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“Fairly new. Very big ships,” Hazel said in a rush. “But if you chose to accept Josephine’s mission, you won’t be flying an airship. ”
A hush descended on the room as Andan Cly struggled to figure out what on earth these women could possibly mean, and the women teetered on the brink of spilling everything, unsure whether they could trust him. Ruthie cracked first. She blurted to Hazel, “Just tell him! Or ask him, and then we will know whether to shoot him or pay him, eh?”
“Shoot me?” he asked.
Hazel took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and opened them again. “Captain, please understand—we are asking you to participate in smuggling something the likes of which you’ve never smuggled before. And the entirety of the Confederacy and the Republic of Texas will be stacked against you. ”
“Must be important. ”
“Very,” she told him gravely. “We are not talking about an airship. We are talking about a war machine with the power to enforce the broken naval blockade. A machine that can choke off the ocean supplies, and perhaps the river supplies … and in time, the whole South. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“You’re telling me you want me to spy for the Union, here inside a Southern city controlled by the South’s number one ally. You’re telling me I’ll be risking my neck to take the case, and you’re risking your own necks to describe it. ”
“Sums it up rather nicely,” Hazel agreed. “So what do you say?”
After half a dozen seconds of silence, he told her, “I suppose the war’s got to end one day, one way or another. And all things being equal, I’d rather it gets won by the Federals. I can’t much rally for any government that’ll call a man a piece of property. So if you’re asking if I can keep my mouth shut and do the job, I’m telling you I can. ”
“Are you sure?” Ruthie asked, hope in her lovely face, but also fear.
“Yeah, I’m sure. If Josephine thought it was important enough to bring me here, then it must be a job worth doing. But I do want to know, before we come to any formal arrangement: What do you mean, it’s a war machine, but not an airship? I’ve never flown anything but an airship. Is this some special kind of warbird? I’ve seen a few armored crafts, including a big one a buddy of mine stole from a base in Macon … but you’re going to have to be more specific. ”
Hazel smiled. It was a worried smile, and it trembled around the edges—but it was a smile that had come to a decision and was prepared to dive on in. “Captain Cly, if it’s specifics you want, it’s specifics you’ll get. ” She sorted through the loose papers on Josephine’s desk and selected a few she wanted, then pushed them toward Andan Cly—who scooted his chair closer for a better look. “These are … schematics,” he observed. “For something I’m not sure I understand. ”
Ruthie nodded, encouraged by his initial grasp of the matter, if not the depth of his knowledge. “They are old designs. For a machine. ”
Hazel picked up a newspaper clipping and turned it around so that it faced the captain right side up. “Horace Lawson Hunley,” he read from the caption beneath a line drawing of a mustachioed man striking a dashing pose.
Hazel said, “Hunley was a Tennessean by birth, but his family brough
t him to New Orleans as a child, and this is where he did most of his work. He was a marine engineer, and those schematics you’re holding are engineer’s drawings for his first successful machine. ”
“If you could call it successful,” Ruthie mumbled.
“It did drown a few people,” Hazel confirmed. “But ultimately, it worked. ”
“Worked at what?” he asked.
“It sailed underwater. ”
“I beg your pardon?”
Hazel said, “You heard me. The Pioneer was a tube designed to hold men and move them underwater, by the use of these hand-cranks and whatnot, as if they were in the belly of a shark. It was a flawed design, put together with the help of these two men—James McClintock and Baxter Watson. ” She pushed forward another clipping with a pair of portraits. “The first sailors drowned, or nearly drowned, when the Pioneer sank in Mobile Bay. The folks who tried to pilot the next version of the craft, the Bayou St. John, didn’t fare too much better. ”
Ruthie spelled it out. “They drowned, too. ”
“You’d think this Hunley fellow would’ve had a hard time finding crew members after a while. ”
“He did, but there are always eager young men who want to be in a history book. Besides, the Confederacy was willing to pay big money to fellows who’d try it out. Imagine it, would you? A boat that sails underwater, loaded up with explosive charges and contact fuses, sneaking up on ships and blowing them to pieces without ever being seen … then slipping away and doing it again. ”
Cly stared down at the papers. “I can imagine it. ”
“A few years and a few more dollars later, Hunley made himself a new model—which he named for himself. The Hunley did better than his earlier boats, which is to say that it drowned only five men on its first run, and eight on its next—including Hunley himself, who was riding on board. But his old partners, McClintock and Watson, they kept on working, kept on designing. Kept on building,” she added quietly.
Ruthie selected a folded sheet of paper. She unfolded it and handed it to Andan Cly.
It depicted the interior workings of a ship, but not one like anything he’d ever seen before. It looked like fiction, there in his hands.
These lines showing gears, and valves, and portals; these careful engineering sketches showing bolts, and curved walls, and compartments for flooding or pumping; these enormous rooms that seated six to eight, with side and bottom holds for ammunition—and tubular sleeves for explosives and fuses.
