How Few Remain Part 7

They camped on the prairie that night, boiling coffee, frying salt pork, and then frying soaked hardtack biscuits sprinkled with brown sugar in the grease from the meat. An occasional firefly winked to light, then out. Off in the distance, an owl hooted. Custer rolled himself in his blanket, stared up at the stars sprinkled like powdered sugar across the sky, and fell asleep almost at once.

It was still dark when he woke, but twilight was turning the eastern horizon gray. He shook his brother. "Wake up, lazybones!" Tom groaned and thrashed. Custer laughed. He'd scored himself a point.

They pa.s.sed into Indian Territory-into Confederate territory-a little before noon. Custer let Sergeant Buckley and the Gatling guns catch up to him. "You pick your spot," he said. "You best know the requirements and capabilities of your weapons." The artillery sergeant nodded. Custer hoped the Gatlings were were capable. capable.

Toward evening, Buckley chose a gently rising little hillock with a commanding view in all directions. The party camped there for the night. When morning came, the Gatling crews stayed behind. Custer, his brother, and the cavalry troopers went out looking for streams, and for the Kiowas' villages they were likely to-were hoping to-find along such waterways.

They found cattle first. The Indians herded cattle these days, instead of hunting the nearly vanished buffalo. "At them!" Custer shouted. At them they went, whooping and waving their hats and shooting their carbines in the air. The cattle bellowed in terror and stampeded. Custer whooped again, in sheer small-boy delight at having made an enormous confused mess.

A bullet made dirt spurt up, not too far from him. It hadn't come from any of his own men, but from one of the Kiowas who'd been tending the herd. Custer fired back, and missed-good shooting from horseback was next to impossible. He waved his men forward against the Indian herders. The outnumbered Kiowas fled. Their ponies, tails bound up in bright cloth, bounded over the prairie.

Custer knew they were leading him and his cavalrymen toward more of their comrades. He followed as eagerly as the Indians could have wanted. If he didn't stir up the hornets' nest, he wasn't doing his job.

His brother pointed off to the northwest. There, down by the bed of a creek, stood the big village to which the herders belonged. Tom Custer rode straight for it, hard as he could go. The rest of the cavalrymen, George Custer among them, pounded after him. "Stay away from the horses!" Custer shouted. "We don't want to stampede the horses." If they stampeded the horses, the Kiowas wouldn't be able to come after them. That was the idea. Custer hoped it was a good idea. One way or the other, the Gatlings would answer that.

Tom Custer rode right down what did duty for the village's main street, past dogs and children and squaws who all ran like the devil to get out of the way. Again, Custer followed his brother, past hide teepees painted with bears and bear tracks, past screaming women, past an old man who fired a pistol at him and missed from a range where he shouldn't have missed a mouse, let alone a man.

Out the other side of the village galloped the cavalrymen. Custer knew they'd just done a very Indian sort of thing: a wild dash that couldn't help but singe the Kiowas' pride. Behind him, warriors were rus.h.i.+ng to their ponies. He fired a couple of rounds at them so they wouldn't get the idea they were doing exactly what he wanted.

He waved his little troop back to the east, toward the hill on which the Gatlings waited. If he couldn't retrace his way across the plain, he and his men were dead. Somewhere between fifty and a hundred Kiowas were on their trail. The Indians had fresher horses and, thanks to the Confederates, rifles as good as his own.

"This is the one part of the business I don't fancy," Tom Custer said: "I don't like running, even for pretend."

In the chase, one of the cavalrymen slid out of the saddle. Another trooper's horse went down, which meant the soldier was a dead man shortly thereafter. The cavalrymen, firing over their shoulders, hit two or three Indians and two or three horses.

After a couple of hours of hard riding one of the troopers pointed northeast. "There, sir!" Sure enough, there atop the little hill waited the two Gatling guns and their crews. Custer spurred toward them. The Kiowas came on after his men, shouting in high excitement. They saw the soldiers on the low hillock, too, but they also saw they still greatly outnumbered their foes.

