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milling forlornly in the slave pens on Moreau and Common streets, going in long chained lines to and from the great exchanges, cleaning out the gutters. Even down by the steamer landing, you couldn't escape the signs of slavery; the grand side-wheelers that plied the New Orleans trade were always taking black folks up and down the river, and Abner Marsh saw them come and go whenever he went down to the Fevre Dream. The slaves rode in chains as often as not, sitting together miserably amidst the cargo, sweating in the heat of the furnaces.

"I don't like it none," Marsh complained to Jonathon Jeffers. "It ain't clean. And I tell you, I won't have none of it on the Fevre Dream. Nobody is goin' to stink up my boat with that kind of stuff, you hear?"

Jeffers gave him a wry look of appraisal. "Why, Cap'n, if we don't traffic in slaves, we stand to lose a pile of money. You're sounding like an abolitionist"

"I ain't no damned abolitionist," Marsh said hotly, "but I mean what I said. If a gentleman wants to bring a slave or two along, servants and such, that's fine. I'll take 'em cabin passage or deck passage, don't matter none to me. But we ain't goin' to take 'em as freight, all chained up by some goddamned trader."

By their seventh night in New Orleans, Abner Marsh felt strangely sick of the city, and anxious to be off. That night Joshua York came down to supper with some river charts in his hand. Marsh had seen very little of his partner since their arrival. "How do you fancy New Orleans?" Marsh asked York as the other seated himself.

"The city is lovely," York replied in an oddly troubled voice that made Marsh look up from the roll he was buttering. "I have nothing but admiration for the Vieux Carre. It is utterly unlike the other river towns we've seen, almost European, and some of the houses in the American section are grand as well. Nonetheless, I do not like it here."

Marsh frowned. "Why's that?"

"I have a bad feeling, Abner. This city-the heat, the bright colors, the smells, the slaves-it is very alive, this New Orleans, but inside I think it is rotten with sickness. Everything is so rich and beautiful here, the cuisine, the manners, the architecture, but beneath that..."He shook his head. "You see all those lovely courtyards, each boasting an exquisite well. And then you see the teamsters selling river water from barrels, and you realize that the well water is unfit to drink. You savor the rich sauces and the spices of the food, and then you learn that the spices are intended to disguise the fact that the meat is going bad. You wander through the St. Louis and cast your eyes upon all that marble and that delightful dome with the light pouring through it down onto the rotunda, and then you learn it is a famous slave mart where humans are sold like cattle. Even the graveyards are places of beauty here. No simple tombstones or wooden crosses, but great marble mausoleums, each prouder than the last, with statuary atop them and fine poetic sentiments inscribed in stone. But inside every one is a rotting corpse, full of maggots and worms. They must be imprisoned in stone because the ground is no good even for burying, and graves fill up with water. And pestilence hangs over this beautiful city like a pall.

"No, Abner," Joshua said with an odd, distant look in his gray eyes, "I love beauty, but sometimes a thing lovely to behold conceals vileness and evil within. The sooner we are quit of this city, the better I shall like it."

"Hell," said Abner Marsh. "Damned if I can say why, but I feel just the same way. Don't fret, we can get out of here real quick."

Joshua York grimaced. "Good," he said. "But first, I have one final task." He moved aside his plate and opened the chart he had brought to the table with him. "Tomorrow at dusk, I want to take the Fevre Dream downriver."

"Downriver?" Marsh said in astonishment. "Hell, ain't nothin' downstream of here for us. Some plantations, lots of Cajuns, swamps and bayous and then the Gulf."

"Look," said York. His finger traced a path down the Mississippi. "We follow the river down around through here, turn off onto this bayou and proceed about a half-dozen miles to here. It won't take us long, and we