From Chapter 1 - He heard the raspy breaths of the five other exhausted crankmen. Like him, they were physically spent from horsing the vessel four miles out and a mile back. No other sounds from the dark silence. No panic in the Hunley. No one clamored toward the hatchways for escape. No one screamed in fear of the possible death sentence they faced, ten fathoms under in a fragile tube. Silently they obeyed the code of valor. He leaned forward on his crank handle and rested for a moment. A sweat-laden, mixed odor of whiskey and acorn-shell, coffee-tainted stench oozed from every man's pores, then hovered like a thick soupy haze, like the sweltering summer night haze he remembered from Mobile. As much as he hated those suffocating nights, he longed for them now.