The artillerymen at the Gatlings waved the troopers on. "At the crest of the hill, dismount as if for a last stand," Custer called to his riders. Maybe it would be be a last stand. The Kiowas were close behind. Up the hill thundered the horses. Custer did his best to stay out of the Gatlings' line of fire, in case they opened up too soon. He reined his blowing, lathered mount to a halt and sprang down. A bullet snapped past him. He shouted to the gunners: "It's your show now, boys!" a last stand. The Kiowas were close behind. Up the hill thundered the horses. Custer did his best to stay out of the Gatlings' line of fire, in case they opened up too soon. He reined his blowing, lathered mount to a halt and sprang down. A bullet snapped past him. He shouted to the gunners: "It's your show now, boys!"

Sergeant Buckley and the crew chief of the other Gatling, Sergeant Neufeld, swung the guns so they bore on the Kiowas. Then they began working the cranks at the rear of the weapons. The barrels revolved. As each one fired, it went around till another cartridge from the bra.s.s drum magazine atop the Gatling gun was chambered and discharged.

The noise was astonis.h.i.+ng, like an enormous sheet of sailcloth being torn in two. The smoke from the black-powder rounds built a fogbank around the top of the hill. As a magazine went dry, the gun crews took it off and replaced it with a full one. When a barrel jammed, that gun went silent for a moment to clear a cartridge or clean away the worst of the fouling. But, for the most part, Buckley and Neufeld cranked and cranked and cranked.

Custer peered through the drifted smoke. The Kiowas might have run headlong into a stone fence. They'd been in easy range before the Gatlings opened up, and they hadn't had a prayer. More than half their band, more than half the horses, lay still and dead in front of the two guns. The rest were riding off as fast as they could go. They were brave, but they hadn't been ready for what they'd just come up against. "G.o.d bless my soul," Custer said softly.

Sergeant Neufeld was also looking out through the smoke, but to the east. "Sir," he called to Custer, "more riders. They look like Rebs, not Indians."

"Let 'em come, Sergeant." Custer's voice was gay. From no confidence in the Gatlings, he'd swung to the other extreme. "Plenty for everyone, isn't there?"

And the Confederates came. In their shoes, Custer would have done likewise. They had a company's worth of men. A couple of dozen Yankees on a no-account hilltop? Get rid of 'em and start the war in style. If the Rebels noticed the dead Kiowas, they paid them no heed.

They should have. As they came galloping toward Custer's little detachment, the Gatlings began their deadly ripping noise again. Troopers and horses went down as if scythed. Custer and his companions added the fire of their carbines to the mechanical murder the Gatling guns dealt out. Like the Kiowas, the Confederates, meeting weapons they hadn't imagined, broke and ran.

Custer walked over to Neufeld and slapped him on the back. Then he did the same with Buckley. "This may not be sporting," he said, "but it's no humbug."

.IV.

Alfred von Schlieffen rode toward the Long Bridge, the most important bridge from Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., down into Confederate Virginia. He had no trouble making his way south from the German ministry: many, though far from all, of Was.h.i.+ngton's civilians had fled north when war broke out, and so traffic was less oppressive than it would have been before the crisis.

Boys still hawked newspapers on the street. From their frantic shouts, some U.S. officer named Custard-Schlieffen didn't think that could be right, but it was what he kept hearing-had single-handedly ma.s.sacred a division of Confederates and a whole tribe of Indians somewhere out beyond the Mississippi. In a leap of logic that escaped the German military attache, the war was as a result supposed to be as good as won.

As yet, the war had not made an appearance around Was.h.i.+ngton. The Confederate States could have pounded the capital of the United States to bits, but had not fired a shot hereabouts. Neither had local U.S. forces; despite big talk, President Blaine was proving more circ.u.mspect when it came to action.

But the Confederates had let it be known they were sending an officer across the Long Bridge under flag of truce at noon today. Schlieffen noticed he was not the only military attache heading toward the bridge. He nodded to Major Ferdinand Foch, his French opposite number. The Frenchman coolly returned the courtesy; like Schlieffen, he had fought in the Franco-Prussian War. Schlieffen wondered how long Foch would be welcome here.

