Beyond the Poseidon Adventure

by Paul Gallico

  He kept the gun on him. “So c’mon, mister. Let’s hear it. Then mebbe we can talk some.”

  Jason shrugged. “That’s got to stay my business, Batman.”

  The high steel hull of the ship amplified Rogo’s roar to a thunderous boom, and it was not until the last echo had rung in the dark corners that they heard the splashing. Every head turned. A black head, arms, and shoulders appeared out of the small pool and swam to the side. The underwater diver heaved itself out of the water, tore off the mask, her hair tipping in torrents down her shining black back.

  “I’m Hely,” she said, and began to cry.

  Fat ladies wear the finest jewelry. By the time they have found their potential source, have driven him on and up in the world, and have so subjugated him that every anniversary and birthday adds weight and worth to their fingers, necks, and wrists, they have also enjoyed at least thirty years good living. Incentive has gone, and their pride lies in the contents of wardrobes and jewelry cases rather than any steady reading of bathroom scales.

  Fat women, also, are seldom fighters. When that flood gushed through the main dining room, it was the unadorned young who had fought for the surface, until they too sank back into the silence of their tinsel-draped tomb. The overweight and the old, decorated from their husbands’ industry, lay beneath.

  That was the philosophy by which Hely led her team of divers into the vast upturned cavern. It was easily found. She led them down the side of the sunken ship and, swinging on the inverted railings, along the deck and down the first steps. There as she wondered which way to go, she noticed the sign. She flipped her feet up in the air to read it. “Come and Say Hello to the New Year!” She followed the arrow past more steps and through the door.

  The thirty-foot-high chamber had become a sealed bowl containing a carnage made even more hideous by the trappings of carnival. From what had been the floor hung the bolted-down tables. All the other contents of the room had been scrambled together when the ship went over and the seas rushed in.

  After the translucent blues of the clearer sea outside, Hely had to adjust her eyes to the cloudy gray of the water here. The only light seemed to come from the pale blue disks of the portholes, and from an oblong hatch in the far corner at the top of the room. With a wave of her arm she drew her stunned crew after her. She checked the depth gauge on the canvas strap around her wrist. They were well beyond the thirty-three-feet mark. They would have to decompress on the return. There was still no hesitation as she swam straight down into the sodden havoc.

  She was right. The dead lay in mounds, dress shirts and billowing gowns their shrouds, and all around them were the foolish fripperies of good fellowship, the paper hats and streamers, waterlogged. The last few seconds of life had stripped them of standards of civilization which, even after centuries of acceptance, could never compete with the will to live. Men had trampled women. Young men had smashed aside older men. The dead were stacked in layers, according to their strength and determination. Hely smiled inside her mask: if these people, conformers and stalwarts all, could cast away the proprieties, what justification did she need?

  She felt not the slightest distaste as she plunged into their bodies. They moved easily enough, weightless in the water. She grabbed a dinner-jacket collar from behind and pulled aside a young man, his hair still crisp and curly. She took a quick look at his watch: forty dollars, not worth taking. She rolled him away. Two more men, one with a disintegrating streamer round his neck, and a woman whose diamond-chip ring suggested true love and penury, merited no further attention. Hely was after the bad hearts, the asthmatics, the bronchitics, the obese and the self-indulged, the heavy smokers and hard liquor drinkers. They would have died first.

  She found the first one under the Christmas tree. It must have been twenty-five feet high, and several bodies were trapped in its flattened branches now, almost as though they had been trying to climb it. Hely looked up. They must have been making for the hatch at the top of the room before the waters overtook them. When it had crashed over, some of the older guests had been caught. This one was a woman, hopelessly enmeshed in the silver branches of the tree. The light was poor, but through the murky gray of the water she caught the glint of gold. One-handed, she unclipped a bracelet. The woman’s plump unsunned arm drifted down again. The worry that had marked her face with lines in life was still there in death. She had the dutiful look of the good wife. Hely pushed her out of the way. Her right hand was locked in that of a man. Her gray hair floated in absurd curls away from her head; her lipstick made a small brown wound of her mouth in the opaque light. Ten years of regular visits to the beauty salon had done nothing for the fat that folded persistently under her chin, and it was beneath those rolls that Hely saw what she wanted: a necklace of sapphires surrounded by diamonds. “My God,” Hely mouthed. Her cold fingers struggled with the intricate catch. Three times her thumbnail slipped off the minute mechanism. The fourth time she slipped both hands around the woman’s neck, gripped the clasp between finger and thumb of each hand and began to twist it. The swollen, stupid face swayed backwards and forwards as she worked as though caught in an undignified exercise. Finally, the clasp broke. Hely slipped it, together with the bracelet, into the rubber purse strapped to her belt.

