Thieves Of Mercy sb-2

by James L. Nelson

  To the north, hidden by the humps of land and the wild turns of the Mississippi River, the first Union mortar of the day fired with a faint, dull thud. Bowater watched the black streak of the shell against robin’s-egg blue, watched it arc neatly into Fort Pillow just to the south and go off with a flash and a sharp crack. Just as they had done to the forts below New Orleans, the Union mortars were pounding away at Fort Pillow, and with equally indifferent results.

  Fort Pillow was in grave danger, to be sure, but not from the Union mortars.

  Nine days before, on the twenty-fifth of May, General P. G. T. Beauregard’s seventy-thousand-man army, crippled by dysentery and typhoid and still recovering from their wounds at Shiloh, had abandoned Corinth, Mississippi, in the face of the Union forces creeping toward them. The Confederate line moved fifty miles south, to Tupelo. Fort Pillow, eighty miles west of Corinth, was left flapping in the breeze. The Union gunboats might not dare to face the fort’s artillery, but the Union Army would have little difficulty in sweeping over their defenses in a land assault.

  The Federals did not know it yet, but Fort Pillow would soon be theirs. And then it was only the River Defense Fleet between them and Memphis.

  And Bowater and Sullivan continued their strange dance.

  “Now, Cap’n,” Sullivan said, leaning on the rail, trying to meet Bowater’s eyes as Bowater drank his coffee, stared out over the water, and tried to ignore him. “Comes a time a fella gots to face the truth. Even if ya do git yer boat built, git her planked up and ironclad an all, you ain’t got no engines. If ya ain’t got engines, ya don’t need no engineer.”

  This was the one point on which Mississippi Mike was persistent. He had given up his hope of snatching Bowater’s men, but he was still agitating for Hieronymus Taylor, as if Taylor were a chattel slave for Bowater to dispose of as he pleased.

  “Ask him yourself,” Bowater said. “I have no authority over his warrant.” Taylor, much improved over the past weeks, had actually accompanied them on this trip. If Bowater took a few steps forward and leaned over the rail he would be able to see the engineer up at the bow, sitting on one of the bollards, his leg, bound in a lighter splint now, thrust out before him.

  “Ah, come on now, Cap’n,” Sullivan said. “I can’t go poachin in another man’s engine room, it ain’t right. It’d be like me askin yer sister to marry, without I asked yer pa first.”

  Bowater found that analogy particularly revolting. “Oh, I see. That’s why you don’t ask him yourself. And here I thought it was because you know Taylor wouldn’t sail with you even if the fate of the Confederacy depended on it.”

  “Taylor’s pleased to make like he don’t care fer me. It’s his way. Not like the kind of worshipfulness he shows you…”

  Bowater ignored the irony. “You have an engineer.”

  “Call that little skunk an engineer? Know what he done this mornin? I ring down three bells, he tells me he ain’t got the steam. Ain’t got the steam, my Royal Bengal. So I jest goes right down to the engine room, jest to have a look-see. He got so much god-damned steam he’s blowin it through. Load of horseshit. And you’d think I walked in on his weddin night, the way he’s screamin about me goin down ta the engine room, like I ain’t got no right to be down there. Come at me with a wrench and I laid him out good.”

  Sullivan grew madder and madder as he told the story, his normal flip attitude deserting him, and Bowater felt a genuine spark of empathy. He had had run-ins enough with engineers over the course of his career. But always the strict discipline and order of the United States Navy had prevented the black gang from running amuck. The River Defense Fleet enjoyed no such discipline or order.

  Taylor was a pain in the Royal Bengal, to be sure, but he was also an extraordinary engineer. Nothing in his engine room was ever in disrepair. And while Bowater suspected that Taylor had, in the past, flanked him with that “ain’t got enough steam” bit, the instances were few, and never at a critical time. None of that could be said of Spence Guthrie.

  Bowater sympathized with Sullivan. But he would not give him Taylor.

  “Cap’n, would you jest talk to Taylor, then? See if he don’t want to sail with us? I’ll put that peckerwood Guthrie on the beach in a second.”

  From below them, as if it were rising from the deck, came a sound-part shriek, part triumphant shout, part cry of wounded pride-a noise that could only come from the throat of Spence Guthrie.

