by John Brunner
At the root of their difficulties lay one insuperable fact. When the pipes were under pressure, they were rigid; they might as well have been cast-iron bars, whereas the boat was limber, flexing to every wave and current.
But they were not rigid all the time. Whenever steam was being admitted to the cylinders, the pressure fell somewhat; whenever one engine was stopped, the pressure was cut off entirely, then surged back at full force. In the interim the metal had had the chance to cool down—not by very much, granted, but Caesar had seen long ago, before he took over from the white engineer at the Predulac plantation, how accidentally running cold water through hot pipes could make them crack open. He was dimly guessing at the nature of thermal shock. If it worked with cold water and hot metal, why not with cold metal and far hotter steam? Besides, you could see the pipes strain on their supports; they had a pulse, like a man’s. And could not a weak blood vessel in the heart or brain bring about his death?
Every time he was able to quit the engineroom, he was grateful to have survived his watch, and he slept only fitfully, thinking that at any time he might be roused by screams.
He wished he could stop himself from feeling after the trickenbag he had grown so used to.
And also that Mam’zelle Josephine had not seen fit to deny her powers.
How strange the sensation was of being rattled over rails after the smoother progress of a steamboat! The contrast was infinitely useful to Joel. He was sleepy, and would otherwise have dropped off despite having company.
As for Whitworth, he remained inscrutable. It was impossible to tell whether he was embarrassed at having been caught out in a lie, or even whether he realized he had been lying. Though he did add a word of warning: “I guess it’s because I sleep so little that when I do I sleep so deep! I’m glad you’re along, otherwise I’d have to rely on the conductor to turn me out at Milan, and even if you tip ‘em all you can afford, you can’t trust darkies. Like they say, there’s God’s time, and railroad time, and nigger time!” He gave a harsh laugh.
“You’re in favor of this idea of regularizing time into zones?” Joel suggested.
“Sure I am!” Whitworth said bluffly. “Changing your watch every time you move a degree or two east or west—it’s all foolishness! Much better to change one hour at a time after traveling a good long distance, don’t you think?”
As a matter of fact, Joel did, but for the sake of keeping his mind busy he took the devil’s advocate role, and afterward led the conversation down another dozen paths, until shortly before they reached Milan when, with relief, he saw Whitworth beginning to yawn.
“I guess since there’s a good long wait before the Cairo train, I could snatch some rest,” he admitted. “You?”
Joel shook his head. “I was lucky last night,” he lied. “I still feel pretty wide awake.”
“That’s great. Watch by me during the layover, and I’ll do the same for you when you need it, right?”
“It’s a deal.”
Though how Joel was going to keep his end of the bargain he didn’t know. Maybe if there was strong coffee to be got at Milan…
Not that he wanted to sleep. His mind was preoccupied with a score of other matters, apart from the mystery of Whitworth’s log. How, for example, was Louisette getting on? Cabling her at home was probably useless; she might all too easily have been obliged to remain at Baton Rouge.
What sort of a person could Arthur be, that he let the mother of his child undergo such torment? And what was he going to say and do when his fellow passengers recognized him in Joel’s reports? At least one of the papers likely to copy them was bound to have gone on board at Memphis; it was amazing none had been received earlier. When Arthur saw them, would he again attack Auberon, since the author was not available? In that case, would Auberon have the sense to avoid a fight?
Poor devil!
Joel shivered. Perhaps it had been cowardly of him to leave the Nonpareil when he was aware that that might happen…
As though divining his thoughts, Whitworth started inquiring about Arthur and Auberon’s disagreement. Doing his best not to speak overfreely, Joel answered.
Whitworth shook his head. “I guess it can’t be good for a man to have too much of this world’s goods,” he opined sententiously. “A camel through a needle’s eye—ain’t that the way of it?”
A little put out, Joel raised a question that had been at the back of his mind.
“How do you reckon the Nonpareil will get on, deprived of one of her key officers?”
“I guess I got my deck crew perfectly trained,” Whitworth retorted with a huffy look. “Whether I’m there or not, they’ll do their damnedest.” A grin twisted his newly-bare upper lip.
“Used to be with Drew, you know! He always told his men, ‘Act like you don’t know whether I’m there or not! Because I could be!’”
Joel faked a smile at the witticism and went back to yet another of the mysteries about this man: why he should have taken time out to shave off his moustache.
The layover at Milan was indeed going to be a long one. The train they planned to connect with was behind time, though not late enough to prejudice their chance of overtaking the Atchafalaya. And the atmosphere was even worse than at Memphis. Since this was not a terminus, there was not a single locomotive in the depot at this hour, and frustrated passengers and night-duty railroadmen wandered about or sat in corners smoking and chawing tobacco and exchanging desultory gossip, under what was little more than a sketch for a roof. At least it was a clear warm night.
By now Whitworth was yawning continually. He pointed at a vacant bench.
“Guess I could do with a little shut-eye,” he said. “Say, if we sit with our feet on our bags, it would be kind of hard for anyone to…?”
“Suits me,” Joel answered, matching words and action.
