Oh, Mother of God, why did I ever listen to him? I’ve lived to rue it. Dr. Wertz, my cousin, was a madman . . .

That late October, an unseasonable hot haze capped our tranquil harbor and city. The palmetto bugs, sluggish by the first cool snap, skittered underfoot with a mid-July spryness. Into such a strange night I bustled, a silk-lined cloak furled over my shoulders. Only a burnt orange moon stocked the cloudless skies. At Lombard & Maple, I veered right, striking a course for The Citadel. Atop a ladder lit by torches, Mr. Taliaferro worked a turnbuckle.

My cough startled him. Before he could mistake me for a runaway slave, I sidled into the halo of light cast by gas lamps.

"Good evening, er, Mr. Hunley, is it?” A stoop-shouldered shadow against the golden bricks, he squinted harder.

I spoke up: “Hello, sir. Your earthquake bolts, are they loose?”

Mr. Taliferro’s outburst was caustic laughter. “Aye. If these beastly quakes don’t wreck us, the Yankee cannoneers surely will. Their gunboats prowl within eyeshot.” His wave indicated some vague nexus behind us. “What I crave to know, no, what we all crave to know is why General Beauregard stirs such high spirits? You, of all people, should know.”

“Temper your voice,” I begged him. “The General bears just cause for newfound optimism. Sworn to secrecy, I can’t be more forthright.”

Descending to the street, Mr. Taliaferro snickered. “I witnessed its arrival on flat cars,” he said. “Your precious invention is a mariner’s craft, eh?”

“That much I’ll confirm. No more. If you’ll pardon me --”

“A peculiar type of mariner’s craft. Through a marine glass perched atop my cupola, I’ve espied your tinkering with it beyond the salt marshes. Gliding as a shark fin, it’s silhouetted in coppery waters . . .”

My nod signaled impatience. “Yes, yes.”

“. . . except unlike the bizarre tinclads which float on the water, yours journeys under the water. Tell me I speak falsely, and I’ll withdraw my bold assertion.”

Was I to call this gentleman weaving into my light a liar to his face? Instead, I took a different tact by sloughing off any credit. “Bah, you exaggerate. It is but a plaything to humor the General. Nothing more. A diversion.”

“Ah, a plaything. Old Bory cannot discern between war and games. Is it scant wonder why Richmond won’t entrust him with another Army command?”

“As always, I defer to your astute mind.” Departing, I bowed from the waist.

Dr. Wertz’s cheroot was a turd of misery. Vile odors didn’t aggrieve me half as much as the embers he let spill down into the cuffs of my britches. He was a man of science, not a slave to neatness. I yawned into my glove. My cinnamon-haired cousin, as usual, tested the limits of my patience.

“What part don’t you understand?” His hazel eyes boiled under gold-rimmed specs. An impatient noise cleared his throat.

My boots shuffled under the gateleg table. “Your theory is sound. Any engineer can grasp it. But the abstract mathematics, well, I’m not well-grounded beyond basic trigonometry.”

His square-tipped finger pointed at rows of English numerals and Greek symbols he’d printed on the journal sheet. I read before my eyes blurred before such confusing gibberish.

Dr. Wertz: “This formula, you see, computes the uranium’s power . . .”

I felt like a student on detention made to don a dunce hat. “Forgive my intrusion, dear cousin, but what exactly is this new element, uranium?”

“Klaproth the German chemist first detected it in 1789,” he said. “Uranium was in a shiny jet mineral from silver mines they called pitchblende. The Frenchman Péligot showed me a few years ago how to isolate it, a thermal process using tetrachloride and potassium. But, my dear cousin, the knave had no use for uranium except to color fancy glass jewelry.”

“Where does it come from?” I asked.

“Permit me to finish,” Dr. Wertz said. “I then took a train to the Joachimsthal mines, saw firsthand how the ore is excavated from the ground. My imagination took flight. Working feverishly, I refined the processes and had the ore shipped here to Charleston by the ton. An old plantation barn made for an excellent factory where to separate out the uranium. The leftover slurry I carted out by mule-drawn wagon to dump into a sinkhole.”

“Who helped you?” I wondered.

He said, “Slave labor, of course. Burns and fires were all too common. But enough said of that. Shall I explain the science again to you?”

