Blockade Runner (7 page)

“I don’t think I need any attention out here,” Leah said. Then she added quickly, “Besides, Miss Belle, he’s so in love with you that he doesn’t even see me.”

The two young women were invited to eat at Captain Bier’s table at dinner, which was served at five o’clock. Leah was amused that Jeff had to serve the meal. He was dressed in a navy jersey and a pair of white pants, and his hair was plastered back.

“How do you like my new cabin boy?” Bier asked jovially.

Jeff flushed to the roots of his hair. Leah knew he hated serving because she was there. Otherwise he would not have minded it at all.

Belle caught his flush of embarrassment and said, “Why, it’s you, Mr. Majors. The last time I saw you, you were in the Stonewall Brigade.”

“Yes, ma’am, I still am,” Jeff muttered, obviously anxious to get away and hide somewhere.

“Well, how does sea life agree with you?” Belle asked. Her eyes cut across to Leah as she added, “I hear you sailors have a girl in every port. Is there anything to that?”

Jeff blinked with astonishment, then wheeled and left the room, indignation on his face.

Captain Bier and Mr. Pollard exchanged glances. Mr. Pollard said, “You ought not to tease the boy, Belle. He’s embarrassed.”

Belle Boyd smiled cheerfully. “It’s good for young men to be embarrassed from time to time. They cause enough embarrassment to young women, don’t you agree?”

“I don’t know about that,” Captain Bier said. “I don’t seem to remember being guilty of that too often.”

John Pollard scrutinized the young spy, then asked, “What about you, Belle? I heard you’ve been engaged two or three times already.”

Belle did not seem at all troubled by his comment. “Oh, young men like to think that,” she said.

“It’s not true then?” Captain Bier pressed.

“Oh, not really. I’m just having too much fun to get married now.”

Pollard laughed loudly at this. “Oh, you mean after marriage the fun stops? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Not for me,” Belle said. “When I marry it’ll be to a man that will be so exciting that marriage will be a thrill every day.”

Bier leaned back and gazed at her rather doubtfully. “That’s kind of a romantic idea you got, Miss Boyd. But then, you are a very romantic young lady.”

“Oh, utterly romantic!” Belle Boyd smiled. She looked at Leah. “Are you romantic, Leah?”

“I don’t know if I am or not. I don’t go around reading a lot of syrupy romances.”

“Oh, I do,” Belle admitted cheerfully. She brushed her dark hair back from her forehead. “I like to read about romance, and I like to attend romantic balls. I think that’s what a woman should do. Why, if I—”

“Captain! Captain Bier!”

Bier jerked himself out of his chair as Lieutenant Mailer came in. “We’re being pursued by a Federal ship!”

“How close is she?”

“Maybe two miles away but coming on fast!”

Bier left the cabin without pausing to say goodbye.

Leah and the others came out of their chairs and followed after him. Taking their place at the rail, they looked in the direction that the lieutenant was pointing. Sure enough, there was a speck with a curling plume of smoke rising in the sky.

“I hope he’s not as fast as we are,” Pollard said. “Some of those gunboats are rather fast.”

“What will happen if they catch us?” Leah asked quickly.

“It won’t be pleasant! But, of course, nothing will happen to you, Leah.”

“It will to me, I think,” Belle said calmly. “The Federal authorities told me if they ever caught me again, it would be prison for good.”

“I hope it won’t come to that.” Mr. Pollard saw the captain rushing to the wheelhouse and said, “Captain Bier has gone through this before. He’ll get us out of it.”

Captain Bier stood on deck, staring at the ship, which was growing larger. “Lieutenant, tell the chief I want all he’s got!”

“Aye, sir!”

Leah watched the officer disappear, and soon the pitch of the propellers seemed to pick up. She felt the ship lurch under her feet and said to Belle, “We’re going faster!”

“I hope so.”

For more than an hour the
Greyhound
plunged her prow into the waters, seeming to fly over the waves—but the pursuing vessel didn’t fall out of sight.

“She’s a fast ship, that one,” Bier muttered, his face very sober. “I can’t identify her.”

“Shall I tell the chief to give us more steam, sir?”

“Yes—tell him again to give us all he’s got!”

The lieutenant disappeared but was back in a short time. “He says he’s wringing all he can out of her, sir.”

“All right.”

“Sir—he says we’ve about run out of the good coal.”