  To one side of the Christmas tree, a grand piano had overturned and trapped several bodies. Again, Hely swung aside the corpses of the young with their costume jewelry. Here she found an elderly woman. She must have been eighty at least. She looked oddly peaceful. She’d had more time to contemplate the grave, Hely thought. Hely pulled her hand out from beneath the piano. At last! This was the real thing. There were two rings, a beautiful square-cut emerald flanked with baguettes and a marquise-shaped diamond. Together they must be worth at least thirty thousand dollars. Hely drew the knife from her leg sheath. She tried to slash the fingers. She could not get enough momentum behind her hand on account of the drag of the water. She held the hand on the piano keyboard. The notes echoed feebly as she reversed her knife and used the serrated edge to saw through the fingers. Pretty gray-brown flowers mushroomed in the water. She held the fingers in one hand and tugged at the rings. The emerald was jammed under the swollen knuckle. Rings and finger went into her purse.

  Buoyed by the water and freed from gravity, Hely worked away as weightless as a bird among the bodies. The weak light which caught the glitter of the tree and the colored decorations was enough to pick out the jewelry. After ten minutes, her purse was half full. The value, even on the black market she reckoned, must be over a hundred thousand dollars. A ghostly fish, incurious, watched as she wrenched a diamond flower-spray brooch off a proud bosom, and the victim’s sodden paper hat, miraculously intact, slipped over open, unprotesting eyes.

  Her work had disturbed the minor detritus, and the food and paper and cigars, together with the plaster from the walls, had become little more than sludge in the water. Through the clouds, Hely could just see the paddling shadows of her companions. Not one of them had dug down among the bodies as she had. They worked tentatively at the top and she could sense their disgust for the task. She felt a cold, hard anger inside. They were fine heroes lounging on the deck or the beach. That was all they were fit for, exhibits of mock masculinity for the admiration of tourist girls. When it came to real guts, they were limp-wrists. Hely had dreamed up this idea from the first Mayday call. She had planned it, had tempted and goaded them into it, had led them and told them what to do. Even then, they faltered and floundered for fear of dirtying their hands. She knew what would happen. When they got back to the Naiad, her haul would lie on the deck beside their timid collection of cheap garnet rings and ten-dollar brooches, and she would have to listen to their excuses and meet their weak, pleading faces. They had not the courage to defy her nor the courage to obey her. They looked like lions and acted like kittens. She would have to get rid of them.

  When Hely saw the invaders come lancing through the gloom she knew their purpose at once. They swam in pairs. Hel
y watched their figures materialize. Two carried spear guns, the others held knives in their right hands, and they were making directly for the rummaging divers.

  Hely settled herself gently on a heap of bodies, and pulled the nearest one on top of her. She felt it flop lightly against her and saw a smashed face close to hers. She grabbed his hair and pulled the head onto her shoulder so she could see. Above, Roland and the others were still daintily picking at the bodies when the invaders hit them.

  It was like a slow-motion ballet in thick fog. The first two men, spear guns under their arms, back-paddled for a moment at about four yards distance. The Naiad divers worked on. Hely could not see the harpoon. She knew they had hit when two of her divers—one looked like the English boy—arched gracefully backwards and spun slowly in the water. The other invaders swept past. For a second, she could see the balance of the fight in their posture. The invaders were pointing down like arrows, predatory and aggressive, the Naiad divers were caught turning, turtle heads hunched into their shoulders, desperate arms extended to hold off the attackers. Then the figures, distinguishable only by their intent, merged. One, two, three, Hely counted the sudden clouds of bubbles that burst upwards. The invaders had slashed her men’s regulators, and the compressed air which should have gone from the cylinder to their mouths was released into the water. Hely caught the glint of silver several times through the swirling waters. They were stabbing the drowning men.