“No sir. Suffice to say you’ve harnessed this uranium’s force, converted it into a viable means to propel my watercraft. Any need for manual exertion to move it is thereby removed.”

“Precisely,” he replied. “Perhaps this will aid in your comprehension. The steam engine is our most advanced mode of conveyance. True enough? Now, give your own imagination unfettered flight. Oh please, sir, cease your damn scowling! Naturally, it sounds extraordinary, but I speak not a false word. I’ve foaled an engine that takes its strength from atomic power, far more sophisticated than steam ever was. That’s what I shall call it: atomic power.”

“Why me to test your enterprise?” I quizzed him again. “My resources are meager. This is a last-ditch chance for me to succeed and I’m deplorably behind schedule as it is.”

Astral lamps fired by whale oil hissed above us. Black drops of humidity wiggled down plaster walls. Patches of perspiration fought through my cornstarch calm. Dr. Wertz folded his arms, palms cupped under the elbows. “I’ve nowhere else to go. Look. A few folks, as you know, call me a visionary. Most ridicule me as a crackpot. But not all, mind you. That Frenchman, Verne? Jules Verne?”

“Yes, I’ve read his balloon travel novel,” I admitted. “Quite thought-provoking.”

“Precisely. As my staunchest champion, he views my atomic locomotion like The Second Coming.”

I hesitated. “Well, still . . .”

My cousin loved to gloat. “Besides, I’m calling in that favor. Remember, I fished you out of the harbor after your sailing accident? Anyway, through you, I’ll perfect my engine, make good on my claims.”

I scraped back my chair. “This is far-fetched as it is ridiculous. It’s out of the question, I’m afraid. To begin with, I’d face too many technical difficulties readapting my design.”

“Not true. No bulkier than a hogshead, it’ll ride on the craft’s tail end. By lightning, show some pluck, Hunley! Put me inside your blasted craft. I’ll descend and observe your crew carrying out their drills. That’ll focus my thinking for making any necessary refinements.”

Head wagging, my protests stiffened. “I forbid it. It’s too perilous.”

“Balderdash! I’ll accept any and all risk. Consider this: your eight-man team cranking the drive shaft by foot will be relieved of their tedium. Moreover, my atomic engine produces its own light. That’s right, sir. Think of it: no more candles inside the craft!”

My tone as did my smile turned sly. “Fine, cousin. I’ll sanction this test using your engine. But only on one condition: if you cannot manage it, you’ll cease bedeviling me.”

“I accept.”

We arose to shake hands in a heartfelt, charitable manner. I shambled down the laboratory steps into the street convinced that Dr. Wertz, once squeezed and tucked into my craft’s cramped, hellish steel confines, would loose heart. Only then would I be free of him. That I liked.

In this recurring nightmare, I played the coxswain-captain. Scummy water gushed into the ballast tanks on both extremities of my thirty-foot long craft. We began oozing lower, disappearing into the city’s kelp-choked harbor.

“Aye, she’s filling fast,” bellowed the sailor with a thick Irish brogue.

“Very good, Sean,” I responded. “Stand by to batten down the hatches.”

“Aye, sir. It’s good as done.”

“Men at quarters!”

My neck hairs quilled on end. Something was afoul. I could feel it in my bones. Mashing my eyes closed, I visualized what to do in the event of a mishap. Crewmen plying wrenches would let out the bolts securing the iron keel. Minus that deadweight, we’d bob to the surface like a hulk of driftwood. How many drills had we practiced doing just that? Twelve. This fine crew was working splendidly in tandem. In a matter of days, we’d master the craft’s intricacies. But a whisper of fear still set my teeth on edge. Why?

Because every mechanical craft has its stress points, its weakest attribute. As an engineer, I knew my craft’s was the watertight seal the steel hatches didn’t always afford. Well, there were others, of course, but the dream always vivified this one.

“Yankeedom will quail before us,” Sean predicted. “We’ll crush their blue flotillas.”

My nod was terse. Through the greasy four-foot wide and five-foot high tunnel, eight vexed faces for the briefest second brightened up beaming our national pride. You had to love them. All were volunteers. All were intelligent enough to divine the craft’s direst consequences -- asphyxiation inside an iron maiden on Charleston Harbor’s bottom. Just then, six candle flames danced low in their wicks.