Whitworth leaned his head on his arm and soon began to snore. In a matter of minutes he turned around and his feet slipped off his bag. But Joel let a safe quarter hour elapse before he gradually eased himself away and, moving with utmost care, exchanged his bag for Whitworth’s. In the dim light of flaring kerosene and naphtha lamps, they looked more identical than ever.
Whitworth stirred but did not awaken; what he had said about needing little sleep, but that very deep, was plainly true.
Hoping against hope he could carry off his pretense of having made a genuine mistake, Joel hastened toward an all-night washroom whose sign he had spotted as they came off their train! There was an attendant, but he was sleepy and uncaring.
As soon as he was sure he was unobserved, he opened Whitworth’s bag and removed the pine log. A moment’s inspection revealed it had been split down the middle, hollowed out, and reassembled with a peg and a bit of string. A thought sprang unbidden to his mind. When carrying fuel aboard a steamer, or tossing it into the furnaces, who would look twice at this or any chunk of wood?
All the time rehearsing in his head the excuses he would make if Whitworth caught him, he produced the pocketknife he always carried, eased the string out of the way, and pried the log apart. And in its hollow center…
A tube about ten inches long, brown, made of thick cardboard, with a wooden plug tamped into each end.
Heart pounding, he turned the thing over, noting that one plug was furnished with a pair of copper wires. He remembered what Josephine had said about a brown stick, and the hairs prickled on his nape.
After what seemed like half eternity, he gathered his wits. Did he have any kind of container with him…? Sure he did: his pocket match-safe.
Hastily he emptied it. Then, using utmost care, he levered out the plug at the bottom of the tube. Inside there was a molasses-dense liquid with sparkles in it.
He snapped his fingers. He recognized this stuff! What a miraculous series of coincidences had led up to that! Although almost ruined by his unwise speculation in slaves during the war, his father had never given up hope of recouping the family’s fortunes, and among the many notions h
e had toyed with was the offer of an agency for an explosive developed by a firm back east, using mica to stabilize nitroglycerine, which he had rejected because, having had his fingers burnt so often, he insisted on guarantees the manufacturers were unwilling to provide. So far as Joel knew, the offer of the agency was still being peddled around New Orleans.
But this was the explosive: no doubt of it. Mica powder, it was called.
He poured enough of it out of the tube and into his match-safe to serve as proof if he had to stand up in court. Then he scraped the rest down the drain, replugged the tube, assembled and retied the log, and returned it to the bag.
What a story!
This was going to make fortunes!
But he must be quick. Any second, Whitworth might waken. Accordingly he marched back to the attendant with a scowl.
“Goddamn it! This isn’t my bag! I guess I picked up my friend’s by mistake! I’ll be back directly!”
Whitworth was still snoring. Much relieved, Joel gently withdrew his own bag, which was resting against the other’s ankle.
He started and came awake, reaching under his long-skirted coat. Until this moment Joel had not realized he was armed. It was only a pocket pistol, but at this range…
“Easy, man!” he exclaimed. “I spotted a washroom and I want my bag!”
Whitworth blinked, then gave a slow smile.
“Are you ever lucky! When I worked as a watchman, I always used to carry a .44 with a hair trigger, stead of this toy here. Coulda blown you clear across the depot! One time a thieving nigger came by, thinking I was dead to the world, and I drilled him square ‘tween the eyes. Took a half hour to clean up the blood!”
He returned the gun to its hiding place.
“Say, if you spot any place we can get coffee, I could do with a cup or two.”
“I’ll see what I can find,” Joel promised, and with his own bag in hand marched away.
Back in the washroom, he retched and retched until he had cleansed himself of the terror he had felt when the miniature gun flashed into view.
Never had he been so glad that his family’s riches had lasted until the conquest of New Orleans—long enough to ensure he escaped military service, when many boys far younger than himself had been drafted.
But he was not without courage. He couldn’t be. What had he just done, stealing away that terrible secret from a man who awoke at a touch with a gun in his hand? He had—he had…
He had, he thought, saved the lives of everybody aboard the Atchafalaya.
Confronting death… His guts twitched again, but there was nothing left to vomit.
How could someone face the prospect of a duel, for instance, with frank excitement, unless he was drunk, or crazy, or—like Auberon—doomed?
To lend a colorable excuse to his absence, he made shift to wash in the sour cold water and run his razor over his cheeks, heedless of the fact that it needed stropping. Until he was set back by a dismaying yet persuasive thought.
Had he saved all those lives?
There could have been another reason why Whitworth was carrying that perilous burden. What sort of reason, it defied Joel’s weary imagination to work out. Yet the fact stood.
When he came away with his own bag, he had vaguely considered calling for the sheriff, cabling the Intelligencer, and drafting tomorrow’s headline: OUR REPORTER SAVES RACING STEAMER FROM DESTRUCTION!
But he didn’t know.
Regardless of whether the story was securely founded, a score—a hundred—editors up and down the country would be delighted to print it.
