his yachting holiday manner. Sullivan was bouncing back and forth.
“Ram that bastard!” Taylor shouted, pointing at the ironclad. “Run that son of a bitch down!”
Bowater looked down at him, an odd expression on his face- part surprise, perhaps, part concern. Odd. Sullivan shouted, “What do ya think I’m gonna do, you stupid bastard?”
Taylor turned and faced forward again. He had no time for Sullivan and his idiocy.
The ironclad was hammering them good, tearing apart the deckhouse above Taylor ’s head. The gun crew were ducking now, behind the bulwark of pine boards and compressed cotton that made a shield on the otherwise unprotected bow. Taylor wanted to tell them to get up, stand like men, load the gun, but he kept his mouth shut, kept his own council.
He glanced over at the Van Dorn. She appeared to be aground and was taking a beating from the ironclad and the others upriver and coming down. Taylor had a sudden sick fear that Sullivan would give up, turn and run, decide they were too outnumbered. He looked up at the wheelhouse again, but Sullivan was standing like a brick wall now, hands on the rail, ready for impact.
The ironclad was fifty feet ahead, no more. Black smoke was rolling from the Page’s chimneys. Guthrie was really pouring it on. Taylor could see the steam gauges in his mind and the thought made him stop, like remembering something terrible that you had managed to momentarily forget.
Twenty feet, ten feet, Taylor could see faces in the Yankee’s gun ports, bare-chested men huddled in the shadows around the barrels of the big guns. A jet of smoke, the roar of a gun, and instantly Taylor was knocked sideways. For an instant he was certain he was a dead man and he was not sure how he felt about it.
Then the General Joseph Page hit the ironclad, hit it square with every ounce of power the walking beam engine could muster. Already off balance from the force of the passing round shot, Taylor sprawled out on the deck, hitting hands first and sliding forward.
He lay still, but just for an instant. As he made certain he was all in one piece, he scrambled to his feet.
The impact of the Van Dorn had swiveled the ironclad around, and the Page struck right on the corner of the casemate, just aft of the bow. And though it owed more to luck than strategy, it was a perfect hit. The Yankee’s broadside guns could not train around forward enough, and the bow guns could not train aft to hit the Page. As long as she stayed where she was, the Page was safe from the ironclad’s cannon.
Taylor raced up to the pine board bulwark and looked over the bow. The Page’s ram had pierced the ironclad’s vulnerable wooden hull below the waterline. For the moment, the two ships were locked together. He heard the Page’s paddle wheels stop, heard them begin the slow turns in reverse.
“No, no, no!” he shouted. Didn’t they see the chance here? Taylor could not stand the idea of backing away, out of danger. There, in the white-hot fire of combat, he could be burned clean, his manhood unassailable.
“Come on, y’all!” he shouted to the men crouched behind the bulwark. “Let’s board the son of a bitch! Come on!”
Eyes met him, unmoving men, uncomprehending. They did not see what he did-the small, half-round foredeck of the ironclad, an easy jump from the General Page’s bow, the gun ports open wide.
“Come on!” No one moved, and Taylor did not have a weapon. He grabbed one of the riverboat men by the collar, jerked him to his feet. Taylor was stronger than most men even when not in a berserker rage, and the man was like a rag doll as Taylor pulled him up and jerked the pistols from the holsters on his belt.
The riverboat man got off a curse, a protest, the beginnings of a roundhouse punch to Taylor ’s head before Taylor shoved him back to the deck.
Two steps and Taylor was at the pine board bulwark, vaulting over it, a pistol in each hand. He landed on the small part of the Page’s deck forward of the bulwark, leaped without breaking stride across the four feet of water to the deck of the ironclad.
He came down hard, stumbled, straightened, was aware eno
ugh to marvel at the fact that he was now standing on the deck of a Yankee man-of-war. He heard screaming, shouting behind him, and the wild, bearded riverboat men came pouring over the bulwark. It was just their kind of madness.
Taylor ran up to the first gun port, pistols held straight out. His thumbs pulled back the hammers. Even over all the noise of the fight he could hear that clean, satisfying click of the action. He looked through the gun port but could see little in the gloomy interior. He fired at motion, something moving, saw another thing that looked like a blue coat and fired the left-hand pistol, cocking the right.
The riverboat men were there, crowding behind him. A pistol went off right in his ear, like a punch to the head. The riverboat men were shouting and storming the other gun ports. The deepwater men were with them.
Taylor stepped forward, pistol out, right up to the gun port. A face appeared and Taylor aimed, and suddenly the man thrust a rammer out, drove it like a lance into Taylor ’s chest. Taylor stumbled, the gun went off, the bullet pinged against the casemate.
“Son of a bitch!” Taylor shouted, thumbed the pistol’s hammer again, drove at the gun port, thrust the pistol into the gloom inside. Something hit his arm-a ram or a club, something-but Taylor did not drop the gun. He swung it around, fired in the general direction of the blow.
The others were crowding the gun ports like dogs around a treed coon, shouting, firing, cursing. But the only way into the casemate was an awkward climb around the big guns, so awkward that the Yankees would have killed with ease any man who tried. Here was the Ark, and they, poor sinners, could only pound on the outside. They could not get in.
Thieves Of Mercy sb-2 Page 13