The British military attache was not in evidence, but before long his a.s.sistant, a captain still on the eager side of thirty, rode up alongside Major Foch and began trying to converse with him in French. Unfortunately, the Englishman knew less of the language than he thought. The pauses in the conversation grew longer and longer.

"Get out of our country, you d.a.m.ned redcoat!" somebody shouted at the a.s.sistant military attache, who was indeed decked out in his dress reds. He tipped his hat to the heckler. Schlieffen nodded slightly, admiring his panache if not his skill with languages.

Almost but not quite in a group-Schlieffen hung back-the three foreign officers rode south through the Agricultural Grounds west of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tute, then west along Maryland Avenue toward the Long Bridge. Now Schlieffen could see the positions of the Confederate guns trained on the capital of the United States. He had also seen, in amongst the trees, U.S. guns ready to reply. More U.S. guns were positioned on the high ground north and west of the city, and elsewhere around it. If the Confederates tried to seize Was.h.i.+ngton, those guns could make it an expensive business.

At the U.S. end of the Long Bridge waited Captain Saul Berryman-General Rosecrans' adjutant-a few soldiers, and Hannibal Hamlin, the U.S. secretary of state. In his black suit, the jacket unb.u.t.toned in the humid heat to expose a large expanse of white s.h.i.+rtfront, Hamlin resembled nothing so much as a roly-poly old penguin.

Captain Berryman nodded to Schlieffen as he dismounted. He did his best to pretend the British and French military representatives, servants of unfriendly powers, did not exist. They took up positions where they could see and remain inconspicuous.

Church bells on both sides of the Potomac began announcing noon. As they did so, a Confederate officer on a black horse rode north over the Long Bridge carrying a small white flag. As he drew near, Schlieffen saw by the red trim on his uniform that he was an artilleryman. "I am Colonel William Elliott," he announced, "and I bear a proposal from President Longstreet and General Jackson seeking to avoid the needless effusion of blood."

Captain Berryman and Secretary Hamlin introduced themselves. Hamlin said, "Say what you will, Colonel. The United States do not and shall not condemn unheard any such proposal." Hamlin's accent was different from Elliott's, almost as different as a Bavarian's from a Berliner's: like President Blaine, the secretary of state came from Maine, as far from the border of the Confederacy as any place in the eastern USA.

"Thank you, sir," Elliott said. "Believing it obvious, then, that the United States cannot hope to defend Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., against the sanguinary bombardment the Confederate States have it within their power to unleash at any time, the president and the general-in-chief ask in the name of humanity that you declare Was.h.i.+ngton an open city and permit its peaceable occupation by Confederate forces. Otherwise, they cannot answer for what will ensue."

"I can speak to that," Captain Berryman said quickly, almost treading on the heels of Elliott's last words. "General Rosecrans has ordered me to reject categorically any such proposal. If you want Was.h.i.+ngton, Colonel, you are going to have to fight for it, and that's flat."

"I am sorry to hear you say that, Captain," Colonel Elliott said. "I had hoped to be able to avoid visiting destruction on this lovely city."

"You'd hoped to get it for nothing," Berryman replied. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that's not going to happen."

"Colonel," the British captain said, "do please remember that legations of powers friendly to your nation are located within this city." With his upper-cla.s.s accent, he swallowed more syllables than the U.S. secretary of state and the Confederate colonel put together.

"We shall make every effort to strike only military targets," Elliott said.

Hannibal Hamlin said, "in any case, this is irrelevant. Due to the outrageous and unacceptable nature of the notes President Blaine received this morning from the ministers of Great Britain and France, the government of the United States is declaring all diplomatic personnel of those two nations to be personae non gratae personae non gratae in this country; arrangements to return the lot of you to your own nations are already under way." in this country; arrangements to return the lot of you to your own nations are already under way."

"As a neutral power, the German Empire may be well suited to arrange those transfers in both directions," Schlieffen said.

"Thank you, sir," Hamlin answered. "I believe one of my a.s.sistants has an appointment with the German minister to discuss that very arrangement." Schlieffen inclined his head. He had exceeded his authority by making the suggestion, but you never could tell what the Americans might overlook.

