The Tubman Command

by Elizabeth Cobbs

  Montgomery nodded. “I want to land the two larger tenders just before that. We need to alert the contraband and commence operations against the dikes.”

  “You want me to go ashore, sir?” Harriet asked.

  “No.” The colonel stepped outside the pilothouse. “Samuel,” he called. “Show me the location of the torpedoes again.”

  Samuel entered the cabin and bent close to the chart. He stroked his pointed beard, straightened, and tapped the map with his finger. “Right here. See where the Cum’bee takes a small, sharp turn—hardly shows on the map—then narrows? A stand of tupelos grows right there. Within sight a the ferry. The mines are just below the surface. The current’s strong, so it’s tricky. Normally, you might hug the inside, especially since the high tide gone whip us fast into that bend.”

  The river pilot, who hadn’t said a word in hours that Harriet recalled, looked over his shoulder. His weathered hands still gripped the wheel. “How I sposed to know what to watch for, if dem tupelos on t’other side?”

  Harriet inhaled sharply. Samuel had scouted the mines from the vantage point of the ferry. The meandering river that watered the rice fields looked the same for miles. The gunship might be around the bend before they spotted the trees and in danger of veering too close to one bank or the other.

  “We’ll launch the tenders early. Get troops up on the dikes,” Montgomery said rapidly. “Their view will be more open. They can fire a signal.”

  “That’s gone alert the pickets at the ferry,” Samuel said.

  “They’ll see us soon enough anyway.” Montgomery turned to the captain. “Reverse the paddle wheels in fifteen minutes and bring us to a stop so we can launch the boats. That’s halfway to the ferry by your calculations, correct?”

  “That’s about right,” Vaught said.

  “It better be right,” he said. “Mark your watch, Captain. And Samuel—keep your eyes open for torpedoes.” He turned to Harriet. “You watch from the other side. Spotters will be on the lower decks, too. Be ready.” With that, Montgomery vanished again down the ladder.

  Harriet and Samuel’s eyes met. If they got past the mines, they would make landfall soon. He looked as if there were a dozen things he wanted to say. Instead, he stepped out of the cabin to take his post, and Harriet brushed her fingers against his as she passed behind him to the opposite deck.

  Slaves in the fields on the south bank of the Combahee flocked toward the levee. Harriet thought they must be from the Middleton Plantation, which Walter had said was near the ferry and across from Heyward’s. She turned around to glance through the cabin’s large windows at the right bank once more. They must have been sailing past the lower portion of the Heyward estate for some time. The men and women she’d seen could be Samuel’s people. Perhaps Lucy was among them, already risking a driver’s wrath to spread the word. Harriet hoped the woman would be all right. The mother of Samuel’s boys.

  A horse’s high whinny caught her attention. She turned around. Two white men galloped down a causeway toward the river on the Middleton side, brandishing whips and yelling at field hands to get back. One fired his shotgun over the heads of the fleeing workers. A furious pack of hounds followed. Their baying vied with the ruckus of the horses. The riders split once they reached the levee and rode in opposing directions to ward people away from the bank. The dogs were confused about which horse to follow, and they stopped at the end of the causeway to bark at men and women near the river. A yellow hound, yapping and snarling, broke from the pack and dove into the field when a man sprinted. The muscled dog leaped onto the slave’s back. Its teeth closed on the man. The pack swarmed over the pair. The runaway vanished under the melee.

  “No!” a soldier on the deck below Harriet called.

  “Lawd a mercy,” someone cried.

  Harriet tore her gaze from the scene, unable to watch. There was nothing they could do except press on. A rifle cracked loudly and Harriet’s eyes darted to the hurricane deck below. With a Springfield on his shoulder, a member of the 2nd South Carolina had broken rank. He stared to see the effect of his shot. The pack of dogs was in disarray. A scrambled mass on the ground possessed the hind legs of a yellow hound. The bloodied, half-naked slave stumbled to his feet.

  “Hold your fire,” a white officer yelled. “Save your ammunition for the Secesh army!”

