by Paul Gallico
'And that?' His light now travelled along a gleaming, polished, continuous cylinder some two feet in diameter. Above it, inverted, was another catwalk.
'That must be the propeller shaft,' added Shelby.
'Leading to the propeller shaft tunnel,' Scott concluded. 'At the end of that catwalk is the bottom of the ship. That's where we've got to get to.'
Shelby groaned. It was another twelve to fourteen feet above their heads. He said, 'How?'
The others sighed. 'Well,' Scott replied, 'there must have been steps or ladders, or a companionway going down to it when she was right-side up. There ought to be one going up there now.'
'And if there isn't?'
'Climb!' Scott said in a voice so curiously grim and hard-toned and unlike him that Shelby stared in amazement. He moved off, leaving Shelby standing there watching the wavering passage of his light overhead as he beamed it first this way and then that. He came back and said merely, 'It's there. It's half cut away, but we can tackle it.'
Without a moment of warning, the platform on which they were all gathered gave a lurch, tumbling Scott and Shelby off their feet. From the depths of the ship arose a grinding, metallic screech of agony accompanied by great bubbling belches and distant internal rumblings.
The floor tilted momentarily at such an angle beneath them that frantically they all scrabbled for some kind of handhold, or clutched wildly at one another trying to brace themselves with their feet on the slippery surface. Muller experienced that same gone, sickening helplessness he had known once during an earthquake in Mexico.
The platform levelled again, though not wholly, but the breaking-up noises continued. A huge, hot, stinking bubble burst from the pit below and from amidships came an explosion, one great thudding boom like the striking of a single note on the bass drum, followed by metallic cymbal-like clashings. Something had given way and the ship began to shudder and shake as though her engines once more were driving her at full speed. The tier tilted again, this time forward. The women screamed helplessly.
'Christ!' cried Rogo. 'She's going!'
'No, no, no!' yelled Scott, his voice high pitched verging on hysteria as he ran out to the centre of the slanting catwalk.
Rogo yelled, 'What the hell d'you think you're doing?' and Shelby shouted, 'Frank! For God's sake come back here!' He spotlighted the tall figure of the Minister bracing himself, legs apart, against the incline.
'No, no!' he shouted. 'I say no!'
They saw him raise his arms above his head and for that instant were too engrossed and distracted to think that death was at hand for all of them and the Poseidon poised for her final plunge.
'What do you want of me, God?' their leader bellowed, shaking his fists up at the dark over his head. All but nude, the lantern strapped to his back, the fire axe still bound about his middle, caught in the yellowing shafts of light he looked like some primitive tribal priest at invocation.
'What more do you want? I made you a promise. We've kept it. We haven't quit. We've never stopped trying, have we?' His powerful voice booming through the vast chamber produced an echo, '. . . v'we', that made itself heard over the apparent death rattle of the liner.
Scott's voice rose to a shriek, 'Why did you let us come so far, you bastard, if you're going to take us now? It's us who invented you. If it weren't for us, you wouldn't be! Jaweh! Marduk! Baal! Moloch! You're still the same old killer with the smell of blood in your nostrils!'
Martin shouted, 'He's off his rocker!'
Shelby found himself clutching Muller, who said, 'We've got to get him off there.' They managed to climb to their knees. The shuddering steamer seemed to be in her last convulsions; the distant pounding increased in volume.
Shelby, his head swimming, his guts turned to water stammered, 'I c-can't go out there.' Muller said nothing and made no move himself.
Scott had to raise his voice still higher in pitch to make himself heard. 'Eater of babies!' he shrieked. 'Butcher of Women! Slaughterer of men! You've already had the boy and the girl. What is it you want -- another sacrifice? More blood? Another life?'
Over all the terrifying sounds of the ship's struggle rose the cry torn from Miss Kinsale, 'Dr Scott! No, please!' For of them all she was the only one who foresaw what he was going to do.
'Spare them! Take me!' bawled the Reverend Frank 'Buzz' Scott and threw himself into the pit below.
He fell limply, his body submissive and his still burning lantern marked an arc across the cavern of the engine room. Then man and light were extinguished beneath the surface of the lake to send up a fountain of oily water.
The survivors were aware that the sound of the splash had echoed hollowly but were not yet wholly cognizant of the reason they were able to hear it, which was that the other noises had abruptly ceased.
There was no longer the thudding from amidships or the awful shuddering and quaking of the vessel. Too, the angle of tilt had diminished and the platform to which they were all clinging, returned almost level, with only a slight inclination towards the bow.
Shelby found his nerve, arose and moving to the edge shone down his light.
The waters of Hell Lake had risen higher, swallowing up the slope of what had been their approach to Mount Poseidon. There was turbulence and an uneasy stirring but Scott did not surface. Rogo, Muller and Martin came over and joined Shelby. The widening rings made by his plunge lapped up at the sides of the pit. There was a rushing of water pouring from some place and then that ceased, too. The ship lapsed once more into silence.
The epicentre of the rings showed where the body of the Minister had vanished but there was no sign of him. Shelby searched the surface of the waters. The silence was broken by a cry from Rogo, 'Christ, Linda's gone!'
