by Paul Gallico
Jane Shelby came to the rescue with, 'Oh, how awful. We must write to one another.'
'Oh yes, indeed we must,' replied Miss Kinsale, and made a curious little movement with her hands and then laughed self-consciously, saying, 'How stupid of me! Of course I haven't my handbag any more. Browne's Bank, Camberley will reach me. It's easy to remember.'
Jane said, 'A letter addressed to my husband care of the Cranborne Motors Company, Detroit, will find us.'
They were already approaching the flank of the London Tower. She was painted white from waterline to top deck. They could hear the splashing sound of the bilge water running from her sides, and see the massed banks of the faces of the passengers high up on the promenade and boat decks. Here and there the sun splintered sharply from the lenses of cameras pointed downwards.
The Commander said, 'Third, after you've dropped the two English ladies and the engine-room hand, will you bring the Americans over to the Monroe? She'll be moving in closer.'
The Third Officer replied, 'Of course, sir.'
The Poseidon was now farther down by the head, so that the upturned keel slanted perceptibly. Only the indomitable Germans still held connection with her. Their lifeboat towing the strand of rope, now doubled, had reached the side of the freighter and was being taken aboard. There was something ridiculous yet courageous about that absurd line snubbing her sternpost.
The sight only irritated Rogo who said, 'I hope she takes 'em all with her when she goes. They murdered my buddy at Bastogne.'
And then they were under the sheer dazzling side of the steamer. Two iron doors had been opened and a set of steps let down. The lifeboat made fast. With the proximity of those faces staring at them, Muller and Nonnie had moved apart. The bowman stepped on to the narrow landing platform and the Third Officer said, 'The British passengers, please,' and went over to Miss Kinsale. He said, 'You'd better take my arm. We'll have you in some clothes and comfortable in a moment.'
The nurse said, 'Let me help you, dear,' and put a motherly arm about Nonnie who had instinctively risen to her feet at the call for the British. She turned half helplessly to Muller and said, 'I'm British. I ought to go, oughtn't I?'
He had been so wholly unprepared for this sudden turn of events, that caught off his guard, he heard himself say, 'I suppose . . . Perhaps . . .' He looked vaguely about and made not one single, solitary movement to stop her.
The nurse was shepherding Nonnie, 'You poor thing, what you must have suffered! A cup of tea and bed for you and you'll be right as rain.
Miss Kinsale was already on the platform steadied by a sailor. The Third Officer pulled Nonnie up alongside, followed by the nurse and Kemal. The coxswain gave an order and suddenly with that mysterious, unfelt movement that characterizes boats there were yards of open water between the lifeboat and the steamer.
Muller was standing up, a puzzled expression on his face. He cried, 'Nonnie! You'll be all right, they'll look after you.' And then almost as an afterthought he added, 'I'll come for you.'
Jane Shelby waved. 'Goodbye, Miss Kinsale! Good luck! We'll write.'
The gap widened. Rogo, Martin, the Shelbys and even Rosen were waving and calling, 'Goodbye, Miss Kinsale! 'Bye-bye, Nonnie! So long, Kemal!' It was all happening so quickly and antiseptically that Nonnie had not even time for tears.
Muller's voice carried to her, 'What was that name of your town?'
'Fareham Cross, outside Bristol. Avon Terrace,' she shouted, her voice shrill to make itself heard above the farewells, 'Number twenty-seven. They all know me mum and dad, there.' And then as what was happening at last began to dawn upon her, came a wail, 'Oh, Hubie!'
As distance diminished, the tiny face into a speck punctuated only by two eyes, Muller cupped his hands and shouted again across the ever-widening strip of water, 'I'll come for you, Nonnie!'
He was still in the grip of the paralysis that had caused him to let her go, and at that moment, too, was registered the certainty that he would never see her again. A feeling of desolation and emptiness seized him. What had happened? Why had he let her go? What had made him do it? Even as he saw her figure and that of Miss Kinsale vanish inside the flank of the steamer, he thought of shouting to the man in charge of the boat to turn around and go back, to let him off to join her. But he did not do so. He was unable to say the words, and the farther away they drew from the liner, the more impossible it all became.
His conscience was already beginning to resolve exactly how and why it had happened. It was of course the devilish coincidence that the London Tower should have been a British vessel homeward bound. Or, if Nonnie had only said, 'Do you want me to go,' instead of 'I ought to go, oughtn't I?' he would have continued to reply from his heart, 'No, no! I never want you to go.'
In the feeling of emptiness and misery that gripped him, he felt he was now one with Rogo, Rosen, the Shelbys and perhaps even poor Miss Kinsale. A thought of reprieve came to him: You have still a chance. You don't have to board the American ship. The lifeboat will be going back to the London Tower. You can go with it, and where she is, slip up behind her and put your hands over her eyes and she'll be in your arms again. The picture lifted up his spirits again.
Martin was struggling desperately to wrench his mind away from that cabin buried beneath the sea in the huge hulk. He might indeed have got off scot free, but as long as the Poseidon was still there he could think only of Mrs Lewis. Would her eyes be open or closed?
