by John Brunner
Fernand stole back into the pilothouse with all the uncertainty of his days as a cub. What Drew had admitted about the difference between racing and merely making a high-speed run had vividly recalled to memory something he had heard Parbury say, on one of the rare occasions he had been able to remain long enough in the parlor of the Pilots’ Guild to eavesdrop on its doyen.
Parbury had declared that neither the Mississippi nor storm nor earthquake could be your enemy, but only another human being.
It had much to do, Fernand had gathered, with his experiences in the war.
Hereabouts they were coming into the most mobile portion of the river they had so far encountered. Lower down, it might be a decade, or a generation, before a new cutoff established itself, or an island rejoined the mainland, or a town was abolished. Here, and for hundreds of miles to come, a single season might suffice. Here ill-fortune was to be taken for granted. Even the proud new city of Commerce, at the upper end of Grand Cutoff, was under threat.
A century later, instead of a vital and flourishing community, there would be labels on revetments and guiding lights. Island 56 would be locked irrevocably to the mainland, and it would not be the only one…
Fernand was thinking about the future, and even from the narrow standpoint of his experience he was resonating to the fluctuations of the Mississippi. Much of this was already present to his subconscious—such-and-such a cutoff was deepening, such-and-such an island was silting up in the chute to its east or west side, such-and-such a towhead was going to become an island and there would be no number to spare for it, so it must acquire a name!
The prospect of becoming a father was working like a ferment in his brain. Once Dorcas had talked about the way she watched bread dough rising, spoken of something from the very air that could change and alter and make food where none was before…
This river could make and break land, and cities, and the hearts of men.
He crept into the pilothouse, therefore, trying to make less sound than a breeze, very much afraid of his momentary impulse to have all the magic charms scrubbed away, which his mother—and Dorcas!—believed essential to success.
And waited, wondering what on earth Drew could conjure up to frustrate the Nonpareil, which came thundering into the clear straight run of Grand Cutoff a scant few hundred yards behind, as ever with her band blasting on the foredeck and her whistle uttering its heart-piercing note and generally announcing her presence to the world whether or not the world gave a damn.
“Mr. Motley, you must make it clear to your captain that if he does not deliver me to St. Louis ahead of the Nonpareil, my guarantee of the fee for the trip may be void!”
“Mr. Motley, if we arrive at St. Louis later than the Nonpareil, my commission to write funeral music may be canceled!”
“Mr. Motley, if we don’t beat the Nonpareil, I stand to lose fifty thousand!”
Mr. Motley… Mr. Motley!
It was a sad predicament, Motley found—being the senior officer without obvious duties.
Yet it did have certain compensations. It was a pleasure to say to the people who stood to lose by their bets, “Sir, if you distrust the management of the Atchafalaya, why did you make such wagers on her?”
Moreover it was a way of making other people laugh—a rare achievement for someone as solemn and devoted to duty as a steamer’s chief clerk—to say, to this fop who spoke with such a funny accent, “Mossoo, you weren’t driven aboard at pistol point, were you?”
Above all, it was gratifying to say to Cherouen, “Doctor, you had your pick of every boat on the river when you left New Orleans! You selected ours, when you might have gone by railroad!”
And that was where the pinch was felt. Canny as his opposite number McNab, without a Scottish name, Motley was first and foremost a commercial calculator. In his view anyone wanting to reach St. Louis in a hurry from New Orleans would for years past have done better to take the cars, disregarding the risk of derailments and washouts. Year by year he had watched the passenger receipts aboard one boat after another decline, while the profits from bulk freight—clean and sweet like cotton or tobacco, or foul and reeking like smoked fish or tung oil… Lord preserve him from tung oil!—increased apace.
This racing was a foolishness! In his view Drew should have told Cherouen to ride the railroad and take his chances. He should have told Larzenac to do the same.
But the principle once established… Well, here he was at the end of his career, and it was better to be retired from a record-breaking steamer than an anonymous, forgotten one.
