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Argonautica

by Walter Jon Williams

Fictionwise Contemporary - Science Fiction

Fictionwise Publications

www.fictionwise.com

First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, October/November

1999

Nebula Award(R) 2001 Preliminary Ballot

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Pelias meeteth the One-Sandaled Man

Jase Miller first saw the iron monster in its improvised drydock off the Yazoo.

The huge creature had her nose into the land and showed her armored ass to the

river. Her twin stacks and rust-red casemate loomed above the flat Old River

country like a visitation from another world. Laboring darkies swarmed over the

thing like ants. Even over the sound of the General Bee's engine, Jase could

hear the ring of hammers on railroad iron.

“There she lies,” he thought, “and I am going to have her or get hung."

“Not as big as I thought,” said Ensign Harry Klee, who had seen Louisiana before

she burned.

“Big enough,” said Jase, and wondered again how he would steal her. By

indirections find directions out, he thought.

He signaled the engine room for ahead slow, then tapped the bell twice to send a

leadsman to the bow for soundings. General Bee dropped off its bow wave, slowed

in the murky water. Shoreward, a cottonmouth moccasin bared its fangs from the

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safety of an oak limb.

Strange country, Jase thought. He was a salt-water sailor, and unused to the

ways of rivers. The meandering Yazoo country was simultaneously open and

constricted—absolutely flat, though with all its sight lines hemmed in by dense

hardwood forests. Cypress, willows, cottonwoods, all thirsty trees that clung to

the banks of the river. Everything that stood was strung with vines. There were

alligators here, and snakes; herons and cormorants flocked in thousands.

And it was hot. Hot as a boiler room. Jase yearned for a sea breeze.

“By the mark three!” sang the leadsman. “Half less three! By the mark twain!"

Jase maneuvered the tug toward the bank, signaled astern slow, and brought the

Bee gently to ground on Yazoo mud. The levee began to fill with curious

bystanders.

Ensign Klee's huge body almost blocked the pilothouse window. “Any of them look

like much a senator to you, Jase?” he said.

Jase peered around Klee. “May be the fellow in the top hat."

Harry Klee squinted and spat. “He looks more like an undertaker."

“Guess I'll go ashore and find out."

Jase rolled down his shirt sleeves and put on his grey uniform jacket—visiting a

former senator required a degree of formality—then he adjusted his straw boater

and made his way past the thirty-pound Parrott rifle on the foredeck. Once

there, he discovered that the mechanism for lowering the gangway had jammed.

“Sorry, sir,” said Castor, one of the twins, in his Cockney accent. “I'll ‘ave

it fixed in a tic."

Jase looked at the group of people standing on the levee and felt his temper

rise. He decided he was not about to stand and be gawked at while he waited for

the gangway to be repaired, so he dropped off the bow and waded to the land, wet

above the knee. The Yazoo mud took one of his boots, which did not improve his

temper. He splashed ashore and mounted the four-foot-high levee in one stride.

“Senator Pendergas?” he asked the fellow in the top hat.

The man shook his head. “That's the general there,” he said, “coming this way."

The senator—now a general—was a broad, round-headed man in shirt sleeves,

striped uniform pants held across his big belly by red suspenders. His shirt

front was stained with tobacco. When Jase saluted him, Pendergas held out one

big hand and waited for Jase to shake it. Jase did as the man seemed to want.

“Lt. Jase Miller, C.S.N., commanding the General Bee,” Jase said.

“Glad to meet you,” Pendergas said, for all the world as if Jase was a

constituent.

“Let me have men about me that are fat,” Jase thought, “Sleek-headed men and

such as sleep o’ nights.” And felt inwardly pleased.

“You got any engineers?” the Senator asked. “I'm having problems with my

engines."

“I've got Navy engineers,” Jase said. Because Pendergas was Army, and so was his

boat apparently. And on account of the first point, Jase aimed to change the

second.

Pendergas looked at him with little eyes half-hidden by lids of fat. “We can

work something out, I reckon."

“I am ordered to cooperate with you, sir."

Pendergas spat tobacco onto the grass. “Well, that's good. Because you and me,

that's all the South has to defend Vicksburg."

