The Poseidon Adventure (26 page)

She seemed suddenly to have taken on a new lease of life, to have found some unexpected reserve of strength or even determination, probably due to the fact that the simplicity of the haberdasher and the things he talked about had taken much of the drama out of the final effort. She understood Martin better than she had Scott.

Martin tapped Kemal on the shoulder, pointing first up, then to Belle. The Turk understood at once, swung himself on to the staircase, mounted four steps, then reached down with one arm free.

Martin ordered, 'Okay, fellers!' Then to Belle, 'Put your hands on our shoulders when we lift, then grab Kemal. You'll go up like in an express elevator.'

He, with Rosen, Shelby and Muller each secured a grip on Belle's legs and thighs and heaved upwards. She rose from their midst like a grotesque caricature of an adagio dancer. She even managed to struggle around the end of the reversed companionway to gain what had been the ceiling of the propeller shaft tunnel and was now the flooring. These were the carriers that served the electro-hydraulic system controlling the 40-ton rudder. The shaft itself was higher up, at shoulder level, and a few feet above it, now forming a roof, was the steel catwalk used by engine-room hands to patrol the length of the tunnel to check and service the bearings of the shaft. Slightly higher than this was the plating of the double bottom of the ship, which when she was rightside-up formed fuel or ballast tanks.

When she had got her breath, Belle called down, 'See, like I said, with a boost up anybody can do it. You got no more worries.' But then of a sudden she gave a gasp and a cry.

Rosen beamed his fading torch up the steps and cried, 'Mamma, what is it? Have you hurt yourself?'

The reply was a few moments in coming. 'It's . . . It's what Dr Metzger said . . . is nothing. So . . . you shouldn't worry.'

Rosen lowered his voice, but it had an embarrassed note as he said to the others, 'Mamma -- I mean, my wife -- for thirty years has been thinking she's got a heart, on account of having been an athlete and then getting fat. You know, "athlete's heart." But the doctor always said . . .'

Muller interrupted, 'She's been through a terrible ordeal, Mr Rosen.'

Martin simply said, 'Next!'

Nonnie begged, 'Let me go, I could look after her a little.'

They shot the dancer aloft and heard her murmuring to Belle. Jane cried, 'Is she all right?'

'She's breathing a little better,' Nonnie reported. 'I'm massaging her. She's fab, really.'

'Miss Kinsale.'

She came trotting forward, lifting her arms to facilitate their gripping her. Her body was too bony and unrounded to be feminine, her breasts small and undeveloped by love. But the long sweep of the dark hair away and down from the angular face made her so momentarily striking that Shelby found himself suddenly stirred and desirous of the excitement of awakening her. He wondered why she had never married. In the darkness he flushed at the memory of his wife's outburst against him,
You didn't even have the guts to have a mistress or crawl into bed with somebody else's wife for the sheer lark of it.

In one vengeful movie reel that spun through the projector of his mind, he seduced Miss Kinsale to show Jane, burying his face in her hair, set her up in an apartment in Detroit and visited her there regularly as his mistress. But with the touch of her hard, fleshless hip against his hand, the moment passed and he wondered at himself that he had ever considered such a thing.

They sent her flying like a woods' dryad up to Kemal. The rest followed.

Now that they were actively engaged in doing something, no one thought of the ship going down. It was as though by their decision to go on with Martin and see the journey through, they were winning her and themselves some sort of reprieve.

Jane Shelby went to the mouth of the tunnel and called into it, 'Robin -- Robin, are you there?' Simultaneously Muller threw the light of his lantern into it.

There was no one to be seen. There was no reply, no human voice. From somewhere a tortured part of the ship creaked and groaned.

Martin said, 'Let me have a look,' and marched a few yards down the tunnel. He came back and said, 'I get it. If we follow the propeller shaft, we ought to come to her skin. Those stewards said the double bottom didn't extend the full length of the ship either front or back. We'll go down here until we find it. But look out, the footing's rotten.'

