by John Brunner
Startled, for they too had been out of sight of Caesar, Arthur and the Springs, who had been cheering the Nonpareil’s recovered freedom and admiring the vast fountain of spray that jetted up from her bows at this terrific speed, fell silent and gazed around in alarm.
On the foredeck the band continued playing for a little; then, sensing something amiss, Manuel waved them to silence and stared about him for some clue to what it was.
In the cabin, which had been deserted except by its regular staff and by those who wished to pray by the body of their old captain, Iliff glanced up in fright. Old and wise in the ways of the river, McNab reacted similarly; so did Katzmann and Bates.
Out on deck, mustering hands to search for damage to the hull, Burge checked in mid-order and wordlessly consulted with the mates. Whitworth said at once, bluffly, “She’s running like a deer! We’ll beat the Atchafalaya yet!”
At all costs he was determined not to let slip the least hint that the other boat might blow up first.
But Underwood had sensed the same as Burge, and looked grave.
During this time word was spreading among the black crew, thanks to the texas tender. The fearful slogan was abroad: “Two hundred!”
Still working up and down the Mississippi were boats on whose paddleboxes were painted the reassuring words LOW PRESSURE.
Most passengers preferred to get to their destination as fast as possible; many preferred to get there as cheaply as might be, or had no other choice. Some were cautious, and among them were the people who let the US Mail contracts. As often as not, unless there was no alternative, they preferred low-pressure steamers, and the fearful followed this government example.
Some people remembered the explosion of the Brilliant, in 1851; some, that the Pennsylvania had burst her boilers off Ship Island, seventy miles below Memphis, in 1858, then burned to her waterline; some, the fate of the Sultana, which had led to the condemnation of the old Atchafalaya, for—as Vanaday had put it to Drew—she had “rained bodies on either bank.”
Yet who would have thought it possible, until this moment, that the same doom might strike the smartest and fastest steamer since the war?
Those whispered words, however, were quite terrifying. One had long been accustomed to pressures of over a hundred; even the Act of 1852 had permitted one hundred and fifty. When the Nonpareil appeared at a hundred sixty, it had not seemed like any significant jump. One knew people who weighed a hundred and sixty; they were not obese, they were in tolerable health, they led active lives. But at two hundred pounds one was already into the zone of the clumsy, the puffing, the potbellied, who were grateful to slump into an armchair and call for another beer after no more than walking up a flight of stairs.
And the shorter they were, the worse off. Naturally. And since many Negroes were undernourished as children, and by comparison with whites their average height was some two inches less, when “200 pounds” was mentioned they thought in terms of helpless, and brainstorm, and apoplexy…
Perhaps that was why the blacks panicked first. Or perhaps it was because Josephine—fighting free of Auberon, who would have restrained her—rushed to the forward rail and shouted warnings in a garbled patois, part English, part French, part Wolof. Most of those who heard her understood, the sole exceptions being the few who had never been either slaves or slave owners.
Auberon understood pretty well, particularly since his ear for French had recently been sharpened. She was saying: “Run, hide, run and hide, for the doom of our black Lord is upon this boat!”
A tremor ran down Auberon’s spine. She had spoken of a brown stick, and it turned out there were explosives aboard… But it was all nonsense and mumbo-jumbo. Must be.
How to calm her before she started a mass desertion?
While on the horizon loomed the trail of the Atchafalaya, which had been a pillar of fire by night and now was a pillar of smoke by day.
Some of those who had labored over the Nonpareil had loved her: not Parbury alone, but anonymous workers in the yard that brought her into being, paid servants of a firm that built a dozen vessels without caring, then suddenly felt that here was a memorable creation.
Some of those who served aboard her loved her too: it had seeped into the sinews of her pilots that she was tricky but rewarding, that she was due to make her mark on river history; the same held for her engineers, who strove devotedly to cure her faults, convinced that sooner or later she would break such records as had stood a generation.
