The Tubman Command

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The Tubman Command Page 24

by Elizabeth Cobbs


  “Yes, Colonel,” Harriet replied. “You want me back when we near the bar?”

  “That instant. And bring Heyward, since he saw the torpedoes last. I want both of you up here once we’re on the river.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  Harriet made her way back to the hurricane deck, filling with soldiers and their gear. Bayonets were sheathed. Men stowed their canvas knapsacks on their laps and fixed their cartridge boxes on their belts. White officers circulated on deck.

  Next to one of the twenty-pounders, two Rhode Island gunners hurriedly stacked scattered cannonballs. The ammunition piles next to the other cannons were arranged in neat pyramids, but something had upset theirs. Other crews waited in knots around the guns. “Cussed idiots! I told you keep your eyes open,” an officer berated two white artillerymen as they restacked the cannonballs. “I turn my back one goddamn second—”

  After the officer stomped away, a colored soldier with the insignia of the 2nd South Carolina approached and held out an iron ball. He cocked his head toward a water cask. “Dis one roll behind dat barrel.”

  A white artilleryman took the shell. “Thank you,” he said, and then he placed it in the growing pile.

  Harriet eyed the open space in the middle of the deck. Officers must be saving it for the contraband. She calculated that the space would hold at least three hundred people, and she wished it were bigger. The other decks might take another two hundred.

  The old ferryboat had been stripped of all nonessential equipment. Ghostly screw-holes for missing passenger benches pocked the deck at regular intervals. Harriet found an empty spot on the deck with her back to the saloon where ladies took the shade in normal times. A cork life preserver still dangled from a hook above her head. The prospect of a long wait reminded Harriet how little she had rested in recent days and that she’d gotten less sleep than planned the night before. Now she’d be forced to sit still. It might be a few hours before they shoved off and several more before they crossed the bar into the Combahee.

  Harriet took a packet of dried pork strips from her satchel. Her head felt woozy. From where she’d posted herself, she should spy Samuel and Walter the moment they came up the ship’s ladder. Though hungry, she set the food in her lap while she retrieved Linah’s button from the inside pocket of the satchel. Dyed brown to match her sister’s dress, the polished-bone button had two thread holes. Harriet pressed it to her lips. “Tomorrow,” she whispered, then she tucked it back into the deepest recess.

  At last, she unwrapped her food, took the hunk of dried pork she’d brought for supper, and chewed slowly. She was determined not to use the boat’s rations and hoped Montgomery had brought enough to provision the refugees on the long sail back to Port Royal. No one would starve, but they’d need something in the course of a day. Once finished with her meager meal, Harriet put her satchel behind her back for support and leaned against the wooden wall to wait. She took a tiny sip from her army canteen and grimaced at its metallic taste. The glare off the water was intense. She blinked—and closed her eyes without meaning to. The sounds of the dock ceased and the light went out.

  A girl with pigtails clung to the white rail with two hands. “Auntie,” she called excitedly over her shoulder as the wharf slipped away, “we gone see the ocean?”

  “Aunt Harriet,” she corrected the child. Harriet wanted the girl to remember she wasn’t an auntie of the type black children had wherever they went, but that she was a real aunt, an aunt with a name.

  “Aunt Harriet, is the sea big? Mama say it real big.”

  Harriet didn’t want to answer but knew she must. “Your mama’s right,” she said. “The ocean bigger than anything else in the whole wide world.”

  “Is the ocean far?”

  “Not too far, honey. At the other end a the Chesapeake.”

  “We gone see it soon?” Margaret asked. She wore a wide straw hat with a chinstrap on which she tugged. The nine-year-old seemed younger than Harriet recollected being at the same age, but she supposed that’s what freedom looked like. White children struck her the same.

  “Bal’more’s at the top a the Chesapeake,” Harriet said. “We gotta sail all the way south fore we come to the sea.”

  “Mama says we shouldn’t go south. Not ever,” the child said.

  “Your mama wants you to have a good education, sugar. Up north,” Harriet said, twisting the truth like a washrag. The child’s real mama did want that, though Harriet’s sister-in-law had wept when Harriet came through the back door and reminded Mary of her promise, at which she gestured to the home she had provided: glass in every window and a piano in the parlor. Harriet’s former brother-in-law, Isaac, had driven off in what appeared to be a new carriage. The timber business must be good.