Which was, Jase reflected, sadly true. A few months ago Flag Officer Davis had

taken Memphis with his Yankee river squadron. Farragut had captured New Orleans

with his salt-water flotilla, then steamed up the Mississippi, right past

Vicksburg's batteries, to join Davis north of the city. With the two Yankee

fleets united, it was clear that Vicksburg was next on their agenda, and the

South didn't have much to stop them.

Pendergas looked down at Jase's stocking foot. “Ain't the Navy issuing full sets

of boots these days?"

“The Navy issued the full set,” Jase said, “but nobody told me the Yazoo River

was planning on collecting a toll."

Pendergas curled a lip at this sorry example of wit. “Let's hope the Yankees

don't get the other,” he said. “And your boat with it."

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There was a rushing sound as the Bee blew steam. Pendergas’ little eyes almost

disappeared into his fleshy face as he looked at the General Bee.

“What kind of boat has the Navy given me, Jase?"

Chill mirth crept round Jase's brain. So Pendergas thought the Navy had given

him a boat, did he? They would see whose boat would be given to whom.

“Armed tugboat, sir, escaped from New Orleans before it fell,” he said. “We

carry a thirty-pound Parrott bow chaser, a twenty-pound Parrott aft, and a

twenty-four-pound smoothbore on each broadside."

Pendergas’ lip curled again. “And no more armor than a country whorehouse,” he

said.

“Oh, a little more than that,” Jase said. He had built waist-high log structures

around the cannon to protect the gunners, and stacked bales of cotton around the

pilot house, the boiler, and wherever else he thought it might do any good, but

there wasn't much else that could be done. The Bee had been built as a tugboat,

taken into the Navy because the Navy had no other vessels, and then named after

a man who had been dead since First Manassas. None of these omens seemed

particularly auspicious.

“Well,” Pendergas said, “come and look at Arcola, and I'll show you the boat the

Army's going to use to clean Farragut off the river.” He turned toward the

rust-red monster he was building in his cotton field, and raised his voice.

“Argus! Argus McBride!"

Limping on his one stocking foot, Jase followed the senator toward the drydock.

McBride turned out to be an old man, with a shock of white hair and a handshake

dry as sand.

“Formerly of the New Orleans, Galveston, and Great Northern Railroad,” Pendergas

said proudly. “He's rebuilding Arcola for me."

Argus looked at Jase skeptically. “You wouldn't know anything about

triple-expansion marine engines, would you?"

“I'm your man,” said Jase.

The senator clapped Jase on the shoulder. “Good boy! I knew we could use you!"

“If you like, I will send for my chief,” Jase said, “and we'll look at the

engines together."

While they waited for Chief Tyrus to come from General Bee, Pendergas and Argus

proudly showed them over the armored ram they were building on the Yazoo.

Arcola had started life as the Mingo, one of the Ellet rams that had sunk the

entire Confederate River Defense Fleet in about ten minutes during the Battle of

Memphis a few months ago. A few days after the battle, Mingo had blown its

boiler while on patrol, drifted down the Mississippi, and come aground on a sand

bar, where it was captured by a corporal's guard that rowed over from shore. “My

corporal's guard!” Pendergas bellowed in amusement, and jabbed Jase in the ribs

with an elbow.

President Jefferson Davis, who had served Mississippi in the Senate alongside

Pendergas, had obliged his colleague at the war's start with a brigadier's

commission. But—possibly because Senate experience had given the President a

good notion of Pendergas’ capabilities—Pendergas had never actually been given

the opportunity to command a combat unit. Until his corporal's guard rowed out

to the sandbar to demand Mingo's surrender, Pendergas’ sole war experience had

been to raise regiments and supplies in safe rear areas, which he shipped off

north to the fighting army.

Pendergas knew an opportunity when he saw it. He hauled Mingo off the sand and

hid her up the Yazoo, on one of his plantations. His slaves dug day and night to

build a drydock here in his cotton field while he assembled the men and

equipment necessary to turn his captured Yankee boat into a monster that would

devour the republic that gave it birth.

Argus showed Jase the foot-thick wooden bulkheads that ran the length of the

boat, to strengthen it for ramming, and the bows packed with timber to increase

the power of the blow. The two triple-expansion engines, driving screw

propellers, were braced for the shock of ramming and were able to drive the

Mingo at fifteen knots.

