Call of the Raven

by Smith, Wilbur

  The paper crackled in the wind. Chester gazed at it like a chained dog eyeing a piece of meat.

  ‘Where and when?’

  ‘Now,’ said Mungo. ‘Here.’

  Chester blanched. ‘That is impossible.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You challenged me. I have the choice of weapons.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And I choose pistols. We must wait until suitable weapons can be found.’

  Mungo nodded to Tippoo. The giant stepped forward with a heavy rosewood box that he seemed to have produced from nowhere. He snapped it open and presented it to Chester. Inside the velvet-lined case were a magnificent pair of percussion duelling pistols. Their barrels were forged from mottled Damascus steel, inlaid with a hunting scene of horses and hounds and huntsmen in bright gold.

  ‘I anticipated your choice,’ said Mungo. ‘Please inspect them. You will find they are all in order.’

  Hesitantly, as if touching a snake, Chester took one of the pistols. He checked the hammer, the chamber and the barrel, as if to satisfy himself that Mungo had not tampered with it.

  ‘You may choose whichever one you like,’ said Mungo. ‘It makes no difference to me.’

  François loaded the guns. Chester took one, Mungo the other. The crowd shuffled back to leave clear space along the front of the dock. Mungo and Chester stood back to back. They paced out ten yards, then turned to face each other.

  Mungo held his pistol steady at his side, staring down the space that separated him from Chester. The prospect of dying did not worry him. This was all he had wanted: a gun in his hand, and a straight shot at Chester.

  Yet he did not underestimate his opponent. Chester’s one good eye stared at Mungo with the intensity of a madman. His burned face throbbed with hatred. If it was possible to guide a bullet by sheer force of will, he would surely find a way to put it in Mungo’s heart.

  Silence gripped the wharf. The crowd shrank back, as if they could feel the blistering heat of the hatred between the two men. Flakes of ash from the Windemere drifted down like snow. François raised his handkerchief.

  ‘One . . .’ he called.

  Mungo let his arm hang loose. He thought of Windemere, his mother and his father.

  ‘Two . . .’

  He curled his finger around the trigger. He thought of the slave girl aboard the Blackhawk; the village he had raided with the Punu; the hundreds of anonymous faces he had brought across the Atlantic to this place. He thought of Camilla.

  ‘Thr—’

  Suddenly there was a commotion in the crowd. Camilla stumbled out, shoved forward by Granville. She staggered in front of Chester.

  Mungo’s arm was already swinging upwards, his finger tightening on the trigger. The sudden motion only heightened the adrenaline pumping through his veins and made his muscles move even faster. The spring that held the hammer stretched; the hammer began to quiver.

  But Mungo’s senses had been honed by years fighting for his life. His golden eyes, fixed on his target, missed nothing. Just before the hammer sprang, he saw Camilla.

  For a lesser shooter, it would have made no difference. His brain would already have given the command, leaving the machinery of his limbs no choice but to complete the irrevocable action. But Mungo, his mind and body calibrated finer than any watch, saw her in time to make a split-second choice.

  He let go of the trigger.

  Chester grabbed Camilla. He held her in front of him, one arm wrapped around her neck while the other held the pistol to her temple. Mungo kept his pistol level. But though Chester’s head was just visible behind Camilla’s, the weapon was not so accurate that he could risk the shot.

  ‘Let her go,’ said Mungo. ‘Let her go, or dishonour yourself forever.’

  ‘Honour?’ Chester gave a cackling laugh. ‘You would lecture me about honour, when you would rather save a slave girl than avenge your own father. You are a coward, Mungo St John.’

  ‘Let her go, and I will show you how much of a coward I am.’

  ‘I do not think I will.’ Chester edged away, dragging Camilla backwards towards the carriage. ‘You will not defeat me so easily.’ His voice was loud and wild. ‘At Bannerfield I have five hundred armed men loyal to me. I own more land and slaves than any other man in the state. You will not prise me out of there so easily.’

  ‘Let her go,’ said Mungo. ‘Let Camilla go, and I will forget what you have done to my family.’

  ‘What you doing to Milla?’ cried Isaac.