  “You got your boy,” Harriet said, her face set and her mind made up. “Margaret’s my girl, and I ain’t leaving her behind in the land a slavery, where she can walk down the street and see other children bought and sold in the middle a town.”

  “But when I gone talk to Mama?” the child now said. She hung from the rail with her shoes nosed against the decorative slats. Margaret had such observant brown eyes. Why didn’t they know their own mother? When tears spilled down the child’s cheeks, Harriet felt she would gladly walk from Maryland to Pennsylvania again to ease the pain. But this wasn’t a hurt she could take away. She’d imposed it.

  Rachel materialized at Harriet’s elbow. Her sister’s hair stood on end, uncombed. It had turned shock-white, though she was barely thirty. “Got my boys?” her sister asked and grabbed onto Harriet’s arm. “You got Ben and Algerine?”

  “You didn’t tell me where they are,” Harriet said.

  But Rachel didn’t relent. “Find em,” she said. “We counting on you. Don’t you let us down.”

  Harriet tried to throw off her sister’s grasp. Not everyone could be rescued; Margaret didn’t even want to be rescued. Harriet was doing her best yet must always do more. God had told her that again and again, though she wondered why He worked her so hard. Why her safety mattered so little to Him. A man like any other, she sometimes felt when He seemed not to listen.

  The hold on her arm tightened.

  “Moses,” a voice said far away. Someone gently shook her.

  Harriet woke from her nightmare. She passed a hand over her eyes. The ship’s railing came into focus.

  Samuel sat alongside her with his wide knees drawn up in the small space. Next to him, Charles Simmons and Walter Plowden stood with their backs to the wall, looking toward land. The ship under them vibrated. Night had fallen. A full moon hung over the river.

  “You was out a while,” Samuel said in a low voice. “You okay?”

  “Thought I’d get some shut-eye fore things get lively,” she said to ease his mind. She didn’t want him thinking about her problem.

  Harriet rose. Samuel stood as well. Only a few lights glowed from scattered cabins on shore. Men in uniform remained seated, but every neck craned to see the island slip away. Voices hummed with excitement as the boat’s speed quickened. The spirit was infectious, the sentiment palpable: They were going for their kin. From the Beaufort River into the Coosaw, they were threading the maze of slavery, and this time they were armed.

  A black sergeant strode into their midst. His heavy boots thundered on the wooden deck. “Quiet!” he said. “I don’t want to hear a whisper ’til we reach our target. Your dang fool voices carry right across open water, and the colonel’s counting on the Secesh to take us for a supply ship, not a troop ship. So don’t let me see a single cheroot or pipe.”

  Montgomery appeared. He must have descended the ladder from the pilothouse. The crowd fell silent. The colonel cleared his throat, and men leaned forward not to miss a word.

  “I’m saying this only once, soldiers, and then I need you to be absolutely silent. Not a hoot. Not a holler. We’re on the most important mission of this war. This isn’t just about attacking enemy positions. This is about fighting a way of
life. We’re going to show the world that evil men can no longer make money from treating people like beasts. You’ve been told we’re headed to Florida. That plan’s changed.”

  The colonel paused. Light from a lantern gleamed on his shaved cheeks. He had fastened the top button of his uniform. Standing tall, he looked fully in command. “Our brave scouts have found a way to strike closer to home,” he continued. Montgomery nodded in Harriet’s direction, and a few soldiers glanced her way. “We’re headed up the Combahee, men.”

  “Yes!” a voice broke out.

  “Praise God!” someone next to the ladder said. A buzz swept the ship.

  “Shhh,” the sergeant hissed angrily. The deck fell silent except for the splash of the side-wheels and chug of the engine.

