Taylor fired again into the darkness. It was no use-the gun crews were shying away from the ports, he could not hit anyone. But a ladder ran up the sloping front face of the casemate to the hurricane deck above. There, perhaps, was a way in.
“Come on! Come on, you bastards, follow me!” Taylor shouted. He had no control anymore. He felt as if his body was barely held together, as if he might fly off in a thousand pieces at any second, blown apart by the rage. He ran for the ladder, raced up, did not see or care if anyone was following. Over the edge of the casemate, and right in front of him, like an eight-foot-high anthill, was the conical pilothouse, pierced all around with small square ports. There, Taylor knew, were the officers.
He stopped, ten feet short, looked over the top of the Navy Colt.36, lined up the notch in the hammer, the brass sight at the end of the barrel, and the face peering out of the port. He pulled the trigger. The hammer snapped dead. He looked at the cylinder. All the percussion caps mangled, all the bullets gone. He threw the gun away, switched the pistol from left hand to right, and with a shout stepped forward, gun extended.
A puff of smoke shot from the pilothouse like the fire from a miniature broadside and a bullet whipped past Taylor ’s head. Sons of whores are shooting at me, Taylor thought, though they might have been waving a greeting for all the impression the bullets made on him. He took another step, gun level, pulled the trigger. The bullet went through the port as if it was a paper target, but if it hit anyone, Taylor could not tell.
An arm appeared through another port, pistol in hand. Taylor adjusted his aim, squeezed the trigger, and then the air was ripped apart by the General Page’s steam whistle, a strident scream, a demand for attention. Taylor turned, looked up at the Page’s wheelhouse. There were Bowater and Sullivan, waving like lunatics, gesturing for him and the others to return. The paddle wheels were turning, backing down, the gunboat trying to disengage from the ironclad.
Over the whistle came the sharp crack of a pistol and Taylor felt a burn in his left leg, midcalf, and a sharp pain. He looked down, thinking that someone had snuck up, slashed him with a knife. That was what it felt like. He had been slashed before, he knew the sensation.
His pants leg was ripped, he could see bloody flesh through the torn cloth, and as he looked at it he realized he could not stand on that leg anymore. He tried to shift his weight to his other foot, but too late. His left leg buckled under him and he fell, hands down on the warm planks of the deck. The pistol clattered away, out of reach.
“Oh, son of a bitch!” he shouted. A bullet plowed into the wood a few feet in front of him and he drew back, then pulled himself forward, reached out for the gun. The pain was starting to come now, rippling up from his left calf where the bullet had done God knew what damage. He wrapped his fingers around the walnut grip, rolled over, thumbed the hammer, and fired defiantly at the pilothouse. He heard the bullet ping against the iron and spin uselessly away.
The General Page was still blowing her steam whistle and Taylor wished they would stop. He pushed himself up on his elbow, looked over the edge of the casemate. The men from the Page were scrambling over the bulwark as the riverboat pulled away, drawing its iron ram free, the gap between Confederate and Yankee growing wider.
Aw, damn… last damn train to Memphis and I missed her…
No matter. That was as good a place to end it as any, sprawled out on the deck of a Yankee ironclad. He held the revolver close to his face. Two intact percussion caps that he could see, perhaps a third hidden from view. Two or three bullets if none misfired. He could take three Yankees with him, as long as the abolitionist bastards had the good grace to kill him in turn. He would not be a prisoner.
He pushed himself up until he was kneeling, clenched his teeth against the pain in his calf, aimed and fired at the pilothouse. His shooting was getting wild, and he cursed himself, told himself to concentrate, concentrate.
Behind him, he heard feet pounding deck, banging up the ladder. Here they come, he thought, tried to turn and face the attackers. A gun fired from the pilothouse, the bullet ripped through Taylor ’s shirt, grazed his skin, knocked him off balance. He fell forward, hands out, rolled on his back, gun up, aimed forward.
A voice, “It’s us! It’s us!” A hand wrapped around the barrel of the gun and pushed it aside as Taylor pulled the trigger. There was gunfire all around now, small arms peppering the pilothouse, and Taylor looked up into Samuel Bowater’s face.
“Tanner!” Bowater shouted. “Bear a hand!”
