Passing the Narrows by Frank Tuttle Page B

scuffed planks just beyond the pilothouse door. After
a moment, someone knocked.
     
    A match scratched and flared as the Captain lit a fresh
cigar.
     
    "She'll just barge in anyway, Cap'n," said Swain. "Might as
well invite her in, polite-like."
     
    The door opened. "May I enter?"
     
    "Step right up, ma'am," said Swain before the Captain's
silence lingered too long. "You'll want a good place to watch
from."
     
    The sorceress entered and stood before the map-table. "And
for what," she said, "am I to watch, sir?"
     
    "You'll know it when you see it, wand-waver. And don't be
sirrin' me -- name's Swain. Mister Swain, if you're bein'
formal, which you might well be since you're the one goin' to get
me killed."
     
    "You could have stayed with the others at Float," snapped
the sorceress. "If you are convinced this vessel is doomed, why
did you remain aboard?"
     
    "Shut up, Swain," said the Captain. "You talk too damn
much."
     
    "At last," said the sorceress. "Something the good Captain
and I agree upon."
     
    "Oh, do you now?" said Swain. "Well, to Hell with both of
you. We're headed for the Yazoo Narrows in the middle of a
moonless night and if I feel like talkin' I'll talk. What do you
know about the Narrows anyway, wand-waver? Anything?"
     
    "I've heard the Narrows mentioned," said the sorceress.
"Just after the War, it was even surveyed as a possible site for
arcane unlatching. But the survey team found only a mild
residual charge, natural in origin."
     
    Swain hooted. "Surveyed it, did they? Brought a boatload
of wand-wavers over it in broad damn daylight, they did. Broad
damn daylight. We told 'em. Oh, yes. We told 'em it only
stirred on moonless nights, but they was Yankees an' officers and
too damn smart to pay mind to the likes of us."
     
    The sorceress shook her head. "Arcane concentrations do not
vary by day or night -- "
     
    "This ain't no arcane concentration, Yer Yankeeship."
     
    "Then what is it, Mister Swain?"
     
    "It's a haunt, ma'am. A powerful one. You ever hear of the
Winney?"
     
    "The Winney? No."
     
    "She was a hospital boat. One of ours. Had two hundred or
more wounded on board, most of 'em civilians from towns your hero
Sherman paid visit." Swain leaned into the night-lamp's glow.
"Well, the Winney hit the Narrows just as one of them
Yankee ironclads rounded the bend. The Winney's master
came out on deck with a white flag. One of your boys picked him
off with a miniball while the rest opened up with artillery. The
Winney went down, crew and wounded and rats and all. No
survivors."
     
    "Utter nonsense," said the sorceress.
     
    "Some say the dead of the Winney come up from the mud
on moonless nights, lookin' to take their vengeance. And they
ain't too picky about who they take vengeance on, anymore."
     
    "Ridiculous, Mr. Swain," she said. "If that story is the
basis of your fears, then I am truly relieved."
     
    "That's just the popular version," said Swain. "I didn't
say I believed it. I just thought you'd appreciate it, bein' of
the Yankee persuasion and all." Swain winked at the sorceress's
glare. "No, ma'am, I tend toward the story a Choctaw medicine
man told me years before the War even broke. The red men called
the Narrows Nusi ma Kosh. Means 'That Which Sleeps.' You
wouldn't catch them within ten miles of the Narrows after
sunset."
     
    "Primitives."
     
    "Don't go callin' 'em names, wand-waver," said Swain. "They
was here before you. Long before. So maybe there's something
down there, way under that black Mississippi mud. Something
older than the Choctaw and older than the Union. Maybe it was
sleepin'. And maybe the War and you wand-wavers done about woke
it up." Swain chuckled. "But I reckon you'd call that
superstitious primitive hillbilly nonsense, wouldn't you?"
     
    "No, I would not," she said. "But there