George Martin - Fevre Dream

He went out onto the forecastle gratefully, away from the awful heat, his jacket and shirt and pants as damp as if he’d just crawled out of the river. The wind moved around him, and Marsh felt wonderfully cold for a moment. Away ahead he saw an island dividing the river, and a light beyond that, on the western bank. They were moving toward it fast. “Damn,” Marsh said. “Must be doing twenty miles an hour. Hell, maybe we’re doing thirty.” He said it loudly, almost shouting it, as if the thunder of his voice would make it true. The Eli Reynolds was an eight-mile-an-hour boat on a good day. Of course, now she had the current behind her.

Marsh thundered up the staircase, through the main cabin, and up onto the hurricane deck to get a look behind them. The tops of the short, stubby chimneys were throwing sparks everywhere and trailing fire, and as he watched steam came boiling up from the ’scape-pipes again as Doc Turney vented just enough to keep the damned boiler from blowing all of them to hell. The deck was unsteady underneath Marsh’s feet, like the skin of something alive. The stern wheel was turning so fast that it was throwing up a goddamn wall of water, like a waterfall upside down.

And behind them came the Fevre Dream, half-dark, smoke and fire from her tall dark stacks rising halfway to the moon. She looked about twenty yards closer than when Marsh had gone downstairs.

Captain Yoerger stepped up beside Marsh. “We can’t outrace her,” he said in his weary gray tones.

“We need more steam! More heat!”

“The paddle can’t turn any faster, Cap’n Marsh. If Doc sneezes at the wrong time, that boiler is goin’ to blow and kill us all. Engine is seven years old, it’s goin’ to shake itself to pieces. The lard is running low, too. When it’s gone we’ll be firing her with just wood. This is an old lady, Cap’n. You got her dancing like it was her wedding night, but she can’t take much more of it.”

“Damn,” Marsh said. He looked back past their paddle. The Fevre Dream came on and on. “Damn,” he repeated. Yoerger was right, he knew. Marsh glanced ahead. They were steaming up on the island. The river, and the main channel, curved away to the east. The western fork was a cutoff, but a minor one. Even at this distance Marsh could see how it narrowed, how the trees leaned over the banks extending their black gnarled figures. He walked back to the pilot house and entered. “Take the cutoff,” he told the pilot.

The pilot glanced back half in shock. On the river, the pilot decided such things. The captain maybe made casual suggestions, but he didn’t give orders. “No, sir,” the pilot replied, less furiously than an older man might have. “Look at the banks, Cap’n Marsh. The river is falling. I know that cutoff, and it ain’t passable this time of year, if I take her in there we’ll be setting on this boat till the spring floods.”

“Maybe that’s so,” Marsh said, “but if we can’t get through, there ain’t no way in hell the Fevre Dream can. She’ll have to go around. We’ll lose her. Right now, losing her is more important than any damn snags or bars we might run into, you hear?”

The pilot frowned. “You got no call to be telling me how to run this river, Cap’n. I got my reputation. I never wrecked no boat yet and I don’t aim to start tonight. We’ll stay on the river.”

Abner Marsh felt himself turning red. He looked back. The Fevre Dream was maybe three hundred feet behind them, and coming up quick. “You damn fool,” Marsh said. “This is the most important race ever been run on this river, and I got a fool for a pilot. They’d have us already if Mister Framm was at her wheel, or if they had a mate who knew how to run her. They’re probably firing her with cottonwood.” He jabbed his stick back at the Fevre Dream. “But look, even slow as she’s goin’, she’ll have us damn soon now, unless we out-pilot her. You hear me? Take that damn cutoff! ”

“I could report you to the association,” the pilot said stiffly.

“I could chuck you over the side,” Abner Marsh replied. He moved forward threateningly.

“Send out a yawl, Cap’n,” the pilot suggested. “We’ll take soundings and see how she’s running in there.”

Abner Marsh snorted in disgust. “Out of the goddamn way,” he said, shoving the pilot aside roughly. The man stumbled and fell. Marsh seized the wheel and turned it hard to the starboard, and the Eli Reynolds swung her head in answer. The pilot cussed and fumed. Marsh ignored him and concentrated on steering until the steamer had crossed the island’s high, muddy point, pounding down the crooked western bank. He glanced back over his shoulder just long enough to see the Fevre Dream -a bare two hundred feet behind now-slow and stop and begin to back furiously. When he looked again, a moment later, she was starting to veer off toward the eastern river bend. Then there was no more time for looking, as the Eli Reynolds hit something, hard, a big log by the sound of it. The impact jarred Marsh’s teeth together so hard he almost bit off his tongue, and he had to hang on the wheel grimly to keep his feet. The pilot, who’d just gotten up, went down again and groaned. The steamboat’s speed sent her climbing over the obstacle, and Marsh saw it briefly; a huge, black, half-submerged tree. A horrible racket ensued, a deafening clattering and thumping, and the boat trembled like some mad giant had gotten hold of her and started to shake, and then there was a violent wrench and the awful sound of wood smashing to splinters as the stern wheel came hammering down on the log.

“Damnation!” the pilot swore, climbing to his feet again. “Give me the wheel!”

“Gladly,” Abner Marsh said, stepping out of the way. The Eli Reynolds had left the dead tree behind and was steaming madly down the shallow cutoff, shuddering as she ploughed through one sand bar after another. Each one slowed her, and the pilot slowed her even more, ringing the engine room bells like a wild man. “Full stop!” he called. “Full stop on the paddle!” The wheel turned a couple last leisurely licks and groaned to a halt, and two long tall plumes of white steam hissed as they came venting up from the ’scape-pipes. The Eli Reynolds lost her head and began to wobble a bit, and the steering wheel spun freely in the pilot’s grip. “We’ve lost the rudder,” he said, as the steamer bit into still another bar.

This one stopped her.

This time Abner Marsh did bite his tongue, as he stumbled forward into the wheel. Someone down below was screaming, he heard as he got back up and spit out a mouthful of blood. It hurt like hell. Fortunately he hadn’t bitten it clean off.

“Damnation!” the pilot said. “Look. Just look.”

Not only had the Eli Reynolds lost her rudder, but half of her paddle wheel as well. It was still attached to the steamer, but it hung crookedly, and half of the wooden buckets were shattered or missing. The boat vented steam once again, groaned, and settled into the mud, listing a bit to starboard.

“I told you we couldn’t run this cutoff,” the pilot said. “I told you. This time of year it’s nothin’ but sand and snags. This ain’t my doing and I won’t have nobody sayin’ it was!”

“Shut your fool mouth,” said Abner Marsh. He was looking back aft, where the river itself was still barely visible through the trees. The river looked empty. Maybe the Fevre Dream had gone on. Maybe. “How long to round that bend?” Marsh asked the pilot.

“Damnation, why the hell do you care? We ain’t goin’ nowhere till spring. You’re goin’ to need a new rudder and a new wheel both, and a good rise to get her off this bar.”

“The bend,” Marsh insisted. “How long around the bend?”

The pilot sputtered. “Thirty minutes, maybe twenty if she’s sparklin’ like she was, but why’s it matter? I tell you-”