They paired off, Martin leading with Miss Kinsale, then Rosen with Belle, Kemal with Jane, Shelby with his daughter, Muller and Nonnie, and Rogo, as usual, bringing up the rear.

There were three of the large lanterns left. Martin allowed only one to be used to light the way ahead and show up the irregularities of the flooring. They moved along silently now, too tired to speak, too numbed even to think about what had happened since they had gone to lunch the day before and been welcomed to the Strong Stomach Club by Mr Rosen.

Muller, grasping Nonnie's hand and arm tightly, marvelled at the adaptability of men and women, what horrors and privations they could endure and still hope and strive and even talk almost like normal human beings. Without warning the ship had rolled over and people were killed before their eyes. A son was missing; a girl they had known was dead. Two of the party that had set out with them were probably drowned by now. A stewardess had been trampled to death. Walking on those eternally slippery pipes underfoot, they had passed men with broken backs and legs, seen fragments of humans hanging from the projections of the steel mountain they had climbed. They had looked on as the Reverend Frank Scott, cursing, blaspheming and miscalling his God, had hurled himself into eternity via the black pit they had named the Lake of Hell. And he, Hubie Muller, had fallen in love with a dancing girl and the touch of her filled him still with that strange elation compounded of passion and compassion.

Susan, as she walked by her father, sore, bruised, heavy-hearted, wondered again what he would say or think or feel if she were to tell him what had happened to her. She knew that in his lexicon rape was the most bestial and terrible of crimes. Men went to prison, were electrocuted or gassed to death for committing it. She saw once more the pink curve of the young sailor's cheek and found her eyes suddenly wet with tears. What would she have done, what would have happened to him had he not run away? She had been violated but for one moment they had been close, brought together by fear and pity.

'Martin,' her father suddenly called out sharply. 'Hold it!'

They came to a halt and the leader's voice drifted back, 'What's up?'

'The tunnel's closing in on us,' Shelby said. 'It's getting lower and narrower, too.' He had been the first to notice it because he was a head taller than Martin.

'Lord!' said Muller. 'What do we do?'

'Crawl on our hands and knees if we have to,' Martin replied savagely. He had taken over the leadership not because he wanted to, but because no one else had offered, and he did not want to die. But he could not escape the feeling that already he had blundered somehow and that he was leading them into disaster.

The narrowing became more marked. Martin said, 'Let the girls wait here. Rosen, you stay with them. The rest of us will go on up ahead and see what gives.'

They crawled now, another ten yards, on their stomachs until forward progress was brought to an end once and for all by the great steel collar filling the whole of the tunnel through which the shaft passed. Over their heads the lights still showed the plating of the double bottom. They had come to the inside of the thrust block of the propeller, against which it pushed to drive the ship forward.

Martin was almost childlike in his disappointment, 'It ain't like they said it would be.'

Rogo behind him said, 'Dead end again. Christ, you're as good as Scott!'

Martin's thin lips split into his mirthless grin, 'Thanks, Rogo! You've been a great help all the way. "What do we do now, coach?" What the hell am I trying to save you for? So you can go back on your beat and belt some more poor bastards.'

Rogo's truculence rose immediately, 'Look, don't start any trouble, sucker.'

Martin laughed now, 'You haven't got room to swing here, copper. So Scott was wrong, and this is the end of the line. You got any better ideas?'

They started to back out of the tunnel. When there was room, Kemal tapped Martin on the shoulder and gestured. Martin shook his head. 'No good, Kemal. Napoo! Finish!'

But the Turk, too, shook his head and was insistent with his gestures, so that they were compelled to watch him.

First he made a revolving motion with his index finger. Then he held up four fingers, and looked around to see whether there was comprehension. Next he showed them two and with both hands indicated the left side and repeated the pantomime for the right side.

Muller murmured, 'Four, split up into twos . . .'

Now Kemal, his eyes burning with concentration as he willed them to understand what he was trying to tell them, made another shift of the position of his hands. He moved one forward so that the grimy blackened nails came just to the wrist of the other.