  “Sullivan, you bastard, I knew you was tryin to git me off this boat!”

  They still could not see him-he was on the side deck right under their feet. Bowater wondered how long he had been standing there listening, if he had crept up there for just that purpose.

  Now they could hear his feet clapping on the deck boards as he ran forward, raced up the stairs, made a fast walking charge across the hurricane deck to where they stood, his arm held out straight, an accusatory finger like a lance pointing at Sullivan.

  “I knew you was plottin agin me, you fat son of a bitch, and now I gots my proof!” Guthrie’s skin was very white and the black smudges of coal dust stood out vividly. His hair made his head look like a porcupine that had suffered some internal explosion, his scraggly beard like an afterthought. It was hard to imagine what color his shirt and pants had originally been.

  “Git the hell off this deck, you little bastard, or I’ll kick you clean down to the boiler room,” Sullivan growled. It was the first time Bowater could recall seeing Sullivan, genuinely angry-redfaced, eye-bulging, fist-balled angry. He had seen Mississippi Mike get punched, kicked, threatened with knives, shot at, jumped by a mob, arrested, seen chairs broken over his head, but he had never, in all that, actually seen him get seriously angry. Until now. And it was not pretty.

  But Guthrie was angry too, angry enough to be oblivious to the clear and present danger that a furious Mike Sullivan represented. “You the one gonna leave this here boat, Sullivan. Gonna leave her in a pine box, you hear? Hit me when I ain’t lookin, like you done this mornin, I’ll teach you, you son of a bitch.”

  “You will, huh?” Sullivan stepped away from the rail, made fighting room around himself, pushed up his sleeves. He towered over Spence Guthrie, weighed as much as two of him, but Guthrie was undeterred. He stepped back as well. A few more men appeared on the hurricane deck. Bowater saw Hieronymus Taylor clomping awkwardly up the ladder at the forward end. Buford Tarbox stepped out of the pilothouse, leaned on the side, cheroot in mouth.

  Bowater did not think this would provide much entertainment. How long did they think Guthrie could stand up to the ursine Mississippi Mike, going slug for slug?

  And then the knives came out.

  Charles Ellet Jr., steaming down the Mississippi River in the ram Queen of the West, felt like Agamemnon of old. Agamemnon, playing the utter fool at Troy. Ellet, in his former life, was a civil engineer, and had been for many years. He was not a young man. Early in the war he had come up with an idea for fitting out fast steam vessels as rams that could dash at an enemy vessel and sink it faster than it could be sunk with gunfire. He had been pushing the idea for almost as long as the war had been going on. He went first to the navy, but the navy showed no interest in his ideas, so he took them to the War Department. The War Department was not very enthusiastic either. But then, on the eighth of March, 1862, the Confederate steamer Virginia demonstrated to a skeptical world just how effective a steam ram could be. Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, was ready to listen to Charles Ellet Jr. So now he was Colonel Charles Ellet, United States Army, in command of an odd assortment of nine army ram vessels, with little in common save for their strengthened bows, the wooden bulwarks protecting their boilers, and the built-up iron rams bolted to their stems. Urged on by Stanton, he had rushed his rams to Plum Point in the wake of the Confederate attack that had sunk two ironclads and, to Ellet’s morbid satisfaction, proved the worth of the ram as a weapon of river warfare. He personally had arrived on board the Switzerland, the last of

  the fleet,
ten days earlier. He was brimming with plans for attacks, runs by Fort Pillow, fights with the Rebels. But Flag Officer Charles Davis showed no interest in his ideas. He would not join Ellet, would not offer one gunboat for the protection of the rams, or any naval officers to man them. He did not return Ellet’s correspondence. He did not seem overeager to do much of anything.

  Colonel Ellet could stand it no more. He was, after all, army, and not under Davis’s command. He could do as he wished, by order of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, as long as it did not interfere with Davis’s plans. And Davis did not seem to have any plans.

  Scout boats had reported a single Rebel ram tied up north of the guns at Fort Pillow. The night before, Ellet had determined to act.

  He devised a ruse: steam within gunshot of the Rebel, and when the Rebel attacked, retreat upriver, where more of his ram fleet waited to spring the trap.