Here was salvation, and Taylor was white hot with rage. “Get out of here!” he shouted. “Leave me be!”
Bowater slipped an arm under Taylor ’s arm and Taylor felt Ruffin Tanner do the same and they hoisted him up, and he-exhausted, in agony-could do nothing about it but scream defiance.
“You fuckin peckerwood bastards! Let me be!” But they would not.
Now Taylor could see the men who had come up the ladder, his shipmates, ten or so, armed with pistols and the.58-caliber Mississippi rifles from the General Page’s arsenal. They fired away at the pilothouse, filling the air with the crack of percussion cap, the bang of the rifles, the metal-on-metal sound of minie balls bouncing off iron. The viewing ports in the pilothouse were empty-no one dared show his face to that fusillade.
Bowater and Tanner were dragging him along now, his one leg useless, his arms draped over their shoulders, held fast, and he could not pull them away. Someone had taken the pistol from his hand. He was shouting, cursing, struggling, but it did no good.
Underfoot the ironclad’s guns went off, three of the broadside guns, and the deck shook like an earthquake. Bowater and Tanner stumbled but kept their footing. The General Page was twenty feet off, backing away, taking a pounding from the Yankees as she drew back.
“Son of a bitch, where is that mick bastard going!” Taylor shouted but no one answered. They dragged him along, dragged him aft, past the pilothouse, with Tanner actually stepping up on the edge of the pilothouse, since there was no room otherwise for three abreast to pass. And even through the anger and the pain Taylor had a chance to wonder where they were taking him, leading him down the ironclad’s deck.
They moved past the chimneys, under an awning stretched over a ridgepole that ran the length of the ship. Something about the deck did not seem right, something about the way it looked against the shore and the river. Taylor thought he was going mad, and then he realized the ironclad was listing. She was sinking under them.
He wanted to curse again, then order them to lay him down, and he shouted, “Leave me here, you bastards,” but now the strength was out of him and the words came out as little more than a whisper, and halfway through the ironclad fired again and smothered every sound on the river.
At last they came to the big, half-round iron casemate over the centerline paddle wheels, and Taylor saw what they were going for. One of the ship’s boats, hung from davits, bumped against a short wooden bulwark that surrounded the hurricane deck. With no order given, Bowater’s men swarmed over the boat, peeling the canvas cover off, casting off the painter made fast to a stanchion, casting off the falls.
“Get him in!” Bowater shouted, relinquishing his grip on Taylor ’s arm as four sailors took him up and hoisted him into the boat.
“Get in, get in!” Bowater continued. Yankees were coming up out of the hatches, onto the hurricane deck, but they were there to escape the rising water below, and they shouted in surprise at the sight of the Rebels stealing their boat, and their shouts were met with small-arms fire.
The men piled in, Bowater last. The boat was swung outboard on the davits, the falls were slacked away smartly in a barely controlled plunge. The aftermost broadside gun went off, no more than five feet forward of the boat’s bow, the concussion and smoke and noise like the end of the world.
The boat slammed down on the water with a jar that made Taylor howl and curse, but no one paid him any attention. The oars came up with expert precision. Tanner in the bow shov
ed off, and the oars came down and the men on the thwarts pulled, pulled hard, bent into it like Taylor had never seen men bend into it, and they needed no encouragement from Bowater, who sat in the stern sheets, hand on the tiller.
Fifteen feet from the ironclad and they heard the crack of small-arms fire. A bullet smacked into a thwart by Bayard Quayle’s right thigh, causing him to jump and shout, but he did not miss his stroke. Another whipped by and Ruffin Tanner shouted and dropped his gun and clapped a hand over his left upper arm and an instant later the hand was red with blood.
Taylor was slumped on the bottom of the boat, looking aft. He saw Bowater reach to his belt, pull out his pistol. A silver, engraved Colt that Bowater kept in a polished wooden box when he was not carrying it, a weapon of the high-born, a gun of the gentry, and he hated the gun and he hated Captain Samuel Bowater and he hated all of them, all of the slave-owning, mint-julepsucking aristocracy who had got them into this horseshit war, hated them as much as he hated the Yankees, and he wondered where that left him now.
