Chapter One
Wednesday, February 19, 1862
USS Delaware
Chowan River, North Carolina
Passed Midshipman Gavin MacKenzie, United States Navy, had his elbows resting on the port railing of the gunboat’s upper deck as it proceeded upriver at a moderate speed. The two other young officers with him, Midshipman Oliver Maxwell and Acting Master’s Mate Josiah Hammond, each held a similar relaxed pose, one on either side of MacKenzie. None of them was on watch. They were simply enjoying the cruising; the Chowan River was charming, the temperature was mild, and the only breeze was that created by the Delaware’s steaming northward.
Maxwell gave his head a single shake. “Sure doesn’t seem like we’re in a war.”
“No,” MacKenzie said. “This is very peaceful.”
Hammond said, “Ironically, this is what the Delaware might have been doing anyway.”
MacKenzie and Maxwell looked at him.
Hammond said, “I mean before the war. Taking some passengers on a leisurely afternoon river excursion.” He straightened up and looked around at their vessel. “Why, where we’re standing, the Delaware doesn’t even look like a warship. You can’t see her guns from here.”
The Delaware had been launched the previous year to serve as a passenger packet on Albemarle Sound and on the rivers that emptied into it. She was an iron-hulled, sidewheel steamer 161 feet in length with a beam of 27 feet. But the Navy had purchased her early in the war and reinforced her decks to carry the weight of heavy ordnance. With a draft of only six feet, she was perfect for wartime duties of patrolling shallow rivers. But she still looked like a passenger packet—except for the IX-inch Dahlgren smoothbore pivot cannon on her foredeck and the long 32-pounder smoothbore cannon mounted on a movable naval gun carriage on the afterdeck. She also carried a 12-pounder rifled boat howitzer.
Maxwell added, “Doesn’t even seem like winter. Temperature’s in the low 50s.”
MacKenzie said, “Typical for North Carolina at this time of year.”
Hammond said, “Gavin, how cold is it back home in Milwaukee right now?”
“At least twenty degrees colder than this, J.B.” Hammond didn’t care for his first name, so other officers called him by his first two initials. “And even colder than that farther away from Lake Michigan. The lake has a moderating effect on the temperature.”
“Nice,” Hammond said.
“Of course, the trade-off is that there is more snow in Milwaukee than farther inland, again because of the lake.”
“Hm,” Hammond said. “I think I could tolerate the snow better than I could stand the cold.”
Maxwell said, “And don’t forget the ice.”
Hammond shivered. “Br!”
MacKenzie nodded. “My mother wrote that my sister, Amelia, likes to go skating with her husband, when they can find someone to watch their two small children.”
“I wonder what that would be like,” Hammond said.
Maxwell asked, “How about Christina, Gavin?”
Christina Williams was a beautiful, blonde, blue-eyed young woman living in Milwaukee. MacKenzie was confident he would marry her someday—eventually. It just seemed the natural denouement of a longtime friendship, which included their respective families.
MacKenzie said, “She likes to skate too. In fact, in her last letter Christina said she had just bought a new pair of skates. Sometimes she goes skating with Amelia.”
Hammond said, “I assume you’re going to be drawing her a sketch of this river for your next letter to her?”
MacKenzie smiled. “Assume? Or guess?”
The other two officers laughed at that. It was well known that MacKenzie and Commander Stephen Rowan, when the latter had been captain of MacKenzie’s former ship, the USS Pawnee, had engaged in good-natured ribbing about assumptions versus guesses, an unusual familiarity between officers of such widely separated ranks. The point being you knew not to trust guesses, but assumptions could get you killed.
That light-hearted contest had continued even to the present. Rowan was now commander of the Union Naval Division in Albemarle Sound, part of Flag Officer Louis Goldsborough’s North Atlantic Blockading Squadron. Rowan’s flagship was the Delaware. And at the moment that officer was standing on the Delaware’s bridge, the curved section of the upper deck just forward of the wheelhouse.
