The Action Page 4

  And suddenly, like Gant on the deck far above, Wells was swinging over nothing. Where the state-room had been there was now a hole that went down to the pale oily maelstrom of the sea far below. Nothing was left except, where the other side of the state-room had been, a square of floor in the corner jutted over the abyss. Bolted to it was half a bunk, and on this, naked, on the far side, sat Rebecca Dark.

  At 1600 Rebecca Dark turned on the shower in Stateroom 2 and slipped her long body out of her red silk robe. She had put her hair up in a careless knot and jammed a green plastic shower cap over it. Rebecca moved with a grace that was totally unselfconscious - markedly different from the controlled movements of Alec Stone or her employer Eldridge Gant. It was not that she was unaware of the beauty of her fine legs, or the way the supple slimness of her waist emphasised the downward curve of hips and the upward rise of breasts; indeed she ate with a certain degree of care to ensure that these things remained so for as long as possible; but - having a fine figure and doing what was necessary to maintain it - she did not let it rule her. She had much the same relationship with the black waves of her hair and her fine-boned face: not that she had ever actually stopped and thought about herself for long enough to work out these things in detail. However, the results of all this thoughtless, semi-automatic care rarely failed to turn heads and occasionally to elicit wolf-whistles from the trenchantly genderist.

  Rebecca had worked for Eldridge Gant for nearly a year now as secretary and general assistant. She and Gant had an easy relationship somewhat along the lines of uncle and niece. Certainly, in all the time she had known him he had never been anything warmer than distantly avuncular. Indeed she always felt that he was working to maintain a distance between them which safeguarded the sacrosanct areas of privacy - both mental and physical - with which he liked to surround himself. For example, during at least one night in every city they visited he would insist on going off Heaven knew where on his own. Rebecca had once enquired about these jaunts - she would not do so again.

  Further, the respect to which she felt he was due as her employer served to hide the fact that she must never get too close to him without him knowing: she must always knock on his door and must never enter without his permission - no matter what. As far as she was concerned it was only common courtesy but he saw it as something more. He had explained it to her once and she could see his point. The fact was, he said, that when one led such a public life as his, privacy even in the smallest things became of paramount importance. So they remained on slightly distant terms and each was quite content with the arrangement. Gant had an efficient secretary who never impinged needlessly on his privacy and whom, incidentally, it was a pleasure to be seen with; Rebecca had a job which she enjoyed and performed well and she also got to see the world - First Class.

  As Rebecca stood beneath the shower and began absent- mindedly to soap the flat brown precipice of her stomach her mind was somewhat removed from her employer. Last night in the bar Mr Wells - “Call me Silas, sweetie” - had been watching her very closely. She rather thought the interesting, silent Mr Stone had given him the brush-off. That Wells is really rather detestable, she thought. And as she did so, a giant hand seemed to lift her and slam her against the shower wall. Winded, she began to slip. Then the wall of the solid little cubicle hit her in the back and as she fell forward again the iron tap smashed against her head just above the hairline. As she collapsed the rose burst off the shower and a cloud of superheated steam roared over her to blast a hole in the heavy-duty plastic of the stall. One or two drops fell on her lower back and buttocks but she was already unconscious.

  In fact it was this steam, which would have killed her had she still been standing up, that saved her life. Under normal circumstances the blow to her head would have laid her out for more than ten minutes but the scalding water dripping onto her hurt sufficiently to cut through the darkness in her head a little under five minutes after the first explosion. At first, aware only of the pain in her back, she thought she had damaged her spine but when she looked over her shoulder the red spots astride the brown-white line left by her bikini bottom showed what had really happened. She pulled herself to her feet and staggered a little on the slope of the deck.

  Her first thought was for Gant as his had been for her - she had been unconscious when he called to her - and she ran into her stateroom to get her clothes. As she was still rather groggy she sat on her bunk in order to pull on her panties, then as the effort started her head aching she lay back to catch her breath.

