ers belowdecks. A moment later levers clanked and
Raoul felt the deck tremble as the paddle wheels on the sides of the
ship reversed themselves.

"Shoot when you're ready, Lieutenant," Raoul said.

_God, how I love this!_

Kingsbury shouted, "Fire!"

The gun thundered, deafening him, and leaped back in its cradle of
tackle. Raoul watched the woods eagerly as a white smoke cloud spread
over the water. On the island, branches flew in all directions. A big
tree fell. He heard a scream followed by a series of wailing cries. He
almost cried aloud with pleasure.

An Indian staggered out from behind the trunk of a tall pine. He
dragged one leg, a useless mass of bloody meat, and fell heavily to the
ground. He held a rifle. He shook his fist at the _Victory_, then aimed
the rifle from his prone position.

In sudden fear, Raoul was about to duck behind a hay bale when a dozen
shots cracked out from the railings beside him. Bleeding from his chest
and his head, the Indian collapsed and rolled into the Mississippi.
Nodding happily, Raoul watched the current catch his body. It drifted
slowly downstream, trailing blood.

"Keep firing!" Raoul roared. A cannoneer swabbed inside the gun barrel
to cool it down for more powder. In a moment the gun boomed out again.
More trees splintered, but no more Indians were flushed out.

"Raise elevation ten degrees," Kingsbury called to the gunners. "They're
probably lurking farther back in the woods."

Raoul heard the clicks as the gunners used hand spikes to raise the
cannon in its carriage.

After the cannon went off, dirt and broken tree limbs sprayed out of the
forest, and Raoul heard shrieking sounds that he hoped were the screams
of Indians.

The cannon boomed again and again. With hand signals to Captain Bill in
the pilot house, Raoul had the _Victory_'s bow swung to starboard and
then to port, so that the grapeshot struck the island in a wide arc.
Trees slowly toppled over, and shrieks of pain and shouts of rage and
defiance pierced the silence between the roars of the cannon.

He pictured the lead balls tearing into howling Indians, ripping their
flesh apart. He remembered Helene's body in Lake Michigan. He remembered
Black Salmon's lash on his back. He saw--as he had seen them two weeks
ago--the heap of blackened, split logs that had been Victoire, his home,
the place where Clarissa, Phil and Andy died. He saw the mound of earth
in the family cemetery where they lay togeth