Two other naval officers were stationed on the bridge. Lieutenant Stephen Quackenbush was captain of the Delaware, and Captain’s Clerk Edward Gabaudan, a recent new addition to the Delaware, was Rowan’s aide and the Delaware’s signal officer.
Also present on the bridge was Army Colonel Rush Hawkins, resplendent in his Zouave uniform of baggy red pants, short dark blue jacket, and tasseled red fez. He was the commanding officer of the 9th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, known as Hawkins’ Zouaves. Several companies of his regiment were aboard some of the gunboats in the eight-boat flotilla Rowan was leading up the Chowan River on this bridge-burning mission. No troops were on the Delaware though.
One company was on the USS Commodore Perry, Lt. Charles Flusser commanding, plodding along about a mile behind the Delaware. She was a converted New York City ferry boat. Judged to be only marginally seaworthy, she had amazed everyone by making the trip down to North Carolina in a gale. She was squat, slow, clumsy, ugly, and vulnerable. But she had a very shallow draft, perfect for riverine warfare, and her extremely wide beam meant she made a very stable gun platform. She had twice the complement of guns the Delaware had.
Well behind the Commodore Perry were three other low-draft, converted ferryboats: the USS Morse, the USS Hunchback, and the USS Commodore Barney. Still farther back were the other gunboats in Rowan’s present flotilla: the USS Louisiana, the USS Whitehead, and the USS John L. Lockwood.
“Well, J.B.,” MacKenzie said, “you assume correctly in this case. I’ll definitely add a sketch of the river in my next letter to Christina.”
Hammond asked, slowly, “And maybe one for my wife?”
Maxwell straightened up. He laughed. “Ah, J.B., that’s why you mentioned him sending a sketch to Christina. So you could beg a sketch for yourself.”
Hammond looked a little sheepish. “Gavin, she loves your sketches I send her.”
MacKenzie smiled. “Sure, J. B., happy to do it. And I’ll stick you in the sketch—as usual.”
“Thanks, Gavin.” Hammond smiled.
Maxwell said, “Gavin, that’s what you get for being so talented with a pencil. Lots of requests.”
MacKenzie shrugged, stood up, and folded his arms casually. “I don’t mind. It’s really a nice compliment.”
Hammond added, “Lots of orders, too, besides requests. How many times have you had to supply sketches for reports to the Navy Department? Maps, boats, guns, officers.”
Maxwell turned around and leaned his back against the railing. “And for the Army, too, J.B. General Butler had him make sketches for him after the Battle of Hatteras Inlet.”
MacKenzie said, “And sketches for Burnside after the Battle of Roanoke Island.” He nodded toward the Delaware’s bridge. “Col. Hawkins asked for sketches, too.”
Hammond said, “Oh, about your charge with the howitzer at the breastworks on Roanoke Island?”
MacKenzie had to smile at that. “No, about the 9th New York Zouaves that went with me. I drew Hawkins leading, even though he was in the middle of the column. And another sketch with Major Kimball in the lead, where he really was.”
Hammond said, “Well, I suppose they did contribute a little.”
MacKenzie chuckled. “Like, most of it. I never did get to fire the howitzer. It was a beast to drag forward.”
Maxwell said, “You and Kimball had a footrace to the breastworks, way ahead of the howitzer.”
MacKenzie nodded. “Didn’t mean to. But the two of us even outran the soldiers. And my howitzer got left well back of the soldiers.”
“But it was your idea,” Hammond said. “To charge right up that causeway. I know. I was there.”
MacKenzie said, “Yes, it was my idea. But I left myself and the howitzer out of the sketches for Hawkins and Kimball.”
Hammond said, “There’s no justice.”
Maxwell said, “Harper’s Weekly is likely to have a lithograph of the charge, Gavin. You may be in that. Should be.”
