The Ironclad Covenant

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William Chestnut’s ankles were bound by heavy leg irons. His wrists were locked in hand irons, which were then shackled to five other prisoners. All were then restrained using the same method. The shackles were the Darby type with barrel locks made by the Hiatt Company. The handcuffs had a square bow with notches on the outside that engaged a lock mechanism shaped like a teardrop. They were the same type he’d once used on the very slaves whose trade the Union had recently announced it was trying to abolish.

He looked up. The morning’s sky was already a bruised mixture of purple, red, and ochre. A violent storm was approaching. He grinned sardonically. There was a very good chance he’d be dead by the time it struck.

He turned his gaze from the horizon to the river and watched as the iron monstrosity approached the wooden jetty. Thick smoke billowed from her two large smokestacks. At 150 feet in length, 36 feet of beam, and drawing only 10 feet of water, the CSS Mississippi had been built to run the river system at speed. Her paddlewheel had been replaced with twin eight-foot bronze screws, powered by two large horizontal fire-tube boilers that lay below the waterline and allowed her to reach a top speed of fourteen and a half knots in calm water — a speed that allowed her to outpace any other armored ship on the river.

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