The Poseidon Adventure (30 page)

Shelby advised, 'Be calm, Mr Rosen. They're cutting through to us now. The doctor will be here in a moment.'

Almost with resentment Martin watched the orange line turn a corner and then another on its way to forming a square some three feet in diameter, almost with resentment. Ten minutes earlier, five even, might they have saved Belle Rosen?

The molten square was complete now and he wondered why the cut-out section did not tumble down inside, until he realized that they would have made the cut on the bias so that this could not happen. He heard the clink of steel levers prying at the burned away edges of the hole. It lifted a crack and then suddenly the whole segment came away, letting in a flood of pearly morning light that dimmed the last of their ebbing torches. Two dungareed legs appeared, followed by a leather-jacketed torso and a blond young man with short-cropped hair and bright blue eyes dropped through. He said, 'I'm Lieutenant Worden. Where's the heart case?'

Muller and Rogo made room for him and he knelt by her side and made his examination. Then he closed the lids of her eyes.

When he had finished he asked, 'Which is the husband?'

They pointed out the frightened Rosen, whose lips were now trembling like those of an infant and his limbs shaking as well. The doctor said, 'I'm sorry, sir, to have to tell you she's gone. There's nothing more we can do.'

'You mean she's dead? Mrs Rosen is dead?'

'Yes, I'm afraid so.'

Rosen fell to his knees beside his wife and began to rock back and forth, crying, 'Mamma! Mamma!' and then, 'Mamma, why did you have to go just when we were getting saved?'

Another pair of legs, leather jacket, cropped head, another young man, this time followed by a ladder, was let down, and then braced firmly against one of the steel crossbeams. The young man said, 'Lieutenant Jackson. Who's in charge here?'

Martin said, 'Well, I suppose I am, or was. But you take over, son, I've not got much left.'

'Commander Thorpe wants all of you out of here as fast as you can. There are blankets up topside. Will those of you who are able, go up the ladder as quickly as possible, where you'll be looked after. If anyone can't, we'll send men down to bring you up.

Martin said, 'I guess we all can, except for . . .' and he nodded in the direction of Belle Rosen.

The young man looked and said, 'She sick?' And then added, 'Oh, I'm sorry. We'll have her out after the rest of you. Can the women go first, please?'

Two sailors dropped down. They saw the seamed face of an older officer topped by the gold-braided, white cap of a Commander in the opening calling, 'All right, Tom, get them started.'

Martin said, 'It's all over. They want us out. The women first.'

And now that their release was at hand, each one of them felt the strangest reluctance at moving, as though they were wishing to tempt Fate by not hurrying, almost as though they were afraid to climb up one more set of steps to face a world where things were right-side up.

'Please,' urged Lieutenant Jackson.

Martin said, 'Miss Kinsale, will you go first?'

All through their climb it seemed that after Scott, Miss Kinsale had been first. She looked both bewildered and embarrassed. During the last stages of their ordeal, her nudity had not worried her. She had not seemed even to be aware of it. But now with strangers about she became conscious of it again and she said, 'Must I?'

A sailor said, 'There's a blanket up there for you, lady. Can I help you?'

Miss Kinsale said, 'I really oughtn't to be the first. There are others who . . .'

The sailor coaxed, 'Lady, let me give you a hand.'

She said, 'No, thank you, I'm quite all right,' and marched up the ladder steadily.

They heard the voice of the Commander with its note of urgency, 'Come along the others, please. What's the delay, Jackson? Do you want more men? Do they need help?'

Muller thought:
He must be afraid she's going down.
Aloud he said to Nonnie, 'Get up there quickly.'

Nonnie said, 'I don't want to leave you.'

Muller snapped, 'Do as I say.' Frightened by his tone she went. He ordered, 'Susan . . . Jane . . .' The three women crawled up the ladder and vanished from view.

Shelby watched them go. Even in this last moment he had failed to be decisive.

Martin said, 'Okay, Rosen, Shelby, Muller, Rogo, Kemal. I'll go last.'

Rogo said, 'Nix! I go last. I've sucked hind tit all the way up. I might as well stick to it. Maybe if I have any luck, this can will go down before I make it.'

Rosen said, 'I don't go without. . . her.'

Shelby had a moment of panic mixed with anger. Always the Rosens, the cause of frustrations and delays. What if the steamer were to take her final plunge before he had got up that ladder? Those damn. . . . But even his own mind balked at adding the word 'Jews', and he felt a flush of shame, as he looked at that obese, inert figure and thought of her brave and miraculous swim.

