by Daniel Wyatt
Watching him stride to the carriage, Marie saw Denning as a mysterious man. She wondered if the other Rebel skippers were like him.
But probably none of them were as handsome as he was.
Chapter fourteen
Wilmington
The sunny conditions did not keep up for the auction later that day.
Denning focused his attention on the hundreds of businessmen in the crowd. Most of the men were well-dressed. By the size of some stomachs, many were obviously well-fed, too, lacking very little in the way of daily necessities. These were men of leisure, professional merchants, blockade skippers turned speculators, and fancy low-lives, vowing to outbid each other for the recent blockaded goods imported from Bermuda and the Bahamas. Some individuals were trustworthy, others were of dubious honesty. The rest were out-and-out cheats. There could even be a Union spy or two in there. A few ladies were sprinkled through the crowd, clinging to their escorts. Denning quickly picked out the Silver Sally’s overseas contraband, opposite the wide platform occupied by the middle-aged, obese crier and his young clerk.
Under the now darkening sky, the crier took the side steps, approached the crowd, and held his hands up for silence. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began in a strong voice. “The sale is about to commence. The condition is cash. No issue of the Hoyer and Ludwig Confederate plate will be taken. The shipment first on the list is from the Silver Sally.”
Denning felt a tap on his shoulder, and turned. “Mr. Jacoby.”
Denning didn’t trust Eli Jacoby. He had the same air of vanity that Denning saw in the Virginia secessionists he knew. Jacoby was a frequent spectator at the auctions and claimed to have a son aboard one of the blockade runners based in Charleston. Recent talk from a source revealed that he had been bartering with secret contacts through the Mason-Dixon line for the sought-after modern Northern hand weapons and munitions. How he was doing it, no one seemed to know for sure. The story Denning had heard implied that Jacoby had good friends in high places. He also was a more-than-frequent visitor to Wilmington’s best brothels, where some of these friends in high places congregated.
“Captain Denning. Congratulations on one more successful trip. My son tells me it’s not as easy as it once was.”
“It’s certainly not.”
“Tell me, captain, how is it that they are auctioning off your goods in only a few days, while other in-coming cargoes sit for days or weeks on the docks?”
“None of your business,” Denning said calmly.
Jacoby cleared his throat. “Please, captain, I didn’t mean to be insulting.”
“No, of course not. But you tried anyway.”
“It’s just that I’d like to know how it’s done, for future reference.”
Denning didn’t believe him. “Like you, I know people,” he said. The mayor, for one, he reminded himself.
Jacoby tipped his hat. “Good luck today.”
“Thank you,” Denning said, forcing the words out.
The Silver Sally’s high markup, nonmilitary items disappeared first. They were the latest in female fashions from Paris — dresses, hats, boots, and perfumes. The Cuban cigars, soaps, and other toiletries followed in a flurry. Although the profit was lower, the military articles saw the hardest of competition. Denning watched as they went before the bidders. Fifteen cases of lead bars. Twenty cases of army boots. Thirty cases of leather. More than three thousand Enfield rifles. Twenty-five hundred Austrian rifles. Three hundred barrels of gunpowder. One million cartridges. Two million percussion caps. Denning had made his way near the platform as the last case of guns vanished with the raising of a customer’s arm. There, he checked the assistant’s tally sheet. Four hundred and fifty thousand gross in gold was the result of the three-day run through the Union blockade. After expenses, about one-quarter of that would be clear profit.
Denning nodded, pleased. Pretty damn good haul.
Later, as night fell, Captain Denning took a long walk down Market and Chestnut Streets, finishing up at his ship. Stars poked through the cloud overhead. It would be a cool evening. He thought back to the auction, and shook his head. The heart of the Confederacy was in the hands of a gang of greedy profiteers, holders of government agreements, men like Eli Jacoby, using Wilmington as their home base. They were cold, heartless men who paid gunmen to guard the blockaded goods until prices rose. Their profits helped them buy more shipments. Denning hadn’t expected the war to wind down into such a fierce fight for revenue. But it had. And it was getting worse. The whole world was going money crazy. And he was caught in the middle of it.