And some of those who traveled on her felt the like: here was a steamer worthy to join the company of the great.
But over and against them stood the others, who had regarded her entirely as means to an end: chief among them obviously Gordon, who had spent money prodigally which was not his, who if he failed to win his bets was surely faced with worse than what would have befallen him in Britain—so right now was concerned above all with ways to silence Matthew, preferably for good, because the boy had not lied, nor had his book… And now and again he was distracted by the possibility that the Atchafalaya might yet explode. (And if so, let it be soon!)
The same held for Woodley, more or less: afraid she would not blow up, but his boat might, yet ashamed to go against the single order he had ever given in his own unfettered right. For him the Nonpareil had been a path to glory. Now she was rushing onward at a record speed, he dared not think of wiser judgment. He connived.
The pilots knew a little better. But past time. Because her doom was spelt out long ago, by someone without a name working in a hot and noisy assembly shop, following instructions given by a dreamer who had now gone to meet his maker.
One rivet no larger than a little finger was enough.
Sensing that victory might yet be snatched, the firemen were charging the furnaces as though demented. The pressure gauges were steady at a reading nobody had thought could be sustained, so they were cheering as they piled their shovels, heedless of the alarm spreading among the cabin staff and deckhands. Who were these nonentities carrying on a trade which could as well have been ashore? Firing a great steamer, now—that was a challenge!
Moreover, all of them had bet on the Nonpareil.
So the fire doors stood permanently open under the eight huge boilers, and the iron that on a normal day felt strong and rigid weakened as it glowed ever brighter, and two hundred pounds of pressure leaned on every softened inch of it, and then at last, before the engineers could obey Hogan’s frantic order…
The boiler which gave way was number one. A rivet popped, a little shred of metal, like thousands of others: a stem, a mushroom head, a flattened end. The iron plates it held had withstood well; here was the fatal flaw. There was a hole.
And through the hole spurted water more than boiling, and its force drove red-hot embers forth, and unburned fuel, and between eyeblinks the contents of the furnace were washed across the floor where the firemen were at work, scalding some, burning others. Screams greeted this. In vain the men were rallied, ordered to close valves and cut the boiler out of circuit. It was futile.
For the failure of the first rivet caused the second to snap, and then the third, and then others, until the furnace was extinguished, uttering only steam.
But there was other steam, above, and at fantastic pressure.
Moreover seven furnaces were still ablaze, and there was no way in all the world that the single doctor pump Parbury had specified, according to use and custom, could keep up a safe water level in them. Not when most of what it poured in was gushing straight out again through the boiler that had burst…
Seeing the water gauge in the engineroom drop, Corkran did his duty, though with a heavy heart. He bawled:
“Get out of here!”
And strode to the speaking tubes to warn the pilot.
It would have been an act of crazy courage. He never reached his goal. For the compulsory fusible plug, set in the wall of the rapidly emptying boiler in accordance with the dictates of the Steamboat Inspectorate, chose t
hat moment to melt and let go a blast of steam. It had not occurred to anyone, not even Parbury, that if and when it did so, it would be deflected across the path that Corkran was taking. A white spear of vapor folded him like a figure made of straw crushed between the casual fingers of a child.
Even as he doubled over, the bravado of the firemen failed them. In face of the stream of hot foul water flooding the boiler room, they dropped their shovels and turned tail.
Thus far the engines pounded on as though nothing were amiss. There was still pressure to drive them despite the leak; indeed, the needles as yet had scarcely quit two hundred.
But flue after flue in the other boilers was being exposed, and the furnaces were still roaring, and it was a matter of seconds only before the end.
Even as people on deck were turning in amazement to see the horde vomiting forth from the engine- and boiler rooms, a flue end melted loose in another boiler. Dry steam—dry because it was so hot—vented directly into the furnace.