In an effort to distract himself and wipe out the picture from his mind, he turned to the detective who was watching the operation of the German freighter trying to put a steel hawser aboard the capsized liner. She had launched another boat besides the one still attached to the stern of the Poseidon by the thin filament of rope.
Martin said, 'Come on, Rogo. Now that it's all over, who were you really after on our ship?' And then added, as an idea suddenly struck him out of the blue, 'Say, look here, would it have been Scott?'
With great deliberation Rogo turned his blanketed figure towards Martin and gave him his cold, policeman's stare, the small piggy eyes peering out from a face so begrimed he looked like a minstrel man. His lips hardly moved as he replied succinctly, 'For Christ's sweet sake, why don't you leave me alone? What difference does it make now, whether I was or I wasn't? The son of a bitch is dead, isn't he? And so is my wife.' And then he added with a sudden chilly viciousness, 'And so is that big, blonde broad you were shacking up with.' Then he turned his back on Martin again.
Strangely Martin was not even startled. If anything he felt almost a curious sense of relief.
He said, 'So you knew?'
Rogo swivelled his head, 'Yeah,' he replied, 'I knew.'
For only an instant Martin wondered how Rogo had found out, before he came to the consideration of what did it matter? He had not got away with it as he had thought. Perhaps there were others as well who had known. And with this somehow his world seemed to click into place again.
Muller, who had been sitting next to Martin, had heard. Why, you little bastard! he thought to himself. So you're the one who got it made with her , and he could not keep his mind from wondering how it had been and what the grey, dry, little man had looked like, sporting with the big, voluptuous woman.
And what about Rogo and Scott, Muller was wondering now? And how many things would remain unanswered from this fatal adventure?
There was a hail and the sound of a rope slapping on to the foredeck of the lifeboat. They had approached the grey steel flank of the Monroe, lying low in the water, her deck dotted with sailors and officers in their tropical whites.
Muller saw that her superstructure was a mass of electronic gear and antennae. Both her cutters were tied up alongside. The Commander who had organized the rescue was already on board, looking down from the rail. Two sailors manned a landing companionway.
Scott and Rogo; Rogo and Scott! 'What difference does it make, now, whether I was or whether I wasn't? The son-of-a-bitch is dead, isn't he?' The detective's
answer repeated itself through Muller's mind and sent him searching back for clues in their relationship during their struggle. Rogo had hated the Minister. But then Rogo had hated everyone.
The lifeboat had been made fast and the Shelbys were being helped aboard. Rosen followed, stumbling as he went, for he had eyes only for what lay wrapped like a large package towards the stern. Muller followed with Martin and Rogo as usual, bringing up the rear. Was there something, then, more sinister in the relationship between Linda, Scott and Rogo? Or was Rogo merely once and for all, fed up with the endless queries as to what he had been doing on the boat and had given a snotty answer? Muller again asked himself the question heard at the beginning of the voyage, Why shouldn't a policeman take a holiday cruise like anyone else? And then: how would a man like Scott become involved in anything that would call for pursuit by the tough guy of the Broadway squad? It was too absurd.
The steel deck of the Monroe was hot under Muller's bare feet. The Commander noticed it and said, 'We'll have you fixed up in a minute.' And then as Martin and Rogo were assisted on board, called down, 'Thank you, coxswain. Cast off!' He turned to the survivors and said, 'We have cabins and clothing ready for you.'
The names were still going around in Muller's head: Rogo; Linda; Scott. The water at the stern of the lifeboat churned white, as the propeller thrashed and the boat moved off. Muller thought: Linda dead; Scott dead; what did the two men have to say to one another when they both went down to the poor creature impaled upon that sliver of iron? And was it only petulance because he thought his God was going to spoil his achievement in bringing the party up from the depths of the overturned ship that had caused Scott to throw himself to his death? Or, had some words been slipped to him out of the side of the policeman's mouth which had made Scott determine that it was better to die than to live? No, it made no sense, but then neither did the minister's cursing of all the old biblical Gods before finishing himself off. It was obvious there was no further information to be had from that smooth, bland, expressionless face of Rogo and never would be.
Muller looked out across the water at the diminishing stern of the lifeboat, now several hundred yards away on its last trip back to the London Tower lying gleaming in the ever-mounting sun, and felt an ice pang at his bowels. Nonnie! His resolve to go to her! Absorbed with his thoughts of Scott, he had blindly and like a sheep followed them all on board and let the boat get away.
Involuntarily he raised his arm in a gesture, that was the beginning of a wave to try to summon them back, even as he realized its futility. They would neither see it nor, if he were to shout, hear.
He was aware suddenly of Rogo's cold eyes on him and the sneering orifice forming at the side of his mouth from which the words emerged, 'So you let her go.'
Muller did not reply. There was nothing he could say, for it was true.
