by Paul Gallico
Jane curiously understood him and what he was trying to do. She said, 'You are a kind man, Mr Rogo. And I'm truly sorry about Linda. Deeply so. I don't think any of us ever understood her, or her troubles.' And then she added, 'But I will hope until there is no more hope.'
The white beam of Martin's big lantern was imperceptibly changing colour. 'Oh, oh,' he said, 'batteries beginning to go. Only one light at a time now.'
This gave them something to think about. They were even more afraid of the dark now, every one of them. They did not want to be enveloped by its thick, oily smell. Yet each quickly checked his or her light for an instant, just to see what strength was left, whether it too was diminishing and would soon be nothing but the faded yellow glow of the burnt out flashlight, hardly enough to illuminate a watch face.
Martin said, 'Well, now you know.' Many of them were considerably dimmer. Then he went on, 'If you want to come with me, I'll do the best I can for you. Scott will be a hard man to follow. I haven't got the stuff he had, but I know what he was out to do and where he wanted to go.'
He was a modest little man and it seemed suddenly such an imposition on his part to foist himself upon them that he felt called upon to justify the leadership. He began, 'You know, there were quite a few plain guys in the war, too; shoe salesmen, accountants, wrappers, shipping clerks, floorwalkers, soda-jerkers and the like.' Then the absurdity of what he was saying struck him and he chuckled again, 'However, so that you won't get any funny ideas about my trying to say I was a hero, I was in the quartermaster corps, handing out supplies.' Then after a slight pause he added, 'But I made top sergeant.'
Muller thought: And I'll bet you were a little stinker.
Rogo said, 'Let's go, if we're going.'
Beneath the strongest of the lantern beams they saw that the ladder or iron staircase Scott had found leading from the next to last platform to the plating of the double bottom of the vessel had been twisted around sideways, offering a not too difficult climbing angle, except that the last five steps had been sheared off, leaving a gap about level with their heads. A man could take hold of the bottom and swing himself up. Above, at the top, the light showed the gleaming silver cylinder of the propeller shaft, the entrance to the tunnel and the reversed walkway of solid piping that followed it to the stern of the ship.
Linda was dead. Linda was no longer in their midst, but Linda had left some taint of a legacy of her cruelty with them all. Belle Rosen spoke up for herself in answer to the thought in one way or another crossing all their minds: What are we going to do about the fat Jewess? She said, 'If somebody will give me a boost up, maybe I could go the rest by myself. It looks like a regular stairs.' Manny said, 'Sure you can, Mamma. I said it all the time.'
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!'
The 'bloody' caused Muller to shudder for an instant, to be replaced by a renewed rush of affection. Whatever she was, Nonnie had been a little fighter all her life. He did not want to see her give up now. But what he did wa
nt, with a sudden desperation, was to bring her forth into the sunlight again; to keep her at his side, dress her, love her, give her things, cherish her, in some way repay for the mystery of what she had given him.
'I ain't any poor woman,' croaked Belle Rosen. 'Help me up, Manny.'
Kemal hurried on ahead with Martin following. One of the big lamps from the fire station still gave a good light. When they came out of the tunnel, the Turk, flashing it about, suddenly cried, 'Hoi! Good! Hokay!'
'Oh brother,' breathed Martin fervently, 'manna from heaven.'
A gap of some twenty feet separated the two parallel, port-side propeller shafts. What they saw was that a companionway originally leading up to the next platform had been wrenched loose and had fallen, handrail and all across the chasm, bridging the two.