MacKenzie just shrugged. “Who knows.” He had to admit though that he did hope there would be a Harper’s Weekly engraving with him—and the howitzer crew—in it. Or maybe in Leslie’s Weekly.
Hammond said, “You should send them some of your own sketches, Gavin. I’ll bet they’d use it. Maybe even pay you for it.”
Maxwell said, “Now, there’s an idea, Gavin. I think your sketches are as good as the ones made by the newspapers’ artists.”
MacKenzie smiled. “Thanks, Oliver. And that is a thought.” He shook his head once.
“Funny how that seems like such a long time ago now. Yet it was just eleven days ago.”
Maxwell said, “I told you it didn’t seem like we were in a war.”
MacKenzie nodded. “Yeah, no sign of the war here.”
Maxwell said, “Not much sign of anybody, for that matter. Just a few blacks fishing. I don’t think we’ve seen any white people all the way up the river. Even in those two small hamlets we passed.”
“Ashland and Colerain,” MacKenzie said.
“They looked deserted.”
Hammond said, “Those two horsemen we saw a couple of hours ago were white.”
“Well, okay, two,” Maxwell allowed. “But just two. I guess after we took Roanoke Island, smashed the Reb’s mosquito fleet, and captured Elizabeth City, the white folk around here took a real scare and cleared out.”
Hammond swept a hand at the passing scene. “Anyway, Gavin, just how would you sketch that? I mean, it’s a beautiful river, even in the dead of winter. But draw every tree? How do you draw water?”
MacKenzie thought about that. The Chowan River traveled through swamps and forests of pine and oak and other trees. Heavy underbrush grew all along the shores. The river was two miles wide at its mouth on Albemarle Sound, but now, about forty miles upstream, the width had narrowed to less than half a mile and promised to narrow further.
He said, “You have to draw in such a way that a little represents a lot. Notice all the oak trees? They don’t lose their leaves in winter.”
Maxwell said, “No. They drop off in the spring.”
“So I’ll have to include that wall of oak leaves we see. But not every leaf. Just some circles to give the general idea. Your mind will fill in the rest.”
Hammond asked, “And the pine trees?”
“The pine trees I can represent with a gallery of short strokes. And maybe just a broad smudge at the river’s edge to represent all that thick underbrush you can’t see through.”
Hammond looked down at the water gurgling past the Delaware’s side. “The river has a funny color to it. Sort of like tea.”
MacKenzie said, “The Chowan is what they call a blackwater river. The swamps produce a lot of decaying vegetation, and that releases tannins into the water. Stains the water this color. Makes it acidic, too.”
Maxwell asked, “How do you know that?”
“Charles Franklin,” MacKenzie said. “Now, there’s a man educated well beyond his schooling. He’s a fount of information, on many subjects.”
Hammond said, “Ah, yes, Charles Franklin. Richest man in Elizabeth City.”
MacKenzie said, “Probably.”
Maxwell said, “Pity how his huge library was lost when someone burned down his mansion after we took Roanoke Island.”
“Yes, a real heartbreaker,” MacKenzie said. “I had spent many a pleasant hour in that library when I visited the Franklins.”
Maxwell said, “Wonderfully ironic, though. People in the city burning down homes and buildings so we Yankees can’t use ‘em, and then it turns out we don’t want to use ‘em anyway.”
“Yeah,” Hammond said. He looked at MacKenzie. “Think you and Jeremy Franklin will ever wind up shooting at each other again?”
MacKenzie shuddered a little. Jeremy Franklin was Charles Franklin’s son and his best friend since their days together at the Naval Academy. He still thought of Jeremy that way. But Jeremy had “gone South” and joined the Confederate Navy when North Carolina had seceded from the Union. Many Union Navy officers had resigned when their home states seceded. And twice in the last five months he and Jeremy had felt duty bound to try to kill each other, once at Hatteras Inlet and again at the locks at South Mills on the Dismal Swamp Canal. “God damn war.”