  But, like Agamemnon at Troy, Ellet had decided that before going into battle he would put his crew’s temper to the test.

  He called the men together, told them his intentions. “It’s a dangerous thing we’re doing here,” he said. “Steaming right up to the Rebel fleet, right under the guns of Fort Pillow. I won’t make a man of you go against your will. If any don’t care for that kind of risk, he can just step over to the starboard side, and we’ll see you put off on another boat.”

  He had folded his arms, triumphant in his speech, but felt the triumph melt like ice as more than half his men, including the captain, two out of three of the pilots, the first mate, all the engineers, and nearly all the crew, shuffled to the starboard side and stared up at him with blank faces. A good part of the morning was lost as the unwilling men collected their gear and the second mate brought the Queen alongside a barge to let them off.

  He was Agamemnon, old and foolish, but he had no Odysseus to correct his blunders. So instead he begged men from the rest of his fleet and got under way, the Monarch following in his wake.

  He stood now in the wheelhouse, watching the banks of the Mississippi slide by. This was as personal as it could be. He had conceived the idea of the ram fleet and through undaunted will had pushed it through the bureaucracies of Washington, pushed and did not stop until it became a reality floating on the Mississippi River. His passion for the rams was so powerful that it had sucked a significant portion of his family into its vortex. Between brothers, nephews, and son, there were six Ellets sailing as part of the ram fleet.

  Just ahead of them, but unseen around the river bend, the day’s first mortar fired, arched its shell high into the air to drop unseen on Rebel heads. Ellet felt his muscles tighten. He tapped his fingernail on the sill of the wheelhouse window. The Rebel steamer would be not too far now, and Ellet prayed to God that it would still be there, tied to the bank, ready to show the same kind of grit the Confederate fleet had shown the month before.

  He turned and caught a glimpse of Monarch before a bend in the river hid her from sight. Monarch was commanded by his brother, Alfred W. Ellet. Alfred had also given his men the option of going ashore, but every one of them had elected to stay with the boat, and Charles wondered why that was, when his own men did not.

  Glad to weed out that bad material, in any event, Ellet thought and then thought no more on the matter. He stepped out of the wheelhouse and looked fore and aft and saw that everything was in readiness. Not that there was much to do to prepare. The rams had not a single gun on them, beyond small arms. Ordnance was not what they were about.

  “Sir?” An ensign called down the deck from the wheelhouse and Ellet hurried back.

  The Queen’s new captain, standing by the big wheel, pointed downriver. “There, sir.” Half a mile away, a Rebel steamer lay against the western bank, the thread of smoke creeping from her chimneys. To the east, and still out of sight, the water batteries of Fort Pillow, and climbing up the steep shore the higher gun emplacements that could drop plunging fire on them.

  “Excellent. Let’s slow to one bell and give them a chance to get under way.”

  The captain grabbed the cord, rang one bell, got a jingle in response. The Queen of the West slowed as the engineer below let the steam pressure drop. Ellet looked astern. He could just see the Monarch farther upstream, which was as it should be. Alfred would be waiting, ready to dash out and hit the Rebel broadside as the Queen lured it upriver.

  They stood on. Field glasses revealed little about the Rebel ship. Stern-wheeler, walking beam engine. Some sort of bulwark on the bow with a gun there. That was about it. There were men on the hurricane deck, or so it seemed, but the appearance of the Queen seemed to generate no excitement.

  “Rebels aren’t too damned observant,” Ellet growled at the captain. “I wonder if they’re even awake.”

  The captain was nodding his concurrence when the first of Fort Pillow ’s guns fired from one hundred and fifty yards away. The sudden blast in the still morning made Ellet start. The shell screamed past, missing the wheelhouse by no more then twenty feet.

  “Reckon they’re awake now,” the captain said.

  It would not have been much of a fight with fists, but knives were something else entirely. With knives, Sullivan’s bulk worked against him, while the quickness that Guthrie enjoyed with his wiry frame more than compensated for Mississippi Mike’s greater reach.

  They circled, crouching low, arms out, crablike. They each held in front of them one of the huge bowie knives with the full hand guard so beloved by the Westerners. They took tentative swipes at each other, feeling the other’s distance, the speed of his reaction.