The Yankee Mingo, built purely as a ram, carried no armor or guns, but Argus had

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changed that. He had covered the ram with a two-foot-thick casemate of oak,

angled like a pitched roof so that shot would bounce off, and then plated the

oak with two layers of railroad iron, the rails ingeniously rolled and slotted,

riveted and spiked and racked together to present a smooth rust-red surface

impenetrable to enemy shot. A pilothouse had been built atop the casemate

forward, steel bars stacked like the logs of a frontier cabin and welded into a

roughly pyramidal shape, with an open top.

Bellona's bridegroom lapp'd in proof, Jase thought.

While building his ram the senator had also been scavenging guns. A massive

ten-inch Dahlgren smoothbore was to be mounted forward, pivoting on tracks so

that it could fire from forward, port, or starboard gunports. A seven-inch

Brooke rifle was to be similarly mounted in the stern. Each broadside consisted

of three bottle-shaped thirty-two-pound smoothbore cannon, making six

altogether. Rather than being placed opposite each other on each broadside, the

guns were staggered down the length of the narrow ram, to allow each big gun

room for recoil.

Jase wondered if either Argus or Pendergas realized how much the iron and guns

would degrade the ram's performance. They wouldn't be getting fifteen knots out

of this boat ever again. They'd be lucky to see half that.

And they didn't seem to know anything about ballast, either. All that iron

topside was going to make the ram roll like a drunken whore unless they stowed

more weight below the waterline.

Still, it would be a good boat, more than a match for anything the Yankees had

in the water. Jase's mouth watered at the thought of commanding her.

“We can't seem to get the carriages right,” Argus said. “That's why the guns

ain't in her. None of us have ever made gun carriages before."

“My men can help you with that,” Jase said.

“I'm gonna knock Farragut's flagship to splinters,” Pendergas said, “see if I

don't."

Jase kept silent on this point.

He had plans of his own.

Jason, Herakles, and Tiphys of Siphae journey to the Temple

Jase and his officers, Harry Klee and Chief Tyrus, were invited to the big house

for supper. Jase always enjoyed the sight of Klee's huge body stuffed into a

dress uniform, the cannonball-shaped head glowering from beneath a cocked hat

while his thick neck bulged out from around the collar and neckcloth.

The Senator's plantation house was a quarter-mile inland through cotton fields.

Long Shanks—which Jase imagined was Longchamps creatively spelled by its

owner—was a big place of raw red brick and cypress wood, too new to have

acquired the white plaster and stately pillared portico that would eventually

turn it into a miniature Greek temple somehow misplaced in the bogs of

Mississippi. Folks hereabouts even hired artists from Europe to paint false

grain on their cypress wood to make it look like a less common brand of timber.

Jase thought it was pretty odd what rich people spent their money on, but he

watched the rich carefully when he could. He aimed to be rich himself, and he

wanted to learn their ways.

Mrs. Pendergas was as stout as her husband and chewed at least as much tobacco,

spitting with casual accuracy into a silver ladies’ spittoon designed so as not

to get tobacco juice on her skirts. Jase bowed over her hand when he was

introduced—on one fat finger there was a diamond the size of a robin's egg—and

when he straightened he saw a fat crab louse sitting on Mrs. Pendergas’ head.

The louse eyed him with a look of the same suspicion that the senator's lady was

giving him at just that moment.

Jase promised himself he would find reason not to accept any offer to lodge at

Long Shanks. At least he knew his own boat was clean of vermin.

Interesting, Jase thought, these Mississippi gentry. Out east, in the Carolina

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tidewater where Jase had been raised, the planters made a display of their

manners and elegance and breeding, but Mississippi had been raw frontier just a

generation ago, nothing but swamp and cypress, and the folks who lived here were

still people of the frontier. Very little on the Yazoo had been papered

over—neither the plantation houses nor the people had gained a veneer of

elegance, and life was still lived in the raw. Ambition was for masters,

submission for slaves, and sheer violence the means to wealth.

They had come out West to get rich, these people. Jase figured it was something

he and the planters had in common.