  The entire operation had taken barely a minute. The attackers regrouped in a soft-paddling circle and then broke up and began to swim around slowly. They were searching. Hely gripped the lapels of her silent escort and swung his body more directly above hers. His face rested on her mask. The color seemed to have been washed from his eyes and she stared into what looked like circles of soiled linen. A lustless arm rested on her breast. She moved her head a fraction for fear of being seen. Beyond his fronds of hair, she saw a black figure flat above her, propelling himself along with the occasional flick of his flippers. He circled, dipped down, and hovered by her. She realized her teeth were clamped hard on her mouthpiece. Surely he would see the bubbles? His progress had disturbed some of the bodies. Other bubbles rose, freed from their traps in the clothes and corpses. Hely gripped her boyfriend to her. The invader passed. She saw the black figures diminish and fade towards the top, and toppled the body off her.

  The hatch. It was the only other way out. All the invaders might not have left the massive chamber, but at least they were out of sight. She flicked in and out of the piles of bodies, her flippers whipping urgently, her fingers pulling at the bodies beneath her, at hair and clothes and limbs, to speed her progress. Once she felt the cold meat of a hand in hers. A wet-suited corpse floated above her. She jerked the leg down and through the mask saw Roland’s eyes. In death as in life, she thought, weak and frightened. She moved on, a shadow among shadows, frightened, but fixed in purpose. Next she was using the branches of the fallen Christmas tree to propel herself, and then she raced up the side of the wall and through the pale light oblong of the hatch. She looked behind: there was no sign of pursuit.

  She thought about Roland and the boys. There was no cause for regret. They were worthless. It was almost as if they had contributed to their own deaths. She had had the guts to rummage deep into that graveyard, and had lived. They had not, and had died.

  Her mind was quite cool. It focused only on survival. To survive the slums, she had learned how to duck, how to run, how to hide, how to lie, and how to smile. They had become reflex actions. Now Hely was running like a hare at the sound of a gun: quite instinctively. She fled as she had done many times before, thinking and planning as she moved. Head for the stern, she thought. That is out of the water and will give cover if those men are still around. She swirled along the corridors without a glance at the rooms she passed: a laundry, a library, a television room. She thrust past the soft-limbed bodies that were everywhere, using them as levers for speed. Hely sped through the passengers’ quarters, onwards and upwards. She checked her depth gauge as she went. She must stop to decompress soon. Stopping was risky if the men were following, but to go on without decompressing from that depth was certain death. She twisted like an eel into a cabin.

  Blue-and-white-checked bedcovers tangled on what had been the ceiling. A suitcase floated against the fitted carpet above her. The minutiae of someone’s domestic life was shattered on the floor. An alarm clock, coffee cups, a glass still holding a twist of lemon, a ring. She picked it up and examined it. Cheap rubbish. She flicked it away in disgust. Suddenly, a face peered at her through the half-open door, and Hely snatched for the knife strapped to her leg. She relaxed with a sigh. The face, fixed in a bilious smile, floated slow and unwinking across the doorway. It was just another body, caught in some gentle current.

  Hely thought. She had gone some distance towards the stern. Soon she would be under the engine room. Then she would surface and see if it was safe to return to the yacht. She still had her haul. The trip had not been entirely wasted. The gleaming green figures on her watch showed she had decompressed for seven minutes. It should be ample. She should be safe from the bends, that terrible flirtation with death that came from too rapid an ascent. She almost smiled as she remembered other chases in earlier days. It was always like this. Always in the dark. Then there had been the slam of a policeman’s boots behind her, the skidding on corners, the swerving and the frantic grabbing for lungfuls of air. Then there was always the delicious moment when the pursuer was lost, the panting rest in the corner of an alley somewhere, and the chance to rejoice in the haul. Then it had been a snatched handbag perhaps. Hely patted her purse. She did not need to look this time. Life, she thought, never really changes. Only the stakes got bigger, and the policemen didn’t wear boots anymore.

