by John Brunner
Tyburn knew the approach to Natchez particularly well, and was by mutual agreement bringing her into the reach below the city. Drew would take the wheel personally when the coal flats came out. Tyburn was signaling for them now with repeated blasts on the whistle.
And beyond that… Well, with luck the lead they had would be increased here; using Drew’s methods, they reckoned to waste only four or five minutes on refueling, while the other boat might easily lose ten. So the helm could be left to the junior member of the team. Fernand fretted and frowned as he mentally reviewed every shift in the channel, every new-fallen tree this summer had shown him.
As to the lead, however:
“How far behind is she now?” Tyburn demanded as he sidled by the great sandbar southeast of Como Landing, which was bound to grow up in a few years and reroute the river.
Field glasses to his eyes, Drew said, “Better than twenty minutes. Could be close on thirty.”
Fernand was feeling light-headed. The prospect of becoming a married man kept intruding on his concentration. He said musingly, “Like we predicted! Lighter she gets, the more she takes a sheer at every bend! But I reckon Parbury can feel as much as you or I can calculate. When she leaves Natchez she’ll be just nicely balanced, with as much coal as she needs and no more, for fear it make her wallow.”
Tyburn and Drew exchanged approving looks.
“What follows from that, then?” Drew pursued.
“She’s going to do her damnedest to overtake before nightfall… Mary mother of God, why didn’t I see that sooner? Of course! She’s bound to try and pass us in the reach above Waterproof—somewhere in Petit Gulf and probably south of Island 111!”
“Why?”
“You know damned well— Excuse me.” Fernand wiped his face. “But I should have spotted it sooner. Shouldn’t I?”
There was a pause. In the meantime Tyburn altered course skillfully to avoid some floating logs and sounded the whistle again, this time to warn off an overeager excursion boat.
“Ah, I guess no man is to blame when he finds a woman to steal his heart,” the captain said at last.
Fernand grinned.
“That’s a fine sentiment, sir. May I know where the quotation comes from? I’d like to note it down.”
“Quotation?” Drew returned blankly. “I don’t believe I ever saw it written.”
“Then you have the making of a poet yourself!” Fernand exclaimed.
But the compliment was wasted. There was a sudden flurry as the excursion steamer threatened to lose way in the path of some idiot’s sailboat that he had crammed with girls in fashionable dresses too cumbersome for them to be any help in a crisis of rerigging, and when it was over Tyburn stepped back from the wheel with a huge yawn, surrendering command to Drew.
“You got her, Captain,” he said with formality. “I’m off to catch a ration of sleep.”
Looking after him as he ponderously descended the stairs, aware of the way in which the population of Natchez—lately claimed to have topped the ten-thousand mark—had bloomed at windows and along the shore like a millennial crop of mushrooms, Fernand wryly realized that in truth he had far to go before he became a seasoned pilot.
Still, his sharp observation concerning Parbury had struck home.
If only there were some way to free his mind from the distractions caused by having Dorcas and his mother on board! It was the essence of a fairy-tale curse, visited on the fortunate one because he did not think things through.
“For someone who reportedly did not see military service,” Cherouen pronounced sententiously, “it must be admitted that Captain Drew possesses a remarkable grasp of organization and discipline. On a good day, that is.”
Sycophantic chuckles greeted the remark. His reputation had been enough to ensure him a group of hangers-on for the duration of the trip. But no one replied. All were too involved in watching Drew’s famous refueling-on-the-run. Ashore, many people had witnessed it before; that did not diminish their excitement.
With their brawny crews paying out long thick hawsers, two flat barges of the largest size were being floated out from shore by the action of the current; the ropes served to position them, aided by men with poles and sweeps. Each was stacked as high as was safe with coal—in boxes rather than bags, for the wood too could be burned.