It was true. The body of his wife impaled upon the triangle of steel was no longer there, nor was the staircase of the reduction gear wheel.
The conformity of Mount Poseidon had changed. Much of it had fallen away. Muller saw with half an eye that it was no longer climbable.
Rogo mumbled, 'She's gone after him.'
The ship steadied.
Shelby was shaking his head from side to side in wonderment. He repeated Scott's words, '"Spare them; take me."'
James Martin said in a voice filled with surprise, 'Well, what do you know, maybe it worked! It don't look like she's going to sink.'
From Miss Kinsale arose a long-drawn-out howl, half animal, half human; a wail from a breaking heart.
CHAPTER XX
The Top Sarge Takes Over
Jane Shelby went to Miss Kinsale, who was kneeling, her rump in the air, her forehead knocking against the iron of the platform. 'Miss Kinsale, you mustn't! Oh, poor dear Miss Kinsale, please, please don't! I understand, but you mustn't.'
She took the woman in her arms but could only partly muffle the awful, 'Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh!'
Looking down upon the now placid, undisturbed surface of the lake, Shelby found himself thinking, Why didn't he come up? And immediately as he remembered Martin's remark, he came to the terrifying thought: The pit is satisfied; the sacrifice has been accepted.
Hubie Muller said, 'The goddam fool! Can't we get him up out of there?'
Martin said, 'He must have got hung up on something. Anyway, we can't either get down or back.'
Shelby felt suddenly as though he would go to pieces. He cried angrily, 'Jane, for God's sakes can't you stop that woman howling?'
She did not reply to him but addressed herself to the miserable person again, 'Dear Miss Kinsale, please try to stop. I understand. But he really believed he did it for us.'
Miss Kinsale buried her face in Jane's arms and moaned, 'I loved him! I loved him!' and wept.
Somehow her mourning of him was a mourning for all, and released them from the tension and horror that had held them paralysed in its grip, so that they were able once more to think and see and even query and rationalize.
Belle said, 'What did he call God -- a bastard? He called God a name and killed himself?'
Susan Shelby said, 'He must have been out of his mind.'
'He shouldn't have abused God,' Mrs Rosen insisted. 'Nobody likes being abused.'
Little Martin came back from the edge of the platform shaking his head. He said, 'He didn't have to do it. She ain't going to go.'
Rosen said, 'She ain't? For me, I said goodbye.'
Muller said, 'We seem to have levelled off again. The poor goddam fool, he really thought he was holding her up.'
To everyone's surprise Nonnie spoke up sharply, 'Well, wasn't he? He kept us going.'
Rogo queried, 'What was all those names he said? I didn't get it.'
Muller replied, 'Semitic names for God, or Gods. People-eaters -- Assyrian, Babylonian -- before the Jewish God. They liked human sacrifice.'
Martin said, 'It sounds crazy to me.'
Miss Kinsale's moaning had stilled somewhat and she lay quieter in Jane Shelby's arms. Belle Rosen said with some indignation, 'Our God isn't like that! When we Jews are good, He gives us milk and honey. When we're bad, we get it in the neck. Okay, so He loves us only when we're good. Just now the Egyptians got it in the neck.'
Manny Rosen remarked, 'But killing himself? And saying it's for us? This is a religion?' He suddenly realized what he had said and began to splutter, 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean that like it sounds. He was a good man.'
Susan put in, 'He really did believe, didn't he?'
Muller said gently, 'Maybe too much so. He was the kind of man who always had to win, and then in the end he found himself competing in the wrong kind of game.'
Thereafter, for the moment no one said anything and breaking the silence there was only the sound of Miss Kinsale's sobbing and Jane Shelby hushing her.
Martin asked, 'What about friend Kemal?' He turned to the figure of the Turk kneeling on the platform, calm and quite unfrightened. Of them all he was probably the best prepared to accept whatever should come, but he shocked them by tapping his forehead with a finger to show what he thought of Scott's act.
Rosen asked, 'What happened with the ship? I don't understand.'
Shelby said, 'Something must have given way; maybe a bulkhead blew and changed the balance. She's probably too big to go all at once. A smaller one would have been finished long ago. The next time will be the last.'
Muller thought to himself: And we've lost the man on whom we have all been depending like children. And then he incongruously framed a tabloid-type headline: 'BUZZ SCOTT QUITS IN THE STRETCH.' Aloud he murmured, 'Why on earth did he do it?'
Rogo said, 'He couldn't take it. When he thought the game was up, he dogged it.'
Miss Kinsale had come to the end of her weeping and rebuked him dryly and primly as ever, 'He did not, Mr Rogo, He did what he thought his Father wished.'
Martin's voice: 'So then you all think we're finished?'
There was a long silence, then that of Shelby was heard, 'We might as well face it. It may only be a matter of minutes.'
Rogo's flat tone: 'Suits me.'
Then Belle Rosen's long, tired sigh: 'And me. The sooner it comes now, the quicker.'
Jane Shelby said, 'It seems such a waste after so much effort.'