Maybe after this trip he would be able to afford a share in a boat of his own, free of such interference by the gambling fraternity. That one would be devoted to safe and silent cargo, free of these lunatic passengers half of whom wanted to enjoy the race and half of whom wanted to follow the Atchafalaya’s original course to Louisville. It might even be—heresy!—a towboat.
“Mr. Motley! What about transfers to Ohio ports?”
“We have arranged with the fast and reliable steamer Luke S. Thrale to transfer passengers and baggage at no extra cost to yourselves!”
But it shouldn’t have been necessary. Other people, warned about the change of destination, had accepted refunds and gone to find another boat. These had said they were happy to go to St. Louis for the excitement of the race, then changed their minds.
It was no way to run a proper commercial service. It offended him, Euclid Motley, who so much admired the rigid logic of his namesake.
Therefore he took especial pleasure in telling the rudest of those who complained that they would have done better not to board a riverboat in the first place.
Some of his listeners began to talk about going ashore at Memphis and taking the rail from there. But not enough to wholly relieve his mind.
And here it was at last: Grand Cutoff, where the river had slashed a new course from Island 53 to Island 54. It was not very long, but it was broad and knife straight.
Field glasses to his eyes, Fernand looked alternately ahead and astern. Ahead, he was hoping against hope he might spot another boat coming down, which could block the Nonpareil as the Annie Hampton had. But there was nothing to be seen before the next bend, bar some boys in a flat-bottomed skiff, waving a tattered Union flag.
And, of course, on the banks, the inevitable watchers.
Astern there was the Nonpareil coming on at full power. She had narrowed the gap to a quarter of a mile, and the passengers and crew of both boats were beside themselves with excitement. Now, in a plain straight reach like this, she must have the advantage. What in heaven’s name could Drew pull out of the hat to baffle her now?
But he seemed remarkably calm, chewing on his quid of tobacco and now and then turning to let fly at the cuspidor. Moreover, as Fernand suddenly realized, it was not merely chewing that made his jaw move; he was once again reciting to himself.
Greatly daring, Fernand said, “Cap’n, I can’t quite hear you!”
“Hmm? Oh, I guess not. Thinking aloud more than anything.” Drew gave the wheel a precisely measured tug and laid the Atchafalaya parallel to the southwestern bank; here that was the slacker water, but it meant he was leaving the shorter course open to the faster boat, and Fernand quailed.
Before he had a chance to say anything more, however, Drew had continued: “ ‘I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift!’”
Although the translation was unfamiliar, Fernand instantly recognized the quotation.
“And I’d be obliged,” Drew finished, “if you would deploy those glasses and tell me whether there’s anything coming down the chute from the larboard side of Council Island!”
“But—” Fernand began, and could have bitten his tongue off. For the second time this trip he had been guilty of overlooking… well, not the obvious; one had to be very wily and experienced to spot what Drew had worked out by reflex.
Of course!
At the head of Grand Cutoff, Island 53, Co
uncil Island, was on its way to rejoining the mainland. It had long been safer to take the Austin—eastward—side.
But on every fall of the river, particularly in winter, when so much of its flow was locked into ice and snow, debris up to and including whole tree trunks could get trapped in the narrow chute. Little by little the summer flow loosened it, but it never disappeared entirely—one of the reasons why the island would eventually cease to be an island.
Nonetheless drift was constantly breaking away, and that was what Drew was gambling on. Fernand saw the scheme now, clear as a landscape illuminated by lightning. It was perfectly legitimate to put about to avoid floating logs; when he did so, he would have to cut across into the path the Nonpareil was intending to take, thereby swamping her once again with the Atchafalaya’s wake. Already the Nonpareil was heading determinedly for the starboard side of the channel, and the gap was reduced to no more than twice the length of either vessel.
But everything depended on whether there truly was drift coming down from the chute. Hands shaking, Fernand refocused his glasses and was hard put to it not to shout for joy.