  He tugged at his father’s arm, but Chester’s grip never loosened on Camilla, or on the gun at her temple.

  ‘Get in the carriage,’ Chester told him.

  When Isaac hesitated, Granville scooped the boy up and pushed him in. Chester followed, dragging Camilla in after him. Granville leaped up onto the box and whipped the horses. Before the doors were even closed, the carriage was flying down the levee and away to the city.

  Mungo ran after it, but it was hopeless. He could not overtake six strong horses. He stopped, staring after the disappearing carriage.

  ‘Where will they go?’ Tippoo had come up beside him.

  ‘Bannerfield,’ said Mungo. ‘It is all he has left.’

  ‘You want me to find horses?’

  ‘He will not go by coach.’ Mungo stared at the cloud of dust and ash the coach had kicked up, second-guessing Chester’s plans. ‘He cannot risk me getting there first. A steamboat is the fastest way.’

  Tippoo bared his teeth. ‘He has no steamboat.’

  ‘He will be able to charter one.’

  Mungo glanced back at the river. Inside him, feelings raged through his veins like fire: fury at Chester’s escape; shock at how close he had come to killing Camilla; fear for her now in Chester’s possession. Outwardly, his expression remained ice cold.

  ‘Fire up the boilers on the Nellie Mae.’

  The steamboat Cleopatra tore up the Mississippi under full steam. Her boilers hissed and strained in protest, for she was not used to this frantic pace. She had been built for the passenger trade, no expense spared, and she would normally cruise the river with the deliberate, regal progress of the queen she had been named for.

  There was nothing stately about her today. She had been fired up and ready to leave her moorings to pick up passengers, when Chester Marion arrived at her wharf and offered the captain ten thousand dollars to take him to Bannerfield. Even so, the master had hesitated. He had seen the fire that engulfed the Windemere, and Chester Marion’s appearance – filthy, burned and ragged – did not inspire confidence. But the carriage had outrun the news of everything else that had happened on the wharf; so far as the master knew, the name of Chester Marion still had more credit than any man in Louisiana. So he had agreed.

  Three hours later, he had begun to wonder if even ten thousand dollars was enough. First, there had been the rush to get the Cleopatra underway. Then, Chester had demanded he shovel on fuel until the pressure gauges on the boilers rose so high they threatened to blow. Even now, with the boat running dangerously fast up the twisting river, Chester did not seem satisfied. He paced the hurricane deck, staring back the way they had come, as if he expected the hounds of Hell to come after them.

  Below his feet, Camilla sat in the lonely splendour of the grand saloon. The room was two hundred feet long and twenty feet high, like the nave of a cathedral. All around her were the trappings of luxury: gilt mirrors, crystal chandeliers, a marble-topped bar and stained glass skylights that admitted a strange, yellow-blue light. Yet to her, it felt like a tomb.

  She sat on a plush sofa wide enough to accommodate a dozen people in comfort. Isaac sat on her lap.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he wailed.

  Whether by some deep-rooted instinct that recognised his mother, or simply because she was the only reassuring presence on the boat, he buried his face between her breasts and wept.

  ‘You must be brave,’ she told him. ‘We are taking you home.’

  Amid all the
chaos and carnage of the day, she felt a serenity within her soul she had never known before. She wrapped her arms around her son and hugged him tight. She had what she wanted. Nothing else mattered.

  Up above, the captain descended from the pilot house and found Chester.

  ‘We cannot keep up this speed much longer. We are burning through our wood too fast. We will have to stop and resupply.’

  Chester pointed aft. They had entered a straight section of the river, three miles long. Behind them, just coming out of the last turn, he saw the bow of another boat. The steam pouring from her funnels, and the speed with which she churned the water, made it clear that she was no ordinary cotton carrier or packet ship.

  ‘If we stop, she will overtake us.’

  ‘But we do not have enough fuel to reach Bannerfield.’

  Chester stamped his foot on the deck. ‘What is this made of?’

  The master swallowed. ‘White oak.’

  ‘And the superstructure?’

  ‘Pine and cedar.’

