George Martin - Fevre Dream

Workmen had abandoned a lantern atop a pile of lumber near the stern of the boat. Marsh struck a match on his leg, lit the lantern, and thrust it imperiously at Brown. “Here, you, carry this,” he said brusquely. He went clomping heavily up a long board onto the main deck, the others trailing behind. “Careful what you touch,” he said, “some of the paint’s still wet.”

The lowest, or main, deck was full of machinery. The lantern burned with a clear, steady light, but Brown kept moving it around, so the shadows of the hulking machines seemed to shift and jump ominously, as if they were things alive. “Here, hold that still,” Marsh commanded. He turned to York and began to point, his stick jabbing like a long hickory finger toward the boilers, great metal cylinders that ran along either side of the forepart of the deck. “Eighteen boilers,” Marsh said proudly, “three more than the Eclipse. Thirty-eight-inch diameters, twenty-eight-foot long, each of ’em.” His stick waggled. “Furnaces are all done up with firebrick and sheet iron, got ’em up on brackets clear of the deck, cuts down on the chance of fires.” He traced the path of the steam lines overhead, running from the boilers back to the engines, and they all turned toward the stern. “We got thirty-six-inch cylinders, high pressure, and we got ourselves an eleven-foot stroke, same as the Eclipse. This boat is goin’ chew up that old river something terrible, I tell you.”

Brown gabbled, Smith gibbled, and Joshua York smiled.

“Come on up,” Marsh said. “Your friends don’t seem too interested in the engines, but they ought to like it just fine upstairs.”

The staircase was wide and ornate, polished oak with graceful fluted banisters. It began up near the bow, its width hiding the boilers and engines from those boarding, then broke in two and curled gracefully to either side to open on the second, or boiler, deck. They walked along the starboard side, with Marsh and his stick and Brown and the lantern leading the way, their boots clacking on the hardwood deck of the promenade as they marveled at the fine gothic detail of the pillars and the guard rails, all the painstakingly shaped wood, carved with flowers and curlicues and acorns. Stateroom doors and windows ran fore and aft in a long, long row; the doors were dark walnut, the windows stained glass. “Staterooms aren’t furnished yet,” Marsh said, opening a door and leading them into one, “but we’re getting nothing but the best, featherbeds and feather pillows, a mirror and an oil lamp for each room. Our cabins are larger than usual, too-won’t be able to take quite as many passengers as some other boat our size, but they’ll have more room.” He smiled. “We can charge ’em more too.”

Each cabin had two doors; one leading out onto the deck, the other inward, to the grand saloon, the main cabin of the steamer. “Main cabin isn’t near finished,” Marsh said, “but come look at it anyway.”

They entered and stopped, while Brown raised the lantern to cast light all up and down the vast, echoing length of it. The grand saloon extended the length of the boiler deck, continuous and unobstructed except by a midship gangway. “Fore portion is the gents’ cabin, aft for the ladies,” Marsh explained. “Take a look. Ain’t done yet, but she’ll be something. That marble bar there is forty foot long, and we’re going to put a mirror behind it just as big. Got it on order now. We’ll have mirrors on every stateroom door too, with silver frames around ’em, and a twelve-foot-high mirror there, at the aft end of the ladies’ cabin.” He pointed upward with his stick. “Can’t see nothing now, with it being dark and all, but the skylights are stained glass, run the whole length of the cabin. We’re going to put down one of them Brussels carpets, and carpets in all the staterooms too. We got a silver water cooler with silver cups that’s going to stand on a fancy wooden table, and we got a grand piano, and brand new velvet chairs, and real linen tablecloths. None of it is here yet, though.”