His voice, though, was steady as he said, “I see a pretty fair mess of trees and boughs heading our way.”
“Suits me,” Drew grunted. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he carried on along the same course.
“How did you know this would happen?”
“Didn’t,” Drew answered curtly. “Maybe your mother’s charms worked the trick.”
From the foredeck a sudden shout went up: “Ware drift!”
Leaning forward, holding the wheel onehanded, Drew flung open the pilothouse window and shouted, “Thank you, Mr. Sexton! I have it in my sights!”
And still made no move to alter course.
Fernand stared in disbelief. Had he misjudged Drew’s plan completely? Here came the Nonpareil, gaining visibly as every ounce of power was applied to her wheels. Alarmed, despondent, the Atchafalaya’s crew and passengers alike were sharing his puzzlement. What in thunderation was the old man up to? They were almost halfway along the cutoff, the rival boat was poised to cut through on the inside of the next bend, and—
And the drift was upon them!
At which point, with all the aplomb in the world, Drew put his wheel over to larboard, not starboard after all. The Atchafalaya’s bow sheer caught the mass of vegetation—mostly willows, with a few larger cottonwoods and what looked like a live oak mixed in with them—and it slithered away to the steamer’s right side.
Where, despite the best efforts of her polemen, the suction of the Nonpareil’s larboard wheel was ready to draw it fatefully in.
“I guess we have no more than half a fathom clearance hereabouts,” Drew mused as though talking to himself. “I better not cut the bank too fine, right?”
And at long last turned on to the starboard heading Fernand had originally expected.
So doing, he created a sidewise wash—nothing as fierce as the one which had strained the rudder post, but perfectly adequate to carry the mass of drift up against the Nonpareil for all her attempts to evade it. Thanks to the combined racket of all four giant cylinders blasting away, it was impossible to hear the crunch and crack as a willow trunk jammed between the buckets and the paddlebox, but Fernand saw it happen and felt it as though it had been one of his own bones going snap.
A grand huzza went up from those among the Atchafalaya’s passengers who appreciated what a feat of steersmanship they had just witnessed. Fernand was tempted to join in. He had piloted boats through this stretch of the river a score of times; he had known that the chute past 53 now and then shed such clumps of vegetation, so it was advisable to keep to the east of the channel—and he had taken such matters so much for granted, he would not have been able to guess how nearly one might shave the western side, let alone put two and two together as Drew had done and take advantage of what was normally a nuisance.
Yet the question remained: how could he have been so sure?
At the wheel the captain stretched and yawned and said, “Oh, Fernand, Fernand…! I never knew till now what capacity I have to be a villain! Has she taken much harm, the Nonpareil?”
Fernand scanned her with his glasses. She was swinging broadside to the current, thanks to her larboard wheel having been forcibly stopped before the engineers could cut the power to the other one, so it was impossible to judge.
He contented himself by declaring, “Enough to be going on with!”
Drew was laying into the marks for the next bend, heading for Bladsoe’s Landing, where they must for the uncountableth time swing back to a southerly heading. Always this infernal frustration, having to backtrack and sidle: two steps back for every three forward… but at least now the Nonpareil was guaranteed not to overtake!
Fernand could contain himself no longer. He repeated his earlier demand: “How could you have predicted that drift?”
“I guess Mr. Barber and his kind would say I was backing an even chance. At least half the times I’ve passed here in summer since the Grand Cutoff formed, that chute has shed something after being disturbed by the wake of a steamer.”
“After being…” Fernand’s jaw dropped. He snatched his glasses back to his eyes and searched the sky above the next reach, from Bladsoe’s Landing to Commerce, where he had not previously looked.
And there was what he hadn’t spotted, but Drew had: smoke wisps betraying another boat.
“She’ll be the Cordelia,” Drew said, and turned to spit the residue of his chaw into the cuspidor. “Clumsy tub! Too much beam for her engines! You’ve seen her!”