For the first time, Denning didn’t like what he saw.
Chapter fifteen
Three days later, off New Inlet
The two officers aboard the cruising gunboat USS Connecticut thought they caught sight of a man-made object outlined against the Atlantic beach.
“What does it look like to you?” Captain Carlisle asked Commander Stephen Farley. Carlisle wiped his brow and gave the telescope to his first mate. It was a warm and sticky night with no moon. He dreaded these Carolina summers.
Farley looked through the eyepiece for about ten seconds, methodically checking the shore. Sure enough, there she was, the pilot house and bow of a ship at anchor peeking through the mist, six or seven hundred yards off port. He couldn’t see any smokestacks or masts, which were undoubtedly lowered to prevent being spotted.
“She’s a blockade runner,” Farley said, excitedly.
“Smell that?”
Farley nodded. He caught the weak scent of anthracite coal, the blockade runners’ fuel. He also smelled brandy on Carlisle’s breath. “Aye, sir. I do.”
“We got one coming out of the gate! All we have to do is throw out the net.” Carlisle grabbed the telescope back. He couldn’t believe his luck. From this distance, the enemy side-wheel steamer bore a close similarity to the Silver Sally. She had the length, close to three hundred feet.
“We’ll have to wait for her to make a move, sir. We can’t go in. Fort Fisher will be in range.”
“Right you are,” Carlisle admitted. “No sense getting shot at. Especially if I can get the pirate to come to us. Let’s give her some slack. All ahead one-third. Let’s see what she’s going to do, eh?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The Connecticut slid out to sea, on a course away from the beach. The enemy made the maneuver Carlisle had hoped for. From a distance of more than a thousand yards out from shore, the runner steered north, leaving the inlet and the high-powered guns at Fort Fisher to the rear, still using the beach as her camouflage.
Now she was out of range of the fort’s guns, exactly what Carlisle wanted. “Slow to one-quarter speed,” ordered Carlisle. It still looked to him like the Silver Sally. His heart beat faster just thinking of another chance at that bastard Denning.
“Aye, sir.”
As the gunboat skimmed across the waves, Carlisle was confident the blockade runner was at his mercy. “Swing the ship completely around, and come up on her stern!”
“Aye, sir. Should I shoot off a flare to alert the other boats?”
“No, dammit! I want her for myself!”
“Right. Yes, of course, sir.”
The Connecticut veered starboard and bore down on the enemy vessel. By blocking her return to New Inlet, Carlisle had forced her into the open. The captain’s pulse quickened. Nothing could go wrong now. Nothing.
The distance narrowed to five hundred yards. And closing.
“What’s she doing now, sir?”
“He’s one tough customer,” Carlisle said, squinting through the eyepiece. “He’s hugging close to the beach. The smokestacks and masts still haven’t gone up. I don’t think the skipper knows we’re behind him. Come with me.”
Farley followed his skipper to the cabin.
“Starboard a little,” Carlisle whispered to the pilot. “Steady... steady.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the pilot replied, comprehending his skipper’s strategy to
come along the enemy’s starboard side.
“Full speed ahead! And have the gun crews on this side on full alert. Go!”
“Aye, sir,” Farley barked. Then he sent his orders down the chain of command. The words raced across the ship in an instant.
“You heard it, men,” said the nearest pivot-gun officer to his four subordinates, as Farley pointed in the direction of the runner. The gun officer’s responsibility was the pivot-mounted, eleven-inch Dahlgren smoothbore, affectionately nicknamed Big Bear. The biggest gun on the cruiser, weighing in at sixteen thousand pounds, Big Bear could fire a 130-pound shell more than four thousand feet.
“Swing her around,” Farley gasped.
One deck hand released the screw-compressor clamps on the gun’s two sides. Another hand pushed the barrel onto the circular rails. Once in position, they locked it with two snaps of the clamps. The crew were poised, awaiting their next order.
