Rhett Butler's people (27 page)

The

Widows

oversized engines burbled through underwater exhausts. Her hinged stacks lay flat, offering no silhouette against the pale beach. A hundred feet away, the runner might have been mist above the swell.

Bringing a runner through the Charleston blockade was more dangerous after the Federals took Battery Wagner. With Federal guns commanding the deepwater ship channel, no runner dared sail west of Fort Sumter. The eastern passage, Maffitt's Channel, was narrow and crooked. Before the War, buoys had marked Rattlesnake and Drunken Dick shoals, but the blockaders had removed them. At low tide, stretches of Maffitt's Channel were four feet, four inches deep. Loaded, the

Widow

drew four feet.

Just beyond Drunken Dick, the runner must veer to starboard and run for Charleston harbor's remaining entrance.

To keep Federal ironclads out of the harbor, Confederate defenders had floated a log boom studded with contact torpedoes across the channel

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from Sumter to Fort Moultrie on the eastern shore. The hundred-yard gap in that boom, directly under Moultrie's guns, was the passage into the harbor.

The Federals knew runners must come in during the dark moon. They knew the channel the runners must take. They knew the tiny entrance they must pass through. Sharp-eyed young Federal lookouts rubbed their eyes, straining to penetrate the night. They listened past the wheeze of their own breathing, the thudding of their hearts.

After Battery Wagner fell, most blockade runners had quit Charleston for Wilmington, North Carolina, where runners had two coastlines to sneak along and two inlets to slip through -- both protected by Fort Fisher, a colossal sand fort astride the narrow peninsula between the Cape Fear River and the Atlantic.

Approaching Charleston, Tunis Bonneau kept his 180-foot side-wheeler inshore in that shifting watery hollow where ocean swell became surf. Though Federal warships kept well offshore, picket boats patrolled the shallows. Twenty-foot dories couldn't sink or board the

Merry Widow,

but their flares could direct the warships' guns onto the unarmed, unarmored runner.

Five knots. Tunis Bonneau stood on tiptoes, squinting. Breakers boomed and surf whumped onto the beach, hissing as it ebbed.

The

Widows

bow lookout raised his left arm, meaning, "picket boat on the port bow." Tunis bent to the speaking tube and asked the engine room for more steam.

The coxswain of the Federal picket boat saw something -- a shape that might or might not be a ship, might or might not be a runner. He fumbled a signal flare from its tin chest and shouted, "Ahoy! What is the counter-sign?

Engines quivering its deck planking, the

Widow

was making nine knots. "The Union Forever!" Rhett Butler sang out.

Tonight's countersign was "Gettysburg," but last night's had been "Preserve the Union." The coxswain had flare and match in hand but hesitated. Might this be a Federal vessel whose captain was on the wrong page of the signal book? There'd been no runners in weeks, and the overzealous coxswain

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who called fire onto a Federal gunboat faced certain court-martial. "Countersign!" the coxswain demanded again.

"Dishonest Abe!" Rhett shouted.

The coxswain had lit the flare when the

Widow

sliced into the dory, dragging eight Federal sailors into her slashing paddle wheels.

"Brave fellows," Tunis Bonneau said.

"But indecisive," Rhett replied.

"Slow ahead," Tunis murmured into the speaking tube.

Tunis steered by dimly seen land shapes and familiar currents tugging at the wheel. He trusted the memories in his hands.

The

Merry Widow

proceeded without further difficulty until she'd weathered Drunken Dick. Fort Sumter was off her port bow when the first Federal flare streaked into the sky.

Tunis called for full steam, the deck crew hove her hinged stacks upright, and the

Widow

lunged forward like a racehorse at the starter's gun.

Picket boats and warships sent up red, green, and blue signals, "Who are you? Are you ours?"

Rhett fired the

Widows

own red and green flares: nonsense signals.

Tunis Bonneau panted, as if faster breathing could make the

Widow's

side wheels turn faster. The deck shuddered beneath his feet.

The first Federal shells fell short by twenty feet. Spume drenched the

Widow's

deck crew.

"Their marksmanship has improved," Rhett said. He climbed a paddle wheel housing and put his glass to his eye, as if the bellowing Federal guns were harmless fireworks on a pleasant summer evening.

The bow lookout strained to spot that narrow gap in the torpedo boom.

Since the Federal guns couldn't track a racing runner, they had zeroed on the boom opening, and the

Widow

wallowed and bucked through near misses, as thoroughly drenched as if beneath Niagara Falls.

In full daylight, the lethal boom lay low in the water; by the dark of the moon, it was invisible. Tunis steered for the thickest concentration of waterspouts, praying the Federal guns were well pointed. The

Widow

shuddered: hit. Hit again, she shook like a wet dog. Tunis almost lost his grip

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when the wheel kicked in his hands. Another near miss slapped him into its spokes.

They were through. The boom's pale cypress logs and greening, barnacled iron torpedoes passed six inches to port.

Fragments from a final burst rattled onto the deck.

After the Federal guns quit, Tunis bent sideways to shake water out of his ears.