As Drew slowed the steamer and aligned her on the gap between them her deckhands assembled on the guards under the direction of her mates: Chalker to starboard, on the Natchez side, and Sexton to larboard, the Vidalia side. The river here being so broad, however, those at Vidalia were enjoying a poor view or none at all, unless they had put out in some of the boats that, numerous as mosquitoes, threatened to clog the racing steamer’s passage. Drew sounded his whistle savagely, and a few took the hint, but others pressed still closer—dangerously so.
Suddenly Gross appeared on the foredeck. Though no longer young, he still boasted a fine and resonant voice.
“Fair warning!” he bellowed. “Our pilot will not slow or put about for any vessel in our path! I say again: we shall not slow or put about if you get in our way!”
That did it. Hastily looking around them and discovering they were apt to be crushed between the Atchafalaya and the coal flats, several young men leaned frantically on their oars and were able to make use of the steamer’s bow wave to get clear—but only just.
Even as they were dispersing, though, yet another small boat closed in: this time a battered steam launch uttering thick smoke and horrible noises from machinery long overdue for repair. Standing at her prow was a man cupping his hands to his mouth and shouting. Fragments of his words reached the ears of those aboard the Atchafalaya.
“Reporter—Memphis Avalanche—hundred dollars…!”
Fernand was at Drew’s side in the pilothouse. To him, between clenched teeth, the captain said, “That idiot looks like he’s going to try and cut across our bows! Go tell him to get lost! Take a pistol to him if you must, but see him off!”
With alacrity Fernand darted down the stairs.
The barge crews flung lines to the steamer, and they were made fast: Chalker’s in less than ten seconds, Sexton’s in well under twenty. At once Drew signaled full ahead, and the barges closed on the steamer’s sides while a human chain seized box after box of coal, to the accompaniment of rhythmic chanting, and hurled them on board. By the time both flats were empty the steamer was clear of the city and her deck crew was exhausted, but there was fuel and to spare for even the most extravagant run to Vicksburg.
Whereafter all should have gone with the smoothness of a well-made watch. With their cheering crews the barges were to be cast loose to drift back on the current, so that the Atchafalaya would be free to charge ahead again, swinging around Rifle Point and its fledging of immature willows. It had all happened before.
But Drew’s guess about the steam launch was only too correct. Instead of giving up, the reporter had passed money to the boat’s owner, more pantomiming than speaking his order to get ahead of the Atchafalaya at all costs. Tucking the fee away, the owner—a melancholy-faced man in clothes much stained with soot and oil—pushed his steam valves to their widest, and the row from the engine achieved such a peak, it momentarily outdid the thunder of the larger boat.
Seeing this, Drew shouted down the speaking tubes for yet more power, intending to leave this nuisance behind.
But even as the engineers hastened to comply, Fernand spotted something that was eloquent of calamity.
Not quite all the tree trunks loosened by the river’s gnawing had gone by. Here came another—and it was colossal! No mere soft cottonwood or flexible willow, but a white oak of thirty good years’ growth… and if Drew put about to miss it, he would surely sink the launch beneath the Atchafalaya’s starboard wheel.
While if he did not, it would strike the larboard wheel and break Lord alone knew how many of its buckets!
“Keep cursing him!” Fernand yelled at Gross. “Blister his goddamned hide until i
t bleeds!”
And raced back to the pilothouse, three steps at a time.
Even as he flung open the door, however, he knew Drew had come to the only possible conclusion. He heard the bells for full astern on both, and his heart sank as he thought of all the headway this would cost.
He glanced astern and stiffened. There! The Nonpareil, with a clear reach ahead of her, being greeted like her rival with cheers and pistol shots and fireworks.
And the Atchafalaya shuddered, stem to stern.
“We hit the log!” he exclaimed.
“It was that,” Drew answered grayly, “or sink the launch and drown the fools aboard.”
At once he seized the speaking tubes again, issuing rapid orders to Diamond, Fonck and O’Dowd. “One cracked bucket!” was the burden of his message, and by the time Fernand gained a view from the larboard window deckhands with hatchets were already swarming out to smash away the paddlebox and manhandle another bucket into position.