Accompanying them was one of Pendergas’ aides, a young, soft-spoken artillery

lieutenant that the Senator introduced, with a twinkle in his eye, as

“Euphemism.” There was obviously a story behind this, one that Euphemism thought

a good deal less funny than Pendergas, but the young lieutenant was so quiet and

retiring that Jase thought it better not to ask.

The Pendergas’ kept a good cook, though. Navy vittles had sharpened Jase's

appetite for the real thing, and he tucked into the pickled oysters, goose,

beefsteak, and fresh greens with a will, and washed it down with the senator's

French champagne. The dinner conversation focused on the war, and on the

senator's opinions of the various commanders, none of which were favorable.

Pillow was a coward, according to the Senator, Van Dorn a fool, Beauregard a

vain, posturing frog-eater, and Johnston—any Johnston—an idiot. Pendergas bore a

grudging respect for Robert Lee, who had just driven McClellan from his post

before Richmond and saved the capital, but he implied that Lee had just been

lucky.

Pendergas dwelt at some length on a master plan of campaign that he had

submitted to the President, which involved the senator's raising a new army

around Jackson, then striking north to the Ohio while the other forces in the

West acted as his auxiliaries. Mr. Davis had not, as yet, offered a response to

his onetime colleague, so Pendergas was planning on using his new ironclad ram

to attract attention and glory to himself and to make his plan irresistible to

those in authority. Jase nodded and expressed his admiration of this plan, and

silently concluded that the senator felt acutely his lack of a meaningful

assignment.

“And about yourself, Captain Miller?” Mrs. Pendergas asked. “Have you seen any

fighting?"

“Mr. Miller,” Pendergas said heavily, “is a lieutenant, my dear."

“Oh, he's a captain, too,” said Tyrus. “His rank is lieutenant, but he's captain

of the Bee, and that's what we call him."

“It is a courtesy title, then,” Pendergas said.

Jase nodded to the senator. “Just as you may be a brigadier general, but you

will also be captain of the Arcola."

Pendergas nodded, pleased with this idea. He wiped gravy off his beard with a

napkin the size of a tablecloth.

“But to answer your question, ma'am,” Jase said, nodding to Mrs. Pendergas,

“yes, I saw action in the privateer Mobile under Captain Markham. We took six

prizes last year, if you remember, and sank the Catskill gunboat off Pensacola."

Privateers were something of an anachronism in the modern world, Jase knew, but

they didn't have to take orders from dim-witted politicians, and they got to

make a profit on their captures. Jase had, in theory, made a tidy sum when the

Mobile's six prizes were sold, but the profit was all on paper, and Jase still

hadn't seen a cent of the money. That had soured him on privateering.

And then, in a gallant act of generosity, Captain Markham had given his

privateer to the Confederacy as a warship, and the government had obliged him by

giving him captain's rank in the Navy. Jase Miller found himself without a job,

and there didn't seem to be any privateers fitting out, so in an ill-considered

outburst of patriotism he had joined the Navy as well, just a few months before

Ellet's rams put most of the Confederate Navy at the bottom of the Mississippi.

He should have looked for work as a blockade runner, he knew now. That's where

the money was.

“Where are you getting crew?” Jase asked, as he accepted one of the senator's

cigars and strolled to the drawing room.

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“Called for volunteers among artillery batteries,” Pendergas said. “Got sixty

gunners that way. Got the beginnings of an engine room crew from the railroads

and some unemployed steamboat men.” He lit a lucifer match and paused with his

cigar half-raised to his lips. “We'll fill up the crew with field hands.

Servants."

The senator puffed his cigar alight while Jase exchanged glances with Harry

Klee. “You're using slaves to fill up your crew?” Harry asked.

“Servants,” Pendergas nodded, using the euphemism common among planters. “The

niggers can haul ropes and shovel coal as well as anyone.” He saw the dubious

look on Harry's face and tried to reassure him. “It'll be white men who steer

the boat and point the guns, don't worry."

An old trick, Jase knew, to make money. Some planters had tried it in the Old

Navy—they put their slaves on board as crew, and while the slaves worked, the

owners pocketed the slaves’ pay for themselves. The practice wasn't common,

because most Navy captains refused outright to enroll slaves, but some captains

with Southern sympathies had permitted the practice.

