One of his gun crew jerked the lanyard, and the wooden deck trembled as the cannon thundered and recoiled, straining against the breeching tackle. The ball arched out of sight, and Tim imagined that he saw a fleck of white where it hit the water short of its mark.
Before the gunner could fire a second shot the packet had shown them her stern and was lost in the mist.
Red squinted into the distance. “She must have been a phantom surely. She could hardly expect to run into Charleston in the afternoon. It must be risky enough at night.”
“She was probably due to arrive last night. She must have been delayed somehow. She’s killing time until sundown.”
The gunner heard Tim and nodded his head. “And now we’ll be on the lookout for her.” He smiled. “But they’re slippery devils, sure enough.”
The South Carolina Coast from Hilton Head to Charleston, 1863
As the transport approached Folly Island, Captain Kautz spread a map on the deck. It showed the coast from Savannah to Charleston. Tim’s eyes traced their course from Hilton Head past St. Helena, Edisto and Kiawa to Folly Island, Lighthouse Inlet and Morris Island, which lay at the entrance to Charleston Harbor.
“We bivouac at the southwest end of Folly tonight,” Kautz said, drawing a stubby finger across the map, “and tomorrow at dusk we march the length of the island to the shore of Lighthouse Inlet. We will launch our attack in small boats. Morris Island is a sparsely covered place.”
The captain had things figured one, two, three. He straightened up with his hands on his hips and looked toward Morris Island, as if he were going to take a bite out of it with his even white teeth. “It shouldn’t be more than one day’s work to clear the rifle pits and capture the batteries along the shore. By Saturday night we’ll be cleaning our rifles inside the fort.”