  The ship shuddered. Harriet grabbed at the railing. The John Adams must be stopping. Black water swirled upriver, bypassing her. The paddle wheel on the port side dredged muck as it churned backward. The vessel struggled against the incoming tide. A moment later, two large tenders with a handful of troops each passed off the bow of the ship. While the gunship trembled in the flood, men disembarked from the boats onto the bank. One waved an American flag as he strode up and down on the raised levee.

  Other soldiers now reached down to pull slaves up onto the bank and push them toward the Heyward Plantation. Slaves farther afield were waved in the same direction. A man in the blue of the 2nd South Carolina blew a bugle. The thrilling notes of reveille sounded across the river, fields, and causeways. Then the paddle wheels on the John Adams reversed again, the smokestack belched black soot, and the ship steamed upriver once more, leaving the two tenders behind. A bend in the river beckoned. The gunboat slowed. Harriet felt they were drifting, though she knew the pilot maintained some degree of speed to operate the rudder. She leaned over the side and scrutinized the current with a hand to her brow to ward off glare. The bright morning sun dazzled the surface and obscured the depths. The torpedoes must lie just ahead.

  Harriet gripped the wooden rail as they took the last turn. Concentrated on the danger to the ship, she barely felt the rail grind against her ribs as she leaned out as far as she could go. The bomb must be nearly underneath them. The Confederate regiment at the ferry would be right beyond it. But then the wide gunboat angled and straightened into another peaceful section of the river. Vast green fields spread out on either side. No torpedoes or troops. No stand of tupelos. Where were they?

  A musket blast onshore was chased by another shot. Almost before Harriet realized it, the ship entered another turn. Faster. As they rounded the curving dike, she spotted a small brick ferry building on a rise far to her left with Rebel breastworks next to it. A moment later, six mounted Confederates thundered north across a pontoon bridge on the river beyond the building, headed toward the Heyward estate. At the same time, a cannon boomed so loudly that her ears rang. The reek of gunpowder filled her nostrils. Her eyes stung. She waved away smoke. They were under fire.

  Harriet rubbed her eyes and frantically scanned the south bank for the hidden torpedo. The shore came into view dead ahead. A hundred feet away, a peaceful stand of green tupelos rustled along the swampy margins of the river. She squinted through the smoke. A large alligator rested in the shade of the reedy trees. When the reptile spotted the ship, it lumbered to the river. Water rippled outward from its lumpy snout as it dove and disappeared. Harriet couldn’t see any other marks on the river aside from the normal dips and shifts of the rushing current. Then she spotted another arrow shape innocently wrinkling the surface. The alligator? She glanced at the trees and back at the snag. The pattern didn’t move in relation to the bank. Harriet spun around and rapped on the window of the pilothouse. The captain was speaking to Samuel, who stood in the doorway pointing toward the opposite shore. Another cannon boomed loudly. When the pontoon bridge ahead splintered and shot upward in a blaze of smoke, Harriet realized the John Adams’s own guns were firing, not the enemy’s.

  The ship continued straight for the diagonal snag in the water. They would hit the mine. Harriet rapped harder on the window as a howitzer thundered. Samuel and Captain Vaught debated the far levee. No one heard her. She pounded the glass, which jiggled in the pane.

  The pilot leaned heavily on the helm to turn the ship. At the last possible moment, he angled away from Harriet’s torpedo. A moment later, he again threw his weight against the massive wheel and the ferryboat zagged i
n the opposite direction, back toward the ferry landing and away from the second torpedo. A flash caused Harriet to throw a hand in front of her face. She ducked her head against the glare, and then spotted a cigar-shaped mirror above the pilot’s head. The man had been watching Harriet and Samuel in the mirror the whole time.

  They had safely cleared the last mine.

  The next minutes blurred together. The John Adams ran up to the ferry station on the south bank, shoved out a gangplank, and disembarked a host of troops with muskets and torches who marched toward the Middleton estate. Another company attacked the pontoon bridge with axes and saws, hacking away until the tide pushed large sections upriver, some ablaze with hot pitch. On the Heyward side of the bank, they landed twenty men who mustered into files and paraded north on the exposed causeway toward the retreating Confederate cavalry. When two Rebels turned around to fire, the Rhode Island artillery opened up, sending shells toward the horsemen, who vanished in the thick smoke.