But even the most fire-eating Southern captain, no matter how colossal his

greed, had ever for an instant considered putting sixty or eighty slaves on his

warship. The idea was sheer lunacy.

Harry Klee's thick neck swelled inside his collar. “But, General Pendergas,” he

said, “slaves—servants—they won't fight for you. Not like free men."

The senator gave Klee a complacent look. “They'll do what I tell ‘em. They

always do.” His diamond stickpin glittered in the lantern light. “They'll all

tell you, Boss Pendergas is a fair man. The whip and the branding iron only for

those who deserve it, apple jack on Sundays, and I keep my drivers away from

their women. Everybody works hard at Long Shanks, but nobody works harder than

me.” He nodded. “So they'll fight for me, I reckon. They know what's good for me

is good for them."

“But sir—” Harry was about to continue his protest, but Jase caught his eye and

gave a slight shake of the head.

The last thing he wanted was to keep Pendergas clear of disaster.

Jase looked at the senator. “Well, how you make up your crew is your business,”

he said. “But what your gun crews'll need is training, and my boys from the

Bee'll be happy to provide it."

“Thankee,” Pendergas said.

“In fact, once your men get to know the ropes a little, we might have some

competition between your men and mine."

A red reflection glowed briefly in the senator's eyes as he drew at his cigar.

“Perhaps a little wager on the outcome?” he suggested.

Jase smiled. “I think the Navy would be happy to bet on a sure thing,” he said.

“A sure thing?” Pendergas seemed amused. “You figure your little boat's able to

give my boys a challenge?"

“I'm counting on it,” Jase said, and took a long pull on his cigar.

Jason plans to recruit the Argonauts

“I want you to mix with Arcola's crew,” Jase told Harry and Tyrus as they

strolled back to the levee. “Get to know them. Get to be their friends. I'll

make sure you have access to the Bee's spirit locker—they're going to be thirsty

men after working on that monster all day.” He smiled. “Have less than thou

showest, Speak less than thou knowest, Lend less than thou owest."

“Ain't got money to lend nowheres, anyhow,” Klee said. “Those white crew, they

ain't gonna be happy to work with blacks."

“And it's dangerous,” Tyrus said. “Asking a slave to fight for his master is

like asking a steer to fight for the honor of the slaughterhouse. The quicker

the Arcola surrenders, the sooner the blacks get their freedom."

“I want you to point this out to the senator's crew,” Jase said. “And every time

you catch any of the officers or crew making a mistake, I want you to point that

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out, too. I want you to let them know that they ain't getting proper instruction

from proper sailors.” He smiled. “Once Pendergas’ crew realizes that the senator

plans on taking ‘em straight out on their lonesomes to fight Farragut's whole

fleet, with niggers making up half the crew and no real officers among ‘em, I

figure they'll be looking for a way out.” He looked out at the General Bee,

lying like a shadow against the levee. “And a way out,” he said, “is just what

we'll give ‘em."

Jason's history is related

Jase had grown up on the Charleston waterfront, the scrawny red-haired runt in a

litter of roughneck brothers. As a boy he wandered over the wharfs, imagining

Spanish galleons choked with gold as his eyes roamed over the ships.

Charleston's elegant gentry didn't give a damn whether he was educated or not,

but his parents did—his God-fearing mother made sure he had his letters, and his

father, a saloon keeper, pounded pieces of the Bible and Shakespeare into him

with a stick. But the sea was what drew him, and when he was twelve he took his

first voyage, as a captain's servant, past brick Fort Sumter to Havana.

He alternated working on ships with working in his father's saloon until his

maternal uncle was finally rewarded for a lifetime of toadying the Democrats

with a postmaster's job in Alexandria, Virginia. This was close enough to

Washington for him to get within smelling distance of some real patronage: soon

all Jase's relations were working for the post office. And Jase himself,

somewhat to his surprise, found himself with an appointment to the Naval

Academy.

Annapolis was easier than he'd expected. He already knew practical seamanship

and navigation: spherical trigonometry was as natural to him as breathing. The

discipline and hazing were mild, and far less arbitrary, than what he got at

home from his parents and brothers.