"This is your final reply, Captain?" William Elliott asked. When Berryman nodded, the Confederate artillery officer rode back toward his own country. As soon as he was off the Long Bridge, Berryman walked over to a telegraph clicker Schlieffen hadn't noticed and rapidly tapped out a message.

A couple of minutes later, an explosion smote the air. Flame and a great cloud of black smoke sprang from the U.S. half of the Long Bridge, which crashed down into the Potomac. Moments after that, other explosions rang out to the east and west, no doubt severing the rest of the bridges linking the USA and CSA.

"We've already burned our bridges behind us," Captain Berryman said with a jaunty smile. "Now we're blowing them up in front of us. Captain, Major"-he spoke to the British and French officers-"I request and require you to return to your ministries at once, that you may be evacuated with your fellow nationals. My men will accompany you to see that this is done. Colonel Schlieffen, I impose no such order on you, but you might be wise to return to the German ministry anyhow. Surely the Confederates will not make it a target."

"No doubt you are right," Schlieffen said. He clambered up onto his horse and rode back toward the red brick building on Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue. The Prussian Army had sh.e.l.led and starved Paris into submission. Then he had been on the giving end of the bombardment. Now he might learn what he had given out.

A column of wagons heading east along G Street held him up. U.S. cavalrymen guarding them made sure they had the right of way. General Rosecrans rode in a buggy near the head of the column: heading for the train station, no doubt. Had the Confederate gunners chosen that moment to open up, they could have beheaded the U.S. Army. Whether or not that would have made it stupider than it was already, Schlieffen was not prepared to say.

A couple of blocks after that, as he was about to urge his horse up into a canter, a little girl of six or seven darted into the street in front of him. He brought the horse to a halt before any harm was done. The girl's mother hauled her back and spanked her, saying, "Be careful, Nellie! Watch where you're going!"

"I'm sorry, Ma," the girl blubbered. Schlieffen sympathized with her-she reminded him of his own daughters back in Germany-but only to a point. She had to learn discipline.

As soon as he did get back to the ministry, he asked to see Kurd von Schlozer. The minister had served in Was.h.i.+ngton since Germany united under Wilhelm I, and understood the United States far better than Schlieffen did. "Very unfortunate," Schlozer said now, running a hand over his glistening bald pate. "The Americans have a gift for antagonizing all their neighbors, and they have chosen this moment to exercise it. I urged restraint on them, but they would not listen. They never listen."

"I have seen the same thing," Schlieffen answered. "As you say, unfortunate. Not the slightest notion of forethought."

"And because they are so stubborn, they find themselves encircled," the German minister said. "They do not have a Bismarck, who has kept French jealousy from wrapping Germany in similar cords."

"Captain Berryman this morning spoke of notes from England and France to the government of the United States," Schlieffen said. "Have they declared war?"

"Not in so many words," Schlozer told him. "They demanded the United States cease all military action against the Confederate States within twelve hours, on pain of war."

Schlieffen weighed in his mind the forces on either side. "The United States might be wiser to accede to this demand."

"They will not." Sadly, Schlozer shook his head. "President Blaine sees that the United States are larger and richer than the Confederate States, and that is all he sees. No European powers have fought in North America since England and the United States had a brush during the Napoleonic Wars. Blaine, I fear, does not fully understand what he is getting into."

"I think you are right, Your Excellency," Schlieffen said. "General Rosecrans called the notes outrageous. And Rosecrans himself, when I spoke with him before, had made no preparations for war against Britain and France, even knowing such was not only possible but likely."

"Americans insist on improvising, as if the spur of the moment will itself impel them to find the right answer." Kurd von Schlozer sighed, like a judge about to p.r.o.nounce sentence, and a harsh sentence at that, on a likable rogue. "Until they learn to think before they act, they will not be taken seriously on the stage of the world. Please furnish me by tonight with a written report on what you saw and heard at the Long Bridge, so that I may cable it to Berlin."