“Steady, lads,” I urged. “A mere draft. Nothing more. Thomas, Richard, prepare to seal the hatches. Steersman Sean, order our cranking pace.”

“Aye, sir.”

Unlike the rest of us, Sean sat enthralled, his every nerve snapping in ecstatic zeal. His was born with fish scales if not a set of gills, I suspected. Both iron hatches clanged shut with a haunting finality. Every crewman flinched, ignoring what dread they surely must’ve caught in each other’s glittery eyes. In short, they were plucky plowboys from Alabama’s and Mississippi’s landlocked clay districts. They’d no phobia of water as I suffered. Exhaling a perturbed snort, I put my face to the porthole’s glass, our sole means of navigation.

“Three fathoms and descending,” Sean said. “Deeper, sir?”

A tense murmur went up. My fingertip tapped my lip while I considered. To date, three fathoms was our record. “We’re in fine fettle. Take her down to four.” I barked out the orders to head off my own apprehension. The porthole blotted from inky jade to opaque black. Black, mind you, as the crack of doom. Hush, I scolded myself. Ears popped. Someone sneezed. The crew pedaled the cranks. Squeaky gears overrode their bullish breathing. I prayed a Hail Mary, fingering a rosary bead inside my vest pocket.

“Good work, lads,” I encouraged them.

Always, at this juncture in the dream, ominous cello music commenced playing as at the theater.

Grunting, Sean applied his entire thew to man the side fins. His efforts proved futile. Our rolling forward end plunged at a 20-degree angle through seawater. It was like clinging for dear life aboard a runaway locomotive hurtling downslope. “Level her off,” I belted out to Sean. Was my alarm contagious? My mouth went dry, my throat constricted.

Beelzebub himself sawed heavier on cello strings. Its strains paralyzed me.

“I-I-I can’t,” Sean huffed back to me. “For some bloody reason, the fins stay stuck, sir. Intractable, they are.”

My reeling brain spliced it together. The water pressure pushing harder and harder was jamming our controls. “Abort! Abort!”

Thomas in the rear hatch: “Uh, I observe water seepage, sir.”

“Duly noted,” I said. “It’s leftover from topside.”

“I respectfully disagree.” Thomas, a scrawny and wiry man, dared to counter me.

Richard cut in, his voice quavering. “L-l-likewise in the fore hatch. Water trickles into our compartment.”

Me: “As is to be expected.”

“It’s streaming through now, sir.”

“We’re sinking!” A hollow-toned voice expressed what we all thought that same terrible second. “We’re sinking to the bottom! God help us!”

One by one, six candles whiffed out. An icy sweat broke out along my spine, under my arms. “Steady, lads.” The cello strings screaked louder. I heard my gasp echo in the lull. Then pandemonium ensued. Lobster bodies scrambled, clawed to the hatchways to escape.

“Get back, damn it.” “Hey, who slugged me?” “Release the keel, by Jesus.” “We’ll die inside here, it’s a steel coffin.” All this while, the craft was upending lengthwise: twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty degrees. Dungeon darkness swallowed us whole. Geysers of water burst through thin-plated armor. Both hatches, scraping metal against metal, collapsed . . .

Quivering, I bolted upright in bed. My heart was cantering, my pulse thrashing out my ribs. “Be calm,” I said. “It was but a bad dream. That is all. A horrid dream.” I got up and gazed through bleary panes at the multitudinous spires over the Charleston skyline. Only the rawest burn of bourbon all through my vital innards deadened my nerves.

Indignant, Dr. Wertz stamped his peg leg on the cypress dock. His burgundy beard bristled. “I take no stock in dreams, Hunley. They don’t forecast the future. What’s next? Tea leaves? Chicken entrails? I remain first a man of science and reason. There, by dang it. We will proceed as you agreed. I insist.”

Attired in loose-fitting tunics, baggy trousers, and straw sandals, the ill-at-ease crew gawped at our subtle disagreement. I did my unctuous best to smooth Wertz’s ruffled feathers.

When my flickering fingers gestured, crew members snapped out of formation. They toed out the mooring chocks, greased the fittings and hatch seals, and primed for their thirteenth dive.

“As you are a scientist, so am I an engineer,” I told him in a conspiratorial murmur. “There are more problems to be solved. Anyway, your turning horn mad in front of the crew benefits neither of us.”