  ‘Then we are standing on all the fuel we need. Break it down and feed it to the furnaces.’

  The master stood his ground.

  ‘You chartered my boat so I could take you to Bannerfield. Not destroy her.’

  ‘I am willing to change the terms of our agreement. A hundred thousand dollars to buy her outright.’

  The master’s jaw dropped in shock. A hundred thousand dollars was many times what the Cleopatra was worth. But it was not his decision to make.’

  ‘I ain’t the owner. I couldn’t agree that even if I wanted it.’

  ‘You could tell him after the fact.’

  It was a tempting offer. With a hundred thousand dollars, the master could pay off the owners for the loss of the ship, throw in ten thousand dollars more by way of apology, and still have enough left to retire handsomely.

  But he was an obstinate man.

  ‘It ain’t right,’ he said.

  ‘Very well.’

  Chester paused for a moment, as if preparing another offer. Then, changing his mind, he took the duelling pistol from his belt. It was still primed and loaded from the unfinished duel. Without warning, he aimed it at the captain and fired. The bullet hit him just below the sternum. The man tottered backwards, clutching his chest, and fell with a scream into the brown water below.

  One of the crew who had been keeping watch for hazards had seen everything. He stared at Chester in amazement.

  ‘What’d you just do?’

  ‘I am the master now,’ said Chester. Beside him, Granville had drawn his own gun and trained it on the sailor. ‘You will follow my orders, or follow the captain overboard. You understand?’

  The crewman made a quick analysis of his options. ‘What do you want me to do?’

  Chester waved the pistol at the deck beneath his feet. ‘Tear her apart.’

  A mile back, the Nellie Mae raced on. All four boilers were running hot, but Tippoo kept a wary eye on the pressure gauges to be sure they did not blow. Mungo found him on the main deck, stripped to the waist with the heat of the furnaces.

  ‘Can you get any more speed?’ he shouted over the roar of the engines. ‘Chester is pulling ahead!’

  It should never have come to this. He had not expected Chester to leave the wharf alive. Knowing what would happen to the Windemere, he had moored the Nellie Mae well downriver of the wharf so that the fire and the explosion would not touch her. When Chester escaped, it had meant a long, hard pull in the cutter to reach the steamboat, and then more delay while they fired up her boilers and took on wood. That had given Chester enough time to board the Cleopatra and set out ahead of Mungo.

  At least it had not been hard to identify the boat Chester had taken from New Orleans. Mungo had watched her leave the docks so fast she almost capsized a yawl sailing by. Soon afterwards, he had seen Chester’s unmistakable silhouette out in the open on the hurricane deck.

  Tippoo shouted an order to the firemen. One came up bearing an armload of logs. He deposited them on deck and began feeding them into the furnace. As each one went in, the pitch of the engine increased.

  ‘We cannot go too close,’ Tippoo pointed out. ‘He still has Camilla.’

  ‘I have not forgotten it,’ said Mungo. ‘We must keep pace with her and wait until she makes a landing. She cannot run forever. Then we will make our numbers tell.’ He had the entire crew of the Raven aboard the Nellie Mae – thirty men in total. ‘He cannot keep us all at bay.’

  ‘Captain!’ called Henderson from the bow. ‘Look at this!’

  Mungo ran forward. Ahead, something about the Cleopatra had changed. Her stern seemed to have shrunk. He examined her through his spyglass.

  ‘They are dismantling her.’ He swore. ‘Chester will raze her to the gunwales in order to keep ahead of us.’

  ‘We’ll run out of firewood before they run out of ship to burn,’ said Henderson.

  In their haste to leave New Orleans, they had not had time to fill the wood stores completely.

  Mungo reached up and snapped off a piece of moulding from the column that supported the boiler deck. He tossed it to Tippoo, who threw it into the furnace.

  ‘Do whatever you must, even if you have to destroy our own ship. We cannot let him get away.’

  The two boats continued upriver like two slaves in a coffle, joined at the neck by a pole that would let them neither halt, nor draw apart, nor close the gap – only carry on remorselessly. Even when night fell, the Cleopatra did not stop. She went on, the glow of her fire visible across the water, like a distant comet streaking upriver.