“Just so long as we didn’t spring the pitman…” Drew said, more to himself than Fernand, and waited for a report from Fonck. It was favorable: the impact had been gentle enough to do no worse harm.
“Thanks be,” Drew said at last, wiping his face. “I’m on an errand of mercy, so they tell me, and sending even such blind idiots as those to a water grave would haunt my conscience all my life. But I wish with all my soul it hadn’t happened in plain sight of them!”
One thing at least had turned out well. The launch’s engine, overstrained, had sprung a steam leak, and now she was being carried helplessly downstream by the current, the reporter still shouting hysterical promises of enormous bribes to anybody who could put him aboard the Atchafalaya.
“Serve him right,” said Drew contemptuously. “Half the time when you waste an hour talking to ‘em, they get it wrong when they write it down.” And added, leaning out of the wide-open larboard window, “Don’t just stand there like you’re growing roots, you sons of perdition! Hump yourselves! Going to be a year getting that bucket fixed? Lively now! Ain’t no funeral you’re bound for less it’s your own! Get the lead out of your breeches!”
A cheer answered this tribute from “Old Poetical,” and wood chips flew wildly. But an even more rousing one came from astern as the Nonpareil stormed into full view.
“Jump to it!” Drew roared. “Jump, or I’ll strangle you in your own guts, you lazy spawn of unrighteousness! I don’t want to see you move—I want you to move so fast I can’t see you!”
Over his shoulder, in a hasty aside to Fernand: “Is all well down on deck?”
“You can’t guess which way Cherouen will blow,” Fernand answered sourly.
“Yeah, I guess not… But I surely wish it hadn’t been young Walt who got scalded! Nimble as a monkey, him! That’s who we need out there on the wheel!”
Fernand gave a sober nod. The untrained deckhands were doing their best, but even so… He checked his watch anxiously. Far too much time was leaking away.
Moreover, lacking power, the Atchafalaya was being carried downstream like the launch.
Suddenly there were heavy footsteps on the stairs, and Barber stood glaring in the doorway.
“What happened?” he demanded. “And how much longer is this going on?”
Not turning, Drew said, “Didn’t you see that fool reporter doing his damnedest to get drowned?”
“Of course I saw him! And why the hell wouldn’t you take him aboard? It could do us all kinds of good to have our lead published in the papers!”
“It’s happening already,” Drew snapped. “We can manage fine without some inky-fingered son of a bitch pestering the passengers.” Without waiting for a reply, he leaned out of the window once more and shouted, “That’s more like it, you clubfooted offspring of Belial! Get that bucket bolted fast and maybe your mothers will recognize you when you get home!”
A speaking tube shrilled; he seized it. The voice was Fonck’s.
“Cap’n, we found something else!”
“What?” Drew barked.
“Had a backup of pressure when we hit that log. Got to fix a sprung union.”
“Bad?”
“Needs slacking and repacking. Five minutes?”
“Make it two!” Drew twisted his head around. “I see the Nonpareil too close for comfort!”
“Yeah, but she still has to refuel.”
“Sure, but even so… Hey!”
“What was that?” Fonck demanded.
“I guess we got the time you need,” Drew said slowly. “But hurry it up anyhow. I didn’t ask for this and they could claim the race because of it.”
“What?”
“Tell you later!”
Drew slammed the speaking tube back on its hook and, together with Barber and Fernand, stared at what was happening astern.
One of the coal flats they had cast off was floating across the river instead of being homed to its wharf. Perhaps the crew were too partial to the Atchafalaya… but if that flat blocked the course of the Nonpareil, or worse yet collided with her, then many people would call off their bets.
“I didn’t ask for that,” Drew repeated under his breath. “I swear I didn’t. But I could name a hundred who’d not believe me.”
For a long and painful minute they stood as though petrified. Then came a cry from the men working on the wheel: the new bucket was in place.
But by then, having avoided the coal-flat as the current bore it to one side, the Nonpareil was heading for her own fuel-barges, and still Fonck had not reported a cure for the leaky union.