  As she did so, the floor of her cabin vanished through the roof. A tremendous wrench slapped her head against her pillow with stunning force. Her hands automatically clutched, slipped, clutched again. She was clinging for life. Clinging literally, for she found herself on the top half of a bed hanging over a cavern whose further reaches she could not see, and the bed, like the cave, was tilting farther and farther to port trying to hurl her off her perch. She worked her hand down the small space between the remains of the bedhead and the wall, closed her eyes and hung on as the ship tilted over.

  Just when Rebecca became certain that she could hold on no longer, the movement ceased and then reversed. Moments after, Rebecca was sitting on her ledge safe for the moment and sound. Then she heard the voice of Eldridge Gant call faintly from the great cauldron of brightness above her head, “Is there anybody there?”

  “Yes!” she screamed, but the word came out in a broken whisper. She cleared her throat desperately and called again but the slow clatter of a falling plank like a single drum at a funeral drowned out her second cry. A little later she thought she saw two figures outlined against the white-hot disk of the sky. She was still calling to Gant, “Yes, here! Oh, here! Help, please, here!” Then they too were gone.

  The seconds crept by, each punctuated by the falling of more timber. She followed one bright plank with her eyes as it fell end over end through the ragged hole where this deck had been, through the metal-toothed void where the next deck down had been, and so on deeper and deeper into the black-shadowed pit until the white-foamed madness of the water below engulfed it and sucked it down. Then above the roar she heard a knocking at her door and called out. The door opened, and there, as though framed in a picture high on a huge wall, stood Silas Wells. Wells’ unbelieving eyes probed the darkness and finally rested upon Rebecca. It was then she realized that she was in fact very nearly in the condition he leeringly reduced her to in his mind every time they met. Automatically her legs crossed over her flimsy panties and her free hand crept up to cover the coral tips of her breasts.

  “Creeping Jesus!” said Wells. Rebecca said nothing.

  Then Wells was gone without another word and Rebecca began to pray. For perhaps two minutes she sat there with tears streaming silently down her face as the forward tilt on the ship became more and more noticeable. But Wells had only gone for help and suddenly the door slammed open again.

  A little way down the passage he had found a hosepipe and an axe in a box on the wall labelled ‘In case of fire break glass.’ Wells had broken the glass. Now he stood in the doorway swinging the heavy brass nozzle of the flat canvas hose. The first time he threw it he missed but the second time it landed on the bed and Rebecca held it with fierce concentration, far more worried about survival than about modesty.

  “Push it under the leg of the bed, take in the slack and throw it back!” yelled Wells. She did so, though it was hard to do one-handed. The first try reached him by something of a miracle. Wells pulled as much off the wall as he could and cut it with the axe. Then he chopped the nozzle off the hose. Taking the two cut ends he passed them through the railings at the bottom of the stairway and tied them together.

  Rebecca had worked out what to do next and was already busy when he staggered back to the doorway and called “Tie yourself a sling.” She pulled her hand out from behind the bed, took a loop of the flat white canvas and tied a double knot in it. She slipped the loop over her head and sat, precariously b
alanced, waiting. Wells tightened the big loop by re-tying the knot at his end and then tested by pulling with all his strength. It was OK.

  “Sit on the very edge,” he yelled. Gingerly, she did so. “Now lean forward. Farther!” Rebecca obeyed. Shockingly close, the wild-foam of white water boiling in through the ruptured bottom beneath the engine room waited to claim her. She closed her eyes, kicked forward and fell off the ledge. “Hold on!” yelled Wells, needlessly. The hose tightened with a jerk. The sling of rough canvas scraped up her ribs before catching under her arms. The top of the big loop sprang taut between the foot of the bannister and the head of the bed as she swung above the submerged ruin of the engine room.

  There was a loud crack from behind her and the bed began to tip. Wells pulled frantically at his end of the makeshift breeches-buoy. The knot he had tied slid past his shoulder and out over the dizzy drop. Turning in slow circles Rebecca was pulled inch by inch towards safety. She was two-thirds of the way over when the leg of the bed broke. Wells saw it go and in that second before the full weight came onto his arms he managed to take a few steps backwards. Rebecca was also thinking with a speed born of desperation. As the whole of her ledge tumbled noisily into the water behind and below her, she grabbed the far side of the loop. Then Wells was staggering forward and Rebecca was swinging 15 ft and more below, where C Deck used to be. The rest of the loop which had spanned the stateroom swung beneath her tapping the razor edges of twisted steel and dragging in the water.

