The additional risk was something they'd just have to take.
* * *
"About half done," John said to himself.
He half turned to speak to Adams when the deck surged under his feet. Water spouted up between the dock and the hull, a fountain surge that drenched the whole front of the ship. Seconds later the hull shuddered again, and another mass of water fell across her midships; and a third, this time at the stern. Dead sea-things bobbed to the surface.
John looked up reflexively. But there had been no sound of a heavy shell dropping across the sky. Torpedo? his mind gibbered. There wasn't more than a yard or two between dock and hull. .
a mine, Center said. attached to the hull by strong magnets, put in place by divers with artificial breathing apparatus. probability approaches unity.
Crewmen vomited out of the hatches, screaming. A second wave came a few seconds later, dripping and sodden with seawater, some of them dragging wounded crewmates. John stood staring blankly, fists squeezing at either side of his head. Then the deck began to tilt towards the quayside, scores of tons of water dragging the port rail down. His ears rang, so loudly that for a moment he couldn't hear Barrjen's shouted questions.
John shook his head like a wet dog and grabbed Adams' shoulder. "Where are the starboard stopcocks?" he said, then screamed it into the man's ear until the expression of stunned incredulity faded.
"What?"
"The stopcocks! We've got to counterflood or she'll capsize!"
"But if we flood, she'll fookin' sink."
"There's only ten feet of water under her keel; we can salvage the cargo and float her later, but if we don't flood she'll capsize, man. Now!"
He could feel the force of his will penetrate the seaman's mental fog. "Right," the mate said, wiping a hand across his face. "This way."
"I'll come, sir," Barrjen said.
"Good man. Let's go."
The companionway down from the bridge was steep and slippery with oily soot from the funnels at the best of times. Now it was canted over at thirty degrees, and John went down it in a controlled fall. The hatchway below flapped open, abandoned in the rush to get away from the waters pouring through the rent hull. He dropped through it into water already ankle-deep, bracing himself against the wall with one hand to keep erect on the tilting deck.
"Don't tell me," he said as Adams staggered beside him. "The stopcocks are on the other side of the ship."
"Yessir."
"No time like the present," John said grimly, and gave him a boost forward. The trip across the beam of the ship became steadily more like a climb. Adams staggered ahead, pushed from behind by John and the ex-Marine. At last they came to a complex of wheels and pipes.
"That one!" Adams shouted, pointing. Then he looked down the side of the ship. "Oh, Jesus, the barnacles are showing-Jesus Son of God, Mary Mother, she's going to go over."
"No she isn't," John said, fighting off a moments image of drowning in the dark with air only a few unreachable feet away through the hull. He spat on his hands. "Let's do it."
The spoked steel wheel was about a yard in diameter, locked by a chain and pin. Adams snatched it out, and John locked his hands on the wheel. It moved a quarter of an inch, stopped, moved again, halted. John braced a foot against the wall and heaved until his muscles crackled and threatened to tear loose from his pelvis.
"Jammed," Adams said. "Must've jammed-shaft torqued by the explosion."
"Then we'll unjam it."
John looked around. Resting in brackets on the side of the central island of the ship were an ax, sledgehammer, and prybar.
"Jam these through the spokes," he said briskly. "Here and here. Now both of you together, heave."
They strained; there was silence except for grunts of effort and the distant shouts on the dock. Then the ax handle snapped across with a gunshot crack. Barrjen skipped aside with a curse as the axhead whipped past him and bounced off the wall, leaving a streak of shiny metal scraped free of paint on the wall.
"Fuck this," John shouted.
He snatched the sledgehammer from Adams hands, jammed the crowbar firmly in place, and braced himself to strike. That was difficult; the ship was well past its center of gravity now, A few more minutes, and the intakes for the flood valves would be above the surface. That would happen seconds before she went over.
Clung. The vibrating jolt shivered painfully back up his arms, into his shoulders, starting a pain in the small of his back. He took a deep breath as the sledge swung up again, focused, exhaled in a grunt of total concentration as the hammer came down. Clung. Clung. Clung.
Adams' nerve broke and he fled back up the ladder. Two strikes later Barrjen spoke, at first a breathy whisper as he stared at the wheel with sweat running down his face.
"She's moving." Then a shout: "The boor's moving!"
It was; John had to reposition himself as it turned a quarter revolution. Easier now. He flung the sledgehammer aside and pulled the crowbar free, grabbing at the wheel with his hands. Barrjen did likewise on the other side. Both men strained at the reluctant metal, faces red and gasping with the effort, bodies knotted into straining statue-shapes. The wheel jerked, moved, jerked. Then spun, faster and faster.
A new sound came from beneath their feet, a vibrating rumble.
"Either that works, or she's already too far gone," John gasped. "Let's see from the dock."
There was a crowd waiting. They cheered as John and the stocky ex-Marine jumped from the tilted deck to the wharfside, a score of hands reaching to steady them. John ignored the babbled questions. He did take a proffered flask of brandy, sipping once or twice before handing it back and never taking his eyes from the ship.
"She's not tilting any further," Barrjen said.
"And she's settling fast."
Four minutes and the decks were awash. Another and they heard a deep rumbling bong, a sound felt through the soles of their feet more than through the ears. The funnels, central island and crane-masts of the merchantman trembled through a thirty-degree arc to a position that was nearly vertical as the relatively flat bottom of the ship rolled it nearly upright on the mud of the harbor bottom.
John flexed his hands and took a deep breath. "Right," he said, when the cheers died down. "Get some small explosive charges here, we'll want to kill off any sea life." Scavengers were swarming in. "We'll need diving suits, air pumps, more ropes. Get moving!"
He looked up into the darkening evening sky, then over towards the castle. He was just in time to see the great bottle-shaped spearhead of flame show over the courtyard walls. The siege howitzers were in action at last. His shoulders tensed as he listened to the whirring, ripping sound of the shell's passage, toning lower and lower as it approached. The three-hundred-pound projectile came closer, closer. . then went by overhead. John pivoted on one heel, part of a mass movement that turned the crowd like sunflowers following the sun across the sky. A red gout of flame billowed up from the gun batteries holding the approaches to the harbor. Seconds later the other heavy howitzer in the castle fired, and the high-velocity guns in the batteries were in fixed revetments. They couldn't be turned to face the castle, and wouldn't be able to elevate that high if they did. .
"I'll be damned," John said softly. "The garrison went over to the government side."
Probably after killing all their officers. The Unionaise regular army was short-service conscript.