Even empty of carpeting, mirrors, and furniture, the long cabin had a splendor to it. They walked down it slowly, in silence, and in the moving light of the lantern bits of its stately beauty suddenly took form from the darkness, only to vanish again behind them: The high arched ceiling with its curving beams, carved and painted with detail as fine as fairy lace. Long rows of slim columns flanking the stateroom doors, trimmed with delicate fluting. The black marble bar with its thick veins of color. The oily sheen of dark wood. The double row of chandeliers, each with four great crystal globes hanging from a spiderweb of wrought iron, wanting only oil and a flame and all those mirrors to wake the whole saloon to glorious, glittering light.

“I thought the cabins too small,” Katherine said suddenly, “but this room will be grand.”

Marsh frowned at her. “The cabins are big, ma’am. Eight foot square. Six is usual. This is a steamer, you know.” He turned away from her, pointed with his walking stick. “Clerk’s office will be all the way forward there, the kitchen and the washrooms are by the wheelhouses. I know just the cook I want to get, too. Used to work on my Lady Liz.”

The roof of the boiler deck was the hurricane deck. They walked up a narrow stair and emerged forward of the great black iron smokestacks, then up a shorter stair to the texas deck, which ran back from the stacks to the wheelhouses. “Crew’s cabins,” Marsh said, not bothering with a tour. The pilot house stood atop the texas. He led them up and in.

From here, the whole yards were visible; all the lesser boats wrapped in mist, the black waters of the Ohio River beyond, and even the distant lights of Louisville, ghostly flickers in the fog. The interior of the pilot house was large and plush. The windows were of the best and clearest glass, with stained glass trim around them. Everywhere shone dark wood, and polished silver pale and cold in the lantern light.

And there was the wheel. Only the top half of it was visible, so huge was it, and even that stood as high as Marsh himself, while the bottom half was set in a slot in the floorboards. It was fashioned of soft black teak, cool and smooth to the touch, and the spokes wore ornamental silver bands like a dancehall girl wears garters. The wheel seemed to cry out for a pilot’s hands.

Joshua York came up to the wheel and touched it, running a pale hand over the black wood and silver. Then he took hold of it, as if he were a pilot himself, and for a long moment he stood like that, the wheel in his hands and his gray eyes brooding as they stared out into the night and the unseasonable June fog. The others all fell silent, and for a brief moment Abner Marsh could almost feel the steamboat move, over some dark river of the mind, on a voyage strange and endless.

Joshua York turned then, and broke the spell. “Abner,” he said, “I would like to learn to steer this boat. Can you teach me to pilot?”

“Pilot, eh?” Marsh said, surprised. He had no difficulty imagining York as a master and a captain, but piloting was something else-yet somehow the very asking made him warm to his partner, made him understandable after all. Abner Marsh knew what it was to want to pilot. “Well, Joshua,” he said, “I’ve done my share of piloting, and it’s the grandest feeling in the world. Being a captain, that ain’t nothin’ to piloting. But it ain’t something you just pick up, if you know what I’m saying.”

“The wheel looks simple enough to master,” York said.

Marsh laughed. “Hell yes, but it’s not the wheel you got to learn. It’s the river, York, the river. The old Mississippi hisself. I was a pilot for eight years, before I got my own boats, licensed for the upper Mississippi and the Illinois. Never for the Ohio, though, or the lower Mississippi, and for all I knew about steamboatin’ I couldn’t have piloted no boat on those rivers to save my life-didn’t know ’em. Those I did know, it took me years to learn ’em, and the learnin’ never stopped. By now I been out of the pilot house for so long that I’d have to learn ’em all over again. The river changes, Joshua, that it does. Ain’t never the same twice in a row, and you got to know every inch of it.” Marsh strolled to the wheel and put one of his own hands on it, fondly. “Now, I plan to pilot this boat, at least once. I dreamed about her too long not to want to take her in my hands. When we go against the Eclipse, I mean to stand a spell in the pilot house, that I do. But she’s too grand a boat for anything but the New Orleans trade, and that means the lower river, so I’m going to have to start learnin’ myself, learn every damn foot. Takes time, takes work.” He looked at York. “You still want to pilot, now that you know what it means?”