Relations between the South Carolina wharf rat and other young naval gentlemen

were more problematical. They had money, connections, and social elegance: Jase

had a world of experience that, at Annapolis, didn't count for a damn. He hated

the Southerners because they were rich, lazy, and stupid. He hated the Yankees

because they were rich, ambitious, and Yankees. He kept his chin tucked and his

fists clenched. He got a reputation as a vicious fighter, a wolverine with whom,

in the end, it was easiest not to tangle.

When he finally got his commission he was glad to be at sea again. All he needed

was a good war and he'd make himself rich off prize money. In the absence of

prize money, he'd settle for a ship of his own. Instead there were long cruises

to show the flag in the Mediterranean and mind-numbing months off Guinea on

anti-slavery patrol. The only good tour was under Markham in the Constellation.

Markham wasn't bad, for a rich planter.

He hoarded his meager lieutenant's pay and dreamed of war and command. Not for

the sake of glory—though he had no objection to a scrap with the Limey or the

Frog—but because it would be an opportunity to get rich. Just let me loose on an

enemy, he thought, and I'll strangle him with one hand and empty his pockets

with the other.

When the Union crumbled, Jase took his time deciding which way to jump. He had

no reason to love the Confederacy. The people running the rebellion were his

worst nightmare, but on the other hand he hated the Yankees six ways from

Sunday. He didn't want to fight his own family: he knew his brothers would join

the CSA. Captain Markham finally helped him make up his mind when he offered the

first lieutenant's berth on his privateer. Privateers were in business to make

money, and money was what Jase wanted to make.

After the privateering cruise he joined the Navy on a ridiculous surge of

optimism, thinking he could maybe hitch himself to Markham's star. But Markham

wasn't given a command right away, and the Navy Department put Jase to work

building a ropewalk in Mobile.

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But Captain Markham came through for him. People in Richmond asked him to

undertake a certain mission on the Mississippi. Markham said he wasn't the right

man for the job, but he knew somebody who was.

Markham wouldn't do anything underhanded or dishonorable, and he was a bad liar.

These, Jase figured, were his character flaws.

Jase took the Western & Atlantic east for a meeting with Secretary of State

Judah P. Benjamin. Benjamin had a bandit's touch with finance and did not share

Captain Markham's character flaws. Jase Miller took to him right away.

Jase had some conditions. He wanted to hand-pick his own crew from anyone in the

South, in or out of the service. He wanted his back covered in Richmond,

particularly with the Secretaries of War and of the Navy.

And he wanted not to be poor when the war was over. In this, he figured, he was

just like the leaders of the Rebellion.

Benjamin saw the sense of these requests. He acceded entirely.

Harry Klee was at loose ends after the Louisiana had been scuttled, and Jase

took him on as executive officer. The Jackson twins were found on a Charleston

blockade runner. Chief Tyrus was brought out of the shipyards in Charleston,

where he'd been converting vessels to blockade runners, and the Gunner, Faren

Smith, the finest cannoneer and rifleman Jase had ever known, was found amid the

wreckage of the River Defense Fleet. Other people were found her and there. None

were exactly immune to the lure of profit.

There was money up the Mississippi, Jase Miller told them. There were two

Federal fleets in the way, Farragut's salt-water flotilla and Davis's river

fleet. So all Jase and his men had to do make their fortunes was steal the

Army's ironclad ram, then defeat the Yankees.

The Argo is builded by Jason and Argus

Under Jase's direction, the senator's workmen put together massive gun truck

carriages of cypress wood strapped with iron. Carpenters assembled a simulated

gun deck on the levee, protected with revetments and cotton bales, where the

guns could be pointed out over the Yazoo and crews could be trained while

workmen still labored on the ironclad. The battery could also be used to protect

Arcola in case the Yankees decided to venture up the Yazoo. Crewmen from the

General Bee came ashore to instruct the ironclad's crew in gunnery.

Since there were no real seamen in Arcola's crew, nobody wondered why the little

Bee, a tiny vessel in a service strapped for volunteers, was fifty percent over

complement. Jase had, like Fortinbras, shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes,

and the list was a long one.