  “Bates!” yelled Wells and abruptly there was another man helping to pull her up.

  Within a few moments they were helping her through the doorframe and into the corridor. Bates swung his white uniform jacket over her shoulders and they supported her out onto the unbearable brightness of the forward deck, and it was not until then that she thought of the show she must have given Wells. But somehow she thought now that he probably hadn’t been looking too closely after all.

  There was a small group of people there. “Rebecca,” said Gant stepping towards her. He looked faintly ridiculous in his sunhat but there was a great deal of relief in his voice. Mrs Gash and Letty Buhl were there with him and Alec Stone lying on the deck with blood on his forehead.

  “What happened?” asked Wells, relinquishing Rebecca into her employer’s charge and gesturing towards Stone.

  “Miss Buhl nearly went over the side when the second explosion happened,” said Gant. “Stone saved her. When I got there he was lying on his belly hanging onto her. She was dangling over the side. He was out cold but he simply wouldn’t let go.” There was awe in his voice.

  Then Bates said, “Where’s the lifeboat?” Nobody answered. The green jaws of the ocean closed over the high forecastle with a roar like a waterfall.

  “Here, Slobowski, what’s the time?” yelled Slattery.

  “Nearly sixteen-hundred.”

  “Jeez! You’d think it would get cooler this time in the day.” The big Irish American turned back to his work.

  “Out here?” answered Slobowski, the square Pole from Chicago, “It never gets cool while the sun’s up.”

  “At noit now,” chimed in little weasely Dublin O’Keefe with a corny whining brogue, “At noit now it’s a different matter entirely so it is. You Americans have it all too easy, you know? All that air-conditioning’s made you soft. Terrible. Terrible. Day’s too hot. Night’s too cold.”

  “Shut up O’Keefe and do a bit of work,” said young Mr Spooner the 20-year-old Third Officer who was still wet behind the ears. They were a unique little group among the Chinese and Malay crew. But they were also much more troublesome than the accommodating Orientals, so today they were swabbing the deck.

  “Yes sir!” said O’Keefe. “Yes sir, indeedy sir. Mr Laughton, could I ever be troubling for a little of your water? His Majesty here…”

  When the engine room blew up they were all thrown onto the deck and Laughton’s bucket toppled over sending a small tidal wave of cold soapy water over O’Keefe as Wanderer slewed first one way and then the other. The men began to pick themselves up. By the time they were all together it was obvious she was going down by the head. Young Spooner turned, a little at a loss. “Better start swinging the lifeboats out,” he said.

  “Oh sir, come off it, sir,” whined O’Keefe. “There’s no rush. ‘Abandon ship’ hasn’t even been sounded yet, sir. Let us go and change sir. We’re all wet.” The others were in agreement with him for once. They all had personal effects they wanted to get if they were going to abandon.

  Spooner was very young. He wavered. O’Keefe took the lack of a blank refusal as permission and started for the aftercastle where their accommodation was. Spooner let it slide and after a while he followed the men. The crew’s quarters in the high poop were cramped but not uncomfortable. Here, the Europeans had a little, segregated, room of their own. Spooner and the men crowded in and the deckhands started to strip off their clothes and put on dry ones. Then one after another they turned to some private corner and began to secrete bundles and packages under their shirts. “Come along now, hurry up, please,” said Spooner, concerned that while there had been no signal to abandon ship a purposeful group of Chinese crewmen had arrived on the deck below under the command of Willy Windle, the Second Officer and were swinging out lifeboats. Where was the Captain? he wondered.

  The Captain and First Officer were at that moment trying to ascertain the extent of the damage below and were just beside the engine room.

  “Hurry up,” repeated Spooner anxiously.

  “Aw sir, just a minute, sir,” whined O’Keefe, smirking round his unresponsive shipmates.