  The John Adams continued to advance upriver. They sailed a hundred yards past the ferry building, now consumed in flames, where the pilot made a laborious three-point turn in the narrowing channel and angled their bow downriver. They had traveled twenty-

  five miles into enemy territory, catching the Secesh unawares. At last, they tied up at Heyward’s landing on the north bank of the river.

  Harriet could contain herself no longer. Montgomery doesn’t need me to watch a docked ship, she thought as she rounded the pilothouse. Samuel had already disappeared.

  Harriet hurried down to the hurricane deck, then the boiler deck, then the main deck, catching sight of people on both sides of the river streaming toward the embankments. Tall columns of smoke poured from the trees in the direction of the Middleton Plantation.

  Get to the gangplank, she thought on each step of the ladders. Get off the ship. Get everyone on board.

  A sweat-stained man and woman rushed onto the John Adams as Harriet reached the main deck, already filling with a babble of voices. Dressed in little more than rags, the woman burst into tears. She fell to her knees and pressed her forehead to the deck. “Tank de Lawd!” she cried. “Tank de Lawd.”

  “Come on, baby. We safe,” the man said, pulling the woman to her feet as others bunched up behind them. “Mas’r Heyward, he jest stan’ lookun,” the man reassured his wife as they passed Harriet.

  “Gran’mammy! Gran’mammy!” cried a young boy who waved over the railing at a wizened old woman in the growing line to board the ship.

  “Mos’ dere, chile!” she called back with a toothless smile, before she lapsed into a coughing fit because of the smoke.

  A rooster escaped from someone’s grasp and flew, crowing, back toward land. “Wrong way!” someone called with a laugh.

  Colonel Montgomery stood at the top of the gangplank. He held up a hand as Harriet ran toward him. “Stop,” he said.

  Harriet almost tripped over her feet.

  “We’ve got contraband coming off both banks,” he said. “There are plenty of soldiers on this side. I need you upstairs, Moses.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Follow me. You’re not needed here.”

  Montgomery brushed past. Tempted to disobey, Harriet turned with reluctance. What could she do from the deck? Harriet glanced over her shoulder as she reached for the rope banister of the ladder and took a last look at the Heyward side of the Combahee. Smoke streamed from the upper windows of a faraway mansion. Flames licked the gray sides of a storage barn. Troops carried bags of rice toward the dock. Walter Plowden, Charles Simmons, and Atticus Blake all had sacks on their backs. One soldier held the reins of a fine horse that he led toward the ship. Harriet supposed that Montgomery had decided to drive his point home in every way possible. Master Heyward would lose his prize pony, too.

  In the hubbub, barefoot slaves clinging to every miserable possession came down the causeway. Ragged clothes afforded glimpses of bare torsos and thighs. A girl with a thin quilt ran behind a woman carrying a straw mattress on her back. One man toted a scrawny piglet under each arm. Two twins clung to the skirt of a mother who carried a cooking pot on her head and a toddler on her shoulders. The baby’s legs were wrapped around her neck, and he hugged the pot with one arm. Harriet squinted to see better. Wide-eyed with surprise, the toddler dredged something from the tureen with his free hand and sucked his fingers clean.

  Despite the chaos, Harriet laughed aloud. Joy coursed through her. Ecstasy tingled in her hands on the rope. They were getting everybody. Piglets and all. Glory, hallelujah.

  She spotted a woman standing on a carved chair that belonged in some dining room. Its polished mahogany gleamed in the brilliant sunlight. Instead of running her loot down to the ship, however, the slave woman positioned the chair in the middle of the causeway. She wore an indigo headscarf and waved people toward the levee, commanding them to hurry. The woman was tall, like Septima. Even without the chair, she would be striking.

  Samuel appeared in the smoke that drifted over the causeway. He carried a small boy close to his chest, with one hand under the child’s bottom and another clasping the boy’s head. The woman on the chair jumped down as he approached. Samuel handed off the child and grasped the hands of two other boys who ran up behind him. They would be Sammy and Jake. The baby must be Abe. Samuel’s family.

  Harriet pushed everything but the battle from her mind and ascended the ladder. Montgomery was right. She wasn’t needed on this side of the river.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  O moaner, don’t you weep,

  When you see that ship come sailin’ over.

