Hugh led him at a brisk stride down to the wharf, where a steam tug was tied up, waiting. Clawson was already aboard, as were Walker Taylor—looking enormous in the uniform of the State Guard, complete with side arm—and George Rountree, the attorney. As Hugh and Sam stepped aboard, the three came forward, and everybody traded handshakes, then went into the pilothouse. At MacRae’s signal, the whiskered captain snapped the brim of his greasy fedora and gave orders to cast off.

Sam steadied himself against the cabin wall as the stern dug in and the bow lifted, plowing a furrow in the outgoing tide as the boat steamed upriver. The river breeze rushed in at the open ports, cooling him so suddenly that he shivered.

Inside the pilothouse, the din of the engine made it impossible to talk without shouting. Hugh MacRae lit a cigar and paced like a man waiting for a telegram. Clawson lit a cigar of his own.

When they were well beyond the wharves, the railroad bridge, and the rafts of anchored ships, the boat lost way and the engine quieted to a low grumble. The captain nodded to MacRae, and they all followed him out onto the starboard deck, moving aft past the smokestack. Then they stood together at the rail, looking down onto the fantail.

Sam recognized big Bill Kenan at once, standing with two other soldiers next to a bulky object draped with a heavy tarpaulin. The tugboat was a mile or more upriver from the city, drifting down on the tide. Sam recognized the point of land coming up on his right. What was it the man on the train had called it? Nigger Head Point.

He heard murmuring and the shuffle of feet under the rear overhang of the cabin roof, but he could not see who was down there. Suddenly, Hugh MacRae took his cigar out of his mouth as if he were pulling a cork. “You men, come out from there. Let me see you.”

Obediently, eight Negro men moved cautiously from under the overhang and stood blinking in the sun, looking up at MacRae.

“Take off your hats so I can see your faces,” MacRae ordered, and the men complied. All were dressed in suits and ties—lawyers, merchants, undertakers. Sam recognized the man who had offered to take a message to Manly the night of the near-lynching, but he had never bothered to learn his name. And standing beside him, no mistake, was Frank Manly. He stared up at Sam, who wished he could suddenly vanish. He was acutely aware of the gun in his pocket—the bulge must be unmistakable to anybody staring as hard as Frank Manly.

The eight black men stood there on the swaying deck, hats in hands, not moving except as the boat moved.

“That’s better. Now, if you will all move aft. That means to the very back.”