But if it was an error…
In that moment Joel knew he was doomed never to be a top reporter, with the doors of New York and Boston open to him… unless he stuck it out for yet one more day before committing himself.
He was going to have to ride the cars to Cairo with Whitworth, acting as though he were not party to any deadly secret. He was going to have to watch the other man until the very moment when the log was tossed into a coal flat destined for the Atchafalaya.
And then delay her, by claiming that that log must be removed and inspected…?
Oh, no!
The more he thought of it, the worse the complications seemed, and he stood no chance of recruiting—even by cable—witnesses to arrest Whitworth.
What sort of a man must he be, to undertake such a hideous mission? And on whose behalf? Surely it could only be Gordon’s! (A conflux of recollections, especially concerned with the financier’s treatment of Matthew.)
Thus something more fundamental than a mere news story began to gather in his mind. Given an intelligent man, frustrated in his ambitions, still working as a second mate when his length of service and qualifications—plus such useful talents as making do with a minimum of sleep—would have suggested he ought to be at least a first mate, maybe even master on his own vessel: what would one make of such a character in a novel?
A great deal.
The discovery lightened Joel’s spirits. He went in search of the promised coffee, and found it in chipped and clumsy mugs, and by the time their long-awaited train was signaled he and Whitworth were chatting in the friendliest possible fashion.
How else should a writer deal with his characters?
No matter how despicable they were…
The Atchafalaya made astonishing time throughout the night, because Tyburn worked wonders during his watch. Fernand ran Plum Point in the clear light of sunrise, and was enormously grateful to both him and Drew for enabling him to get so much unbroken rest, so that he came fresh to one of the trickiest portions of the river.
Yet all those efforts had not been enough. The Nonpareil was still snuffing at her rival’s heels.
And Tyburn had said with a grunt, as he ceded the wheel, “New pilot!”—jerking his head sternward. “That ain’t Colin’s style, nor Dermot’s either!”
“There was talk of Woodley hiring specialists,” Fernand began. Tyburn cut him short, around a huge yawn.
“There was also talk of Dermot grounding her if Woodley tried it! Not that he ever came into the open about it, but listening to him in the Guild parlor you could read between the lines. Yet I swear that wasn’t either of ‘em chasing me!”
“Any idea who?”
“I’d put money on Zeke Barfoot. I know Woodley wanted him because he once tripped with you, didn’t he?”
Fernand nodded. “Did me a good turn, what’s more,” he said, recalling how the gaunt rangy man had reprimanded Whitworth.
“Figures. Also he lives at Memphis. You’d think with the fees he pulls down he could move to a healthier city. But he was born there, so…” A concluding shrug.
“You won’t have to bother with him, at least. I reckon his watch is about over. Most likely you’ll have Colin on your tail.”
That was no special comfort to Fernand. He recalled how miserable his last watch had seemed, and how Trumbull had closed the gap on the approach to Memphis, despite Drew having taken over.
And yet he almost caressed the wheel as he laid the Atchafalaya into her marks for the next bend. For at the edge of memory echoed that precious compliment Drew had paid him: “You have the makings of a fighting pilot!”
Very well: he was going to fight like hell!
And the chance to prove it came upon him very shortly. Above Ashport, once they had cleared a tangle of tiny islands, there was a straight five-mile run before the channel swerved again into Needham’s Cutoff—behind what had once been Needham’s Point, before the river’s relentless gnawing severed it, and incidentally transferred the land which survived from the Arkansas to the Tennessee side.
With a hand that shook not in the least, he reached for the engineroom speaking tube. Fonck answered.
“Dutch, I guess you better rout out Josh and get his forge to burning. We could strain the rudder post again shortly.”
“Is she that close?” rumbled the big engineer.
“She’s so close, I reckon I could spit on her.”
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“You just do your damnedest and we’ll do ours!” Fonck promised.
“How are things down there? Any more trouble? And how’s Walt?”
“I’m kind of worried about him. His bandages soak through in next to no time. But he claims his burn don’t hurt too bad, so…” There followed the audible counterpart of a shrug. “He’s going to be a real engineer one of these days. But for chrissake don’t tell Jim. He’s much too proud of having picked him for a striker!”
Fernand chuckled and hung the tube back on its hook. It struck him with a pang that he shouldn’t have needed to ask. On any ordinary run, he would have visited the engineroom twice a day, a habit he had consciously copied from Drew. Of course, on this trip he was bound to spend what time he could spare with Dorcas and his mother.
Maybe he was getting his priorities wrong—?
But there was no time to think more on the subject. Here they were entering the five-mile reach, and there was the Nonpareil!
Followed the longest twenty minutes of his life.
Here the river was far too broad to make maximum use of the wake, yet it was the only weapon to hand. There were no oncoming steamers or sluggish towboats to be overtaken, which might balk the Nonpareil; she was running too far from shore and in water too deep to repeat Drew’s trick with a broadside wave that drove her aground. She came late out of the last bend, by a dozen times her own length, but the instant she was clear and straight she used the full tremendous power of her high-pressure steam, and the fountain from her cutwater splayed higher than ever before.