“Yeah,” Maxwell said. “Friends shouldn’t have to fight each other. Or even stop being friends. I know you were good friends with all the Franklins, Gavin. Including his sister Rebecca.”
MacKenzie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Oh, my God. He hadn’t thought about Rebecca Franklin for a good twelve minutes now. What a fabulously beautiful, passionate woman. Although he considered eventual marriage to Christina Williams both inevitable and highly desirable, Rebecca Franklin was one reason why he didn’t think it was imminent.
How many times had he relived in his mind that late night back in August of 1860 after the garden party at the Franklins’? How Rebecca had come to his room and invited him to introduce her to the world of carnal pleasures. Such passion, such abandon, such a gorgeous, young female body with the softest, smoothest skin, a wonderfully filled out figure, with the most perfect, firm breasts he had ever seen on a woman or could even imagine. And he had fondled many and had a rich imagination to boot.
MacKenzie was a very frustrated man. He had not seen Rebecca again for a year and a half after the weekend of that garden party. Until he had walked into Elizabeth City nine days ago after the city had been seized by Union forces and he had found the Franklin mansion burned to the ground.
Rebecca was a strong, devoted, articulate defender of the Confederacy, but she just couldn’t think of MacKenzie as the enemy. And she made it clear in that brief meeting that she was eager to have him visit her. It gave him an erection just thinking about what their next visit—a leisurely, intimate visit—would be like. But he hadn’t gotten back into the town since then.
For Elizabeth City had been captured but not occupied. Goldsborough and Burnside didn’t want to bother unless it became necessary. So instead of being moored regularly at the Elizabeth City wharf, the Delaware had often anchored offshore or even down near Roanoke Island. And sometimes she was off on a short mission somewhere in the Sound. And when the warship had docked at the Elizabeth City wharf, MacKenzie had never had the opportunity to go ashore.
For another matter, he wasn’t even sure Rebecca was still in Elizabeth City. Her home was gone. Where would she stay? Perhaps she had gone down to Wilmington to stay with her father, who had gone down there to invest in blockade runners.
Someone nudged him.
“Hm?”
Maxwell said, “Where did you go off to?”
MacKenzie smiled a bit. Can’t tell you, Oliver, but it was powerfully distracting. He noticed that Hammond was sauntering toward the bridge, and Maxwell looked like he was going to follow.
Maxwell said, “They’ve spotted someone waving a white flag on that landing up ahead. To port.”
“Oh, okay.” He followed Maxwell.
The three men stopped at the railing on the bridge in automatic order of rank, with MacKenzie nearest to Rowan, then Maxwell, and then Hammond.
Gabaudan was looking through a day telescope. “Looks like a Negro woman, sir.”
Quackenbush said, “Wonder what she wants.”
Rowan looked around. At this point the Chowan River was passing a steep bluff on the left that must have been forty feet tall. It was covered in a thick stand of pine and oak trees with a low wall of dense underbrush.
Rowan turned toward the wheelhouse. “Mr. Williams,” he called. Nassa Williams was a local river pilot hired by Rowan. “I can’t see over this bluff. Is there a village up ahead or just a plantation landing?”
Williams raised his voice. “A village, sir. Winton.”
All anyone could see of the village was just a short road climbing a steep clay embankment up from the landing.
Quackenbush asked Williams, “Is it very big?”
Williams shrugged. “A couple of dozen buildings is all. But it’s the county seat of Hertford County. So it does prosper some. A few stores, two hotels, I think, and some homes. And the courthouse, of course. A church. Things like that.”
Rowan stuck out a hand for the telescope. Gabaudan handed him the instrument. Rowan put it up to his eye. “She looks middle-aged. Well, maybe not.”
Hawkins said, “I don’t think she’s just trying to say hello. She’s really waving that rag.”