The ironclad's crews proved no better than expected. The militia artillerymen

that Pendergas had scavenged from his training units knew how to do their jobs

well enough, given that they'd trained on little six-pound brass howitzers

instead of hulking iron naval guns, but the militiamen hated the blacks like

poison. They demonstrated on every possible occasion that they'd rather curse

and kick their black fellow crewmen than fight the Yankees. The slaves knew

better than to disclose the hatred they doubtless felt for the whites, but they

showed no enthusiasm for their task, and little bits of sabotage kept occurring.

Friction primers would go missing, the special ammunition for the Brooke rifle

would be placed by the wrong gun, handspikes and priming irons would not be

ready to hand when they were needed. On one occasion, the guns’ wooden tompions

were seen floating down the Yazoo. These incidents drove the white gunners into

near-frenzy.

Senator Pendergas pronounced himself pleased with his gunners’ progress. Jase

smiled and bided his time.

Jase formed some of the Bee's men into a baseball team, and Navy played Army

almost every afternoon, following drill. With Faren Smith's pitching, Castor

Jackson stealing bases, and Castor's twin Put-Up-Your-Dukes and Harry Klee

regularly belting the ball into the bayou, the Navy won on a regular basis. Army

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discontent increased. Jase let it simmer.

Pendergas seemed unaware of the tensions within his command. He busied himself

with his grand plans for winning the war once the President gave him the troops,

and with plotting the destruction of Farragut's fleet, which he figured would be

the work of an afternoon. On occasion, though, he relaxed to the extent of

attending a baseball game.

“Your center fielder,” he nodded on one such occasion, “I've been thinking he

looks familiar."

Jase took a draw on one of the senator's cigars. “His name is Pedaiah Jackson,”

he said.

Pendergas gave him a squint-eyed look. “The prizefighter? The one they call

Put-Up-Your-Dukes?"

“That's the one."

“I saw him beat Tommy Corcoran down in Orleans in ‘58. He was a champ, wasn't

he?"

“Heavyweight champion of Great Britain and Ireland,” Jase said, “till the law

found out about the wives he had stashed all over the kingdom, and he had to

take a long sea voyage.” On the USS Constellation, as it happened, where Jase

was serving as third lieutenant.

Pendergas spat tobacco into the grass and ground it in with his shoe.

“Interesting crew you've got, Miller."

Jase nodded at the field. “That's Jackson's twin brother Castor at shortstop. My

quartermaster."

The senator scratched his beard thoughtfully. “There's a prizefighter up in

Yazoo City called Tom Amboise. People call him ‘King.’ A blacksmith. Killed a

man in the ring up in Memphis with his bare fists."

“I heard of him,” Jase said.

“You reckon Put-Up-Your-Dukes would fight him? Barehanded, of course? I'd put up

a good cash prize. We could stage the fight up in Yazoo City, and I could

commission a special train from Jackson for all the sportin’ gents."

Jase concealed his inward smile. “Talk to Jackson about it. But I don't want him

fighting as long as we're working on the Arcola. Launch the ram and get the men

trained, and then I figure I can release Dukes from duty for a few days."

The senator spat. “Gives me more time for putting up placards and spreading the

word.” And placing bets, Jase figured.

“Well, then,” Jase said. “If Jackson is willing."

Pendergas peered at him. “Is Jackson in training?"

“I've never seen him come close to losing."

Pendergas smiled as he placed mental bets against the local man-killer. Things

were coming together pretty well.

With sacrifices to the Gods, Argo is launched

Placards for the prize fight started going up on the same day that Arcola was

launched. The earthen embankment that separated the makeshift drydock from the

Yazoo was torn away, and foaming river water spilled into the gap. As slaves

worked madly with shovels and barrows, the water climbed the ram's wooden hull

to the belt of iron at the waterline. The cradle on which Arcola rested gave a

series of groans. People cheered. Guns fired a salute. Flags waved. A militia

band—boys and elderly men—played “Bonnie Blue Flag.” Pendergas, grandly dressed

in a soft pearl-grey uniform, waved his forage cap at the crowd.

A gun fired. The Army battle flag, the red square with the blue saltire and

white stars, rose on the ram's flagstaff.

Jase, aboard General Bee, did not like that flag there, and reckoned he would

have to change it. He ordered ahead slow. The tugboat's bronze screw propeller

thrashed brown water. Warps tautened, creaked.