Bowater turned, leveled the gun at the ironclad, fired away, working the hammer with his thumb. Those who did not have oars joined in, firing off the Mississippi rifles at the crowd of Yankees on the hurricane deck.
The Yankees were still working the broadside guns, even with the ironclad sinking around them, and Taylor saw one of the big forty-two pounders run out, the muzzle aimed generally at them, and he thought, If those kangaroos are loaded with grape or cannister, that’s it for us.
The gun fired. Round shot, it passed close enough to the boat that they could feel the wind of its passing, but it did not hit them.
Taylor looked to his left. The General Page was steaming up, her paddle wheels slapping the water, as if she meant to cut the boat in two. The men at the oars bent into it again. The boat shot ahead and the Page passed just astern, tossing the boat with her wake, her wheels stopping dead, then slowing, grinding, for turns astern. Sullivan had interposed his ship between the boat and the Yankee ironclad.
Bowater pushed the tiller over. The men pulled again and Bowater ordered, “Toss oars,” as the pilfered Yankee boat came up alongside the General Page, a dozen men there to haul Bowater and his men aboard.
In the quiet as the boat came alongside, Taylor looked up into Bowater’s face and Bowater looked down at him. And Taylor said, “Don’t you think I’m gonna thank you for this, you patrician son of a bitch.”
Bowater smiled. “Patrician? That’s a hell of a word for an ignorant New Orleans peckerwood like you.”
Hands grabbed Taylor ’s shoulders and he was lifted up to the deck, and the rest of the men scrambled up after him. Mississippi Mike Sullivan was there, grinning wide. He shook his head. “That was the stupidest goddamn thing I ever seen.”
TWELVE
Also by direction of the President, our vessels shelled Sewell’s Point yesterday mainly with the view of ascertaining the practicability of landing a body of troops thereabouts. The Merrimack came out, but was even more cautious than ever.
FLAG OFFICER L. M. GOLDSBOROUGH TO GIDEON WELLES
The tug rolled along under a perfect blue sky, the black smoke from her funnel standing out bold against that background until it was pulled apart by the breeze, the bow cutting a neat wake through the water of Hampton Roads. They were closer now to Confederate country than Union.
“Mr. President,” said Molly in her accented French, “I think you are single-handedly invading the South.” Stanton translated. Lincoln smiled.
“No, ma’am. I am simply borrowing the army and navy for a little while, to see if I can make the dog hunt.” Stanton translated, stumbling over the idiom, making an awkward translation. Wendy stepped in and explained. “You Americans!” Molly said. “Is it any wonder we find you all so charming?” They closed with the shore and Lincoln picked up a pair of field glasses, ran them along east to west. A man stepped out of the wheelhouse, thin with a lined face and round spectacles, a well-worn derby pushed down on his head, a scroll of paper like an old royal pronouncement held under his arm. He approached, in a deferential way. Not a man who was close to the President, not one who was comfortable in the presence of power, like the Secretary of War or the wife of the Norwegian minister.
“Captain, set that right here,” Lincoln said, pushing the lemonade glasses out of the way, begging the ladies’ forgiveness. The man with the derby unrolled the paper on the table. Wendy looked as close as she dared. It was a map of Hampton Roads and the shoreline. A chart, she corrected herself.
Lincoln weighted the edges with glasses and the pitcher. The man in the derby studied it, embarrassed by the company.
“Forgive my manners, ladies, my mind is elsewhere,” Lincoln said. “Mrs. Nielsen, Miss Atkins, this is Captain Robin Walbridge, the finest pilot in Hampton Roads. He is assisting me in finding a suitable place to land troops.”
Wendy translated. Molly just nodded. “We are pleased to make your acquaintance, sir,” Wendy said. Captain Walbridge mumbled, nodded, studied the chart.
“Right here, sir,” Walbridge said, speaking very low, whether out of a concern for security or shyness Wendy could not tell. He pointed a thick finger at a place on the chart. Wendy let her eyes wander over the paper, trying to appear bored and disinterested. “This point is the point you see right yonder, sir.” He turned and pointed at the shoreline. Lincoln looked from chart to shore and back, nodded his big head.
Now Lincoln ran a finger over the chart. “It would appear that there is water enough here for Merrimack to sail,” he said.