  When she had seen the water beginning to brighten she knew she was nearing the surface. She headed for the light. It was not bright enough for the sky. It must be a pool somewhere in the boat. Then she had surfaced in the great dark barn and struggled to the side. There were some people. A little man with ginger hair. A girl. A man in an undershirt with a gun. She needed time to think. Cry, thought Hely, and the tears ran.

  The story did not hang together. It offended all Rogo’s instincts as a policeman. He reran it through his mind. A girl pops up in the middle of a sinking ship looking like she’d just stepped out of the centerfold of Playboy, unzips her rubber suit so’s you can see halfway to Kalamazoo, sobs like hell, gets all the guys patting her back and wishing they were patting her ass, and then tells a story you wouldn’t hand a ten-year-old.

  “Look, let’s try to get it straight, lady,” Rogo said. He was kneeling down beside her, the gun still in his hand. “You say you were on a cruise, you heard the call, and you and your buddies came looking for survivors. Okay. So where are your buddies? You say they got trapped—where, for God’s sake, and how, and why couldn’t you help them? You came here—why not swim out the way you swam in and go back to your boat? I’m not knocking your story but there sure’s one helluva lot of holes in it.”

  Rogo’s questioning was not very popular with the other men. Martin was on his knees, his arm around the girl in enthusiastic consolation. “Don’t worry,” he kept saying. “You’re among friends now. We’ll look after you.” He took her hand and squeezed it. His little pink face shone with sincerity and excitement too. James Martin, haberdasher, was still having the adventure of a lifetime.

  That was why he had returned. All his life he had been nobody. His schooldays were spent in anxious smiles to please the big guys. He was the last to be picked for a ball game. Later he was the one the girls kissed on the cheek and said was cute. Even his business was the smallest in Anaheim. At the Rotary meeting, Martin had to sit quietly and listen to Delano who ran the big food store and old Marcus Dowdney who owned the furniture business. Even when he organized the Christmas raffle for them, they hardly noticed him. “You did a great job there, Jack,” Mr. Delano would say. Three years he ha
d been a member, and he was so insignificant they didn’t even know his name. James Martin despised himself a little, and his life a lot. He didn’t want to go back home. And when he did, he wanted to have his photograph on the front page of the local paper. Boy, old Dowdney would know his name then.

  For the first time in his life, he felt like a hero. He felt like a cowboy. He felt like a marine. He felt like all the things he had always wanted to be. James Martin, haberdasher, from Anaheim, the worst football player in high school, was on his knees in a sinking ship holding a beautiful woman in his arms. Anyway you looked at it, it beat selling socks.

  He brushed her wet hair back from her face. “You’ll feel okay in a few minutes. You just rest. Comfortable? My knee’s not digging into you, is it?”

  Hely’s plight even dragged Manny Rosen out of his desperate longing to be away from this place. He sat on the girder beside her. “You listen to him, miss. He’s right. You’ve had a nasty shock, I guess. You young kids nowadays, I don’t know, you don’t look after yourselves. Flesh and blood you are, you can only take so much.” Belle had come out of that same pool and died. Her body was just a few feet behind him. She had been flesh and blood and now she was a lump of ice. “Listen to an old man,” he added. “Take it easy, huh?” His hand wiped a smear of oil off his tragic, drooping moustache.

  The girl was obviously distressed. Klaas agreed that the story was confused, but then the girl was shaken. “Coby,” he whispered, “do you think I should go to the Magt and fetch the brandy? This young woman is badly shocked.” He was a little surprised to see the hard set of his daughter’s face. “I do not think she is in any danger of dying,” she said. “She looks very much alive to me, papa.” Coby had watched her every second since she climbed out of the pool. She had seen the imploring words and glances. She had seen the girl’s wary look when Rogo said he was a policeman. She had seen something else in her eyes when she had looked at Jason, still leaning against the girder, his face unmoved. “I don’t think she’s quite as ill as she appears, father,” said Coby.