Fevre Dream (F.M.) by Martin George R. R

Author:Martin, George R. R. [Martin, George R. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Novel, Sci-fi, Vampires
ISBN: 9780553900989
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1982-01-01T02:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

_____________________________________

Aboard the Steamer

FEVRE DREAM,

New Orleans,

August 1857

IT seemed as though half the steamers in New Orleans had decided to leave that afternoon, Abner Marsh thought as he stood upon the hurricane deck and watched them all depart.

The custom was for boats going upriver to make their departure from the levee about five o'clock. At three the engineers would fire the furnaces and start to get the steam up. Rosin and pitch-pine would get chucked into the steamers' hungry maws, along with wood and coal, and from one boat after another the black smoke would start to rise, ascending from the lofty flowered chimneys in tall hot columns, dark pennants of farewell. Four miles of steamboats packed solid along the levee can generate a lot of smoke. The sooty columns would start to blend together into one massive black cloud a couple hundred feet above the river; a cloud shot through with ash, full of hot bright cinders, adrift on the wind. Larger and larger the cloud would swell as still more steamers fired up and poured out smoke, until the pall blotted out the sun and began to creep across the face of the city.

From Abner Marsh's vantage point on the hurricane deck, it looked as though the whole city of New Orleans was going up in flames, and all the steamers were about to flee. It made him feel uneasy, as if somehow the other captains knew something he did not, as if the Fevre Dream, too, ought to be getting up her steam and making ready to back out. Marsh was anxious to be off. For all the wealth and glamour of the New Orleans trade, he yearned for the rivers he knew: for the upper Mississippi with its bluffs and dense woods, for the wild muddy Missouri that ate steamers like nobody's business, for the narrow Illinois and the silty, bustling Fevre. The Fevre Dream's maiden voyage down the Ohio seemed almost idyllic to him now, a remembrance of simpler, better days. Not even two months gone, it seemed an eternity ago. Ever since they'd left St. Louis and come downriver, things had been going wrong, and the further south they'd come the worse they'd gotten. "Joshua is right," Marsh muttered to himself as he looked out over New Orleans. "There's something rotten here." It was too damn hot, too damn wet, with too damn many bugs, enough to make a man think there was a curse on the whole damn place. And maybe there was, on account of the slavery, though Marsh wasn't sure about that. All he was sure of was that he wanted to tell Whitey to fire up the boilers, and roust Framm or Albright up to the pilot house, so he could back the Fevre Dream clear of the landing and get her upriver. Now. Before sunset. Before they arrived.

Abner Marsh wanted to shout those orders so bad he could taste the words, lying bitter and unspoken on his tongue. He felt

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