  Bowater, watching, recalled when Sullivan and Tarbox had gone at it. Sullivan landed one good kick and it had been over, and Tarbox seemed to have forgotten it by the time he stood up. This brawl did not look as if it would be resolved so easily.

  By the wheelhouse, money was moving from hand to hand. Tarbox was taking the bets.

  Guthrie made the first move, stepping into the circle of Sullivan’s arms, his left arm blocking Sullivan’s right, his knife flashing out and down. Had he made a proper lunge, Bowater noted, front foot out, back leg extended, arm straight, the way Bowater’s fencing tutor, Monsieur Ouellette, had taught him, Guthrie would have run the knife into Sullivan’s gut. But he did not. It was a quick slash and a jump back out of the way. Sullivan twisted clear of the attack and charged.

  He came at Guthrie in a flurry of big arms and steel, knocking the smaller man’s knife aside, slashing with his own blade. But Guthrie was as quick as he looked, and much stronger. He leaped back, recovered, met Sullivan’s knife, hand guard to hand guard, and held it. Guthrie’s foot darted up and caught Sullivan between the legs, and only Sullivan’s lightning fast left hand blocked Guthrie from landing a kick that might have done for Mississippi Mike.

  They both staggered back, reassessing, still circling. The men crowding the deck were getting vocal, and seemed pretty evenly divided as to who they wished would run a knife through whom.

  Captain and engineer came at one another again. Sullivan feinted with his knife, connected with his brogan, right in Guthrie’s stomach, doubling the engineer up. Sullivan stepped back to deliver another kick and Guthrie charged like a bull, head-butting Sullivan in the stomach. The breath came out of Sullivan’s lungs like steam from an emergency valve but he still managed to bring both hands down on Guthrie’s neck, which dropped the engineer to the deck.

  Sullivan might have ended it there, if he had not been stumbling back, gasping, barely able to hold his blade. Guthrie rolled over, and willing hands pulled him to his feet, gave him a restorative shake, and pushed him forward.

  By the time Guthrie staggered after him, Mississippi Mike had managed to catch his breath and resume his defensive stance, but halfhearted, heaving, as was Guthrie. They came at each other as if they were half asleep, or drunk, or both. Knives swept the air. Sullivan grabbed Guthrie’s knife hand, and Guthrie did the same to Sullivan, and they stood there, each holding the other’s wrist, forming a circle with their arms, li
ke kids playing a game, teeth bared, faces red, each straining to break the other’s grip.

  Close upriver, perhaps two hundred yards, one of Fort Pillow’s guns fired, a startling sound. Bowater jumped, wheeled around. There was a steamer coming downriver, a Yankee steamer. No one had noticed its approach.

  Then from behind, a sound like a grunt and a muffled scream, like someone violently ill. Bowater turned back. In that instant of distraction, Spence Guthrie had managed to free his knife hand. Now his bowie knife was buried in Mississippi Mike Sullivan’s gut, almost up to the hand guard. Blood was spilling fresh on the deck.

  Sullivan grabbed Guthrie’s hand, pulled the hand and the knife away, pulled the blade clean out of his gut. His right hand made a wide sweeping arc through the air and the hand guard of his knife hit the side of Guthrie’s head with an impact like round shot, point-blank range.

  Guthrie flew sideways, limp as a doll, a spray of blood flying off his face. He hit the deck and did not move, just as Sullivan fell to his knees, hand on his stomach. Blood ran between his fingers. His eyes were wide. He fell slowly onto his side and lay there, curled in a ball.

  The fort fired again. Bowater pulled his eyes from the two men laid out on the deck, looked upriver. The Yankee was coming on through the water battery’s fire, making right for them, the General Page, helpless, tied to the bank, the captain and chief engineer hors de combat.

  Someone had better do some damn thing, he thought. He looked across the deck at Buford Tarbox, first mate, who was looking back at him.

  “Cap’n Bowater, I reckon you’re in charge now,” he said, the cheroot never leaving his mouth.

  “Me?” Bowater argued. “You’re the first officer, damn it.”

  “That’s right. First officer. I ain’t a cap’n of nothin.”

  Bowater shook his head. This was absurd, the Page was an army vessel, but arguing was even more absurd. “Quarters!” he shouted. “Hands to quarters! Cast off the fasts! What steam do we have?”