The ram groaned but refused to move from its cradle. The railroad iron was

weighing it down. Jase increased Bee's power until there was nothing but white

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froth under its stern counter. Arcola did not move.

Harry Klee beat upon the frame of the pilothouse door with one huge fist. “Those

Army dung-throwers! They've stranded Arcola in her own dry dock!"

Jase jangled bells to signal engine stop. “We'll get her afloat."

“Hope she's not stuck till the river rises!"

Mule teams were mobilized, harnessed to warps, and lined up on the levees. The

ironclad was lightened by the weight of its anchor and chain, its cookstove, a

pair of anvils, carpenter's stores, and the contents of the paint locker. Again

Jase signaled Bee's engine room ahead slow. Mule drivers cracked whips. Again

the flags waved. Again the people cheered. Again Pendergas waved his cap. Again

the strains of “Bonnie Blue Flag” were heard.

Again the ironclad failed to move. Pendergas threw his forage cap onto the levee

and kicked it into the Yazoo. Jase lit a cigar while Harry Klee cursed and

fumed.

“Calm down, Harry,” he said. “This is just dandy.” Then he went ashore to tell

Pendergas he had a plan.

The crowds had gone home by the time Arcola was floated. The ironclad's boilers

were filled with water. Jase warped a coal barge into the drydock until its bows

touched Arcola's flat stern. Just enough coal was shifted into the ram's bunkers

to get up steam, then the barge was warped away again. It was the middle of the

night before the steam pressure was sufficient to crank the engines, but that

wasn't enough for Jase. He had Chief Tyrus tie down the safety valves and

ordered more coal thrown into the fireboxes.

The mules were harnessed once more. Harry Klee took position in Bee's

wheelhouse. Jase stood in the armored pilot's station atop the front of the

ironclad's casemate, Castor Jackson and three others stood at the wheel just

below him, and Chief Tyrus attended the engines. The other crew were hustled

ashore, and were probably glad to be there. Jase wished he could blow a steam

whistle to let everyone know when to start, but Arcola lacked that piece of

equipment. Maybe a whistle was beneath the dignity of an armored terror such as

the ram.

Arcola's pilot house lacked a roof, so Jase just chinned himself up, got one

foot onto the casemate, and stood. The day's heat still rose from the railroad

iron. He had Castor hand him up a battle lantern, and he waved it at Klee. Bee,

which had a whistle, promptly gave out with a series of blasts, and over the

silent river Jase heard the sound of General Bee's engines begin to thump. Whips

cracked. Wood groaned as it took the strain.

Jase looked down into the ram and called to Castor. “Signal astern slow.” Castor

expertly played the ropes that rang bells in the engine room, and was answered

by huge, solid, tooth-rattling crashes as Arcola's engines engaged, then a surge

as the twin eight-foot-diameter propellers began to bite water. White water

streamed alongside Arcola's flank. Jase felt the ram shudder, heard submerged

wood groan.

“Half astern,” he ordered. Bells jangled in the engine room. Tongues of flame

licked from the twin stacks. The hawsers that connected General Bee to Arcola

were so taut that water shot from the coils as they took the strain. The ram's

air intakes, huge metal bells shaped like ear trumpets, began to howl with the

force of the gale sucked into the boilers. Wood moaned like a giant in torment.

The water in the drydock surged back from the propellers, turned to froth. A

shudder ran the length of the ram, and Jase felt the trembling in his bones.

Jase saw Pendergas on the edge of the drydock, pacing up and down, shouting at

him. He had a feeling that the senator wanted Jase to shut everything down and

wait for the Yazoo to rise.

Jase looked left and right, watching the water surge along the ironclad. Gauged

his moment.

“Astern full.” Spray from the propellers flew twenty feet high, a wave

inundating Pendergas in his new uniform. Pendergas kept shouting. A series of

bangs like cannon shots sounded through the air. Arcola jerked on the ways and

Jase almost tumbled down the inclined iron casemate. There was a surge, the bow

rose as if to a wave, and Arcola leaped like a racehorse from the drydock,

scattering behind it the hardwood wedges that had held it in its cradle.

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Williams, Walter Jon - Argonautica

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