by Paul Gallico
Muller was waiting for Linda at the narrow ledge turning about the steel wall. He held out his hand to her. She took it and said, 'Oh, Mr Muller, hold me. I'm so frightened.'
'Here, take my arm.'
When she had it, the signal he received was unmistakable. Muller was an expert at overt pressures. He thought to himself: The bitch! Poor Rogo.
The party toiled upwards. Linda said to Rogo, 'Why do we have to go like this? I can see a better way over there, look!'
Rogo held her back, tightening his grip on the rope so that she could not try. 'For Jesus' sake, baby, don't try any funny business. The guy's got it figured out. It's working. Don't forget I'm at the other end of this rope.'
'Like always,' Linda said, 'low man on the totem pole.'
They reached the portion of the platform half-way to the top that Scott had spotted. He and the others were waiting there. There was just room enough for them.
Scott said, 'Sit if you can, and lights out. We'll rest here for a few minutes.'
CHAPTER XVIII
And Then There Were Twelve
Out of the darkness came Belle Rosen's voice, 'What are we doing here?'
No one replied; no one knew whether the question meant the return of her sense of humour, or was drawn out of despair. But she repeated it, 'I mean it. What are we all doing here? How can this happen today? A couple hours ago we are sitting down to supper and maybe afterwards looking at the show, or playing some cards, and now here we are practically naked with no clothes on, climbing up like monkeys so we shouldn't get killed.'
Richard Shelby said, 'You've got something there, Mrs Rosen.'
It was strange that all through this adventure which should have knitted them together, members of the party who had not known one another before continued to use last names. The Shelbys and the Rosens had never fraternized or exchanged more than polite greetings. Shelby found it impossible to call her Belle, particularly now that she was nearly nude. He felt that she had earned the dignity of 'Mrs Rosen'. He said, 'A modern vessel with every safety appliance, rolling over like a canoe . . .'
Muller added. 'Look what happened to the Andrea Doria. Two ships with radar steaming into a head-on collision.'
Manny Rosen put in, 'It's all so nice when you're sitting in the Captain's cabin for a cocktail party, eating caviar sandwiches on the company and drinking champagne. So where is the Captain now, when we're needing him? Or all those other officers always dancing with the passengers?'
Nobody answered the question which hung there heavily in the enshrouding blackness. Obsessed with their struggle, it was so easy to forget, yet they all knew. Nonnie began to cry softly, 'All my pals . . .'
Jane Shelby, who was near her, groped an arm about her shoulder and said gently, 'I've lost my boy.'
Rogo said, 'Don't say that, ma'am. In an investigation of a missing person, we never give up until there is a . . .' He had been about to say corpus delicti, but checked himself in time, ' . . . a definite indication that there's no chance. We may find him when we get to the top.'
Jane said, 'Thank you, Mr Rogo, I understand. But by now he would have heard us. He would have seen our lights.'
'It's a big ship, ma'am. He may have gone another way.'
Jane thought: It was the way that he went that I cannot bear, amidst filth and stench. That I left him so as not to shame him . . . a boy being shamed of a bodily function in the presence of his mother. He was so young to be blotted out like that, and I'll never know when or where, or how, or what his last thoughts were.
Rogo said, 'I'd do anything to find him for you, ma'am. Maybe I should have stayed back and had another look.' All his easily stirred policeman's sympathies lay with the mother of the victim.
'Thank you, Mr Rogo. No, it was useless. He wasn't there.'
Scott's voice was heard, 'He'll be found. The kid had guts. He was playing the game.' He spoke with such confidence and assertion that for an instant Jane's heart was filled with hope until she felt suddenly that he might very well be speaking not for her, but for himself.
He then said again, 'Let's go!' and snapped on the lantern strapped to his back. It threw its beam upwards into the tangled steel that yet awaited them. 'I won't kid you. The last half will be more difficult, more tiring and more dangerous.'
A little distance from the top was the overhang Scott had seen, a weird circular ladder made up of the square steel teeth of the reduction gear wheel jammed against the side when the entire unit had ripped loose. It offered hand and footholds, but the climber, for six or eight feet, would be tilted backwards with his body angled precariously over the abyss below.
This was again the problem they had encountered before, the inverted staircase which twice they had solved by avoiding it. This one could not be bypassed. It had to be negotiated to the point where the teeth receded once more into a position where the weight would be thrown forward again, easing the pressure on arms and thighs. Neither from below, or now that they were close to it, had Scott been able to see any way around it. All he could count upon was the fact that he, Martin and Shelby would be at the top by the time the weakest members of the party reached the spot. They would be able to hold and help them via the ropes.
'Anyone know what time it is?' Martin asked. 'My watch stopped at a quarter past two.'
'Hell!' said Muller. 'So has mine. That muck we swam through.'
Shelby said, 'It's been a half-hour at least since then. It must be almost three o'clock.'
'We've been this way almost six hours,' said Martin. 'My God, what's holding the ship up?'
Miss Kinsale was arranging her ropes. 'It's you who said it, Mr Martin . . . God!'