“Aye, sir. They say she draws around twenty-three foot of water, so yes, she could certainly get within range of her guns.”
Lincoln nodded. “Very well. Let’s keep looking.”
They cruised along the shore, poking in and out of Willoughby Bay, rounding the sand spit that made up the bay’s northern shore. Beyond the bow, the Chesapeake Bay opened up, north to south, and beyond that, the open ocean. Wendy felt a thrill at the sight of it, a thrill that carried her beyond the tension of her circumstance. “Oh, such beauty!” she said.
Lincoln looked up. “What might that be, Miss Atkins? I know you’re not speaking in reference to me.”
“Oh, sir…” Wendy felt herself blush. “The ocean, Mr. President. It is so beautiful, and it is so rare that I see it.”
Oh, Lord, we’re supposed to have just completed a sea voyage!
Wendy felt herself tense from the gaffe, and she waited for Lincoln to point it out, but all he said was, “I see it rarely myself, though I can’t say I miss it. I miss the rivers of the West more. Tell me, miss, where is it you are from?”
“ Culpepper, Virginia, sir.” Off balance, Wendy blurted it out, and even as the words left her mouth she tried to check them, which made the blunder even worse. She met Lincoln ’s eyes, his expressionless face, and she felt her cheeks burn. Her stomach twisted up, her palms felt wet. She wanted to explain, to pour out more lies on top of what she had said, but her judgment had not abandoned her completely and she kept her mouth shut.
Lincoln nodded. For a moment he did not say a word. “I’ve never been,” he said at last. “I hear it’s nice.”
“Nice, sir, but far from the sea. And now in enemy hands, I fear. I am happier in Maryland, where I can at least enjoy the bay.”
Lincoln nodded again. His face was unreadable. “Forgive me,” he said, and picked up the field glasses once more and trained them on the shoreline.
They steamed in silence for five minutes or so, five horrible minutes while Wendy replayed in her head every word, every nuance of her fifty-second conversation with the President. Finally Captain Walbridge, who had been standing as far away as he could and still remain one of the party at the table, gave a low cough, a signal he was about to speak.
“Mr. President… the beach you see yonder? Good landing beach, sir. Surf generally ain’t too much. Sandy shore, easy on the boats, sir. And there’s not a devil of a chance of that Merrimack getting out here
. Beg pardon, ladies.”
Wendy smiled and nodded. Molly looked as if she neither understood nor cared. Lincoln looked through the field glasses at the shore. Stanton stood up, planted a hand on the table, looked down at the chart.
“Captain Walbridge,” Lincoln said, never taking the field glasses from his eyes, “please ask the lieutenant to get in as close as he can to the shore.”
“Aye, sir,” Walbridge said, and strode off quickly to the wheelhouse. The tug turned, ran inshore at an oblique angle, the surf rolling white, the tall dune grass, the yellow sand beach all becoming more discernible as they closed with the land.
Stanton picked up another pair of field glasses. “Look at those dogs, following us on horseback!” he exclaimed. Wendy could see the horsemen, riding along the beach, gray-clad on brown mounts. If only they knew who was looking on them now! How desperate they would be to spread the word!
“Shall I have the lieutenant give them a round or two?” Stan-ton asked. “Load of grape? Get them all in one shot.”
“No, Mr. Stanton, I think not,” Lincoln said.
“There’s a chance they’ll divine what we’re about, Mr. President. Could give the Rebels time to organize a defense against our landing.”
“I imagine they’ll be more suspicious if we start shooting at them.” Lincoln stood and looked down at Walbridge, returning from the wheelhouse. The pilot was a good head shorter than the President. “Captain, I do believe we have found the place to land our troops. Do you agree?”
“Oh, yes, sir. Reckon it’ll answer. Good landing place, no chance of Merrimack interfering.”
“Very well. Stanton, let’s get back to Fortress Monroe and see Wool is motivated to move his men.” Lincoln turned to the women. “Miss Atkins, pray tell Mrs. Nielsen that we will soon have her off this disagreeable tug and quartered in more comfortable surroundings.”
Wendy translated. Molly nodded. “Please tell Mr. Lincoln that I require the use of the facilities,” she said.
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