by John Jakes
Hunley himself reached Charleston a few days later to take charge of the next test, on October 15. He and the entire replacement crew brought from Mobile lost their lives. “She was buried bow first, nine fathoms down, at an angle of roughly thirty-five degrees,” Cooper said the night afterward. He hunched before a plate from which he had eaten nothing.
His daughter asked, “How deep is nine fathoms, Papa?”
“Forty-five feet.”
“Brrr. Nothing but sharks in the dark down there.”
And that Peripatetic Coffin.
“But you’ve already raised her—” Judith began.
“Raised her and opened her. The bodies were twisted into horrible postures.”
“Marie-Louise,” her mother said, “you are excused.”
“But, Mama, I want to hear more about—”
“Go.”
After their daughter left the room, Judith briefly covered her mouth with her napkin. “Really, Cooper, must you be so graphic in front of her?”
“Why should I sugar-coat the truth? She’s practically a young woman. The disaster happened, and it needn’t have.” He thumped the table. “It needn’t have! We studied the bodies carefully. Hunley’s, now—his face was black and his right hand was over his head. Near the forward hatch, which he was clearly trying to open when he died. Two others had candles clasped in their hands. They were down by the bolts that secure the iron bars to the bottom of the hull. The bars are extra ballast, unfastened and dropped when the captain wants to come up. But not a single bolt had been removed, though the poor wretches had clearly been trying. It was all a puzzle till we made the important discovery: the seacock for the ballast tank at the bow was still open.”
“Telling you what?” Her tone and look said she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“How she went down! Another crewman was manning the pump that empties the tanks. Panic must have ensued. Perhaps they used up the air, and the candles went out. In that confined space, that would do it. They were trying to bring her up, don’t you see? But the seacock was open, and in the dark, with the panic, Hunley failed to order it closed. Or the man responsible was incapable of doing it. That’s why they died. Operated properly, the vessel is seaworthy. She can kill plenty of Yankee sailors, and we’re going to test her and train a crew until she’s ready.”
Judith gave him a strange look: sad, yet not submissive. “I’m frankly tired of hearing about your holy crusade to take human lives.”
He glared. “Judah means nothing to you?”
“Judah died because of the actions of people on our side. Including your sister.”
Cooper shoved his chair away from the table. “Spare me your mealy-mouthed pacifism. I’m going back to the office.”
“Tonight? Again? You’ve been there every—”
“You act as if I go larking off to some bordello or gaming house.” He was shouting now. “I go to do work that’s urgent and vital. General Beauregard will not, I repeat to you, he will not put Hunley into service unless we prove her seaworthy and equip her with a bow spar sturdy enough to hold a charge capable of sinking an ironclad, not merely damaging her. The spar must carry at least ninety pounds of powder. We’re evaluating materials and designs.”
With slow, elaborate movements, he rose. Bowed. “Now if I have once again explained my behavior and motivation to your satisfaction, and if there are no further trivial questions for which you require answers, may I have your permission to leave?”
“Oh, Cooper—”
He pivoted and walked out.
After the Tradd Street door slammed, she continued to sit motionless. His bolting off reminded her of his behavior when he had been struggling to build Star of Carolina. But then, living and working in a state of perpetual exhaustion, he had been gentle and affectionate. The man she had married. Now she lived with a vengeful stranger she hardly knew.
Those had been Judith’s thoughts last October following the fatal test. As the holidays neared, nothing changed—unless you considered worsening to be a change. Worsening of matters at. Tradd Street, worsening of matters in Charleston.
The city continued to resound and shake from enemy shell fire. Pieces of china had to be set well back on a shelf lest the tremors tumble them off. The Parrotts sometimes boomed all night long, and reflected red light on the bedroom ceiling frequently woke her. She wanted to turn and hold her husband, but he usually wasn’t there. He seldom stayed in bed longer than two hours.