  Shout, “Glory, Hallelujah!”

  When you see that ship sail by.

  Spiritual

  THE COLONEL STOOD ON THE HURRICANE deck, his field glasses pointed at the plantation across the river. “Any sign a pickets?” she asked.

  Montgomery lowered his binoculars. “No. I think they all escaped over the bridge. Let’s pray they don’t reach the main army before we cast off.”

  Harriet nodded. She’d seen the four horses.

  Montgomery put the glasses to his eyes once more. “But I’m concerned about the crowd in the trees. The ones coming down the far road.” He lifted the lanyard over his head and handed her the binoculars. “We can only take so many without sinking.”

  A rutted dirt track led from the ferry landing to the estate hidden on a rise. Harriet aimed the glasses at the top of the road. Dense foliage obscured the wooded bluff and smoke further limited her view. The part of the road that came into focus looked deserted. Montgomery tapped her shoulder. “To the right.”

  Harriet shifted the binoculars. Pines, tupelos, and live oaks swam together in a green blur. She aimed the instrument downward to find the riverbank. Oriented, she pointed the glasses toward the right-hand side of the hill. There, a smaller lane curved through some shanties on the bluff. Odd colors and shapes filtered past the buildings and through the trees. She followed the direction of their movement and picked out the spot where the lane ended down near the river. There, on a short dock built off the levee, a crowd of slaves awaited their turn for a trickle of rowboats that plied back and forth. A soldier at the landing coordinated the boarding process.

  Harriet lowered the field glasses. Across the narrow channel, the group on the landing wasn’t hard to spot. She noticed a young man with no shirt push around another boy his own age.

  A thump sounded below. Harriet peered over the side of the gunship. Two decks down, a small rowboat bobbed against the ship. A pair of black hands reached across the watery gap and helped a woman climb aboard. “Lawd Almighty, a cullud sojer! Tank you, brudduh,” she said before disappearing into the ship. The next instant, hands reached forward again and took another refugee by the wrists.

  Harriet handed back the binoculars, and Montgomery slung them around his neck. She stared at the crowd, which didn’t seem to be growing larger so much as more desperate. Crossing the river by rowboat was a slow process. Armed
overseers couldn’t be far away, and Rebel reinforcements would be right behind them. Harriet noticed a heap of cooking pots and blankets near the embankment. Someone must have told people they couldn’t bring anything.

  Another rowboat on the far side of the river loaded a group of slaves. The soldier on the landing raised his hands to keep too many from boarding at once. The dinghy cast off after a moment as another approached. The soldier caught a line thrown to him and knelt to cleat the craft.

  The crowd surged around the stooping man. The boy who had pushed ahead of another clambered on board and took a seat in the bow. Others followed. The soldier stood. He put up his hands again. The onward rush slackened, but when the soldier leaned over to speak to a tiny woman who clung to a cooking pot, the fearful crowd surged again, and the dinghy swiftly filled. A refugee untied the line and jumped into the drifting craft. The oarsman steered the boat into the channel.

  Harriet observed that the rower pulled easily. The man wasn’t fighting the current. She wondered how much time had passed. The Combahee must be napping. Slack water had arrived. Soon the tide would turn.

  Another rowboat made for the crowded landing. Harriet no longer saw the soldier on the dock, just a mass of people. Refugees were jammed so close together that she worried someone might fall into the murky river. The soldier on the dock reappeared when he reached up for a rope that came sailing across the water from the approaching dinghy. Several slaves grabbed for it at the same time, and the line fell uselessly into the stream. The rower pulled the dripping rope aboard and threw it again. This time, the soldier caught the line and tied the craft to the dock.

  As before, the crowd pressed forward. Panic filled the air. Harriet could smell it—a sharp odor of fear and sweat. Men and women scrambled quickly into the rocking boat. Parents grabbed children onto their laps. A large, well-built man stepped aboard, and the vessel swayed wildly until a boy gave up his seat in the middle. The man pulled the child onto his lap. People shouted in Gullah from the dock to the rowboat. Soon, all the space was taken. Yet the skiff didn’t move.