Hunt, a James River pilot who knew every bend and shoal like the creases in his face, kept his eyes focused ahead and tipped his head upward. “What little light comes from the moon is enough for me to read the river.”

“Yankee gunners will use it too.”

“True, but our gray sides blend with the shadows along the bank. They won’t pick us out easily.”

“Let us hope so,” Tombs sighed.

He climbed through a rear hatch and stood on the casemate roof as the Texas reached Drewrys Bluff and surged through the moored gunboats of Admiral Semmes’ James River Fleet. The crews of her sister ironclads, Virginia II, Fredericksburg, and Richmond, sick at heart as they prepared to blow their ships into the air, suddenly broke into wild cheering as the Texas swept past. Black smoke spewed from her stack and obscured the stars. The Confederate battle flag stretched out taut in the breeze from the ship’s forward thrust, presenting a stirring sight that would never be seen again.

Tombs doffed his hat and held it high. It was the final dream that would soon become a nightmare of bitterness and defeat. And yet, it was a grand moment to be savored. The Texas was on her way to becoming a legend.

And then, as suddenly as she appeared, she was gone around the river’s bend, her wake the only sign of her passing.

Just above the Trents Reach, where the Federal army had stretched an obstruction, across the river and dug several artillery emplacements, Tombs ordered the United States colors raised on the mast.

Inside the casemate, the gun deck was cleared for action. Most of the men had stripped to the waist and stood at their guns with handkerchiefs tied around their foreheads. The officers had removed their coats and quietly strode the deck in their undershirts beneath suspenders. The ship’s surgeon passed out tourniquets and instructed the men on how to apply them.

Fire buckets were spaced about the deck. Sand was spread to soak up blood. Pistols and cutlasses were issued to repel boarders, rifles loaded with bayonets fixed on their muzzles. The hatches to the magazine rooms below the gun deck were opened and the winches and pulleys readied to hoist the shot and powder.

Pushed by the current, the Texas was doing 16 knots when her bow crushed the floating spar of the obstruction. She surged through into clear water with hardly a scratch on the iron ram bolted to her bow.

An alert Union sentry spotted the Texas as she slipped out of the dark and fired off his musket.

“Cease fire, for God’s sake cease fire!” Tombs shouted from the roof of the casemate.

“What ship are you?” a voice from shore came back.

“The Atlanta, you idiot. Can’t you recognize your own ship?”

“When did you come upriver?”

“An hour ago. We’re under orders to patrol to the obstruction and back to City Point.”

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General Grant’s Union army supply port on the James River.