  “Shut up, O’Keefe,” snapped Spooner, ill-tempered. His own whites were beginning to dry uncomfortably on him. He would be a mass of prickly heat tonight, he thought. He turned to the door saying, “Come on then,” and he noticed two things: almost the whole crew was on the after deck swinging out the lifeboats; Mr Gant in a white hat clutching a bright orange lifejacket was tumbling backwards through a dark doorway behind the bridge. He must have slipped, thought Spooner.

  Then the deck took off and soared in a million jagged fragments into the air. It was like watching a flock of starlings take flight. Or like black fireworks, thought Spooner distantly, totally overwhelmed by the great roaring. The last thing he saw before falling backwards was Second Officer Windle flying impossibly high in the air, a man, at first quite recognisable, then a shape, then a cross among many crosses then, suddenly and for no apparent reason, five separate pieces which began to fall with the rest towards the sea. Spooner fell onto his back and rolled as the ship rolled. “Sweet Mary Mother of God,” said O’Keefe. They all lay stunned as the Wanderer heeled over.

  It was Laughton, the huge, quiet ex-boxer from Liverpool who took charge. Spooner had knocked himself out as he fell. Blood trickled down his forehead. “Better get to a boat,” he said.

  “Over that?” screamed O’Keefe, waving at the yawning crater in the deck.

  “There’s one on the poop,” said Slobowski, the Pole from Chicago. “It’s a cutter more than a proper lifeboat, but I guess it’ll do.” They piled up tables and chairs until Slattery could climb up and smash the skylight. The big Bronx Irishman pulled them all up through, one at a time after him onto the sloping poop. Laughton went last, handing up Third Officer Spooner’s inert body to Slobowski and Slattery. When he got up he saw that the others were pulling the old green canvas cover from the long cutter and preparing to swing it out.

  “Better hurry,” said Laughton. The angle of the deck was increasing as she went down by the head. The propellors and rudder were nearly clear of the water.

  “We’ll never get it down past the rudder,” whined O’Keefe, but even as he said it the great fin of metal toppled flat onto its side with a sound like a massive gong being struck. They began to winch the boat down as quickly as they could, so that it slid off the dripping rudder clear of the blades and into the water. Laughton slung Spooner over one massive shoulder and climbed
down the gantry rope. The rest followed as best they could.

  Once in the boat they unshipped the oars and were just about to row away when Laughton said, “Once round the ship. There may be more alive and all the other boats are gone.”

  “They’re all dead,” said O’Keefe belligerently. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  “Sorry,” said Laughton gently, “no can do.” His baby-blue eyes wandered over the rest of the men in the lifeboat, half expecting them to back O’Keefe and get away to safety but Slattery shrugged his massive shoulders, grinning his Irish grin and Slobowski the Pole nodded once. So they rowed down the side of the sinking ship yelling, “Is there anybody there?”

  “Yes, here!” cried Eldridge Gant the actor, suddenly appearing just forward of the bridge in a white sunhat which made him look faintly ridiculous.

  “Jump!” yelled O’Keefe, eager to be away.^

  “GET OFF OF THERE!” shouted Slobowski.

  “DO IT NOW MAN!” Laughton yelled.

  “But there are several more…let’s see…seven of us all together…”

  “Jesus Christ,” muttered O’Keefe.

  “GET THEM ALL OFF. QUICKLY,” bellowed Laughton, concerned now that by the time seven people could sort themselves out and get to the boat they would all be sucked down after the Wanderer and drown.

  “DO IT NOW MAN!” Laughton repeated, gripping the tiller so tightly the dry wood began to crack. Unconscious still beside Laughton’s corded thigh, Spooner stirred a little. Five passengers and the radio operator crowded to the side of the ship, paused, then four of them jumped. The men in the boat rowed as near as they dared and quickly dragged them aboard: Letty Buhl and Mrs Gash, Rebecca, and Wells. Grant and Bates followed with the unconscious Alec Stone, held between them. They supported him to the boat and climbed in after he had been pulled aboard.