Curtness became Cooper’s way of life. Just before Christmas she suggested that it might be well for them to travel up the Ashley to check on matters at the plantation. “Why? The enemy is here. Let the place rot.” One night he brought Lucius Chickering home to supper—the purpose was additional time to work, not hospitality—and twelve-year-old Marie-Louise watched the young man adoringly all through the meal. She uttered several sighs impossible to miss or misinterpret.
When she and Judith left the men alone with brandy, Lucius said, “I think your charming daughter’s in love with me.”
“I am not in the mood to waste time on cheap witticisms.”
Nor are you ever, Lucius thought. He found himself possessed of surprising courage as he cleared his throat. “See here, Mr. Main. I know I’m only your assistant. Younger than you, far less experienced. Still, I know how I feel. And I feel a little lightness isn’t out of order even in time of war. May help, in fact.”
“In your war, perhaps. Not in mine. Finish your brandy so we can get to work.”
Now it was January. Old Bory’s flagging faith in Hunley had been kept alive by Cooper’s pleading and by the enthusiasm of the new captain and crew. The former was another army officer, Lieutenant George Dixon, late of the Twenty-first Alabama Volunteers. The crew had been recruited from the receiving ship Indian Chief, and each man had been told Hunley’s history. General Beauregard insisted.
Cooper knew, absolutely, that the submersible could be effective against enemy vessels blockading the harbor. Beyond that, and more important, if she could operate as designed, she could generate fear out of all proportion to her size. This was Mallory to the letter. Innovation, surprise—the sea route to victory or, barring that, an honorable negotiated peace for the nation whose military adventures were failures.
Thus, morning after morning, Cooper and Lucius stepped into their rowboat at the battery for the long pull out past the fallen casemates of Sumter, within sight of Catskill and Nahant and the other monitors, to the inlet on the back side of Sullivan’s Island where the fish-ship tied up. The trip was hard, but easier than that of Captain Dixon and crew, who marched seven miles from their barracks just to start the day.
The creaky dock jutting from the sandy beach was pleasant in the winter sunshine. The two Navy Department men and Mr. Alexander, the gnarled British machinist who had helped build the vessel, repeatedly watched the crew submerge Hunley for short periods, with no mishaps.
Finally, late in January, there came a mellow afternoon when Dixon announced: “We are ready, Mr. Main. Will General Beauregard authorize an attack?”
Cooper’s thinning hair fluttered in the wind. His face, normally pale, was the color of pond ice. “I doubt it. Not yet. You’ve only stayed down a few minutes each time. We must demonstrate that she can stay down much longer.”
“Well, sir, how long is much longer?” Alexander asked.
“Till the air runs out. Till the crew has reached the absolute limit of endurance. We must find that limit, Dixon. In fact, I want you to choose one man and put him ashore for the next test. I’ll replace him—I got Old Bory’s permission yesterday. I did it because it will help banish his doubt. I must prove the Navy Department trusts this vessel, that all the deaths have been the result of human error, not faulty design.”
“But Mr. Main,” Lucius protested, “it could be extremely dangerous for you—”
Then, reddening and realizing he was in the presence of someone else who would face danger, he shut his mouth. He avoi
ded his superior’s murderous eye. Dixon’s own reaction surprised Cooper.
“Mr. Chickering’s right, sir. You are a married man with a family. Is your wife agreeable to—?”
“I need General Beauregard’s permission, but I don’t need hers. For anything. Keep that in mind, if you please. I want Hunley in service, sinking Yankee ships and drowning Yankee seamen, without further delay. I am going to take part in the test dive. We are going to make it tomorrow night.”
His hunched posture, compressed lips, furious eyes made argument inadvisable. Seaward, the Parrotts boomed as the day’s bombardment started. A dozen big, black-headed gulls lifted from the beach in fright.
90
APPROACHING THE END OF his sixth month in Libby Prison, Billy weighed twenty-eight pounds less than he had the day he walked in. His beard hung to the middle of his chest. His face had a gray, sunken appearance. But he had learned how you survived.
You poke your food with your finger, hunting for weevils. Then you smelled the food. Better to starve than swallow some of the spoiled slop fed to prisoners. Bad food could induce the flux and force you to run repeatedly to a trough in one of the odorous wooden closets the keepers dignified with the name bathroom. You could die before you stopped running.