This time the embers did not just spill out, or wash out. They were blasted out. They landed on the planking; they lodged on the horizontal stringers of the hull; they found a home on the piles of waiting fuel, which had been supplemented with bacon and rosin and wax…
The hissing of the serpent in the Garden of Eden: a message of irrevocable doom.
The lever arm of the steam drum safety valve trembled a little as a local buildup of pressure preceded the ultimate catastrophe. One vain spurt of steam rushed up the escape pipes.
But the valve held back just enough of what remained to complete the pattern.
The main feed pipe to the larboard engine split along its upper side with a noise like an old man’s cough, and lifted planking on the boiler deck above.
Two men who had imagined they were making their escape were pitched overboard.
The fire that had begun on the piled-up fuel roared and crackled into furious life.
As though to offer her creator a Viking’s funeral, the Nonpareil set off down the same course as that last steamer which had borne her name.
Tyburn was at the wheel of the Atchafalaya; Fernand was trying to persuade Drew to rest, but the captain doggedly refused to do so until he had carried out a complete tour of the vessel and complimented everyone on how they had worked during the fog, starting with the men who were enslaved to the engines and the boilers.
That chore completed, they emerged on the guards and were confronted by a beaming Cherouen. A pace or two behind him was Barber, with his bodyguards as always. The latter looked improbably plump and rosy-cheeked, given how long he had spent at the bar and the card table since the start of the trip. It was as though deciding to make plain his racial origin had taken a burden from his heart. Cherouen by contrast, despite his expression, looked haggard and had dark patches under his eyes. Were a prospective patient to compare them, thinking both were doctors, he might well have felt inclined to prefer Barber’s medicine.
Yet Cherouen’s voice boomed out as resonantly as ever.
“Captain, congratulations!” he exclaimed. “I confess there were times when I doubted your ability to bring me to St. Louis sooner than the Nonpareil! But you’re certain to do so now, are you not?”
“Lap of the gods,” grunted Drew, and made to push past. Barber raised a delaying hand.
“No, don’t say that, Hosea! Your skill deserves praise! Miraculous though it may have been for a blind man to pilot the Nonpareil in fog, look what’s become of her! And here we are leading in the last stage of our journey, thanks to your brilliant steersmanship!”
If he thought to ingratiate himself with Drew by this fulsome compliment, he was wrong. It made the captain bristle.
“It’s still in the lap of the gods!” he rapped, giving a nod past Barber’s shoulder to acknowledge the arrival of Joel, ever alert to anything that might make news. “But for Mr. Siskin, remember, we’d have been blown to perdition!”
“I know, I know!” Barber made haste to say, and added, “I had it in mind to offer some reward. I’m sure you feel the same, don’t you? We can both well afford it when this trip is over: you because you’ll have my half of the boat, and your fee from Dr. Cherouen, and me because I bet carefully and with good judgment—”
Drew cut him short with a grimace buried in his salt-and-pepper beard.
“Fee from Dr. Cherouen? I understood it was to be from Mrs. Grammont that I drew my pay. Not that I don’t believe you can afford my charges, Doctor. I’m sure you can, and double if required. It’s just that, having watched you over these past few days, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that it’s a mercy my beloved Susannah did not survive to suffer at your hands. Now let me pass!”
Barber said placatingly, “Hosea, we’re all overwrought, you know. Don’t say anything you may regret later. We can carry straight on to St. Louis now, and on present showing we can break the record for the run, in spite of being so long held up by the fog, and that’s thanks to you, and Fernand”—a dip of his head—“and your other admirable pilot, Mr. Tyburn. And I’m sure the entire river community will wish to show its appreciation of your joint feat. Indeed, I’ve heard reports of a grand dinner in the Southern Hotel, and preparation of a specially gilded pair of horns. Think how fine the Atchafalaya will appear with not one but two between her chimneys!”
He droned on. Fernand, who until a moment ago had been aching for the chance to steer Drew back to his stateroom and lay him down—for only then might he rush in search of Dorcas, whom he had so brusquely abandoned in the midst of fog—was suddenly seized by another preoccupation. It had not occurred to him that they might still break the New Orleans to St. Louis record after such a slow night, but would a gambler say so without evidence?