"Yes, Your Excellency." Schlieffen went up to his stuffy office and drafted the report. After giving it to the minister's secretary, he went back up and studied for a while the Confederate General Lee's move up into Pennsylvania, the stroke that had won the War of Secession for the CSA. Lee had faced inferior opposition, no doubt of that, but the move, an indirect rather than a direct threat to Was.h.i.+ngton, showed considerable strategic insight. The North Americans were raw, but not all of them were stupid.

Schlieffen expected the Confederate guns to open up on Was.h.i.+ngton at any moment, but they stayed quiet. Inefficient Inefficient, he thought, but then checked himself. Maybe the Confederate States were waiting for their allies formally to join the war before commencing offensive action of their own: again, not the worst strategic notion. He went to bed still wondering, and did so with a perfectly clear conscience. If anything happened, he would know about it.

Dawn was breaking when the bombardment began. Schlieffen sprang out of bed, threw on his uniform, and hurried up to the roof of the ministry. Other buildings around it were of similar height, impeding his view, but he saw more there than he could have anywhere else-and his ears told him some of what he could not see.

Great clouds of smoke rose from the south and the southwest, from the Confederate batteries on the Arlington Heights and elsewhere along the Potomac. U.S. guns were answering, too: not only the big cannon in the fortresses that had surrounded Was.h.i.+ngton since the War of Secession but also field guns in the city itself and down by the river. Sh.e.l.ls made freight-train noises through the air.

He judged the weight of fire to be about equal. If anything, the USA might have held a slight edge: so his ears said, at any rate. But what did it matter? The U.S. guns could chew up Confederate emplacements in Virginia, but nothing more. Meanwhile, though, the Confederate cannon still in the fight were wrecking the capital of the United States.

He heard only artillery-no rifle fire. That meant the Confederate States weren't trying to throw infantry across the Potomac. Had he been in charge in Richmond, he would have held back, too: with the small professional army that was all the Confederates had in the field at the moment, they would have taken casualties they could not afford. Sh.e.l.ling Was.h.i.+ngton was in any case a largely symbolic act, for which artillery more than sufficed.

It was also a destructive act. Schlieffen watched Confederate sh.e.l.ls exploding around some of the fortresses in the hills back of the city. He also heard them landing to the south and the southeast, around the White House, with the War Department next door to it, and the U.S. Capitol. Smoke rose from both directions. Schlieffen went downstairs for a moment, returning with a pair of field gla.s.ses. Peering southeast through them, he nodded to himself. Not all of those sh.e.l.ls over there were coming down near the Capitol. Others, farther away, pounded the Navy Yard by the eastern branch of the Potomac.

In the streets, panic reigned. People who hadn't fled the city were all trying to leave at once now. Schlieffen hoped the little girl his horse had almost run over was safe. A fire engine, bell clanging, did its valiant best to force its way through the crush. Its valiant best wasn't nearly good enough.

An errant Confederate sh.e.l.l landed less than a block away from the German ministry. It started a fire. The fire engine could not get to that one, either. The firemen cursed as their big horses went forward by inches. Schlieffen breathed in gunpowder smoke like a man gauging the bouquet of a new bottle of wine. After a moment, he shrugged. Too soon to judge the quality of the vintage yet, but it was a war.

The Queen of the Ohio Queen of the Ohio steamed up the river for which she had been named. Frederick Dougla.s.s impatiently paced her deck. She'd had a disgracefully long layover in Evansville taking on wood, and she'd been bucking the current ever since Cairo. He didn't want to be late for his speaking engagement in Cincinnati. steamed up the river for which she had been named. Frederick Dougla.s.s impatiently paced her deck. She'd had a disgracefully long layover in Evansville taking on wood, and she'd been bucking the current ever since Cairo. He didn't want to be late for his speaking engagement in Cincinnati.

"I should have taken the train," he muttered. But he shook his ma.s.sive head. Whenever he traveled to a city on the northern bank of the Ohio, he went by steamboat. That way, standing by the port or starboard rail-depending on whether he was going downstream or up-he could look into Confederate Kentucky.