Martin said, 'Okay, Shelby, get up there. Muller, Kemal . . .'

Rogo said to Rosen, 'I'll stick with you, Manny, 'til we get her out of here. Go ahead, Martin, beat it!'

Rogo and Rosen were left alone as a sailor called up, 'Send down more blankets and some line!' The stuff came hurtling down.

Rogo advised, 'Don't look, Manny. They'll do the best they can for her. Anyway, whatever happens, she's out of it.'

The sailors wrapped the body in the blanket and made a sling for it.

Rosen asked, 'Why did this have to happen to her? She was so great, so wonderful and I always laughed when she said she had a heart. Even in the last minute I didn't really believe it.' And then he added once more, 'She was great, wasn't she?'

Rogo replied, 'Yeah, she was great, Manny. Right from the beginning she was a champ.'

Rosen suddenly looked at Rogo and said, 'Oh my God, Mike, I shouldn't be talking! You had it happen to you, too.'

Rogo said, 'Yeah, that's right.'

A sailor called up through the opening, 'Okay!' and the body of Belle Rosen began its upward journey. When it reached the aperture, the feet were lowered and the head raised, so that she would pass through and then she was gone.

Rogo said, 'Okay, Manny, now you can go.'

His limbs were still shaking, so that the two sailors had to hold and help him. Half-way up he turned and looked anxiously at Rogo who was standing, surrounded by the now burned-out lamps and flashlights. 'You coming, aren't you, Mike?'

In his mind Rogo had been travelling back along the shaft tunnel to the platform of the catwalk, across the upside-down engine room to recall the figure of his wife impaled. But he remembered it was no longer there.

In that last moment of retrospection he knew that he was not the kind to take his own life. He had been hoping that the ship would take it, as it had so many others and do it for him. But the ceiling was still beneath his feet. He replied reluctantly, 'Yeah, I guess so.' He climbed the ladder and out into the blinding early sunshine where a blanket was thrown over hs shoulders and he stared dazed and with amazement, as were the others, at the right-side up world and flotilla that surrounded them.

CHAPTER XXIV

'Say Goodbye'

In addition to the lean, grey American destroyer escort standing off only some few hundred yards in the flat calm sea, there were two other ships. One was a modern liner of some twenty-four thousand tons with a streamlined red and blue funnel, British, the R.M.S. London Tower of the Antilles-Tower Line, half a mile away, its railings black with passengers. The second was a rusty German tramp freighter of twelve thousand tons, the Helgoland.

One motorized lifeboat from the London Tower was standing by close to the stern, another had made fast beneath the bow of the Poseidon. All about was a mass of flotsam that had not yet drifted away from the whaleback hull in the windless sea. There were empty life-rafts, unsinkable lifeboats wrenched loose from their davits at the capsizing, deck-chairs, caps, odd bits of clothing. Four U.S. Air Rescue planes cruised overhead.

The Helgoland had a lifeboat out as well, sloppily rowed by seamen and was messing about by the stern, until the Commander picked up a megaphone and shouted, 'What the hell are you fellows trying to do?'

A man in khaki pants and white singlet, but wearing an officer's cap, arose and trumpeted back in a thick German accent, 'We vant to get a line on her. Salvage!'

'Sheer off!' The Commander bawled irritably. 'Can't you see we're trying to get these people out of here? After that I don't care what you do.'

The German spoke an order and the rowers gave way. They sat there watching.

The Commander called down through the breach in the hull, 'Anybody else down there?'

'No sir!'

'Check again and hurry. She's not going to last much longer.' He turned to the group and said, 'All of you here? Anyone missing of your party?'

Jane Shelby said, 'I've lost my son Robin. He was ten.'

The Commander repeated, 'Your boy? Where was he? Was he just with you?'

Jane said, 'No. Much farther down, much earlier. I can't remember which deck -- we climbed so many. It was when the lights went out and there was a rush.'

The Commander said, 'We've only picked up three sailors in a life-raft,' and then added, 'but we're taking some people off from the bow. He may have got into that group. I'll ask. What was his full name?'

'Robin Shelby.'

A radio man was standing by with a walkie-talkie. The Commander said, 'Check on the bow and ask if there's a ten-year-old boy named Robin Shelby.'

For the first time the party became aware of the activity at the other end of the Poseidon, two city blocks away.

It was too far off to recognize faces, but there were passengers and sailors and Muller noticed in the bright, semi-tropical, morning light several black dinner-jackets of the men passengers stood out incongruously. He was conscious of a strange resentment and he wondered whether Shelby and Martin felt the same, for he saw them shielding their eyes and staring down in that direction.