Her husband added, 'We're all together. We might as well wait it out here as anywhere else.'
And then Martin's dry speech came again, 'We're not there yet.'
Shelby: 'Where?'
'Where he was trying to get us to. Up there at the top, over our heads. The bottom of the ship.'
Rogo said, 'He was off his rocker. I wish I never would have listened to him. Linda would be alive now.'
'Or both of you dead,' Martin said sharply. 'He may have been a weirdie, but he had the right idea and he had guts. Without him we'd never have got this far.'
Muller kept seeing his headline again and said, 'Until he quit on us. What good will it do us now, when the ship goes . . . ?'
'I don't know about you,' Martin interrupted, 'but when the ship goes, I'm going to be up there where we were heading for. Maybe she won't go.'
Shelby laughed bitterly and said, 'That's a maybe in a million. Can't you feel her? She's hanging by a thread.'
Martin said quietly, 'I'll take the odds. Wasn't that Scott's idea? He never said we'd be rescued. He just said that if somebody came, we ought to be where they could get to us.' And then they heard the haberdasher's dry chuckle. He said, 'Everybody's got some motive or other for wanting to survive. You'll probably think mine's nutty, but I've got a new line coming into the shop in the middle of January, real 'with-it' stuff. You've got to cater for the kids today. My wife can't handle it. Arthritis. So you see, I've got to get back to dress those windows.'
It was the first time in many hours that any of them had thought of or been reminded of Martin's occupation. Rogo's voice heavy with sarcasm cut through, 'Brother, you've really got a lot to live for, ain't you?'
Martin's reply startled them. He said, 'I don't know about you, but there's no dying in me until my time comes.'
'You going it alone?'
Martin replied, 'Oh, I expect you'll all come along.'
Manny Rosen said, 'You heard my wife say she couldn't make another step.'
Martin replied, 'She said that before.'
Belle moaned, 'My heart's hurting me.'
From habit her husband began, 'Mamma, please, not with the heart again.'
Martin urged, 'We ought to have one more try. It isn't far any more. Scott said there was a ladder that could be reached.'
Why he did it, he did not know, but Muller clicked on his lantern and with its beams picked up the thin, grey insignificant countenance of Martin, who had raised himself to his knees.
Martin snapped, 'Put that out! We'll be needing it,' and then after a pause, his chuckle again, 'I know what you're all thinking. But what's so strange about a haberdasher not wanting to drown like a rat in a trap, if he can help it?' He paused again, then, 'Harry Truman did all right, didn't he? He started off selling socks, shirts and ties.'
Muller laughed and thought to himself, Why, you little banty rooster!
Susan was thinking: Oh, Daddy, why couldn't you have taken over like that? The little man is going to make us go on. And then immediately after, But how could father, alter the way mother's beaten him down? Why do people do such things to each other?
Nonnie reached over to Muller and placed her lips close to his ear, so that her whisper would be heard by none but him. 'Let's not go. Let's just stay here and do it until we drown and die together. It doesn't hurt very much to drown, does it? I wouldn't care then.'
But the spark of hope had been blown upon again in Muller. 'No. Martin's right. You can't waste all that effort and trying and then lie down and quit.'
Martin rose to his feet. Almost automatically the others followed his example. Through their exhaustion and shock penetrated the fact that someone again was making decisions for them and they were relieved.
Belle asked, 'What am I doing?'
It was Shelby who in a rush of shame and self-accusation replied, 'What you've always done, Mrs Rosen, been the bravest of all of us.' For once the cliché rang true; There was a murmur of approval and Belle said, 'Na, na . . .'
Miss Kinsale had complete control of herself now. She said, 'We owe it to Dr Scott to go on. He died to save us.'
Rogo said under his breath, 'Nuts! He died because he went off his chump.' Then, 'They're both down there together now. She always had a letch for him.' And finally, 'Christ, why did she have to die like that?'
Manny Rosen said, 'I'm . . . we're sorry, Mike.'
Rogo said bitterly, 'Oh no, you're not. You hated her, all of you. Well, you're even. She hated all of your guts, and so do I.'
Martin asked quietly, 'Coming, Rogo?'
All emotion was again drained out of the reply. 'Could be.'
Jane compromised, 'I'll come if only for the chance that we might find my Robin. Frank was certain we'd find him -- so certain.' Puzzlement came into her voice, 'Why was he so certain when . . . ?' They hea
rd her catch her breath and she said, 'He was only so certain because he was so sure he couldn't fail. But he could fail, couldn't he? And the knowledge that he had, that he had lost Robin and Linda killed him, didn't it?' She checked herself on the verge of breakdown again, brought herself under control and continued, 'I won't give up. We may still find him.'
'Ma'am,' counselled Rogo, his voice and attitude changing startlingly as the policeman once more took over, 'I wouldn't be putting up too much hope there now.' He had worked on too many kidnap and missing child cases during his career. As long as there was a bare chance, he would hold it out to a parent, but when in his bones he felt that something was over, that all they would someday stumble across would be a ravished, mangled, half-buried corpse, he felt it more humane and wise to extinguish that hope, to prepare them for what he knew must be the worst.