Rhett stepped down from the housing, folded his telescope, and lit a cigar. His match's flare was so bright, it hurt Tunis's eyes. In a hoarse voice, Tunis ordered Mr. MacLeod, the

Widow's

engineer, to check for damage.

"We come through again," Tunis told Rhett.

"That was the easy part," Rhett said. "Lord, I dread our arrival. Poor, poor Rosemary."

News of Meg's death had reached Rhett in Nassau.

"I hate this war," Tunis said.

"Some say it will set your people free."

"Yes, sir. That's what some people say."

The city was dark. Charleston's church steeples -- mariners' beacons for generations -- had been painted black so Federal gunners couldn't aim by them.

Marked by the streak of its fuse, a shell arced from Federal guns into the city. A brief flash was followed seconds later by a dull rumble.

Tunis felt river currents in his wheel. The land breeze stank of brick dust and fires. "Slow ahead."

Rhett tried a joke. "Now I've sold you the

Widow,

Tunis, you must be more careful with her."

"Ha-ha."

Charleston's waterfront was wrecked. The

Widow

thrummed upriver past burned wharves, clipper ships moldering at their moorings, and steamers, decks awash, settled on the river bottom.

Engineer MacLeod reported shell damage was minor but that the

Widow's

oversized steam engines had torqued their steel mounts and twisted the ship's starboard knees.

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Most of Charleston's speculators had left for Wilmington, but, alerted by the Federal welcome, men at the Haynes & Son wharf were eager to do business.

Tunis reversed his engines as the

Widow

eased into her mooring and crewmen fended her off the bumpers.

Flickering lanterns illuminated the wharf. Someone cried, "Rhett, I got to have me some silk and perfumes."

"Buttons and epaulets," another voice called.

"I'll take twenty of champagne!"

The

Widow

was snubbed fore and aft, and with loud whooshes, the boilers vented steam. In the silence, Rhett could hear the river lapping at her hull. "Can't help you tonight, gentlemen. I've got no luxury goods. I've got thirty cases of cotton-carding combs, fourteen cases of Wentworth rifles, army shoes, uniform cloth, and minie balls. Perhaps you'll join me in a cheer for the Bonny Blue Flag That Bears a Single Star?"

"Christ!" someone said. "You pick a hell of a time to get patriotic."

A heavy hammer was banging in the engine room: Mr. MacLeod repairing engine mounts.

Disappointed speculators abandoned the wharf to a blue sulky and a black buggy.

"I reckon that's Ruthie and Rosemary," Tunis said.

"Tunis, why do we give our hearts to be broken?"

"Reckon we'd be better off if we didn't?"

Rhett's sister waited beside the sulky. She seemed smaller than Rhett remembered her.

"Dear Rosemary." He enfolded her in his arms.

For a moment, she resisted; then she gave a racking sob and convulsed. "Why, Rhett? Why do they murder our children? Have they no children of their own?"

In punctuation, a shell exploded in the city. Rhett held her until she stopped quaking and some tension leaked out of her. "Thank you," she said very softly. He released her and she wiped her eyes and tried to smile. She blew her nose.

In a calm, flat voice, she said, "Meg was so tiny. Almost as if she were

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an infant again. When John picked her up, one of her shoes fell off. You know, we never did find her other shoe. My baby's face was filthy, so I took my handkerchief to wipe her face, but John jerked her away. Rhett... Margaret Haynes was my own baby, but I had to beg before my husband let me clean her dear forehead. Her lip was cut -- here -- but it was not bleeding. She was cold as clay. With these fingers, Rhett, I closed my baby's eyes."

Rhett held her again. Absent the tension that had animated her, Rosemary was a rag doll. Rhett asked, "John? ..."

"He walks the streets every night, utterly indifferent to the bombardment. Why, Rhett" -- she offered a ghastly smile -- "our free colored firemen see more of my husband than I do. Isn't that peculiar?"

"I will go to him...."

Rosemary clutched Rhett's arm. "You cannot! He will not see you! John begs that as his friend you will not go to him."

"If an old friend can't -- "

"Rhett, please believe me. John Haynes will not admit you to our house."

At the other buggy, Ruthie Bonneau was whispering fiercely, "Go on, now, Tunis Bonneau. You go on!"

Tunis crumpled his hat in his hands, "Miss Rosemary, me and Ruthie, we're right sorry 'bout your trouble. We always thought high of you Hayneses."

Rosemary looked past him. Absently, she stroked her horse's muzzle. "I wonder if Tecumseh remembers Meg," she said softly. "I look into his large mild eyes and ..." She put her hand over her face to muffle a sob.

"Every night, me 'n' Ruthie, we prays for you, Miss Rosemary," Tunis said desperately. He helped his pregnant wife into their buggy and drove off.

Rosemary searched her brother's face. "Rhett, I have been so blind, so terribly blind! I wanted what I ought not and lost all the precious hours I might have had with my child and my husband...." She paused and took a breath. "Brother, you must not make my mistake. Promise me ... promise you'll do something for me?"

"Anything."

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