And indeed Fernand had, tied up at the Vicksburg wharf, but she was in the Vicksburg–St. Louis trade, and consequently he had never met her on the water; only on the Atchafalaya’s run with Dr. Larzenac had he worked the long Mississippi since her appearance, rather than turning off to Louisville.
Yet Drew, likewise…
Indescribably impressed, he said, “Sir, you were talking earlier about my mother’s charms.”
Shrugging, looking uncomfortable, Drew said with a trace of defiance, “Sometimes I think I’d call on the devil himself if I could win this race and be sure it was the only one I ever ran!”
“You don’t have to.”
“What?”
Fernand, moved by a strange impulse, put his arm around the older man’s shoulders.
“Sir, there aren’t any charms aboard this boat. Not any more. I set Mr. Amboy’s stewards to getting rid of them. You did that on your unaided skill and judgment. And you still have more to teach me than you’ve told me yet. So I want you to be the best man at my wedding, and—and will you stand godfather to my firstborn?”
There was a pause while Drew made yet another of the minuscule adjustments to their course that were dictated by such tiny factors as the wake of the much-abused Cordelia. Shortly she must be overtaken—but that would be a trivial problem.
At last the captain said, “It’s on the way?”
Fernand nodded.
“I guessed it was possible, but I wasn’t sure. Yes! Yes, but on condition!”
“Anything!”
“That you get your head down, damnit! Don’t go canoodling with Dorcas now, but get some rest! Because if you run us aground in the dark…!”
“I’m on my way! But—”
“What now?”
“But one more question, Cap’n! What would you have done if the Cordelia hadn’t shaken loose that drift?”
“Same as before: tried washing the Nonpareil into the shallows.”
“And risked breaking the rudder post completely? The last time was on a bend! How could you do it in a straight reach?”
“That’s why I had Josh standing by with his forge alight to make more cramps. You didn’t notice?”
Fernand felt himself once more victimized by blushing; he was glad he was behind Drew.
“But on reflection I doubt it would have worked,” the captain finished. “So call us lucky… Are you going?”
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“Right away,” Fernand declared, opening the door. But he had to add one final comment as he looked toward the Nonpareil.
“You know, I bet they’re hating us back there!”
“That son of a bitch has the luck of the devil!” Woodley raged. “Unless he hired someone to cut loose that drift just as we were closing on him!”
Hogan said stonily, as he juggled the Nonpareil in mid-river using the surviving wheel and the rudder, “I said we’d been ill-wished, didn’t I? There was no way he could have known a clump like that was going to float free just as he came on it. Soon’s he saw it, of course, he knew what to do, and there isn’t a pilot on the river could have dodged. Oh, he’s the wiliest of us all! Now he’s using every trick he ever learned or heard of—never mind how dirty, so long as he keeps the lead!”
The pilothouse door opened to admit Parbury, who had been down on the foredeck as usual. His face was gray with fatigue, and his expression a mask of suppressed rage. But his tongue was as acid as ever when he said, “Dermot, how in hell did you let him catch you out?”
Hogan bridled. “I did my utmost—!”
“And you didn’t realize that drift was going to be bust loose by the Cordelia’s wake?”
There was a sudden dead pause. Woodley said at length, “The Cordelia?”
“Oh, in heaven’s name!” Parbury thumped the floor with his cane. “I have no eyes of my own! I’ve been watching through the eyes of that boy Matthew! And he told me about the wake ripples! He’s bright, that one—could even make a pilot if he weren’t so dainty and fine-mannered! Dermot, how often have you been past here and seen a steamer’s wake shake off a bunch of logs from the Council Island chute?”
Hogan scowled, but forbore to reply.
“So how do you know about this Cordelia?” Woodley rasped.
“Don’t you know your steamer schedules? What other boat could be clearing Grand Cutoff about now, except maybe a towboat failing to keep her times? Ah, to perdition with it! How much damage did we take? I heard a crack, but it sounded more like green wood than one of the buckets.”