'With an assist from the Reverend Dr Scott,' Muller muttered to himself.
'What did you say, darling?' Nonnie asked.
The 'darling' grated on Muller but then he looked at her and loved her again.
Rogo said, 'She ain't gonna stay up much longer.'
'So, then, is there any use we should keep on climbing up like this?' Manny queried.
Scott was ready to leave now, but he turned back to them all for a moment and replied simply, 'Yes, because we are human beings responsible to ourselves.'
The simple statement rang through Muller like a bell, and for the first time he felt he understood something of the character of this ecclesiastical athlete and his climb, as well as himself for following him; the goal they had set themselves in the face of almost insurmountable obstacles and a well nigh hopeless situation.
Up had always been good; down was bad. God and Heaven were up; Hell and the Devil were down. The road to damnation was the downward path. Resurrection was ascent. Phrases rang through his ears: 'So-and-So is rising in the world. He's on his way up . . . Poor old You-Know-Who is slipping they say. Losing his grip. If he doesn't watch his step, he'll be down and out.' Down and Out! Up and safe on top of the heap. Man's whole history had been an ascent . . . upwards, always upwards out of the ooze and slime of the sea, on to the land, higher and higher and now reaching out his arms to the planets. His mythology created the dwellers underground as misshapen dwarfs and monsters, the creatures of the upper air were exquisite, graceful, winged fantasies of light.
Where else, indeed, was there to go but up, as long as one had a single breath left in one's body? Even the poor, wheezy fat woman to whom every move must have been an almost unbearable torture, was not quitting. Was it really the hope of a miracle of rescue that was driving them onwards, or the curious hypnotism of the climb itself, the very upness of it. They had protested and quarrelled, balked and tried to shirk, all, but given up. But always they had come. back to the striving aloft.
This must be at the core of Scott's religion, or his faith to justify himself as a man. Whether or not he truly saw rescue as the end result, if he and they failed, with one's last gasp one would be maintaining the dignity his God had bestowed. And Muller wondered if from the very first Scott had not led them, would they now be dead in the grip of the dark w
ater below; would they each on their own have made some effort to adapt themselves to this once familiar world turned upside-down and struggle in the right direction?
Aloud he said, 'Okay, let's go.'
Scott made one change in the order of their proceeding. He altered the positions of Manny Rosen and Kemal, so that Manny came before Belle and the Turk after. Then he took the latter and pointed upward to the bad patch, pantomiming.
Kemal nodded and said, 'Hokay, hokay!' with a glance from his broad hands to Belle Rosen's bottom.
'We'll make it,' Scott promised and took his first hand and foothold to start them on their last lap.
He had been right. It was more difficult and more dangerous, and their unused muscles were beginning to cramp and give out. The pauses had to come at more frequent intervals, particularly for Belle who groaned, complained and lamented with every rise and yet kept going as they all did. For there was also the hypnosis of discipline and obedience that Scott had instilled, each to follow the other in exactly the same manner, and it was their concentration in obeying, in watching the one above and trying to follow, that to some extent kept their minds off their failing strength.
The overhang of the gear wheel ascent was now above the Minister's head. Slight as the angle was, he wondered however Mrs Rosen would manage it. Much depended upon Kemal. He said to Miss Kinsale, 'Let your slack go so that we have about ten feet between us. Watch how I do it, then try to do the same, except I'll be pulling you as well. Do you see? Pass the word along to Martin and on down.'
He started up, using not only his hands but his knees and elbows to brace himself. He was strong and still in condition from daily workouts on the squash courts and deck tennis. But he could feel the pains crawling up his wrists into his forearms, then his biceps. It was heave, push, pull and hang on. His thighs were aching.
'I'm praying,' said Miss Kinsale.
'Never mind that! Keep your eyes open and your wits about you,' Scott gasped almost testily. 'When you reach where I am, lean to the left, understand?'
'Yes, Dr Scott,' Miss Kinsale sounded contrite. 'I'll tell that to Mr Martin too.'
Scott pulled himself over the last overhanging piece. The next was vertical, and those above tilted backwards like steps. When he caught his breath, he climbed them without any trouble. To his relief, the last lap was what he had suspected he had seen, a companionway intact, but reversed with the steps unbacked. They had only to go around behind it and use it like a ladder.
'It's a cinch , once you get up here,' he called down. He grasped the guide-rope and look a turn with it around his wrist. 'Okay, come up,' and pulled.
Miss Kinsale made the passage astonishingly easily, whether it was because she was slight and wiry or the example and added help of Scott on the rope, but in half the time it had taken him, she stood beside him. She said, 'Dr Scott, I'm afraid Mrs Rosen will never be able to do it.'
He replied, 'She will. If she can't, we will have to leave her behind. But she's very brave.'
Miss Kinsale stared at him with an expression on her face as close to shock and disapproval as she had ever mustered. 'You're not serious, about leaving her?'
'We've had to leave that Englishman and his girl and dozens of others who could not or would not come. How do you think we've come through this far? We're winning.'