“Got it!” he shouted an unbearable eternity later, and added, “Full ahead whenever you like, Cap’n!”
“Now!”
But the Nonpareil was coaling up, and the precious lead won by her rival had been cut in half. Now it was nip and tuck.
Exactly what had caused the delay to the Atchafalaya was not apparent from the Nonpareil as she stormed toward Natchez to the accompaniment of even louder shouts than had greeted her rival, plus her own band of music.
Never mind! Here was a God-sent opportunity to make up distance!
“Just so long as we lose no more time in coaling than she did, we’ll close the gap!” Woodley predicted to Hogan, who had the wheel, and Parbury gave a long-drawn sigh of relief.
The air crackled with tension as they drew close to the wharf, with the Atchafalaya being born backward toward them—and one of her coal-flats also, while men with sweeps madly flailed the water.
“If that’s one of Drew’s tricks…!” Woodley whispered.
But it wasn’t. The crew of the flat were as eager to avoid collision as Hogan was, and the encounter cost them at most a few seconds. Call it accident…
But now they were to make their own coaling stop, and because Drew had been here first, the best-positioned flats, nearer the center of the river, had been claimed. They had to slow more than the Atchafalaya, and they took longer to lash the flats and start unloading them.
Well before the job was finished, the Atchafalaya was once more under way at full power.
Gordon marched importantly off to oversee the refueling, leaving Matthew in possession of the field glasses through which, during the morning, he had stared in frustration at the leading boat.
That suited the boy splendidly. He was scanning the shore, spotting scores of beautiful girls, some demurely tagging at their parents’ heels, some hanging shamelessly on young men’s arms.
Determination mounted in him. Sooner or later he would have a girl. Not one bought for him by his boss! One of his own choice! It must be possible!
The recollection of Gordon, so pompous and absurd in his “national dress,” was about the only thing related to his disastrous evening at the Limousin that made Matthew want to laugh. But he preferred staring at the girls and thinking how much better they would look than Gordon in skirts as short as the latter’s kilt.
Particularly since he could not possibly be wearing it by right—
Oh, no!<
br />
What had he done with his precious book about tartans?
Even as he set forth to search for it, however, a hand fell on his arm and a much-hated voice rasped in his ear.
“Boy, they say you have field glasses! Tell me what’s going on!”
Parbury had a fierce grip, and his visage was grim enough to arouse childlike terrors. Matthew cast about desperately for rescue.
“Lost your tongue?”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, sir!”
“Tell me what you see, that’s all! Boxes of coal are being brought aboard, right?”
“Why, of course!”
“Are they flowing smoothly, like midstream water?”
“Uh…” Abruptly Matthew caught an inkling of what Parbury was driving at. “No, sir! I saw one dropped a moment ago.”
“Dropped! You must be lying!” His clawlike grip closed tighter.
“I swear it, sir! Clear over the side of the barge!”
“Dropped!” Parbury repeated the word as though savoring its bitter taste, and released Matthew. “Oh, it’s always the same! Want to learn a lesson, young man? No matter how hard you work to make something perfect, someone else can always ruin it. Tell me the names of the foremen down there”—with a jab of his forefinger toward the coal flats.
“I don’t know them, sir. Never saw them before.”
“But you were aboard last time we coaled at this wharf!”
“That was coming downriver at night!” Matthew cried. And before he could stop himself: “Have you forgotten there’s a difference?”
Parbury became a statue for the space of half a dozen heartbeats. Then he relaxed like the miracle of Pygmalion, and actually laughed. Short and dry the sound was, but it was laughter.
“I was about to teach you a lesson, and you taught me one. Good luck to you, boy. You should go far!”
Whereupon he swung around and, by memory and the use of his stick, stalked away while others hastily stepped aside. Even the first-time passengers had learned by now that Mr. Parbury was the person not to cross.
He left Matthew wholly unaware of what he was supposed to have done.