You inserted no angry words or sentiments, no criticism of the prison or its administration, in the letters you were permitted to write. To conserve paper, the allowable length of each letter had been reduced to six lines. Billy took this as a sign of the war going badly for the rebs. You didn’t count on any of the letters reaching the North; Billy suspected some or all were burned or dumped in the James.
You slept lightly in case prisoners from another part of the building staged a rat raid, hunting for items to steal. To sleep lightly wasn’t difficult. Each of the large rooms of the prison held between three hundred and five hundred men; the place was bursting because exchanges had slowed to a trickle. Billy’s room on the top floor was so crowded that everyone slept spoon fashion. Without blankets. That added to the ease of sleeping lightly now that winter had come.
You stayed away from the windows. You did so no matter how strong your longing for a whiff of fresh air instead of the stinks of fumigation. Guards outside, and even some civilians, occasionally shot at prisoners who appeared at windows. These marksmen received no reprimand from the warden.
You broke the tedium by taking an apple or newspaper or small homemade oatmeal cake from the basket of Crazy Betsy, then chatted with her for a bit about matters of no consequence. Crazy Betsy was a tiny, tense, blue-eyed woman, about forty, addressed formally as Miss Van Lew. Boys loitering outside the building shrieked “witch!” when she entered. Occasionally they threw stones at her. But that didn’t deter frequent visits, and the authorities allowed her the run of Libby because she was a lifetime resident of Church Hill and helped keep the inmates pacified with her little gifts.
You did everything possible to avoid depressive thoughts of your situation. You played checkers. Swapped combat stories, learned French or musical theory in one of the informal classes taught by prisoners. If you had spare paper, you scribbled out an item for the Libby Chronicle and handed it to the editor, who stood up and recited an entire newspaper twice weekly to huge crowds jammed into one of the largest rooms.
Above all, if you were Billy Hazard, you avoided contact with Corporal Clyde Vesey.
Throughout the early weeks of Billy’s imprisonment, that wasn’t hard. Vesey was still posted on the ground floor, where he continued to receive new prisoners and maintain records of those already inside. One night right after Christmas, however, in the freezing room where Billy was trying to sleep amid the restless men around him, Vesey appeared, specterlike, carrying a lantern.
“There you are, Hazard,” said he, smiling. “I was anxious to find you and tell you I’ve been transferred up here, nights. It means half again as much in wages. It also means I shall be able to give you the attention you deserve.”
Billy coughed into his fist; he had caught a cold. After the spasm, he said, “Wonderful news. I’ll treasure each and every golden moment in your presence, Vesey.”
Still sweetly smiling, Vesey glanced at the hand with which Billy braced himself on his bit of floor while he spoke. Quickly Vesey shifted and stepped on the hand with his hobnailed boot.
“I’ll have none of your arrogant college ways while I’m on duty.” He put more weight on Billy’s hand. “Clear, sir?”
Billy clenched his teeth and squinted. Tears filled the corners of his eyes, and a little line of blood ran from under the sole of Vesey’s boot. “You son of a bitch,” Billy whispered. Fortunately Vesey was talking again.
“What? Do I see the brave Yankee weeping? Excellent. Excellent!” He twisted his boot back and forth. Billy couldn’t hold back a low, choked sound. Vesey raised his boot, and Billy saw the gashes, the blood shining in the lantern light. “I must go on my rounds. But I shall be back often from now on. We shall have regular lessons in humility, until you learn your proper station Lower than the lowest nigger. Good evening, Hazard.”
And off he went, humming a hymn.
Billy blinked several times, tore a piece from his ragged shirt, and wrapped his bleeding hand. He sneezed twice. Men lay or either side of him and at his head and foot. He was certain they must be awake, but not one had stirred during Vesey’s visit. He didn’t blame them. He wasn’t sure he would risk his own chances of survival just to defend some other prisoner unlucky enough to draw a guard’s wrath.