  “We’ll be at the mouth of the river before morning,” Montgomery said. “Some of you will storm the Rebel positions at Fields Point and Tar Bluff. Captain Apthorp and the men of the Harriet Weed will attack the Nichols place. Most of you, along with troops from the Sentinel, will continue with me to the plantations on the upper reaches of the river. You’ve trained for this, men. The fate of every man and woman on these shores depends upon your devotion to duty.” Montgomery paused. Emotion colored his face in the glow of the lantern that an ensign held aloft. “Glory, hallelujah!” the former preacher added with feeling.

  “Glory, hallelujah,” went up the soft echo from men unable to restrain their voices. “Damn straight,” came a call from the artillery. Several laughed.

  A shrill boat whistle cleaved the moment in two. Montgomery froze, startled, then whipped around. He vanished up the ship’s ladder. The whistle sounded again, and Harriet realized it came from one of the ships behind them, out of view around a bend. Three long whistles followed. The universal signal for distress.

  “Quiet!” the sergeant barked before anyone spoke.

  Every soul tensed. Harriet held her breath. What had gone wrong?

  A moment later, the John Adams’s heartbeat chugged to a stop. The splash of the paddle wheels ceased, and the anchor chain clanged off its spindle. Montgomery and the colored pilot descended the ladder and continued on down to the lower decks. The earlier command of silence took on greater import. A profound hush fell over the deck. Everyone strained to hear what was happening. When a man coughed, three shushed him. Minutes passed, broken only by the sound of rowboats being lowered into the water. Time passed with unbearable slowness. An hour or more later, Harriet heard the crew clamber back aboard. The Adams’s engine roared to life. But instead of continuing on its voyage, the gunboat drew up anchor and began a three-point turn in the water, back toward Beaufort.

  A soldier across from Harriet groaned. “Oh, Gawd, no. Turning ’round? My mama on de Cum’bee,” he said to the man next to him, who put a finger to his lips.

  Harriet felt like jumping to her feet. She must find Montgomery. They couldn’t abort the mission. They couldn’t turn back. Not now. The sergeant who had spoken earlier came up the ladder from the boiler deck to deliver the news.

  “Everyone stay put, exactly where you is,” he commanded. “The Sentinel’s hit a sandbar. They can’t get her off, so the Adams and Weed are gone take on her men. We’ll be underway again after that.”

  An artilleryman across from Harriet let out a whoop. Others moaned with relief.

  “Damn Sentinel,” a Rhode Islander said. Standing beside his howitzer, the white man spoke distinctly, though he kept his voice low. “Everyone knew she was a tub.”

  “Good thing Montgomery balked at putting guns aboard,” another gunner said. “I’d hate to move those twenty-pounders in the dark.”

  Harriet calculated quickly on her fingers. Taking on the Sentinel’s troops meant at least an extra hundred soldiers divided between the Adams and Weed—fifty apiece—plus the loss of all the Sentinel’s passenger space. Possibly three hundred people, all told. Could she be right? “How many we gone lose?” she whispered to Samuel.

  He knew exactly what she meant. “We down at least three hundred,” he murmured in her ear. Three hundred contraband. Three hundred more souls left behind.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I have left my wife in the land of bondage; my little ones they say every night, where is my father? But when I die, . . . O Lord, I shall see my wife and little children once more.

  Anonymous, 1st South Carolina Volunteers

  BY THE TIME THE CREW FASTENED down the last tender and hauled up the anchor, they had lost more than two hours. Harriet guessed they wouldn’t have to wait for the flood tide now. Trailed by the small Harriet Weed, the John Adams picked its way even more slowly through the Beaufort River, past the shifting sandbars. Once they gained the wider Coosaw, they sped up. The steam engines throbbed so loudly that Harriet feared a boiler might burst and burn them to the waterline. She’d seen a ship on the Hudson explode once. Sparks flew so high they looked like stars. All but three passengers died.

  The sound of their engines bounced off the mainland. The paddle wheels swooshed steadily. Silent and tense, the soldiers kept their heads low. The full moon gleamed on the barrels of their smoothbore muskets. A few infantry—the better shots—had the newer Springfield rifles.

  Although pinned between two men, Harriet felt only Samuel’s leg and shoulder, acutely aware of his presence. He adjusted his position at one point to get more comfortable, and Harriet shifted in response to let him know she was awake. When the ship took a small wave against the starboard side and briefly wallowed, the warm solidity of his hip against hers made her heart swell. He wouldn’t leave her. If they didn’t die on the Combahee, they would be with one another always.