  ‘Follow her,’ Mungo told Wisi, up in the pilot house. ‘Do not let her out of your sight.’

  ‘The river is dangerous in the dark,’ Wisi warned.

  ‘As long as we keep the same line, we know we are safe. If there is anything in the way, Chester will hit it first. And then we will have him.’

  But luck was with Chester that night. It seemed as if the Devil himself must be steering the boat, past sandbars and shallows and floating trees, sometimes so close their branches brushed the hull. All Mungo could do was follow in her wake.

  As dawn rose, they could see the full extent of the destruction the boats had suffered. Both had been stripped to their waterlines. The decks, cabins, walls and supporting timbers had all been dismantled and fed into the furnaces. All that remained were the engines and machinery on the main decks, the steering cables, and the pilot houses perched high above on stilts. Each ship looked like a body that had been flayed of its skin, leaving only the muscles and vital organs.

  ‘He has nothing left to burn,’ said Henderson.

  ‘Neither do we,’ said Mungo.

  But as the sun rose over the river, he saw it did not matter. They were passing through cotton fields now. Little more than a mile ahead, he could see the warehouses and landing stages of Bannerfield. Chester must have found a way to signal ahead. Through his spyglass, Mungo saw blue-jacketed militiamen mustering by the dock.

  ‘The news from New Orleans has not reached here yet,’ said Mungo. ‘They do not know their master is bankrupt.’

  The Cleopatra nosed up to the dock. As soon as she touched, Mungo saw Chester, Camilla, Granville and Isaac leap off and hurry up the track towards the main house. The Cleopatra cast off and drifted slowly back downstream.

  ‘We have lost the race,’ said Mungo.

  He stared at the deck, his fists balled, his yellow eyes smouldering with fury, conscious of the men gathered around him. He had brought them this far on his quest for vengeance, and he had failed. They watched expectantly, waiting to find out what would happen next.

  ‘I meant to shoot Chester dead on the wharf at New Orleans, fairly and honourably,’ Mungo said. ‘When he denied me that victory, I hoped to catch him on the river and finish it there. Now, my only recourse is to fight my way into his estate. But he has an army waiting for us.’

  The men listened impassively.

  ‘This is my own fight
. There is no profit or glory to be had in it. I cannot ask you to risk your lives on account of my revenge. If you wish to take the Nellie Mae back to New Orleans, I will not blame you.’

  Still the men gave no sign of what they were thinking.

  ‘On the table in the Raven’s cabin, you will find a deed that divides the ownership of the ship between all of you. I signed it this morning, in case the duel did not go in my favour. All I ask is that you put me ashore before you turn back.’

  The men glanced at each other. None of them dared speak. One by one, they turned to Tippoo. Mungo followed their gazes, searching his friend’s eyes.

  ‘What do you say?’

  The giant shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ said Wisi.

  ‘No,’ said Virgil Henderson. ‘You’re our captain. We’ll fight with you to the end.’

  The others all nodded their agreement. Their brave, eager faces were black with soot from the furnaces; their hands were blistered from ripping the ship apart. But not one of them showed any hint of doubt.

  Mungo nodded. A speck of soot seemed to have got in his eye, making it water. He rubbed it away impatiently.

  ‘So be it.’

  ‘The men we are fighting,’ Wisi asked. ‘Do we take them to sell?’

  Despite everything, that drew a smile from Mungo.

  ‘If I had my way, I would ship them to Africa in chains and sell them to your father, the Nganga, as his personal slaves. But we will have to content ourselves with killing them.’

  Tippoo pointed to the dock. The militiamen had formed two lines – one along the wharf, the other on the riverbank above. They must have outnumbered the Nellie Mae’s crew at least two to one, with more, no doubt, waiting further back on the plantation. They raised their rifles as the boat approached.

  ‘Many of them,’ Tippoo grunted.

  ‘Then we will fight twice as hard.’ Beneath his feet, Mungo felt the boat slowing against the current. While they had been talking, no one had been feeding the fires; the boilers were going cool. ‘How much more fuel do we have?’