Achates was dropping out of formation, emitting a thick plume of steam as she angled towards the river's southern bank. The rest of the squadron had slowed to stay in company with her, and Simpson grunted.
"I suppose we've done better than we had any right to expect to get this far without a significant engineering casualty," he said.
"I don't imagine Commander Baumgartner feels that way at the moment, Admiral," Halberstat replied, and Simpson chuckled harshly.
"No, I don't imagine he does," he agreed. Commander C.H. Baumgartner was a dour fellow even in his sunniest moments—which this certainly was not. Simpson himself was one of the few people who even knew what the initials stood for. Most of the sailors in the navy who'd dealt with the officer just used the monicker an up-timer had given him: "Clod Hopper." Not to his face, of course.
Simpson looked at Halberstat. "Any more details on his problem?"
"He did send a follow-up message, sir." Halberstat extracted another folded message slip from the breast pocket of his uniform tunic and passed it across. "According to his engineer, it's a fractured steampipe. And he's got at least three badly injured men."
"Wonderful."
Simpson unfolded the second message and scanned it quickly. Actually, it wasn't a steampipe, he saw; it was the fitting where the steampipe in question joined the boiler itself, which made the injury reports understandable enough. Indeed, they were lucky the sailors in question appeared to have escaped with relatively minor burns, given the amount of live steam that must have escaped. He didn't feel especially lucky, however, and he suppressed a sudden temptation to swear out loud and turned to the signalman who had followed him out onto the bridge wing, instead.
"Message to Achilles, copied to Achates," he said. The signalman's pencil poised itself above his message pad, and he continued. "Stand by to assist Achates. Prepare to pass a tow, if required."
"Aye, sir." The signalman read back the message, and then headed for the radio room voice pipe when Simpson nodded.
"May I ask what you intend to do, sir?" Halberstat asked.
"Unless Commander Baumgartner's initial assessment is wrong, it's going to take at least thirty-six to forty-eight hours for him to make repairs—assuming he can make them out of shipboard resources," Simpson replied. "We can't afford to wait that long. The emperor is expecting us at Luebeck and General Torstensson's already moving. What's the closest town?"
"That would be Ritsenbuttel, I believe," Halberstat said, pointing downstream and to the southern bank.
"All right." Simpson nodded. "In that case, let's get a message sent back to Hamburg. We're going to need some sort of security force down here, if it turns out Baumgartner's estimate is overly optimistic. Until they can get here, I think his own Marines should be able to provide any base security he requires."
Du Bouvard swore inventively and with feeling as the Americans' steady approach suddenly slowed. He had no idea why it had happened. One of the timberclads was turning out of line, and as he watched, a second timberclad moved towards it, as if to render assistance. There was also a lot of white smoke—or possibly steam—streaming up.
Why the devil couldn't they have had whatever problem they're having fifteen minutes earlier? he demanded.
No one answered, and he shook his head in disgust. If he'd only known this was coming, he would never have put his swimmers into the water so soon! And if the Americans were having mechanical problems, it was entirely possible they would have no choice but to anchor somewhere after all while they made repairs. An anchored warship would have been far more vulnerable.
Lieutenant Leberecht Probst, USE Marine Corps, stood beside the bass boat's wheel and shaded his eyes with one hand as he looked philosophically back upriver.
Probst was better educated than the majority of his fellow Marines. Like Hans and Gretchen Richter, he was the son of a small printer. Unlike the Richters' father, however, Anton Probst was alive and well . . . and an enthusiastic supporter of the Committees of Correspondence whose political tracts had brought him so much business of late. Young Leberecht had read those same tracts while helping to set type, and one thing had led to another.
Now he watched the ironclads reducing their speed to little more than a crawl while Achilles went alongside Achates.
"What do you think, Leberecht?" Ensign Kjell Halvorsen asked, and he shrugged.
"I think somebody broke down. From the looks of things, it was Achates."
"Commander Baumgartner's going to be pissed," Halvorsen said with a certain satisfaction. The tall young Swede wasn't especially fond of Commander Baumgartner, since Commander Baumgartner's attractive younger daughter was quite fond of Ensign Halvorsen and the commander did not approve. Of course, Baumgartner didn't approve of much of anything.