All through the harrowing climb under Scott's leadership he had thought of the rescue of himself and the others, if achieved, as an exclusivity limited to them as a reward for their courage and effort. They had fought and overcome insuperable odds, had suffered horror, fear and death and had won through. He was aware even that he had been thinking of the newspaper stories beginning, 'The sole survivors of the Poseidon disaster were . . .'

There they were in the stern, ten scarecrows, bruised, filthy, naked, shocked and exhausted, and at the far end were others being lifted from a similar hole, some apparently still fully clothed.

What had happened? How had they managed? Had there been some easy way of access to the bow? Had they simply climbed or walked there without travail or trouble, and waited for rescue? Or had they, too, been through same terrible adventure, and by what right? Who had led them? Had they, also, left dead behind them on the way? Muller was haunted by speculation as to what would have happened to them, if instead of following Scott they had waited with the others in the dining-room. Would they have managed just as well and perhaps without losing so many members of their party? The sight of those others emerging aroused a sense of bitter loss and deprivation in him and increased his self-loathing so that he could not rejoice that others, too, had made their way to safety. Then he thought that if he had remained in the dining-room, he never would have met Nonnie . . .

All of them were staring at the continuing operation at the bow. Shelby was thinking,
Oh God, please let Robin be there!
And then he thought of himself as asking this favour of whom and what? And he knew that he had lost his last security. Along with his marriage belief in the God Service to which one could apply for help had been destroyed.

And yet, kneeling close by the red-painted keel, blanketed like an Indian, Miss Kinsale quite alone and unconcerned was offering up her final prayer of gratitude. 'I thank Thee, Lord, that Thou has seen fit to spare us.'

Shelby's mind went back to his feeling of embarrassment that moment so long ago when Scott had gone down upon his knees. He felt confused, choked and close to breakdown.

Martin was thinking that he, too, used the name of God and he was both frightened and ashamed. The thought went:
My God, what if Wilma Lewis were to be amongst them?
He again saw his whole way of life threatened.

Kemal, the Turk, had no shame. He was shading his eyes, trying to identify crew members who were being brought up from the hole in the bow. He was hoping that none of them would be from the group he had abandoned. He wanted to be the only one clever enough to have saved himself by joining on with the mad priest and his friends.

The radio man, who had been muttering into his walkie-talkie, now said, 'Sir!'

The Commander replied, 'Yes, Harper?'

'There's no ten-year-old boy, Robin Shelby, up forward, sir.'

'Is that every one now?'

'Yes sir. Thirty-two passengers; twelve crew.'

The Commander said, 'I'm sorry, ma'am, there's no child with those people.'

Jane thanked the Commander and then asked, 'Will you be able to look any further? Is there any possible hope?'

'Ma'am, between here and up there it's all double bottom. We might try a cut, but . . .'

The hull beneath their feet shuddered and from deep within the ship came a rumbling. A great belching bubble arose from her port side, throwing up oil in a geyser-like eruption that disturbed the flat calm of the sea on that beautiful morning. The body of a man in sailor's dungarees came up with it.

The Commander ordered, 'Call in that lifeboat! Get these people off at once.'

The radio man talked rapidly into his walkie-talkie; other sailors signalled and the lifeboat with the legend 'LONDON TOWER' on her bow, closed in and made fast to the lines festooning the twenty-five-foot high side of the bottom-up hull. The two gigantic port-side propellers and the slab of the forty-ton rudder dwarfed everything and everyone. More of a forward tilt had developed.

'Come along! Come along!' the Commander ordered impatiently. 'Quickly with these women. The men will follow. You first, ma'am. We'll get you squared away afterwards. We've too much gear in our own boats.'

A seaman from the London Tower grasped the bottom of the Jacob's ladder which members of the Monroe crew had slung from the keel to the waterline.

The Commander looked at Jane keenly and asked, 'Can you manage? Will you be able to climb down?'

'Yes,' she replied and was struck by the irony that the last climb to safety should be down.

'You'll have to take off your blanket for the moment,' the Commander said. 'But they have others in the lifeboat. There'll be a man to help you.' Then he repeated, 'We'll sort out where you come from when we get you away.'

So once again Jane exposed herself, still too close to the familiar nudity of the adventure to think of what she might look like, but suddenly bitterly resentful as half-way down the ladder, with a seaman preceding her and another following, she turned her head to see a photographer rise up in the stern of the lifeboat and aim a camera at her. It was the first time she had thought of a civilization to which they had succeeded against all odds in returning, and it made her feel sick.