  At last, a shift in the breeze alerted Harriet that they had entered the Sound. Soon they would approach the bar that blocked ships from the Combahee at low tide. The moon had passed the high point. It must be near three in the morning.

  Harriet slid her hand over Samuel’s thigh, grateful for a last excuse to touch him. The fabric of his trousers was rough under her palm. She shook his sturdy leg. He nodded, and they rose together, stepped around the men propped against the saloon, and made their way up the ladder to the pilothouse.

  Colonel Montgomery and Captain Vaught leaned over a map spread across the table, attended by a young ensign. The pilot was at the wheel. A candle in a hurricane glass lit the room. Montgomery straightened as they entered and looked at Harriet. He held a mug of coffee. “You say the first torpedo is in the channel on the blind side of the island, right?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “That’s where our informant said they laid the mine.”

  “My brother,” Samuel offered.

  Montgomery swallowed the dregs of his coffee and set down the cup. “One of you confirm that with your own eyes?”

  “No,” Harriet answered. “We didn’t have time.”

  The colonel frowned. “Wasn’t that why you went upriver?”

  Harriet couldn’t tell him she’d been more anxious to find the mine near the ferry. There hadn’t been time to comb the mouth of the river as well, especially with pickets guarding it so closely. “We jest couldn’t do it all,” she said. “But the location makes sense. Secesh want to sink us or force us into the open.”

  “Well, into the open we go,” Montgomery said grimly.

  The flat, dark marshes on either side of the waterway made the river’s mouth appear much wider than it actually was. The pilot set the ship’s bow for a middle course as they approached the bar. Samuel dug in his pocket and pressed a piece of dried pork in Harriet’s hand. “Eat,” he murmured before he stepped outside to watch from the narrow deck surrounding the pilothouse.

  Harriet chewed. The man never stopped thinking about food.

  The ship sailed slowly in the moonlight. The engine sounded less burdened, though the captain appeared more strained as they approached the bar. The pipe clenched in his teeth had gone out. “Slow up,” Captain Vaught told the pilot, speaking around the stem. Without taking his hands off the wheel, the pilo
t pressed on a treadle near his right foot. The stopping bell rang out. Somewhere below in the engine room, a sailor closed the throttle, and the ship shuddered. The vessel slowed almost immediately.

  Harriet made herself small against the wall of the pilothouse. The captain kept checking the chart on the table and talking with the pilot, whose hands remained on the wheel. Vaught ordered the young ensign to sound a bell located outside the pilothouse to signal leadsmen on the main deck. “Make sure we’re still at ten feet,” Vaught told the junior officer, who dashed out the door, rang the bell, and hustled down the ladder.

  A few minutes later, the young man ran up the ladder and back into the pilothouse. His chest heaved. “Still ten!”

  “Tide ain’t too rough here,” the Gullah pilot said over his shoulder to the captain. “De bar stay flat.”

  Captain Vaught nodded, but fifteen minutes later, he ordered the ensign to ring the bell again to measure the channel’s depth. The ship crept along. Montgomery kept lifting his binoculars. After a tense half hour, the captain drew an audible breath.

  “Dere we go, sah,” the pilot said at the same time. “We over de bar.” Shortly thereafter, a small island appeared in the broad river. The experienced pilot navigated to starboard to pass into the channel.

  Montgomery left when the hump of Fields Point appeared in silhouette in the distance. His footsteps faded on the ladder. Two sharpshooters with Whitworth rifles came up after him and positioned themselves on the starboard side of the pilothouse, facing toward the Rebel post.

  “Slow the engine,” Captain Vaught ordered the helmsman, who again pressed the treadle of the stopping bell. “And don’t take out that dock.”

  The gunship began its slow glide toward the landing. The dawn air was crystalline. Objects seemed sharper than normal, although Harriet couldn’t tell if it was the light or her nerves. She studied the low dirt walls of the fort. No silhouette of cannons. But where was the shotgun that had winged Samuel? Where were the kepi caps and Confederate rifles?

 

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