“The anthracite?”

This special coal, Leah had been told, burned hotter than most other varieties.

“Yes, sir.”

“Blast! I knew we’d pay for sailing with that sorry load of inferior coal!”

“Well, it was all we could get, sir.”

The lieutenant’s words obviously did nothing to ease Captain Bier’s fears. He stood with his feet fixed on the deck as if he were a plant growing there, his eyes glued to the warship. When he glanced up at the thick smoke that was pouring out of the
Greyhound’s
stack, he grunted. “Sorry fuel for a man to have to use!”

Jeff had come topside along with most of the hands. He asked a short, chunky man named Charles Crowder, “What’s happening, Charles? Why is our smoke so black?”

“‘Cause we’re having to use a bad kind of coal. Don’t burn hot, so we can’t get up a full head of steam.”

Jeff stared at the Federal gunboat, which was drawing nearer, and felt a touch of fear.
If they catch us—and if they find out I’m in the Confederate army, they’ll put me in a prison camp
. The thought was disturbing, and he swallowed hard. “Do you think we can outrun them?”

“Naw, I don’t. They got us this time,” Crowder said savagely.

“What will they do to you?”

“Aw, nothin’, I reckon. But I won’t get paid—and this here has been a good ship.”

“What about Captain Bier?”

“He’ll go to jail—and so will Belle Boyd, I reckon.”

Jeff was filled with despair, and when he saw Leah standing with Belle, he wanted to go talk to her. But the wall between them was too high, so he clenched his teeth and prepared for the worst.

Captain Bier said he could now make out the ship that was bearing down on them. “I think she’s the
Dominant,”
he grunted.

Lieutenant Mailer blinked. “She’s the one who sank the
Southern Star
then.”

“Yes, she’s a fast one—and that captain is no fool.”

Mailer looked up at the sky anxiously. “Maybe we can lose her after dark.”

“She’ll be up to us before then—” Captain Bier broke off, and an idea seemed to take him.

“What is it, Captain?”

“You know that turpentine we’ve got on board?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Well, we’ve got forty barrels of it. Soak some cotton with the stuff and put it in with the coal.”

“Why, yes, sir, but—”

“That turpentine will burn hotter than any coal ever mined. I think it’ll give us some extra power. Go on—get the crew to working on it.”

“Aye, sir!”

Jeff was one of those pressed into action by Lieutenant Mailer. Obeying the frantic orders of the officer, he drew his knife and sliced through the bindings on a bale. After stuffing the fluffy white cotton into a sack, he ran down to the engine room. The pounding of the engine was deafening!

“Douse that cotton with this turpentine!” Mailer shouted.

Jeff began to pour the clear liquid onto the cotton. The pungent fumes of the chemical bit at his eyes and nose, and when he threw a handful of cotton into the firebox, it almost exploded. The heat struck him in the face, and he ducked back.

“Keep it coming!” the chief yelled.

“She might break apart, Chief!” Lieutenant Mailer cried, blinking from the fumes that filled the engine room.

“You let me worry about that, sir! We got to get away from them Yankees!”

Jeff ran back to the deck to get more cotton, and when he looked up he saw that thick gray smoke was now pouring out of the stack. He made the trip back and forth to the engine room so many times he lost count.

Finally, when he staggered up on deck, Lieutenant Mailer took a hard look at his face. “You’re beat out, Majors. Take a break.”

Jeff stumbled along the deck, sat down, and gasped for breath. He was sick from the fumes of the turpentine, and his face was crimson from the fierce heat of the engine room. He ducked his head and tried to keep from throwing up, feeling about as bad as he’d ever felt in his life.

“Here—let me bathe your face, Jeff.”

A coolness touched his neck, and when he looked up he saw that Leah had come with a basin of water. Her eyes were troubled, and as she bathed his face with the cool water, she said, “You’ve done too much, Jeff.”

“Got to get away from that ship!”

“It won’t help if you kill yourself,” she said firmly. She continued to move the cloth over his face and neck. “You’re close to having a heatstroke.”

Jeff felt much better as the cool water sluiced over his head and face. The sickness went away, and at last he said, “Thanks, Leah—that’s good.”

Leah considered him carefully. “Are you all right now, Jeff?”

“Yes—I’m better.” He got to his feet and discovered that his legs were weak. “Guess I did get too hot.”