At two hundred yards to the enemy’s rear, Carlisle saw three smokestacks and two masts suddenly whip into position. Was it the Sally? Carlisle was forced to do something now. “Aim and fire, Big Bear!” he cried loudly, not worrying about keeping his voice down.
The gun flashed a red flame, illuminating the water for a radius of a hundred yards. The whistling projectile crashed down off the enemy’s stern, and a high spout of water sprayed into the air. They had missed.
“Reload!” Carlisle knew it would take a while for Big Bear to be ready for round two. “Fire howitzer one and two!” he yelled.
The first howitzer shell missed too, but the second one sliced one of the smokestacks in half. Sparks and steel fragments spewed onto the ship’s deck, and several men cried out in agony as the long cylindrical stack landed over the side rail, hissing as it hit the water. Steam rose over midships. A triumphant cheer shook Carlisle’s gunboat.
“Fetch me my megaphone,” Carlisle ordered Farley.
“Aye, sir.”
A small fire had broken out on the crippled Rebel ship, but was quickly snuffed out by her men. By now, the two war vessels were only fifty yards apart. Already three nearby Union gunboats were heading to the action to give support. Carlisle was determined to beat them there. The enemy ship didn’t have a chance with only one funnel to draw a proper draft. Without a healthy fire there would be no steam. She could go no farther. That much was certain.
Carlisle plunked the megaphone to his mouth. “Surrender your ship!” he screamed, his voice whipping across the water to the enemy ship. “There are three back-ups on the way!”
“We surrender,” came the reply. “We have injured men aboard who need medical assistance.”
“Prepare to be boarded!” Carlisle shouted. “We will shoot to kill if provoked.”
“There will be no resistance. The ship is yours.”
Carlisle turned to his first mate. “Farley, grab a lantern, form a boarding detail and launch a lifeboat. Look lively.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Carlisle and Farley took an armed party of seven men up the boat’s side. Carlisle limped aboard the blockade runner. He saw a short, bearded man in a foreign uniform, and an array of officers. The pungent smell of burning destruction hovered in the air. Carlisle faced the skipper at close range. With a flick of his arm, he sent Farley and two sailors off to check the contraband merchandise.
“You the skipper?” Carlisle snorted, raising the lantern to shoulder level.
“I am, sir,” the bearded man said stiffly, squinting at the light. “Captain Andrew Luddenworth of Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s Royal Navy.”
Carlisle doubted the name the skipper gave. Many runner captains used aliases, although he had to be English with that accent. “The name of your ship, sir?” The creaking and banging of wood crates competed with the skippers voices.
“Princess Ann.”
“What is your destination and cargo?”
The British skipper didn’t answer.
“Cat got your tongue, eh?” Carlisle said. “Ah, never mind. Bermuda or Bahamas, it doesn’t matter. It won’t get there.”
Farley appeared at his captain’s side. “What did you find?” Carlisle asked, lowering the lantern to his knee.
“Four injured men. One dead. Crates of turpentine. Bags of rice and tobacco. At least eight hundred bales of cotton, sir. The brand, I couldn’t tell you. And there—”
“Sea Island, sir. I only haul the better quality,” the British skipper answered, having no fear of the Union captors. He knew the law. It was a joke. He’d be set free.
“Oh, you only haul the better quality,” Carlisle said, mocking the Englishman. “Your ship is now the property of the United States Navy. What do you think of that? How many Southerners are aboard?”
“That’s for you to find out.”
“We will. When we do, it’s prison for them all. Where they belong.”
“Sir,” Farley said to Carlisle. “That’s not all she has. There’s a young lady aboard.”
“A lady?” Carlisle stared at Farley.
“Aye, sir. A real good-looker, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“She a stowaway?”
“I doubt it, sir.”
Carlisle thought about, then huffed a reply. “Think she may be a lady of the evening?”
Farley chuckled. “Too good looking and too well dressed for that, sir.”
“Never mind her. Just take her in custody with the rest.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, we did it, Farley.”
“Congratulations, sir, on your first capture.”