“No,” Rowan said. “She’s definitely trying to get our attention.” He turned to Quackenbush. “Let’s slow down for a bit. See if we can figure out what that black woman wants.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Quackenbush said. He turned toward the wheelhouse again. “One bell, Mr. Williams.”
Williams nodded. “Okay,” he said. As a civilian he made it a point not to sound too naval. He reached for the engine room bell cord.
Hammond piped up. “Commander Rowan, sir. I’ve heard tell that there’s a force of five hundred Unionists in the neighborhood who want to join Burnside.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that rumor, too,” Rowan said. He didn’t sound impressed.
Hammond said, “Maybe they’re camped out at Winton, and this woman is trying to get us to stop and talk to them.”
Hawkins said, “I doubt there are five Unionists on the Chowan who want to join us, much less five hundred.”
Rowan said, “I don’t give those stories any credence either, Colonel.”
MacKenzie said, “Besides, if there was a military force there wanting to get our attention, wouldn’t there be an officer on that wharf instead of some Negro woman?”
Rowan nodded. “A reasonable assumption, Mr. MacKenzie.”
MacKenzie couldn’t resist. “An assumption, sir?”
Gabaudan looked at MacKenzie suddenly, his eyebrows raised. He glanced at Rowan, expecting the commander to lash out at the effrontery.
But Rowan only smiled. He nodded slowly. He looked at MacKenzie. “Score one for you, Mr. MacKenzie.”
MacKenzie didn’t respond. Gloating would be pushing his luck.
Rowan said, “So why don’t you haul your ass up to the mainmast crosstrees. Maybe you can see into the village from there and figure out what this woman’s problem is.”
MacKenzie’s shoulders slumped. Oh, shit. The Delaware was far too small to have a proper fighting top on the mainmast where a lookout could stand or sit. On the Delaware any lookout had to find an awkward perch on the crosstrees, with maybe a leg wrapped around a shorter trestletree for security.
But MacKenzie acknowledged immediately. “Aye, aye, sir.”
Gabaudan grinned at him. As did Hammond and Maxwell. All three had a playful serves-you-right look on their faces.
MacKenzie shrugged a little as if to say it had been worth it. He stepped into the wheelhouse to retrieve another telescope from a bracket.
Rowan said, “Mr. Quackenbush, it’ll be almost dark before we get to the Blackwater and the Nottoway. We’ll have to anchor for the night short of them and let the rest of the flotilla catch up to us. We’ll assault the bridges tomorrow. So let’s talk to this woman and see what she wants. I think we’ll have plenty of time. I’m curious.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Quackenbush said. He turned to the wheelhouse. “Mr. Williams, dock the Delaware at that wharf.”
“Will do,” Williams said. He gave the wheel a good turn, and the Delaware headed for shore, which was only a few hundred yards away. The Chowan was narrowing swiftly.
MacKenzie descended to the lower deck. Although the mainmast was forward of the upper deck close enough that you could lean out and touch it from the bridge, a climber had to ascend the mast’s rigging from the main deck.
MacKenzie hopped up to the starboard railing on the main deck and started to climb the rigging, hands grasping the shrouds and feet climbing the ratlines. He used one hand to hold the telescope.
It was slow work going up. The shrouds and ratlines wobbled as he ascended, and ratlines never gave solid footing to a climber.
He got his shoulders above the crosstrees and paused. He looked ashore. He could see into the village from that vantage point. He could see buildings and dirt streets, the steeple on a church, a short tower on a building that must have been the courthouse, given the Confederate flag flying from a pole on its roof. But no people, other than the black woman on the wharf. There certainly was no military unit waiting for them. And no one else was visible on the streets either. Not even any Negroes, who weren’t apprehensive about the Union Navy.
He glanced to his right. From the wharf upriver, the bank was covered in pine, thick stands of oak, and that impenetrable underbrush like all the rest of the bluff at Winton. He saw no one there either.