“I got overheated once—when we were picking cotton. Do you remember that?”

“Sure do. We must have been no more than nine years old.”

“I was eight—and when you saw how red my face was you dragged me to the creek and put me in it.”

“Seems like a long time ago,” Jeff murmured. He thought of that day and added, “You got pretty mad at me for dumping you into the creek.”

“Yes, but afterwards I knew it was the right thing to do.” She looked into his eyes and said softly, “We had some fine times, didn’t we?”

“Yes, we did.” Jeff wanted to say more, but his pride was still stiff. He tried to bring himself to say he was sorry for all that had happened.

And perhaps he would have found a way to say it, but at that moment Captain Bier yelled, “She’s getting close! Lieutenant—tell the chief to add coal dust to the firebox!”

“Coal dust?”

“That’s what I said! Do I have to give every order twice?”

Lieutenant Mailer swallowed hard and ran to the ladder.

Leah and Jeff were close enough to the captain to hear him muttering under his breath.

“What would he want to throw coal dust into the fire for?” Jeff wondered.

“I can’t imagine,” Leah said, sounding mystified. “But he’s a smart man. I’ll bet he’s got something in his mind.”

“It’s almost dark.” Jeff looked up at the sky. “If we can just stay out of range for another hour, it’ll be dark, and we can sneak away.”

Soon not only Jeff and Leah but the crew discovered why the captain had given such a strange order.

John Pollard was standing beside Jeff and Leah. Looking up at the stack, he exclaimed, “Look at that! I’ve never seen such thick smoke!”

It was a thick, oily smoke that didn’t rise but instead fell toward the sea. Within a short time the
Greyhound
had laid down a smoke screen that swallowed up the Federal gunboat.

“She’ll never find us in that mess!” Jeff cried out. “And it’s getting dark—I think we’ve made it!”

He proved to be correct, for the billows of black smoke and the falling darkness swallowed up both ships—which was exactly what Captain Bier had planned!

After the excitement of the chase, Belle Boyd said, “Come on down to my cabin, Leah. I’m not sleepy yet—we can talk.”

“All right.”

Leah accompanied Belle to her cabin, and they sat talking for a long time. Leah had already discovered that Belle loved to speak of her exploits, and once she smiled and said, “You ought to go on the stage, Miss Belle.”

“I’ve thought of that,” Belle said seriously. “A lot of people go on the circuit, telling of their adventures. I might bill myself as ‘The Lily of the Shenandoah.’ That’s one of the names they call me, you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Or maybe just ‘The Rebel Spy.’” She stood and took a dramatic position, reciting with theatrical gestures, “And there I was, in the middle of the
Battle of Bull Run with all of the weight of winning the battle on my shoulders. I had to get through to the Confederate forces …”

She turned around twice, bowed, and then laughed at herself. “How was that?” she asked. “Do you think I could make a living on the stage?”

“I think you could.” Leah listened until Belle finally grew quiet, then said, “Were you serious about what you said to the captain?”

“About what, Leah?”

“About marriage.”

“Oh, I was just talking. I don’t even remember what I said now.”

“You said you had to have a romantic courtship and then romance afterwards.”

“Well, I would like that. What woman wouldn’t?”

“I hear about a lot of romantic courtships, but I don’t know about afterwards. Marriage must be especially hard in these times.”

Belle Boyd leaned back. She picked up a perfume bottle from the table, took the top off, smelled it, then smiled. “I’d like to find a man that’d sweep me off my feet,” she said. “Plenty of them have tried, but none has made it so far.”

“Well, one of them will some day, I’m pretty sure.”

Leah went to her own cabin then and went to bed. As the ship rose and fell with the waves, she thought about Belle Boyd’s desire for a romantic courtship. She rolled over thinking,
That would be nice, but I don’t know if it’s what I want or not. I’d just like a good, solid man who wouldn’t change all the time and would take care of me. Marriage, I think, is more than moonlight and poetry and the stuff that Belle likes
.

O
n her second afternoon on the ship, Leah made her way to the galley, where she found James Austin, the cook, preparing the evening meal. She had been friendly with the man and now said, “Mr. Austin, I’d like to do something.”

“What’s that, Miss Leah?” he asked cheerfully. He was a short man with thinning red hair and china-blue eyes, and there was always a smear of flour on his face.