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Hilda Gottshak was putting the finishing touches on a dozen meat pies for lunch.
“What’s wrong, boy?” Lydia asked Tiger.
The Newfoundland had started whining. Lydia checked and found no obvious injuries. Tiger kept up the low, relentless howl. Lydia chose to ignore the animal, hoping he would quiet down on his own.
In the comer of the pilothouse, Roosevelt was figuring the profits New Orleans could generate. From the start he’d envisioned the steamboat ru
The smell of the meat pies piqued his appetite. Roosevelt figured that once Jack resumed control of the helm, he would wander into the kitchen and see what Helga had to tide him over until lunch.
He was sure the worst was over, and his appetite had returned with a vengeance.
At the sight of the mighty river, Jack took the wheel from Roosevelt. As he made a sweeping turn into the muddy waters flowing from the north, the Roosevelt baby awoke screaming. At almost the same time, Tiger began to howl as if his tail were caught in a bear trap. To compound matters, the river was rougher than usual, and the boat was suddenly rocking to and fro. Stepping out the pilothouse door, Jack stared at the sky above. A flock of wrens darted back and forth as if their leader had no idea of their intended flight direction. Along the shoreline, the trees began to shake as if responding to an unseen gale.
Though it was not yet noon, the sky to the west was an unearthly orange color.
“I don’t like this,” Jack shouted, “there’s some—”
But he never finished the sentence.
Deep below ground, where the sun will never reach and the cool of a light breeze will never be felt, the temperature was six hundred degrees Fahrenheit. A river of wet, molten earth one hundred feet in diameter roared toward a just-opened fissure. Slipping into the opening, the wet slop acted like Vaseline on glass. The plates of the earth, at this point just barely held in place, slipped like a skater on clear ice.
The earth snapped and stung at the surface.
“Good Lord, what is happen—” Nicholas Roosevelt started to say.
He was standing in the kitchen, trying to talk Helga out of a slab of cheese. Staring out the window for a second, he watched as a geyser of brown water shot eighty feet in the air. Then the water arced over the decks of New Orleans, as dozens of fish, turtles, salamanders, and snakes rained down. Then a rumbling was felt through the decks in the hull.
Back in the pilothouse, Jack struggled to keep the steamboat on course.
On the shore, undulating waves swept across the earth like someone shaking a bedspread. The trees along the bank swayed back and forth until their branches intertwined and locked in place. Then they snapped like breadsticks in a vise. Branches were turned into spears and shot across the water like a gauntlet of arrows. Fissures dotted the ground along the river. Streams of water ran into the low-lying areas. Then, seconds later, the ground belched as torrents of shale rock, dirt, and water blasted in the air.
“The river is out of its banks,” Jack shouted.
Engineer Baker walked into the pilothouse.
From deep beneath the river’s former cha
At that instant, Roosevelt burst into the pilothouse.
“It’s either an earthquake,” he said quickly, “or the end of the world.”
“I think the former,” Jack said. “I felt one in Spanish California a few years ago.”
“How long did it last?” Roosevelt asked.
“That one was small,” Jack said. “Only lasted ten minutes or so.”
“I’m going to check on my wife,” Roosevelt said, as he turned to leave.
“Could you ask Miss Markum to come in here?” Baker asked.
“I will,” Roosevelt said, as he sprinted away.
Just then, the earth twitched, and the river began to flow backwards from south to north.
Markum poked her head inside the pilothouse door, her face white with fear.
“If we make it out of this alive — will you marry me?” Baker asked.
“Yes,” Markum said without hesitation, clutching Baker around the waist.
Deep below the river, the liquid was squeezed from between the plates, and the grinding together of coarse rock stopped. The first shock had ended, but there was much more to come.
Jack spun the wheel completely to its stop as the Mississippi River changed direction again and returned to a north-to-south flow. Gazing through the window of the pilothouse, he saw that the boat was traversing a farmer’s field. Fifty feet off the right side of the boat’s hull was the upper story of a large red barn. Several milk cows and a lone horse were huddled on the upper loft, avoiding the rushing water. No trace of a farm-house could be seen.
When Roosevelt came into the pilothouse, Jack was intent on staring off the right side of the bow far in the distance. There was an opening in the ground ahead that was swallowing up most of the river flow. As the land on the far side of the opening came into view, he could see puddles of water and acres of mud where the riverbed used to lie.
New Orleans was less than a hundred yards from the chasm and was being sucked closer. With only seconds to spare, Baker managed to get the beams reset for reverse ru
Crouched in the thick brush of Wolf Island, the Indian braves were as frozen as petrified wood. They had paddled their canoes out to the island before the first shock of the earthquake. When the worst of the tremors struck, their resolve was only strengthened. The Penelore was wreaking havoc across their land, and it needed to be killed. Straining to hear, the chief caught a faint unknown sound coming from upstream. With a series of hand signals, he motioned for his braves to climb into their canoes for the attack.
Lydia rushed to the pilothouse and stuck her head in the door. “The baby has started to cry, and Tiger is whining up a storm.”
Roosevelt turned to Jack. “That’s the signal another shock is coming. Keep to the main cha
Jack pointed through the pilothouse front window. “An island coming up.”
Roosevelt sca
“Which side is the best cha
“The left cha
“The left cha
“How long before the next shock?” Roosevelt asked Lydia.
“Judging by Tiger’s howls, not long.”
A ghastly sound reached the ears of the Sioux braves hidden on Wolf Island. The grinding of metal, the hissing of steam, the thumping of the walking beam. The great beast grew larger as it neared. The beast was blue like the sky — but this was nothing that came from the heavens. An ugly, pointed nose gave way to two waterwheels halfway down the trunk of the beast. Just behind them were a pair of black tubes where the smoke from the fires of hell spewed forth.