The green, gently rolling land looked no different from that on the Ohio side of the river. The shadow lying over it, unlike the one over smoky St. Louis, was not real. To Dougla.s.s, that made the shadow no less palpable, no less oppressive. On the southern bank of the river, millions of his brethren suffered in bondage-and most of his own countrymen did their best to pretend those suffering millions did not exist.

Not far away from Dougla.s.s, a white man and his wife were staring into Kentucky, too. He warmed to the worried expressions on their faces. Not all U.S. whites ignored the plight of the Negro in the Confederate States. Then the woman said, "Jack, are you sure it's safe to travel on the Ohio with the war on?"

"Safe as houses, sweetheart," Jack said rea.s.suringly, and patted the woman's hand. He was wearing a flashy brown-and-white checked suit and a derby with a feather in the hatband: someone who wanted to impress the ignorant with an importance he didn't really possess, Dougla.s.s guessed. He was certainly doing his best to impress his wife. In a loud, pompous voice, he went on, "If the Rebs were going to make a real fight, they'd have done it by now. You ask me, they don't have the stomach for it. Last night, we got past Louisville all right, didn't we? And look how that Custer chewed them up out west. Was it Texas or the Indian Territory? I misremember."

They had got past Louisville and the Falls of the Ohio without trouble, true enough. One reason they'd got past without trouble was that they'd used the ca.n.a.l on the Indiana side of the river, the one painfully excavated through solid rock after the war, not the Louisville and Portland Ca.n.a.l in Confederate Kentucky. Dougla.s.s understood that, even if Jack didn't.

The Queen of the Ohio Queen of the Ohio rounded a bend in the river just past Madison, Indiana. Jack's wife pointed to the riverbank on the Kentucky side. "Those are guns," she said. rounded a bend in the river just past Madison, Indiana. Jack's wife pointed to the riverbank on the Kentucky side. "Those are guns," she said.

Guns they were indeed. Dougla.s.s recognized them: four twelve-pounder Napoleons, leftovers from the war. As guns went these days, they weren't anything special. Neither were the troops who manned them. By their ill-fitting gray uniforms, they were Kentucky militiamen, not Confederate regulars at all.

Antique cannon, amateur soldiers-an armored gunboat would have slaughtered the men and wrecked the guns in a matter of minutes. The Queen of the Ohio Queen of the Ohio was anything but a gunboat. was anything but a gunboat.

"You! Yankee boat! Surrender!" one of the Kentuckians shouted across the water-the sidewheeler flew a large U.S. flag. "Come aground on this here bank. We got to search you to make sure you ain't carrying troops, and then you're a prize of war."

Frederick Dougla.s.s quickly went down to the main deck and toward the steamboat's bow. If he had to swim for it, he didn't want to have to swim around the boat before striking out for the northern bank of the Ohio. Nothing could have induced him to stay aboard if the boat grounded itself in Confederate territory. If those militiamen caught him, they would sell him into slavery. He'd been free for more than forty years, all his adult life. He was ready to die trying to stay free before going back into bondage.

"Surrender!" the militiaman shouted again. When the Queen of the Ohio Queen of the Ohio kept steaming along, the fellow turned to his battery and waved. The gun crews had been standing around watching the sidewheeler. Now one crew sprang into action. kept steaming along, the fellow turned to his battery and waved. The gun crews had been standing around watching the sidewheeler. Now one crew sprang into action.

"Are they going to shoot at us?" an unshaven desk pa.s.senger in dirty overalls asked.

"They can't," his equally grubby female companion answered. "They wouldn't."

The Napoleon roared. Flame and smoke belched from its muzzle. The cannonball splashed into the river in front of the steamboat. The gun rolled backwards with the recoil. The artillerymen began reloading. The other three crews were serving their pieces, too.

"That one was a warning," the Kentuckian shouted to the Queen of the Ohio Queen of the Ohio. "Surrender or we blow y'all out of the water."

Pa.s.sengers cried out in alarm and dismay. From the pilothouse up above came an order delivered with such furious vehemence that it cut through the rising din: "Tie down the safety valves and pour on the ether! Get us the h.e.l.l out of here!"