Startlingly, Shelby cried, 'I've got it! We're in the wrong tunnel!'

Martin said, 'What do you mean? I don't get it. What difference does it make?'

'It's what he was trying to tell us.' He imitated Kemal's revolving finger and then the show of four. 'The ship has quadruple screws, two of them on a side, that is, either side of the rudder.'

Rogo was still smarting at having had the wind taken out of his sails by a shrimp of an ex-sergeant who had won the war handing out uniforms, or checking up stock in the PX. He said, 'So what does that get us? We're in the same jam in any other tunnel.'

'No,' Shelby said excitedly, 'that's the last thing he was trying to tell us by the position of his hands. The propellers aren't in a line. One is set forward of the other on each side of the hull. We're in the tunnel which doesn't go beyond the double bottom.'

Muller was catching on. 'Then Peters and Acre would be right. The second one would be set farther aft . . .'

'Exactly!' said Shelby. 'The other shaft tunnel ought to extend out beyond the double bottom and towards the rudder and the skin of the ship.'

Martin said briefly, 'You don't learn things like that selling socks. Let's go. Do you want to take over, Rogo?'

The detective smiled crookedly on one side of his face. 'Sorry, Sarge,' he said, 'I talked out of turn.'

Muller said. 'How do we find the other tunnel?'

Shelby indicated Kemal, 'He'd know.' He held up two fingers to the Turk who nodded, delighted that he had been understood, and beckoned them to follow him.

Rogo said, 'Why didn't the dope tell us we were in the wrong tunnel in the first place?'

Muller replied briefly, 'The ship's turned upside-down for him, too.' The light of the lantern flickered and turned a darker shade of yellow.

'Oh, lord! The batteries,' Martin said, 'we've been wasting them.'

The four crawled back until they could walk upright again. When they reached the others Manny Rosen asked excitedly, 'What happened? Some trouble? We can't go on? I heard . . .'

Martin came to the point, 'Sorry, I boobed. There are two tunnels like this. I picked the wrong one. We've got to get to the other, Kemal thinks he knows the way.'

Jane Shelby moaned, 'I had given up for Robin. If there's another tunnel, must I hope all over again?' She began to cry softly.

Susan put her arms around her and comforted, 'Oh, Mummy . . .'

Manny said with heat, 'You want my wife now to be walking all the way back again?' And then, 'God knows what else we shall have to do, like acrobats. What do you expect?'

Martin said, 'I don't expect anything. I'm just telling you what happened. There's still a double bottom between us and the outside world -- if there still is any such thing. Shelby can explain it better than I. If we stay here, we might as well be back in the dining-room again, for all the good it will do us.'

Belle Rosen had slumped down on to the floor. Even in the spare use they were making now of their torchlight, they could see how grey her whitish skin had become, and the trembling of her limbs. Her voice had changed to a hoarse whisper as she asked, 'In God's name, what is it you want we should do now? Climbing any more I couldn't.'

Miss Kinsale spoke up, 'We must go on, Mrs Rosen. You wouldn't want Dr Scott to have died for us in vain.'

'Dr Scott went his way,' Belle said, 'why couldn't you let me go mine, now, in peace?'

Rogo refrained from repeating his opinion of the Minister's sacrifice. Instead he said, 'Don't forget you were Belle Zimmerman, the champ, once, and the newspapers said you were the greatest. Like Shelby said, when it comes to moxie, you got us all beat, Belle. You'd feel like an awful sap if they came knocking at your door, and you were out.'

Martin said, 'There won't be any more climbing. We're at the top now, just in the wrong spot. The batteries of our lights are running down and the air here ain't any too good to breathe any more. Maybe it's our last chance.'

Nonnie said, 'Are you going to make that poor woman move again? It's cruelty! Can't you see she's had it? And I've bloody well had it too. I don't want to go any more, Hubie, hold me!'