He looked to his left as he started to scramble onto the crosstrees. He paused. He thought the underbrush there had an odd aspect to it, as if sun were reflecting off branches covered in ice. But it wasn’t cold enough for ice. And there had been no rain to make branches even wet.
Without climbing all the way onto the crosstrees, he raised the telescope, clicked open the tubes, and brought the instrument up to his eye. “Well, let’s see.” He looked through the telescope, adjusted the focus, and study the underbrush.
His mouth dropped open, his pulse leaped, a shiver ran through his body. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. Rifle barrels. He swung the telescope rapidly down the rim of the bluff. Hundreds of rifle barrels.
He snapped his head down. High up on the mainmast he was almost directly over the men on the bridge. “It’s a trap!” he shouted. “Sheer off, sheer off!”
Every man on the bridge jerked his head up. Rowan and Quackenbush both blurted, “What?”
A man on shore bellowed, “Fire!”
The afternoon’s tranquility was shattered by the crash of a volley of several hundred rifle muskets. It was all the louder for being totally unexpected. And the Delaware was very close now, only fifty yards from the wharf.
Minié balls clattered angrily but uselessly against the iron hull of the Delaware, but the superstructure was wood. Splinters flew, bullets punched holes in bulkheads. All the windows on the port side shattered, including the two port windows in the wheelhouse. Bullets smacked into the Delaware’s engine walking beam and twanged off the cannons fore and aft. The smokestack boomed as bullets perforated it. So many bullets struck the surface of the river around the Delaware that it looked like it was hailing.
Bullets thunked into the mainmast with an ominous angry whack! that reflected how much energy there was behind them at such a close range. Splinters flew from the crosstrees at MacKenzie’s elbows. He flinched and lost his grip on the telescope, and it fell. It caromed off the ship’s bell affixed to the front of the mainmast and clattered to the deck.
From the bluff: “Fire at will!”
MacKenzie frantically started back down the ratlines, his haste causing him to fumble. He stuck his foot between two ratlines. “God dammit!”
Initially, every man on the bridge flinched and ducked. But Hammond and Maxwell crashed through a door and threw themselves on the deck inside Rowan’s quarters. Maxwell kicked the door shut.
The other four men on the bridge charged around the wheelhouse and dropped below the level of the windows.
Rowan dispensed with the chain of command. “Williams, get us the hell outa here! Sheer off, sheer off!”
But Williams hadn’t waited for orders. On his knees he was already slapping the wheel and spinning it as fast as he could.
“Full speed, Williams,” Rowan added.
Williams grabbed frantically for the engine room bell cord, missed, and had to try again.
On the bluff two 12-pounder field guns that MacKenzie hadn’t even noticed fired. But atop the bluff they were so high that their two shells sailed over the top of the Delaware, ricocheted off the river’s surface, and plunged into the forest on the other side, exploding there.
There had been a brief pause in the firing as the Confederates reloaded, but they were skilled, and it took them far less than a minute to reload their muskets. Firing resumed before MacKenzie could fumble his way very far back down. He could tell soldiers on shore were now aiming specifically for him; bullets hitting the mast descended right along with him.
A shroud parted, and several ratlines snapped. MacKenzie hurried but he was amazed he hadn’t been hit already. The thick bulk of the mainmast was the only thing protecting him, and it wasn’t as wide as he was. And as the Delaware moved upriver, the mast would no longer shield him at all. He had to get down faster.
He was still well above the deck, but he decided it would be better to hit the deck by dropping himself than to have a bullet do it for him. He swung off the ratlines and grabbed a shroud with both hands. He gauged his swing, hoped he wouldn’t hit anything on the deck, and let go.
The deck rushed up at him. He hit the deck hard and rolled, grimacing and gasping for the air that had been knocked out of his lungs. His feet hurt, his elbows and knees hurt, his shoulder hurt, his wrists hurt, his butt hurt. At least he hadn’t hit his head. And he didn’t feel like he had broken any bones.