An order like that meant the steamboat was liable to explode even if the boiler didn't take a hit from the Confederate guns. Dougla.s.s couldn't have cared less. He clapped his hands together, applauding the captain's good sense: surrender, for him, was unthinkable. The sooner they got out of range of those Napoleons, the better.

The rest of the battery opened up on the sidewheeler, in earnest this time. One ball whizzed over her, a clean miss. Another went into the river just short of her, throwing water up onto Dougla.s.s and the other pa.s.sengers standing nearby. The third carried away the top couple of feet of one smokestack. The Rebels jumped up and down as if they'd sunk the Queen of the Ohio Queen of the Ohio. Their commander's furious yells set them to swabbing out and reloading again.

"My G.o.d!" Jack's groans from above reached Dougla.s.s' ears. "What do we do?"

"I think we'd better get down onto the main deck," his wife answered-she, evidently, had sense enough for both of them. "If the boat catches fire, we'll have to go into the river."

Pa.s.sengers by the score flooded out of the steamboat's cabins and salons, down the stairs, and onto the main deck. Some went to starboard, to stare across the river at the militiamen shooting at them. Some ran to port, as if they were a.s.sured of safety because they couldn't see the Confederate guns from there.

Those guns proved any such safety illusory a moment later. A ball slammed into the Queen of the Ohio's Queen of the Ohio's superstructure and tore through the boat's timbers as if they were made of pasteboard. A fusillade of screams-some women's, some men's-from the port side said the ball had torn through one of the pa.s.sengers, too. superstructure and tore through the boat's timbers as if they were made of pasteboard. A fusillade of screams-some women's, some men's-from the port side said the ball had torn through one of the pa.s.sengers, too.

"Dear sweet Jesus!" somebody shouted. "If we take a hit in the boiler, this whole d.a.m.n boat'll go up like it was filled with powder."

That had already occurred to Dougla.s.s. He wondered if it had occurred to the Confederate gunners, too. Maybe, to them, it was all good fun, like boys gigging frogs. But the frogs died in earnest-and so would a couple of hundred civilians, if the Rebs chanced to make a lucky, or rather an unlucky, shot ... or if, in their exertions to flee the battery, the crew overstrained the boiler and it went up without being hit.

On the heels of that thought came another, even worse. "How many guns await us around the next next bend of the river?" the Negro orator asked the heavens. bend of the river?" the Negro orator asked the heavens.

"Shut your mouth, you d.a.m.n n.i.g.g.e.r," snapped a white woman who looked like somebody's maiden aunt. Dougla.s.s fell silent, but that didn't matter. If one battery of guns was out along the Ohio, scores would be-U.S. guns as well as C.S., he supposed, but the Confederate cannon were the ones that worried him.

Boom! Wham! A cannonball slammed into the steamboat's starboard paddlewheel. Wood splinters flew. One of them stabbed a man, who shrieked like a d.a.m.ned soul. The wheel kept turning, though now it put Dougla.s.s in mind of a man smiling with a missing tooth. A cannonball slammed into the steamboat's starboard paddlewheel. Wood splinters flew. One of them stabbed a man, who shrieked like a d.a.m.ned soul. The wheel kept turning, though now it put Dougla.s.s in mind of a man smiling with a missing tooth.

Under his feet, the Queen of the Ohio Queen of the Ohio quivered like a racehorse suddenly given the whip. She fairly leaped forward in the water. Great gouts of smoke and sparks poured from her newly uneven stacks. The riverbank seemed almost a blur, such was the sidewheeler's speed. quivered like a racehorse suddenly given the whip. She fairly leaped forward in the water. Great gouts of smoke and sparks poured from her newly uneven stacks. The riverbank seemed almost a blur, such was the sidewheeler's speed.

But the boat's fastest clip was a pathetic creep when measured against the speed of a twelve-pound iron ball. More splashes around the Queen of the Ohio Queen of the Ohio said the crews firing at her were not masters of their trade. But more crashes and screams said they didn't need to be masters to score hits. "Have we got a doctor on board?" somebody shouted. said the crews firing at her were not masters of their trade. But more crashes and screams said they didn't need to be masters to score hits. "Have we got a doctor on board?" somebody shouted.