The Poseidon Adventure by Paul Gallico

Author:Paul Gallico [Gallico, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Coward-McCann

A RATTLING OF BONES

14

The party worked its way back again, rechecking, peering behind cases, boxes and bales that had been tumbled from floor to ceiling when the ship keeled over, looking now for a young, dead hand stretched out from beneath some pile, afraid to find it, afraid not to find it, growing more and more fearful of being compelled to face the fact that he was nowhere.

They met once more near the centre of Broadway where they had left the others, the bobbing lights coming together.

“Did you find . . .” Manny Rosen was about to ask, when Belle poked him, “Don’t even ask. Wouldn’t they have said so? This is terrible!”

Scott said, “I’m sorry, Jane, he isn’t there. He couldn’t have got past us. We’ve been to the end.”

He said nothing about the gap in the inner wall of the alley and the dark hole at the bottom of it where the lantern had shown unspeakable things floating. Kemal had pointed down and said, “Boiler—Boom!”

The second one aft had not exploded, but plunging downward it became wedged in the funnel shaft. There had been no chance of the boy ever reaching it.

They fell silent until Nonnie said, “But he can’t have disappeared, he was such a lively little . . .” and then she cried, “oh dear!” as Muller squeezed her arm to silence her, for with one exception they were all aware that he could very well have done so.

Rosen asked, “What about staircases?”

Rogo said, “There are plenty of those, going both ways.”

“Mightn’t he have got up one of those?”

Martin said, “What, in the dark?”

Belle whispered to her husband, “Shsh! Don’t talk so much, Manny, don’t ask so many questions. Ain’t it bad enough without making it worse?”

Susan said, “I looked down where we came from. There was nobody there. There’s about six inches of water now.” She remembered that it had just covered the pipes and Herbert had run splashing away into oblivion.

“Yes,” Scott said, “in the corridor of ‘D’ deck below. The ship is deeper in the water than she was.”

Rogo said, “Jesus! She could go any minute, then. What’s holding her up?”

Muller said, “Maybe the cargo holds and the ballast tanks at either end. Acre said they were empty. She could be flooding in the middle, but . . .”

“Then we ought to be getting the hell out of here,” snapped Linda Rogo. “If the kid’s gone, it isn’t our fault. I don’t want to drown. If he was anywhere around, he would have hollered, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes,” Jane Shelby said, “you must be getting on, of course.” Her speech, under this provocation, was astonishingly calm. “All of you, please. I shall stay here until I have found my son . . .”

Susan caught her breath and said, “But Mother—you can’t!” and realized suddenly that what she was saying was “we can’t”. All the selfishness of youth came welling up in her. For she didn’t want to be left behind in that black and forbidding alley with the memory of what had happened to her there.

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