He hauled out his watch and stared about him, recognizing familiar scenery. Ahead lay Grand Tower and the Devil’s Bake-oven and the mouth of the Big Muddy; beyond, Chester and the mouth of the Kaskaskia and Herculaneum where there was a railroad, and—
And one thousand one hundred and ninety-four miles from New Orleans, the city of St. Louis at long last.
He drew a deep breath. Barber was right. If they could shave as little as fifteen minutes off their best previous time from this point to the end, they would set a new overall record. A mere quarter hour! It should be feasible! The boat was running as sweetly as she had ever done; there wasn’t a jar or jolt in her piston strokes, and there had been no further trouble in the engineroom, and even the scrapes she had had during the fog had caused no discernible problems, according to Diamond’s morning report. She was like—the image came unbidden—his Uncle Edouard in middle age, when he was first a person in his nephew’s world: no longer capable of sprinting, but having learned endurance and the sense of timing which could enable one to outdo a younger and less experienced opponent, rushing away from the start at such a rate he grew exhausted.
Fernand shivered. Never before had he had such a sense of a steamer’s personality… nor of the shortness of her life.
He returned slowly to the here and now. Barber was calming Cherouen, while Drew looked about him for his staff, forgotten somewhere thanks to his fatigue. But for it, doubtless the doctor would have had a wound of his own to heal. There had been words as harsh as vitriol. Fernand remembered their impact, though not what they were, for he had been distracted.
His intervention was needed; Fernand said, “Captain, you really should turn in, you know!”
And hesitated. Drew was paying no attention. All of a sudden he had cocked his head like a dog snuffing the wind.
He was the first, but not the only, one to react in similar fashion. Passing on some errand, Gross—who also looked red-eyed and drawn—turned towards the after rail, staring in the direction of the Nonpareil.
Whose engine note had altered. A few minutes ago she had been uttering the powerful, determined panting that logically would accompany her efforts to pull free of the sand reef; then she had been in clear water, then changed from full astern to full ahead an
d spoken of her newly regained freedom with a vigorous thrusting of her pistons.
But now…
Fernand’s nails bit deep into his palms. What in the world was her pilot up to? It seemed he could not decide whether to race ahead or dawdle. The noise she was making—
A shout came from above. The after window of the pilothouse was flung open, and there was the texas tender signaling madly with both arms, recruited because Tyburn was alone at the wheel and dared not leave it.
Fernand and Drew exchanged glances, then incontinently ran for the pilothouse. After a second’s indecision, Barber and Cherouen followed. So, more enthusiastically, did Joel.
For the message the tender was relaying at the top of his lungs was simple and terrifying:
“She’s afire!”
Even while they were still on the texas, Drew and Fernand could see there was far too much smoke rising from the Nonpareil’s location. But there were binoculars above, and a better vantage point. They rushed up the final flight, almost tripping on one another’s heels.
Outside, hindered at the last moment by a pang of conscience, Joel halted, having overtaken Cherouen and Barber on the way. Cherouen’s breathing was like an old man’s; he had begun to gasp after a dozen strides. Barber had done better, but he was portly, and his weight told.
Uncapping his telescope, Joel trained it… and thought of Auberon, and his newly discovered half-sister, and his loathsome brother-in-law Arthur, and poor Louisette, and those friends who had seemed so charming, Hugo and Stella Spring, but had turned out to be so shallow and easily led, and Gordon, and Matthew, and the mad musician Manuel whom Joel found somehow endearing, and the black engineer he had helped to secure a post for—must he answer for that at the day of judgment?—and all the people he had talked to or interviewed, Captain Woodley and his pilots and his engineers and his clerks and chief steward and caterer and mates… including Whitworth (and before what court was he to make his plea, who had been prepared to carry murder in a carpetbag?)