She was followed in quick succession by her daughter, Miss Kinsale and Nonnie, then her husband and Muller, Martin and Kemal.

There seemed to be some argument going on between the Commander, the detective and Rosen, but she could not hear what was being said. Finally they, too, came down the ladder and were helped into the lifeboat by the young Third Officer in charge.

Rogo was saying, 'Don't you worry, Manny. They promised they'd bring her.' Manny must have been refusing to leave without Belle's remains.

The Commander called down, 'Okay. Thank you, that's all!'

The officer said, Right, sir,' and then gave the order, 'Cast off!'

The coxswain aft and the leading seaman forward let go the lines and the lifeboat fell away from the hulk as her engine stuttered into action. The ten survivors sat huddled close together, a tight little group that threw an aura of isolation about themselves from the crew of the lifeboat, which included a nurse who draped blankets over them, made them comfortable and fussed about them until she became aware that they neither really needed nor wanted these ministrations, but seemed to wish to be left alone for whatever reason. She retired to the stern.

The men from the Monroe quickly lowered their equipment into their two motor launches, in one of which the body of Belle Rosen had already been deposited and then with their officers scrambled down themselves into the boats and stood away. The lifeboat from the German freighter now approached directly beneath the stern and a crewman managed to fling a rope around the rudder post of the Poseidon. They picked up the end and began to row back with it to where their ship was lying a quarter of a mile off, evidently with the intention of passing a cable through and taking the hulk in tow.

The Commander megaphoned to them angrily, 'You goddam fools, you haven't got a chance! Do you want to get sucked under? Cut loose!'

The man wearing an officer's cap replied, 'Keep your advice to yourself! We know what we're doing. There was a capsized ore carrier last year that floated for forty days. They finally had to sink her with explosives.' He laughed and then said, 'I'll call you as my witness that we were the first to get a line aboard. We've already radioed for two of our big salvage tugs.'

The exchange penetrated to the ears of the survivors. Would their ship have remained thus for forty days and forty nights? Had the whole desperate adventure then been for nothing?

Rogo said, between his teeth, 'Go on, you bitch, sink! I don't like Krauts.'

Already the tremendous effort made by the group and their triumph seemed somehow to have been diminished. All they had suffered had begun to fade into the background as in one way or another they were realizing they would have to get used to the idea of living again. Muller, looking over to Martin, thought he seemed to have shrunk even more in size, almost disappearing into his blanket. He had lost his command and was no longer needed.

And still the Poseidon hung there, looming motionless, tall and solid as a building, the sun reflecting redly from the anti-fouling paint on her bottom.

The lifeboat began to turn in a wide circle. To the survivors, the sights and sounds, the three ships stationed near by, the buzzing of the engines from cutters and launches, the wreckage strewn upon the sea, and above all the implacable wall of the capsized ship, seemed to come to them as though heard and seen under glass. The nerves that brought sight and sound to their brains were not yet fully functioning. They felt themselves floating between two worlds, ready for neither, and for a moment Jane Shelby found herself almost wishing to be back inside the darkness, struggling upwards, reaching for a goal. Here it was achieved and she was neither prepared for it nor glad.

Susan reached out a hand from her blanket to touch her and ask, 'Are you all right, Mother?' And then she added, 'I feel so funny.'

Jane said, 'Yes, I do, too.'

The second lifeboat from the London Tower, which had taken off the survivors from the bow section of the liner, crossed their course as they were completing the circle. It was crowded and their eyes took them in, but did not yet interpret what they saw: lifeboat, crew, survivors from the Poseidon, sailors, several stewards still in their white lackets, women huddled under blankets, all floating upon that glassy sea, not yet ruffled by so much as a breeze. Too incongruous; too unbelievable.

Muller suddenly cried, 'My God!' and Nonnie said, 'What?' in alarm.

No more than a dozen yards separated the two lifeboats. 'It's The Beamer and his girl.' Muller shouted over, 'Hoi, there! Bates! Pamela!'

The Beamer looked up. He was still wearing his dinner-jacket, his shirt open at the neck. The girl was wrapped in a blanket and he had his arm about her. His face was quite red, and as he recognized the others, he broke into a broad grin. Both he and the girl waved. In one of The Beamer's hands was a bottle. The great and potent deity, Bacchus, had looked after his own again.

A sudden rush of tears came to Nonnie's eyes, 'I'm so happy they made it. All the time I've been thinking of them lost down there in the dark, and her staying behind to look after him.'