By early January Billy’s hand was infected and his cold much worse. Vesey sought him out at least once every night to abuse him verbally or force him to march up and down the prison staircase for two hours, or stand in a corner on tiptoe while Vesey sat on a stool, a bayonet on his musket and the steel tip held half an inch from Billy’s trembling back.
“Confess,” Vesey would croon to him, smiling. “By now you must be cognizant of your inferiority. Your heathen nature. Your wrong thinking. Confess that you admire President Davis and consider General Lee the greatest soldier in Christendom.”
Billy’s legs shook. His toes felt broken. He said, “Fuck you.”
Vesey tore Billy’s shirt and raked his back once with the bayonet. Luckily the wound didn’t fester as his hand had; the hand was all yellow and brown with pus and scabs. “We shall continue this,” Vesey promised as his duty sergeant came looking for him. “Be assured of it, heathen.”
Billy’s attitude about helping other prisoners soon underwent a change. Eight new men arrived in the top-floor room to occupy the space of a captain who had died in his sleep. One of the newcomers, a sallow, curly-haired youth with a high forehead, found space next to Billy. The newcomer’s name was Timothy Wann. He had enlisted at the end of his freshman year at Harvard and been brevetted to second lieutenant after three others holding that rank in his unit were killed one by one.
On Wann’s second night in Libby, officers from another room conducted a rat raid. Billy woke out of his usual light sleep to see three bearded men carrying the Massachusetts boy toward the communal washroom. A fourth soldier, unbuckling Wann’s belt, said, “Skinny little ass on this chicken. But it’ll serve.”
Billy knew such things went on, though he had never been threatened or been a witness. But he couldn’t tolerate such treatment for a young officer who was really just a schoolboy. He wiped his dripping nose, staggered to his feet, and wove his way through dozing prisoners till he caught up with the quartet carrying the round-eyed, terrified Wann.
“Let him go,” Billy said. “You can do that in your own room if you must, but not in here.”
The gray-haired man who had unbuckled Wann’s belt pulled it loose and stroked it, scowling. “Got some claim on this youngster, have you? Is he your pet bird?”
Billy reached out, intending to pull Wann off the shoulders of the three carrying him like a side of beef. The other soldier, stepped back for room, then whipped Billy’s cheek with the belt.
&nb
sp; Sick as he felt—a fever had been on him for the past twenty-four hours—he found strength in his anger. He ripped the belt away from the older man, grasped both ends, looped it over the soldier’s head, and crossed his hands. The soldier gagged. Billy pulled harder.
The friends of the strangling man let Wann fall to the floor. “Get back to your place,” Billy said to Tim as one of the raiders punched him. In the corridor, he spied a lantern.
“What’s the commotion? What’s happening in there?” Vesey appeared, lantern held high, side arm in his other hand. Billy released one end of the belt. The gray-haired officer stepped away, rubbing his red throat. “This crazy loon attacked me. Started to choke me to death—just ’cause we were in here speaking to friends and he said we disturbed his sleep.”
“Your accusation doesn’t surprise me, sir,” Vesey replied with a sympathetic nod. “This officer is a violent man. Constantly provoking trouble. I shall take him in hand. The rest of you go back to your quarters.”
“Yessir,” two of the raiders muttered. None wasted any time leaving.
“What are we to do with you, Hazard?” Vesey managed speak, sigh, and smile at the same time. “My lessons up here have failed to bring an end to this constant rebellion. Perhaps one conducted in the fresh air would be more effective.”
“I want my shoes if we’re going out—”
“March,” Vesey said, yanking his collar. Billy had a glimpse of heads raised here and there in the room. Then they sank down again, and he wondered why he had been so stupid as to help Tim. The young prisoner started to get up. Billy shook his head and walked out of the room ahead of Vesey.
On the river side of the building, Vesey handed his lantern to the guard at the door, then prodded Billy down the steps and pushed him to his knees. Vesey proceeded to lash Billy’s wrists and ankles together behind his back, pulling the ropes steadily tighter until Billy’s shoulders bowed with strain. In a matter of seconds, his leg muscles were aching.