But Rogo was not yet through. The flat monotone of his voice never changed as he said, 'I always knew you was a prick.' Nor was there anything that Muller could say to that evaluation either. And Rogo added finally, 'I'd say it was a break for the kid at that. Guys like you are poison for anybody with a heart.' And with this he turned his back upon Muller.
The doctor had joined the Commander and said, 'I think, sir, we had best get these people to rest and some treatment. They've been pretty badly shaken up,' when there was a stir that ran all through the men aboard the destroyer escort and sudden shouts and cries of, 'There she goes! She's going!'
There was a rush to the rail. The Commander, the doctor and the seven Americans remained fixed and staring, watching frozen as half a mile away, the bow of the gigantic black whale-back suddenly dipped beneath the glaze with which the sun had varnished the surface of the sea and inevitably began to slide forward.
There was another startled shout from the men on the frigate. The seaman at the bow of one of the German freighter's boats which had been attached to the hulk by a line, was not smart enough with his axe to cut loose, and in a split second before the line parted, the craft had been overturned, spilling the men into the sea. Aboard the Monroe, Mike Rogo threw back his head and laughed chillingly, 'Drown, you Kraut bastards!' he shouted.
The stern of the Poseidon, her quadruple screws looking like giant electric fans, lifted high into the air, and it seemed that she was about to go to eternity silently, when with a suddenness that made Muller jump, the three ships standing by tied down their whistle chords, sirens and hooters in a last mourning cry and salute to the one-time queen of the sea.
For a moment yet she hung there, and then with dignity and a grave despairing finality, slid beneath the surface. Where she had once been there was now nothing but a mass of oil slick and floating debris, through which the second lifeboat from the German freighter picked its way to the other members of its crew floundering in the water.
James Martin thought: So I'm not to be let off scot free after all; there is to be punishment. Maybe old Hell-Fire Hosey had something. Martin told himself that Rogo was a tough little monkey and a cop. He might not be above blackmail. And had Muller overheard as well? Martin knew that in the end when he got home, he would tell.
Emmanuel Rosen had slipped unnoticed from the group and had seated himself, head in his hands, by the wrapped figure on the hot steel deck.
When the shouting arose and the sirens roared, he looked up in time to see the last of the Poseidon and murmured, 'Mamma, Mamma, I wish I was on it still. I wish we both were.'
Jane and Richard Shelby were standing shoulder to shoulder, Susan by herself some little distance away. Shelby's mind was racing to the beginning of the catastrophe and he was asking himself, 'Ought I not have followed Scott? Was the man some kind of a lunatic? A screw loose from being hit on the head by football players? Were those taken off from the bow the people who had remained quietly in the dining-room, waiting for an officer to come and tell them what to do? And if he had done so, would his son still be alive? How could a man know? What could a man do? And now they would never know what had happened to the boy. But he thought to himself: Jane has forgiven me whatever , and slid his arm about her waist, and from somewhere she summoned the strength not to pull away from him.
It was a terrible moment for her to be hoping and praying that her son was already dead, that the piece of her flesh that was being torn from her side was no longer animate or conscious and that he need not suffer a second death, that what she was witnessing was only his burial.
She bore no grudges, blamed no one but herself and the lie she had lived for this tragedy. And she now bade a silent farewell not only to her son, but to that other self that had emerged for so brief a moment, too late and was now gone, to be buried as deeply and finally as the unhappy ship.
Susan Shelby was gripping the rail hard and letting the tears flow for all the losses she had sustained on this fatal voyage: her brother, her youth, her image of her father and of her home. . . . But there was yet for her another reason to weep.
The eyes from which the tears fell too had strained as the lifeboat from the London Tower carrying the rescued crew members had passed. She had been looking for a baby face, light-blue eyes and pink cheeks beneath sandy hair, a head that she had held close to her breast. It was not there. This boy, hardly older than herself, whose random encounter with her would for ever change her life, had been snuffed out like all the rest. She was unable in her mind to see him in his death, wherever it had overtaken him, but only knew that it was unfair for him not to have had his chance.
And then with a curious, surging desperation that rose from some depth inside her came the wish, the hope and thereafter even a prayer that she might be pregnant by him; that he had not died wholly, that a part of him had been left behind to live the life that he had lost. And she saw and felt that if it were so, the birth would be one of the most momentous joy for her.
It would be a child like himself, with the beautifully formed mouth, a button nose and rosy cheeks, and she would take it one day to -- where was it? Her mind reverte
d for an instant to that dark and terrifying moment, but it seemed dark and terrifying no longer, but only a happening. Hull, that was it! He had said he had come from Hull, and his mum and dad had a fish and chip shop there. It should not be so difficult to find the parents of a young sailor who had gone down in the Poseidon catastrophe and place the child in their arms and say, 'Herbert didn't die really, all of him. This is a part of him.' And at the picture she smiled to herself and whispered, 'Please, God, let it be so.'
IRWIN ALLEN'S
PRODUCTION OF
THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE
Twentieth Century-Fox Presents Irwin Allen's Pro-
duction of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, starring
Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons,