by John Brunner
It looked as though what Fernand most feared was bound to happen: she was going to overtake while he was at the wheel, with Dorcas and Eulalie on board to witness his failure.
The pilothouse door opened stealthily, and in came Drew.
For a second hope flared in Fernand’s breast: had the captain arrived with a brilliant solution and the intention of taking over the helm?
Not at all. For a while he said nothing, merely chewed meditatively. At length he spat into the sawdust box and said, “Got the legs of us, has she?”
The Nonpareil was closing like a greyhound on a hare, her bow aligned on the best and broadest entrance to Needham’s Cutoff like a rifle sight on a bull’s-eye. A surge of anger washed through Fernand.
“Not if I have anything to do with it!” he declared, and in the same instant inspiration struck.
What would happen if a steamer’s mass were to wallow in a chance wind-driven surge? There was more breeze this morning than they had had since setting out, and it was patterning the water.
He pondered a few seconds, and then it came naturally, on a level below logic.
He reached for the speaking tube again and said calmly, “I guess you better warn Josh we’re in for some rough weather. Turn the deckhands to and make all secure. Warn the stewards and tenders we could break some crockery. In about two minutes I’m going to ask for a dead stop.”
“What?”
“And then the fastest shift you ever made to half astern starboard and half ahead larboard! We could strain not just the rudder post but the whole damned hull, but it’s our only chance! She’ll pass us before the head of the reach if we don’t do something!”
“I hope to God you know what you’re about,” said Fonck seriously. But seconds later it was clear the order had been passed on. Luckily there were not, as yet, more than a handful of passengers up and about, and all those congregated at the stern where their weight would be most useful. The deckhands turned to as instructed, and did their best to make a cheerful noise, but they too had seen how close the Nonpareil was looming, and by now the latter’s deck crew could be heard chanting: “The Nonpareil [clap, clap] is on her way [clap, clap]!”
Not if I can help it, Fernand swore under his breath.
Now where was the biggest of these accidental waves? He reached for his field glasses and knocked the crucifix to the floor… but there was no time to grope after it.
He had to tug the bell rope for a stop.
The wheels were at rest before they had completed another revolution. Their bearings and supports cried out but stood the strain. Could they take the rest of what he had in mind? He must trust to the design skills of Wenceslas Cleech and the loving care that Drew had lavished on this boat.
In the grip of an emotion halfway between terror and exaltation, Fernand tugged the bell rope again, and—with her rival closing swiftly—the Atchafalaya, still rushing upstream with all the momentum of her former speed, swung end for end in what from rest would have been little more than her own length, just as the largest of the natural waves broke on her hull. She rocked—her whole gigantic bulk rocked—as though a storm had struck her. But she turned as impersonally as the paddle of a butter churn until she had made a complete revolution, then resumed full ahead.
The effect, Fernand recounted later, was like dropping a boulder in a bathtub.
Although her pilot tried valiantly to steer clear, the Nonpareil was caught in what might as well have been a tidal bore—a wave higher than her freeboard, which sluiced her main deck, soaked her waiting fuel, slopped into her hold… Meantime one of her wheels lifted clear of the water; then her bow dipped; that lifted her rudder clear; and within seconds, faster than her pilot could recover, she was halfway to broadside on, thereby taking the remaining force of the Atchafalaya’s backwash where she least wanted it, where it could make her swerve—slowly, but she too weighed over a thousand tons—off her intended course.
Which Fernand, sweating, promptly poached by lining up on Needham’s Cutoff in such a manner that the Nonpareil would again be running square in her rival’s wake.
There were a few ragged cheers from below, but more curses and complaints, for he had tested the steamer to her utmost, and he waited a long moment for fear of hearing he had sprung a leak somewhere in her hull.
No such report came. He relaxed slowly, aware he had accomplished something he could relate proudly for the rest of his life.
But the finest accolade came from Drew, who got down on hands and knees and stood upright again and said, offering what he had retrieved, “Here’s the thing your mother gave you… Oh, damn it! I thought we were beat at last! And it warn’t true!”
Fernand made no move to take the crucifix—just grinned. It didn’t seem to matter anymore.
Tyburn had been wrong in his guess about who would take over from Barfoot. Cursing with all the fury of his Irish forebears, Hogan struggled to force the Nonpareil back on her intended heading despite the fact that the hold was awash and the chain wagon had jammed at exactly the wrong point of its traverse.
With sudden sick realization he discovered the trouble was far worse than that. He could turn the wheel one way—to starboard—without the least resistance.
In the same moment shouts came from below, and one horrifying scream.
He did not need to wait for Burge’s message via speaking tube to guess what had happened. The shock of being swung halfway to broadside had snapped one of the rudder cables; near its break a crewman had been struck by the rope’s end.
Shortly he was informed that the man was not seriously hurt, which could have been a miracle. Once he had seen a big burly fellow killed in just such an accident, his windpipe crushed as efficiently as by a garrote.
But, Burge warned, splicing the rope wasn’t the only problem to contend with. Its colossal tension had made it crack like a whip and coiled it around a stanchion which had split and must be reinforced. Moreover there was so much water in the hold it would have to be pumped out, and the fact that the fuel had been soaked would reduce the temperature of the furnaces…
The job took what felt like half eternity. Meantime Hogan seethed, and the Nonpareil barely held her own against the current, because lacking a rudder he dared not take her into the next bend, and yet once more the Atchafalaya raced ahead.
When the excitement died away, realization of the fact that today was Sunday began to spread aboard the Atchafalaya. Even before daybreak the deckhands had raised a drowsy song about Judgment Day:
In dat great gittin’-up mornin’, fare thee well, fare thee well,
God gonna up an’ speak to Gabriel, fare thee well, fare thee well!
But the reference to having to rise without enough sleep behind you was too clear for anybody to show much enthusiasm.
In the cabin it was agreed over breakfast that a prayer meeting, at least, must be held. Despite his Catholic stance, Barber let himself be persuaded to approach Gaston to provide music for a few hymns. Yesterday the Frenchman had made the mistake of demonstrating the keenness of his ear; a snatch of melody sung or hummed by one of the company had been enough to supply him with all he needed to round out a fully developed arrangement. His performance had so impressed Barber, he had gone to him privately afterward and told him that if his engagement in St. Louis fell through, he might apply for a permanent post at the Limousin.
Which was, of course, precisely what Gaston had dreamed of when he first arrived in the New World.
But now the idea of working to please the fads and fancies of a sporting, gambling crowd was repugnant to him. He was not foolish enough to turn down Barber’s offer outright; however, he made it clear that his ambitions lay in the direction of the concert hall.
Subsequently, however, he had passed a bad night. While striving to concentrate on his projected funeral music, he had kept finding his mind drifting off course, toward his tone poem about the Mississippi, and what strains floated through his head were too exultant for funerary u
se. Traveling to St. Louis aboard a race-winning steamer was perhaps not such a good idea after all…
When he appeared—red-eyed, because his mind had gone driving on much of the night like the Atchafalaya’s engines—the last thing he wanted was to sit down again at the piano for any other reason than to fix some fleeting fragments of inspiration against his arrival.
But he yielded to Barber’s blandishments when the latter neatly pointed out that a succession of sober hymn tunes might be exactly what he needed to make his imagination flow down the proper channel.
It was therefore with some dismay that Gaston discovered, partway through the impromptu service, that he was, not for the first time, picking up the insistent, barbaric rhythms of the spirituals being sung forward. Worse yet, when he strained his ears during a prayer that Motley was offering—as the most devout of the officers, he had been called on to preside—he realized he was also being influenced by the band aboard the Nonpareil.
Though in real terms she must be four or five miles behind, the river was doubling back on itself yet again. Across a point fledged with saplings the music from Manuel’s little orchestra was borne on the light wind.
It made her seem as close as she had been before Fernand executed his coup. Illogically, irrationally, people felt she must be within an ace of overtaking after all.
That was the opinion buoying up everyone aboard the Nonpareil, now the rudder cable had been fixed.
Or almost everyone…
Josephine had slept well after the triumphant proof of her power, which had impressed Auberon and Hogan, at least, if not Woodley or the clerks.
Now she woke to an alarming suspicion that seemed to have carried over from a dream.
Had it been somehow necessary for her to engage in that ritual (she could not think of it otherwise) with her half-brother before her abilities could again be manifest?
Or was the explanation simpler? Had she not made her faith apparent enough so that she seemed to be ashamed of her Lord?
She had, after all, hidden from even her most devoted followers…
But perhaps the time for pretense was at an end. It could not be kept up much longer, anyhow; the engineer had claimed he was only one of hundreds who knew her identity. She had better make a virtue out of misfortune.
Making herself as presentable as she could, given that she had no change of attire with her and Auberon’s haste had torn some of the hooks from her bodice, she set out in search of Caesar.
She found him asleep on a pile of sacks near the verge staff. Close at hand, some of the firemen and deckhands were marking Sunday by singing spirituals. She found a place to sit down beside Caesar, the startled men making room for her, and waited patiently for him to wake. The singing continued until the band appeared for its first performance of the day, a medley of hymn tunes.
Josephine knew very few of the words, but she recognized several melodies and joined in wordlessly with her resonant contralto, not at all dismayed by seeming to give lip service to the rival deity. Damballah, she was satisfied, knew what was in her heart.
Above, on the boiler deck, Auberon made inquiries for her, having discovered that her stateroom was open and a maid was making up the bed. No one appeared to have seen her yet today. It was long before it occurred to him to look for her on the main deck; when he did, she went on singing, paying him no more attention than if he were a total stranger.
The sound of music and singing also woke Cherouen, but his response was to groan and cover his head with his pillow. He had drunk long and deep last night, mostly at Barber’s expense, and he hated the idea of facing the new day. Especially a Sunday.
Though at least this was not a boat that closed the bars and banned cards and other games of chance on the Sabbath. He cheered up a little, thinking about an eye-opener, and then was dragged right back down to the depths of depression by the sad reflection that so far medicine had never come up with a quick, infallible cure for hangovers.
There were, of course, palliatives…
After a while he was able to reach his medical bag and stagger to the laver for water to mix a potion with.
All the while he was cursing Josephine for deserting him in his hour of greatest need.
Eulalie woke with a sense of pleasurable anticipation. Like Josephine, she believed implicitly in the content of her dreams, and what remained most vivid from them was the image of her silver crucifix, but immensely enlarged, gleaming above the twin chimneys of the Atchafalaya while her son was at her wheel.
Above—or between?
There was a curious and disturbing ambiguity in the picture she could recall: as though the crucified Christ might in fact be hanging between the chimneys, arms outstretched and lashed to them, like the swinging gilded horns that announced this steamer’s prowess to the world.
In any case she had wanted to dream of Damballah, not Jesus.
Why, then, was she convinced on waking that she had foreseen something right and to be looked forward to?
Faintly she detected another image trying to escape from memory and pinned it down. It was of a baby.
Ah!
She rose, washed and dressed hastily, and went to rouse Dorcas. That must be the link. If it was, it wouldn’t be the first time a love child had been born with magic powers.
Dorcas too had dreamed: that Fernand had come to her. She woke thinking that the knock on her stateroom door was his, and was bitterly disappointed when she found it was only his mother’s.
But she and Eulalie were overjoyed when they found him joining them in the cabin upon the conclusion of his watch.
When they asked how it had gone, he modestly made light of his achievement, which somehow—he could only guess at the cause, though Drew hazarded it might be rudder damage—had delayed the Nonpareil. However, he laid stress on the new pilot aboard the trailing boat. He was overheard, and the news spread like wildfire. To his infinite dismay he suddenly found more people talking about that than about his feat of piloting. Those who had imagined the Nonpareil to be hopelessly far behind looked for ways to hedge or default on their bets.
Barber was a notable exception. By now he was so confident of the Atchafalaya’s victory, he had dispatched cables from Memphis increasing his stakes on her by ten thousand dollars.
He sent Fernand a bottle of champagne by way of thanks.
Arthur Gattry awoke to as bad a headache as Cherouen’s, and even louder music, for Manuel was by then drilling his players through a lugubrious version of “The Old Rugged Cross.”
He wished he could lose himself again in the mazes of sleep, but it was useless.
Lying on his back, with cramp in one leg which he continually flexed and reflexed in an attempt to make it go away, he thought about this day and his past and above all about the way he had acted since leaving New Orleans.
For a while he tried to defend himself against himself, as in a court of law. He had made clear from the start that he wanted a modern marriage. So why had Louisette landed him with a child immediately? He expected her to be a charming, pretty companion he could rely on escorting to parties and public functions, then take home and bed without objections. Babies had no role in his vision of the future, except insofar as he was marrying because of family pressure, to provide an eventual heir.
He had been stupid to give in. He would have done better to take a mistress en plaçage like so many of his friends, instead of a wife who claimed an equal share of his life!
But Hugo and Stella had seemed so pleased with one another, and there was no boring nuisance of children to worry about yet, and he had taken the necessary steps…
No. He hadn’t. In his first flush of excitement at the discovery that Louisette had what they called a “passionate nature,” he had at least once disregarded better judgment and…
The band was blasting out another hymn tune now, inviting sinners to repentance.
He bent his head. He was responsible. Black depression, infinite misery told him so. He
had grounds to be ashamed of himself, to seek out Auberon and apologize, to admit he ought to have accepted his cousin-in-law’s advice and left the boat. Especially since she seemed in a fair way to losing and he couldn’t afford to meet his bets if she did.
When was the next stop? Cairo this evening?
As he dressed, he was balancing priorities: his wife and child, his stakes on the race, and the urgent need for something to take care of his aching head and sour belly.
Optimistically he checked his pocket flask. It was empty; he made a mental note to have it refilled.
He was starting to feel himself again.
Woodley had been crowing with pride when the Nonpareil arrived in the five-mile straight so close astern of the Atchafalaya. He ascribed all this to Zeke Barfoot’s intervention.
“Warn’t I right all along?” he kept crying. “Hiring extra pilots to tackle the worst bits of the river—it paid off!”
Now he was singing a very different tune.
“What are we going to pay Barfoot with?” Gordon grumbled. “Promises and scraps of paper?”
“You know more about that than I do!” Woodley flared.
“Is it my fault that the English are still locking up my money?”
There was a cough. Because it came from Parbury, all eyes turned to him.
“As I understand it,” the blind man remarked, “hiring fresh pilots didn’t pay off yet. We’re still trailing ‘em!”
“By far less!” Woodley objected.
The prayer meeting was over; they were in the clerks’ office, the most convenient place for a conference.
“Less is not good enough!” Parbury barked. “And don’t complain about not specifying strong enough rudder cables! Some dirty tricks can’t be foreseen! What do you say, Hamish?”
“I won’t be satisfied until I see the Atchafalaya far behind!” Gordon declared, and exchanged secret glances with Woodley. “But above Cairo—yes, I guess we may just do that!”