Carlisle smiled. Although it wasn’t the Silver Sally, it was still a blockade runner. “When we get to shore, we celebrate.”
Chapter sixteen
Maryland
On the sixteenth of June, Robert E. Lee’s forward column crossed the Potomac into the open, green fields of Maryland. The Union army followed along a wide parallel line, careful to stay between Washington and Lee. The preliminary reports reaching Wilmington of Lee’s invasion of the North were apparently true. Franklin Taylor, for one, saw with his own eyes how swift the advance was.
Fear spread throughout the state as the seventy-thousand-strong Rebel force devoured unripe corn crops. They seized horses, cattle, clothing, food, grain, and wagons from civilians, paying for them in useless Confederate scrip. Taylor remembered the first, less-aggressive invasion of the North in 1862, when Lee was hoping for allies in Maryland. This time the soldiers showed no mercy. They viciously bound free blacks and sent them south into slavery. The raid seemed to intensify once the soldiers had heard that the extreme western portion of Virginia had voted that week to break away from the state and the Confederacy to form West Virginia, the newest state of the Union.
It was a terrible blow to most Virginians in Lee’s army.
* * * *
Taylor was occupied with his own fears after his Signal Corps had waded through the Potomac with the rest of the army’s rear. He didn’t feel a traitor any longer, if he ever had. His home soil of West Virginia had sided with the Union. What better reason to be a Union informer. In the late afternoon, he split away from camp on horseback, his destination the newly-laid telegraph wires. Having failed in his attempt to notify the Union force of Stonewall Jackson’s flank movement at Chancellorsville, Taylor was determined he would advise his base about Lee’s proposed destination.
Coming out in a clearing of tall green weeds, he saw a path winding into a heavily wooded forest. Beyond that, on a hill, stood the poles and lines, six or seven hundred yards to the right. By now he had traveled several miles. Snipers from either side could be in the woods.
He urged his horse into a moderate trot, and set out on the path.
* * * *
Washington, D.C.
The telegraph officer at the Treasury Department jerked as his machine came to life with a steady stream of clicks. The young man grabbed his note pad and copied the letters down as they came over the wires.
“Colonel, it�
��s from Yankee,” he cried out to Lafayette Baker, not taking his eyes from the machine.
Baker stepped into the telegraph room. “Are you certain?”
“I can tell by his fist.”
Following a lengthy series of ticks, the line went dead. With Baker glaring intently over his shoulder, the young man took the jumbled blocks of letters and decoded them using his book. “There it is, sir,” he said, finished, giving the sheet of paper to Baker.
LEE DESPERATELY NEEDS SUPPLIES DESTINATION GETTYSBURG PENNSYLVANIA RUMORS OF SHOE FACTORY YANKEE
Baker smiled. He had good news for Stanton. “Now we know where Lee’s heading.”
“God almighty, sir! Lee’s going to invade Pennsylvania.”
“Yeah. Fancy that. Fine man that Taylor.” Baker was jubilant. “Nice work,” he said to the telegraph officer.
* * * *
Maryland
Taylor jumped when he heard the twig crack. He dismounted and withdrew his pistol slowly. He could hear a distinct rustle of leaves. He could barely see a hundred feet in any direction. The rustle came closer. Was it an animal? A soldier? Where was it? Then he heard a muffled cough.
Was it a Yank or a Reb?
Taylor obeyed his first impulse, which was to hide. He slung the horse’s reins around a tree, then dodged away, squatting down behind a thick trunk. A few seconds later he realized the sound was to his left, leaving him between the unidentified person and his horse. He held his gun up and cocked it. If it was a Union soldier, what would he do? He was on their side, but they wouldn’t know that. He could be shot before he was able to stammer a word in his own defense.
Then, across the thicket, a Reb on horseback came into view.
Taylor’s heart hammered all the way up to his throat. Peering around the trunk, he saw the Reb officer on foot, his horse by his side, held loosely by the reins. Taylor relaxed. As the Reb came within twenty feet of the tree, Taylor uncocked his gun and put it away, then slipped out from behind the trunk, careful not to startle the officer.