Next morning, he found out somebody on the Kentucky shore had fired a machine gun at the Punishment, hoping to pick off someone on deck or in the cabin. Wayne Pitchess took that in stride. "He didn't hurt us, and we probably didn't hurt him," he said around a mouthful of sausage. "That's the kind of war I like to fight."

Cautiously, the Punishment pushed farther down the river. Now Tennessee lay to port. They steamed past the ruins of a Confederate fort that had mounted guns able to sink a battleship, let alone a river monitor. More such forts, still untaken, lay farther south. On the stretches of the Mississippi it owned, the USA had its share of them, too. They were another reason combats between monitors were scarce.

Enos eyed the woods running down to the river. U.S. forces were supposed to have cleared away all the Rebs, but the exchange of fire the night before showed that wasn't so. He wondered how he would get any sign of the enemy, or, for that matter, of the Negroes who had rebelled against the Confederacy. All he saw were trees. He saw a hell of a lot of trees. He was used to the cramped confines of Massachusetts, where everything was jammed up against everything else. It wasn't like that here. The land was wide, and people thin on the ground.

With a low rumble, the turret of the Punishment began to revolve. The guns rose slightly. George had never heard them fired before. He braced himself.

Bracing himself wasn't enough. The roar seemed like the end of the world. Sheets of golden flame spat from the guns' muzzles. One of them blew a perfect smoke ring, as he might have done with a cigar, only a hundred times bigger.

His ears still ringing, he watched the gun barrels rise again, an even smaller movement than they had made before.