Dr. Wertz, sensing his chance slipping away, composed himself on the spot. “My apologies, dear cousin. Tempers are wrought-up. Never again, I pledge, will anger pass between us.”

For a moment, I debated whether to push my bid to forestall his going below. Safety was paramount. General Beauregard would be irked at any loss of life. The accepted axiom was for our soldiers to slay their soldiers, not for us to slay our own. Ha! Twelve dives had been a resounding triumph. What could go awry? Well, anything and everything. Engineering was never a precise or perfect art. Knowing that as the craft’s designer fetched me great distress and anxiety.

I looked in askance at the fat, grotesque barnacle Dr. Wertz had attached to my craft using locks and chains. Encased in copper boilerplate on the aft end, his vibrating atomic engine produced an orange-red aura. Hot as a woodstove, it burned the human touch. A magnified cicada’s rasp issued from its inner mechanisms. At once I was filled with trepidation and awe. Once the dive was completed, my cousin promised to explain it all to me in simple detail. My palm lifted to one of the idling dynamo’s vents, felt a gush of warm air. Aha! That force was how they’d propel underwater. Enthralled, I decided to go ahead.

Burly old tars assisted crewmen and my cousin worming through dual hatches. After locking down both lids, they towed the craft by ropes to a low ramp, then scooted it down and out into the hungry bay. The time: twelve noon. Air depleted, they’d surface by two o’clock. A bottle of celebratory bourbon in Dr. Wertz’s laboratory awaited us then.

Water gurgled into the ballast tanks at either end. My craft, inch by inch, yielded to the brackish sea lapping over its hull. Creating a whirlpool, the hatches ebbed from view. At the end of the dock, my head at the right angle, I espied its blunt shadow creeping ever afar. Odd thing. Never once had I sat inside its snug chamber. That was, I assured myself, by luck of the draw.

Catastrophe rides a fast horse. First bad signs? Bubbles fizzed between the red buoys. Precious air was leaking out! I shouted, pointed. “Huh? What is it, sir?” The old tars sprinted over, also peered down. Abject horror ruled. The craft plummeted further and further to the treacherous bottom. Likewise, my heart swooned to my lowermost guts. Ah, God. We were powerless to help, only stood gawking and picturing their slow, awful deaths.

Later at night, after news of the fiasco had reached General Beauregard, I was retracing my route to my cousin’s house. Sad to say, Charleston’s citizenry was up in arms. Yet again, promised deliverance had been snatched away. The General, in a spat of the blackest furor, forbade further production of my “reckless” craft. To defy his orders would boot me in Libby Prison up in Richmond, a punishment direr than Hell itself. My gravest fear right now? A crazed mob would come knocking, a hangman’s rope in hand. Did I mention our thoroughfares were flanked with abundant tall, stout oaks?

Only in murky darkness did I dare dart about alleyways. Passing by Walkers, Evans, & Cogswell Printers, my mood grew grimmer. Dr. Wertz, my contemptible cousin, had ensured my comeuppance. Why had I listened to his ill-advised counsel?

His atomic engine had failed in its mission to propel my craft through water. Instead, at least from my vantage point, the engine was every bit an albatross or a millstone, its weight dragging a brave crew to their tragic deaths. Or perhaps the hatch seals had failed. At any rate, the atomic engine’s heat had probably melted my craft into a lump of molted metal even underwater.

Alas, Dr. Wertz’s atomic engine was why the CSA Hunley, my precious craft, ended up on the bottom of Charleston Harbor as a water-logged folly. My folly. Hunley’s folly. Already I cringed from the chant: Hunley’s folly! Hunley’s folly! Hunley’s folly!

Now I was a fiend inside my cousin’s laboratory. Now I was dousing his burlap curtains with our celebratory bourbon. Now I was shredding his scientific journal pages filled with such obtuse glyphs. Flint struck to steel sparked a flame. Ardent licks went up the burlap curtains. I hurled on splintering boxes and crates. Also, his infernal cheroots. The extra stores of uranium glowed a horrid orange.

Praise be fire. Fire forever released this world from Dr. Wertz’s madness. Fire, the Great Disposer, fire. Never again would man attempt my arrogant folly.