He struggled to get to his hands and knees, gasping for a breath. He crawled over to the port bulwark. On the Delaware the iron bulwarks on the main deck were just a little over waist high. So MacKenzie snuggled up to the bulwark and kept his head down.
Rowan called down to him. “Mr. MacKenzie.”
MacKenzie looked up at the bridge. He could see Rowan peering around the corner of the wheelhouse, on his knees. “Sir?”
“Are you hurt?”
“Nothing that won’t heal in time.”
“Anybody else hurt on deck?”
MacKenzie looked around at the rest of the crew huddled against the port bulwark. He saw the executive officer, Earl Chase, and James Spriggman, one of the Delaware’s other acting master’s mates. Several sailors were also there.
Chase called to Rowan, “It’s a miracle, sir, but no one down here was hit.”
“Thank God.”
MacKenzie asked, “On the bridge, sir? Anyone hit? You, sir? Mr. Hammond or Mr. Maxwell?” He noticed that Rowan was rubbing his temples. He thought the commander was getting another of his frequent headaches.
Rowan said, “No. I don’t think anybody was hit. Williams, were you hit?”
“A couple of scratches is all,” Williams said. “From broken glass.”
Rowan said, “I don’t know how we could take that much fire and not have anyone hit. Must be a whole fucking regiment on that bluff.”
“I think so, sir,” MacKenzie called. “It looked like it.”
Chase said to MacKenzie, “With so many of ‘em, the Rebs must’ve thought they didn’t have to aim. Probably figured a simple shotgun approach was bound to wreak havoc with us.”
MacKenzie snorted. “Well, I’m pretty sure they were aiming at me as I was coming back down, God damn ‘em.”
Chase smiled. “You were the obvious target, Gavin.”
“Well, I took it personal.”
“It was.”
Two cannons downriver boomed. Clearly much bigger guns than the two field pieces the Confederates had.
MacKenzie looked at Chase. “That must be the Perry.”
Chase nodded. “Flusser didn’t need any signal from Rowan. Probably ripping into those woods with grapeshot.”
That caused the fire from shore to slacken considerably.
Shortly Rowan said, “All right, we’re far enough upriver. Mr. Quackenbush, turn the ship around. We shall beat to quarters and clear those woods with our guns.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Quackenbush said. “Mr. Williams, we will reverse course. Bosun? Where are you, bosun?”
“Here, sir,” came a voice farther down the upper deck on the starboard side.
“Beat to quarters, bosun,” Quackenbush ordered.
“Aye, aye, sir!” The bosun’s shrill whistle brought the rest of crew scrambling up from below decks. The Delaware was too small to have a marine drummer aboard.
“Col. Hawkins,” Rowan said. “Most of your regiment is on other gunboats that will take an hour or more to catch up to us. So the day is too advanced for field action. But tomorrow we’ll come back, take this town, and teach it a lesson. Bastards. Sneaking, dishonorable bastards.”
“Yes, sir!” Hawkins said.
“And find that black woman if you can,” Rowan added.
“Yes, sir.”
MacKenzie didn’t think Winton was going to like Rowan’s lesson.
Rowan called, “Mr. MacKenzie.”
MacKenzie looked up. “Yes, sir?”
Rowan gave him a salute.
MacKenzie returned the gesture. Yes, assumptions could get you killed; don’t trust ‘em.
Quackenbush had the Delaware turned around. It wasn’t straightforward; they had to back and fill in the narrow channel.
The guns were manned. As the Delaware steamed slowly downriver, the guns fired grapeshot at the bluff and a few shells farther into the woods beyond it. The Commodore Perry kept up its firing as well. All firing from the bluff ceased.
About eight miles below Winton, Rowan anchored the Delaware in the middle of the river. The rest of his flotilla also anchored, strung out downriver from but close to the Delaware.
Rowan called all his captains aboard the Delaware. Together with Hawkins they had to make plans for the next day.