Miss Kinsale said, 'We've lost the boy,' and was taken aback by the sudden expression of fury on the Minister's face.
'Don't ever say that!'
She apologized, 'I'm sorry, Dr Scott. I didn't mean . . .' Then she added, 'May I stay here and help her?'
'No. There are others to come. I have done the best I can for her. We can be of more use from the top.'
Miss Kinsale asked, 'Do you mind if I pray for her?'
Scott replied, 'If you want to. But she must already have pleased God beyond anything words of supplication could do. We'll see.'
Laboriously, step by step they made their way higher, pausing only to help Martin by hauling on him. Susan, young and athletic, had enough left to negotiate it, but Jane and Richard Shelby were in agony. Shelby thought that he would fall backwards and dangle helplessly. Yet even as he felt he was giving up, he had crossed the danger line.
By now Scott, Miss Kinsale and Martin had reached the top, where they could apply enough power to get Manny Rosen over the worst of it, so that he could crawl up the rest, scraping his knees and belly. But he was very proud of himself and shouted down, 'See Mamma, I made it! It ain't so terrible.'
But it was.
For Belle Rosen was indeed at the end of her strength. The higher they climbed, the hotter, more oppressive and airless it became, and she could not suck oxygen into her lungs. When those above pulled on the rope it tended only to jam her more closely to the gear wheel where she clung, moaning and gasping, 'I can't, I can't! Oh, let me go, let me fall! I can't, I can't!'
It was Kemal's power below her, pushing, lifting an arm and a leg at a time that was keeping her there. He was trying to force her limbs into the spaces between the teeth so that her whole weight would not be on the rope that was cutting into the bulging flesh of her side. He had her half up when he felt his own great resistance failing and he began to cry out and shout, 'Oh, oh, no can! No can!'
Muller squeezed past Nonnie, dragging Linda with him. The thoughts he had been having had charged him anew. He was obsessed with up; rising, climbing, ascending, high, higher -- the road to up must not be blocked.
Linda cried, 'Stop it! You're hurting me. Look out! The old cow'll come down on top of us.'
He said, 'Keep quiet, you stupid bitch,' and ranged himself next to the Turk.
With an unexpected ally on his side, Kemal found a last reserve. The two men pushed and heaved. And now what had before been a handicap, suddenly came to their rescue; the film of oil covering all. For lifted and shoved, she suddenly slid over the slippery surface to be dragged bumping and slapping against the remainder of the pseudo staircase, at the top of which she flopped, writhing and gasping.
Scott gave her no time to collapse further but nipped down the ladder, lifted her up and practically carried her. He called down, 'Good job, Hubie! Go back to your regular place before you get tangled up. Okay, Kemal, and you next, Nonnie. Use the guide-rope. It's been fastened. We can get you over the worst.'
Kemal's great chest heaved as he fought to regain his breath. Then he gave a great 'whoosh', sucked in air and crawled his way clear of the obstacle. There was so much power at the top now that both Nonnie and Muller were able to make it without too much difficulty.
It was Linda who balked, as always. She cried, 'No, no! I don't want to go that way! I'll hurt myself. Muller hurt me already. I won't do it! Let me go my own way.'
'Aw now, sweetie pie,' Rogo coaxed, 'It's only that one bit. I'm right behind you.'
Scott shouted, 'Mrs Rogo! Keep to our way. There isn't any other.'
'You keep your goddamn mouth shut! I've had enough out of you. Let me, let me . . .' She was becoming hysterical, lurching and tugging at the rope that held her. 'Stop it, don't pull! Let me go. I'm going around the other side.'
There was a small plank of metal, a foot wide, that stuck out to the right and above it was a maze of tubing, pieces of stair rail and torn electric wires. She went for it.
'No, Linda!' Scott ordered. 'It's no good. It's not safe. I tested it. Rogo, hold her!'
For a moment she was rearing and plunging like a pony at the end of a tether. Then suddenly, a cunning look coming over her face, she ascended a step to get slack, loosened the body rope, threw it over her head and was back down again to where the gear tooth climb began.
See you,' she said, stepped out on to the metal planking and reaching up, pulled on the wires, hauling herself aloft to where she could get a grip upon the tubing.
The wires came away, dropping her down again on to the plank, which tipped up and broke her hold. Two of the women above screamed as she began to fall.
Rogo, his lantern illumina
ting her momentarily, reached for her and with a superhuman effort caught her arm as she went by. But his hand and her own flesh were slippery and she slid through his grasp.
The women screamed again. Lights were shafting down upon the body which turned over once so that when she hit the triangular steel spear point thrust out from the side, it pierced her through her back, and emerged from her chest.
She gave a long drawn out, 'ahhhhhhhhhhhh' of pain, first high pitched, then trailing off. Thereafter her voice echoing through the dark cavern, she cried out, 'Rogo, you son-of-a-bitch!'
And after that, she moved once, like a person stretching after a long sleep, and then became still and neither stirred again nor made another sound.